Selects: Fallout Shelters: Probably Useless (Let’s Never Find Out)

9:36Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I remember that.

9:37Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, you know, it was my brother and I taking out – digging out buckets of dirt and carrying them out in the woods and dumping them for probably three or four weekends and then we stopped.

9:47Chuck Bryant:So you guys were 20 percent covered if something happened.

9:50Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, we could have, yeah, it was pretty gross.

9:53Chuck Bryant:So was it akin to this shelter that we were going to go over at the end? Was it like that?

10:00Josh Clark:Well, I mean, it eventually could have been, which is to say, you know, kind of a concrete room underground surrounded by earth.

10:10Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah, no, I'm saying like the kind where it's like you dig a trench and put some wood poles on earth over it.

10:15Josh Clark:No, this is part of my basement. Like my dad had a workshop, and on the interior wall of the workshop, he knocked down the cinder block wall, and we just started digging.

10:25Chuck Bryant:Oh, wow.

10:26Josh Clark:Which I'm sure was super safe to the foundation of the house.

10:29Chuck Bryant:Sure, right. He's like, oh, it's probably not low-bearing. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, there was definitely a point in time, especially during the height of the Cold War, where it was like, this is, we're really in danger here. The world was just kind of walking around, just twitching and shaking at the idea of this. And part of the problem was not just the idea that a bomb was going to go off and just blow cities apart. Because apparently there was this one of the nuclear deterrent theories, the game theories that people kind of operated under, said, no, you know what? If we ever engage in a nuclear war, we're just going to be attacking military installations side to side.

11:11Chuck Bryant:And so we don't really have to worry about that for people in New York or D.C. or, you know, Atlanta, wherever, any of the major metropolitan cities. We don't have to worry about those cities getting leveled. But there's going to be a huge problem for the people living there because there's such a thing as radioactive fallout. It's not just the bomb that gets you. It's the fallout afterward.

11:31Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, if you're talking about a nuclear bomb, a nuclear warhead, it depends on what kind. You know, back then it was different than it is now. But let's say a one megaton H-bomb back in the day would completely wipe out everything within about two miles from where it hit.

11:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and I know I said we weren't going to fear monger, Chuck, but I found out that there is a bomb in the U.S. arsenal called the B-83, which is 1.2 megatons. And it can be carried around very easily by the B-2 bomber. So those exist.

12:05Josh Clark:So two miles, everything is gone. And this is from the blast. and a person, if you're like five miles away from that bomb site, you're going to get hit with third-degree burns just from that blast.

12:17Chuck Bryant:Yeah, you're going to be hating life. So the blast is going to be bad enough. And again, yeah, just for people miles away, it could be burned to death, incinerated, vaporized, just all sorts of terrible stuff. But if you're living outside of that blast zone, you've got problems in the radioactivity that's going to be generated by it Because when those bombs explode, they release a lot of radioactive particles of different varieties. And those things go up in the air and they get kind of carried around and stirred up in the atmosphere. But a lot of them are heavy enough that they come back down in basically around the area, in a larger area around the bomb's epicenter.

12:58Josh Clark:Yeah, and we should probably just go over some of these different types of radiation. Some of it you might recognize from various Incredible Hulk comic books.

13:08Chuck Bryant:Right.

13:09Josh Clark:But you've got your alpha particles, your beta particles. You've got gamma rays. You've got neutrons. The gamma rays is what got Hulk, right? I think so, right?

13:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

13:18Josh Clark:I'm pretty sure.

13:19Chuck Bryant:Because gamma rays are green and Hulk was green. That's right.

13:22Josh Clark:I think that's it. And you have those sweet, sweet purple pants that somehow still fit. For sure. So the alpha and beta particles, they are not great, but they are easily stopped is probably the best way to say it. Yeah.

13:36Chuck Bryant:So here's the thing. And like everything I tried to read about this was like they would go to great lengths and be like, well, this one isn't like that much of a problem. This one's way worse. And then finally they'd throw up their hands and be like, actually, all of this is just going to be one big giant cluster. Right. Because depending on the different type of radioactive particle, there's different situations where they're way worse than the other one. Like a gamma ray is really bad because it can go clear through several inches of lead right into you on the other side of the lead through your body.

14:09Chuck Bryant:And then everything it comes in contact with, say, all of your cells and tissues and bones and all that stuff, it really screws them up genetically. And you can develop cancer and radiation sickness and all that. That's pretty bad. But then you've got alpha particles where they can be stopped by a piece of paper. They can't even make it through your skin, but they could get all over like crops in the water and we drink them and eat them and then they cause all sorts of problems inside of you too. So there's really no good radioactive particle as far as a fallout from a nuclear bomb is concerned.

14:42Josh Clark:Yeah, not at all. So don't, you know, if you read up on this stuff and it said, oh, a piece of paper or a little bit of plastic can stop beta particles and alpha particles. Just think about the air you're breathing, the water you're drinking, the maize you're growing. Sure. If you want to get traditional. It's all very dangerous.

15:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Don't just be like, oh, let's make a paper suit out of newspapers and maybe a little paper dry cornered hat out of newspapers. I'll be fine.

15:09Josh Clark:But like you said, when this bomb hits, that mushroom cloud goes up. Everything's all mixed together. And as the wind blows, these little – I think John Fuller, our old pal, wrote this one a long time ago, right? Yeah. For How Stuff Works. Old John Fuller. He said there are lots of little – they act like little tiny missiles basically that are just going off all over the place. Yeah. That was the neutrons, right? Yeah. I think the neutrons specific he called the missiles. But they kind of all are.

15:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah, they are. They're super high energy. And gamma rays, like I said, they can pass right through you. Neutrons are a problem in the relative immediate blast area because they're very heavy. So they don't go nearly as far as, say, like gamma rays or X-rays or alpha particles or beta particles. But they all do damage in their own unique special snowflake way.

16:02Josh Clark:Yeah, and it's also, I mean, this stuff is being carried around by the wind. But the actual particles that you're seeing is actually Earth that is now enriched with this stuff that is poofed up from that crater where Earth used to be, I guess.

16:18Chuck Bryant:Right. And so knowing all this, like this was this is like why people started to be like, oh, OK, maybe we should start building fallout shelters to live in or inhabit for, you know, the immediate period after this this nuclear attack to give us a chance to survive. and hopefully make it a few weeks and then things will have died down. Everybody will have forgotten about the whole nuclear holocaust. And we can come back out and restart civilization. That was the, really, honestly, if you get down to it, the thinking behind fallout shelters in the United States in the 60s and late 50s.

16:55Josh Clark:All right, should we take a break there and then talk about these things? I think so. Some more? Yeah. All right, we'll be right back, everyone.

17:33Josh Clark:We'll be right back. benefits. You're getting both in every sip. Skypot protein soda. Reach for the sky. Get your Skypot protein soda now at Target. Hey, our ride's almost here. Are you ready? Just grabbing my shoes. That's what you said 10 minutes ago. I just dropped a video call, uploading this giant file on my tablet, looking at my watch go bananas with the group chat, and of course, still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone. All at once? Yep. Story of my life. That's why I switched to T-Mobile. They have the fastest 5G network. Okay, multitasker. I see you. Honestly, I never imagined I could do all this at once.

18:13Josh Clark:It's awesome. Say no more, I'm totally switching. My post is taking way too long to upload. That's a sign. You've got to get T-Mobile. So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile.com.

18:33Josh Clark:Fastest based on analysis by Uklav Speed Test Intelligence Data of National Speed Score results Incorporating 5G download and upload speeds For the first half of 2026

18:46Chuck Bryant:Hey everybody, YouTube Premium Takes something you already love, YouTube And makes it even better The content, the creators, the feeling of finding Exactly what you're into For every mood and moment of your day Like, for example, let's say you want to learn to cook, but you don't have time to go take cooking classes across town. Well, you can find tons of instructional cooking videos, all without ads, on YouTube Premium.

19:09Josh Clark:That's right. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube. A YouTube Premium subscription gives you access to exclusive YouTube features and benefits, including, but not limited to, ad-free. So we're talking about uninterrupted videos, background play. So background play lets you keep listening with your screen locked and offline downloads. You can download your videos to watch anywhere, even without Wi-Fi connection.

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20:02Chuck Bryant:So, Chuck, I think since we've got one act under our belt, we need to start the second act by telling everybody they can preorder our book. Hey, I took some vitamins, you know? I've been taking vitamins as much as I can. Oh, yeah? And I've got this multivitamin, you know, like the worst a vitamin can taste. I've got that horrible vitamin taste just stuck in the back of my throat because it got stuck there for a half of a millisecond before it washed down, and it's just left this terrible taste of vitamin coating back there. It's driving me batty.

20:37Josh Clark:How is your health with the vitamins? Can you tell the difference? No, none. How's your pee? How's your urine?

20:44Chuck Bryant:It's bright yellow, which makes me just feel like such a chump, especially after our vitamin supplement episode. Oh, right. Didn't we say like we pee most of it out? Yeah. There's good ones for sure. And I like to think I'm taking good ones, but I just know that there's no telling right now.

20:59Josh Clark:You're like, I'm using injectables now.

21:01Chuck Bryant:Pretty much snortable vitamins.

21:05Josh Clark:So fallout shelters, it's funny here, and I'm glad John put it this way because it really makes a lot of sense. If you think about an SPF for sunscreen, it's the same exact way with a fallout shelter. you have a PF, a protection factor. And that is just very simply a representative of being in a fallout shelter or just being out in the open. And FEMA put out a pamphlet called Standards for Fallout Shelters, and they said you need a PF of 40. At least. Yeah, if you want to, you know. And that puts you down to about 2.5 % of the radiation, which I heard that number and I thought that was too much.

21:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah, no, I think what you're really shooting for is something like 300, that kind of thing. And they're saying like a minimum of 40 or else you might as well just go lay out in the radioactivity for all the protection you're going to get. Another way to look at that PF number is that it's the denominator and the fraction of the radioactive exposure that you get compared to being outside of the shelter. So a PF of 40 would mean that you get 1 40th. I'm more of a fraction guy than a decimal dude how about you? you like decimals or fractions more?

22:21Josh Clark:I don't like either one but I think for our next live show in 2022 you should wear a shirt that says fraction guy and I'll have one that says decimal dude and that'll just be our new tour outfit and you can have yours printed on a button down shirt of course

22:38Chuck Bryant:because nothing looks better than good silk screening on a button down Oxford Maybe by the time we go on tour again, this horrible vitamin taste will be out of my mouth.

22:48Josh Clark:Maybe so. So with fallout shelters, there's a couple of kinds, if you're going back to the 1960s, that people were talking about. And that is the public one and then the private one that you just build at your house like we kind of didn't do. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. And this would be right up your alley. You probably did this.

23:10Chuck Bryant:Rabbit hole is pretty safe, I bet. Yeah, depends on how deep, I guess.

23:14Josh Clark:Yeah. But if you start Googling 60s fallout shelters. Oh, and I did. Oh, boy. It's just a treasure trove of articles and pictures. I saw one that these people in Woodland Hills, a suburb of L.A., or part of greater Los Angeles, bought a house not too long ago, a few years ago, and they found a – did you see this one? No, I saw some in Milwaukee. Oh, well, I saw that Milwaukee article too. That was great. But they found a 15-foot-down, under-the-earth fallout shelter that was fully stocked. It was like a time capsule from 1961.

23:55Chuck Bryant:And Brendan Fraser and Christopher Walken were living in it.

23:59Josh Clark:I can't remember who the mom was. Do you remember? Oh, I didn't see that. Oh, you didn't? No. It was a cute movie. Yeah? Is that Encino Man?

24:07Chuck Bryant:No, no, no. This was Blast from the Past.

24:10Josh Clark:Oh, okay.

24:11Chuck Bryant:And Zeno Man was great, too, because the weasel's in it. Oh, was he? Yeah, Pauly Shore. Yeah, I knew who that is. I just didn't. Pauly Shore, Sean Austin, and Brendan Fraser. Sean Astin. Whatever. That guy's rich enough. He doesn't care what I say.

24:28Josh Clark:So I was looking at all these 1961 period products and just, like, getting tingly feelings in my body. Mm-hmm. Because they were perfectly preserved for the most part, like, faded and stuff. Mm-hmm. But there was a can, like a coffee can, but it said multi-purpose food, Meals for Millions. And so I was like, I got to find out what this is. And it turns out that Meals for Millions was a nonprofit from way back then that is now— What's it called now? Hefra International. No, now it's transformed into another name these days. I think Freedom from Hunger is the new name. Okay. But these two guys, Clifford Clinton and Dr.

25:05Josh Clark:Henry Borsuk, took on this task of – Borsuk was a biochemist at Caltech. And they took on this project of trying to find the best food to feed like the cheapest, absolute, most bare bones thing you could put in a package to feed the hungry.

25:24Chuck Bryant:Right.

25:24Josh Clark:And that's what they came up with was this stuff in a can. And it is 68 % defatted soy grits plus dehydrated potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, leeks, parsley, and spices fortified with vitamins and minerals. And it comes in a can and you boil it up and eat it. And it was something like two cents per serving. And it was a really ingenious idea, but this became, I think, kind of a popular thing for fallout shelters because you could just stock cans and cans of this, like, the most bare-bones, caloric, sort of healthy thing you could get.

26:00Chuck Bryant:Meals for millions. That's pretty great. I did not expect it to actually be as healthy as what you just listed off.

26:07Josh Clark:Yeah, I would love to taste some of it. Well, it's just travel to Woodland Hills.

26:12Chuck Bryant:I know. Just call it food. What do you mean, multipurpose food? Is it like a pomade as well or something? A sealant. A food that I ran across that was pretty popular, especially among government-funded fallout shelters, was this kind of like wheat cracker that was made from bulgur wheat. And apparently they were inspired by some crackers that were found in Egyptian tombs that were still edible after a couple thousand years. So they're like, oh, that'd be perfect for fallout shelters. So they kind of recreated those. Tasteless, edible? Yeah, multipurpose apparently. You could shave with them too.

26:51Josh Clark:You might could. That Milwaukee article was pretty cool though. Yeah. I think it said that at the time there were like 3 ,000 plus personal shelters in the city of Milwaukee alone.

27:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah, the thing is, is like that's probably a pretty good number. The thing is there's no official numbers for the fallout shelters that were built around the Cold War because there were a lot of private ones, but there was also public ones too. So let's keep talking about the private ones first. Because if we're going to follow the historical timeline, which I'm in favor of, around I think the late 1950s, I think it was 1957, in the Eisenhower administration, there was a report that's now called the Gaither Report. And it basically said, here's everything we figured out about a nuclear war. The cities are toast.

27:45Chuck Bryant:People are going to die en masse. We have no place to put them for them to shelter in. And everybody's in a lot of trouble if there is a nuclear war. So really, the best thing we need to focus on is to prevent a nuclear war from happening. Well, that leaked out. And people said, well, what are we going to do? And this is when the government was like, I don't know. Why don't you build some shelters and leave us alone? And so people started doing that. And it became like a huge craze. And so shelters in places like that home in Woodland Hills or that one in Milwaukee that are still around today in some cases, that became like a big deal.

28:23Chuck Bryant:Like adding like a really nice swimming pool or adding like a rec room or something like that. People turned to fallout shelters and they started building them like crazy.

28:35Josh Clark:Yeah. And from that Milwaukee, I think it was in Milwaukee was the name of the website. But from what they said was they were being marketed as sort of multipurpose rec rooms that in case the S goes down, it's conveniently lined with concrete. And you could just sort of easily convert it. And I guess you would have some stuff stashed there in either a closet or in bins or something. And when you're not using it, you know, when there's no nuclear disaster, you're just using it as sort of a playroom or something.

29:09Chuck Bryant:Yeah, there was some decorator show in Chicago in the late 50s, I think, and they billed this thing as the family room of tomorrow. Yeah. It was exactly what you described. It was like a normal functioning family room, but it just happened to be in a basement in like foot-thick concrete encased under the dirt.

29:28Josh Clark:Yeah, I remember seeing when I was a kid, my brother and I did lots of sort of, I mean, I guess it wasn't urban exploring, but— Trespassing? Suburban exploring.

29:39Chuck Bryant:Sure, okay. And I remember a couple of distinct times that we saw vent pipes just coming out of the earth in the forest.

29:47Josh Clark:And we never saw any entryway or anything like that. But that had to be some sort of fallout shelter, I think. Yeah, probably. I mean, they were near homes, but not like in the yard. We'd come across a couple of them in our various expeditions.

30:04Chuck Bryant:Okay.

30:04Josh Clark:Like, you know, just clearly a vent pipe just coming out of the woodland forest floor. Oh, gotcha, gotcha.

30:09Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what it was. I hope.

30:12Josh Clark:Yeah, well, we didn't dig around.

30:14Chuck Bryant:If not, have you ever seen that Hugh Jackman movie where, like, his wife is kidnapped? Prisoners. Yeah, man, that was really good. Yeah. I mean, really good. Yeah, great movie.

30:26Josh Clark:So, um. That's, uh, what's-his-face is doing the new Dune movie, Denis Villeneuve.

30:31Chuck Bryant:Oh, well, there you go. That's why it was so good.

30:33Josh Clark:Yeah, he's a master.

30:36Chuck Bryant:I'm sorry Chuck I just I can't not correct you his name is Dennis Dennis Villanova I'm sorry okay I mispronounced it so I was kidding anyway there was the private fallout shelter trend that just blew up and became a thing and then in 1961 President Kennedy sent a letter out surely it went out to more than just this but if you were a Life Magazine subscriber, which was pretty substantial back in 1961, in the September 15th edition, you got a letter from President Kennedy basically saying like, hey, you know, this whole possibility of nuclear war thing. Well, we've decided we're going to do something about it, we the government.

31:23Chuck Bryant:And we're going to start what's called the National Fallout Shelter Survey. And with the survey, basically what we're going to do is send out government officials and they're going to look at buildings all around the country and identify sites that have the potential of serving as a fallout shelter. And everyone says, well, that's great. So like a fallout shelter, so if like a nuclear bomb goes off over our city, we're going to be saved. It's like, no, don't be ridiculous. That would cost a lot of money. No, this is going to protect you from radioactive fallout. You'll have to survive the blast, but this will hopefully protect you from the fallout afterward.

32:02Josh Clark:Yeah, and, you know, we kind of laugh about that, but, I mean, there's no way they could have built enough, like, adequate shelters to protect all Americans from the blast.

32:12Chuck Bryant:No, I mean, there was a lot of Americans. Apparently, they did look at it at first. They could have pretended to. And it was going to be, like,$200 billion in 1961 dollars.

32:22Josh Clark:That's another cute number, actually.

32:23Chuck Bryant:They were like, oh, no, we can't do that. We don't have that kind of money. So it was like you said, I think$190 million is what they ended up spending on it, which to me seems like a lot of money to send out some people to look at buildings and decide what was a fallout shelter and what wasn't.

32:39Josh Clark:Yeah, you know what's really funny is when you look at what people did around the world, what countries did around the world, and how it so jibes with how those countries are still today. So the U.S. did what we did. The Soviets said that they built a big extensive system and they had an advanced cooling system and all these filters protecting against everything and provisions, food and water forever. And, you know, this is the press release they put out basically. Who knows what really happened?

33:12Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because I found that on like russiasogreat.com or whatever. I mean, it was like an urban exploration of like an abandoned shelter. But, you know, was this just like the biggest one? How many were like that? Right. Supposedly, the Soviets boasted of a system that could protect most of their citizens from the blast.

33:33Josh Clark:All right. So that makes sense. Sweden built 65 ,000, which covered about 70 percent of the population.

33:40Chuck Bryant:TS for the other 30 percent.

33:41Josh Clark:Switzerland built enough shelters for everybody.

33:45Chuck Bryant:OK.

33:45Josh Clark:God bless them. The UK said, you know what? We're going to build enough for our military, our government, and the royal family. Yeah, chin up, everyone else. And then Australia said, nah, we'll take a pass. We're not going to build any because no one's going to mess with us down here.

34:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah, they're like, everybody's right on the beach. Everyone knows we're fine if the rest of the world's gone up in flames. I think they're probably right. I mean, they were, and especially back then, enough off the map or off the path of the threat that they didn't even need to sweat it. Yeah. They're like, hey, what's all the ruckus up there? Yeah. So the U.S. said, okay, we've got to do something. Let's at least build these fallout shelters that are going to protect people from radioactivity. And so they started building these. Well, I shouldn't say building. They started going on to private property or public buildings and saying, hey, you got a really nice basement here.

34:43Chuck Bryant:Can you take down the human skins and clean it up a little bit? We're going to put some bulgur wheat biscuits in here. We're going to put in some multipurpose food. Don't ask. And we're going to turn this place into a fallout shelter. And on their way out, they would slap a sign, a very iconic sign, which is a black circle with three inverted triangles all pointing toward the center that designated a fallout shelter. And they did this in yellow in the event of like a blackout during a nuclear war or something so that you could easily see it.

35:15Josh Clark:Yeah, pretty cool. The company 3M made these for about a penny each. And they made about 400 ,000 of these signs. And they would stock these things with, you know, like medical first aid kits, some water drums.

35:31Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

35:31Josh Clark:Those crackers that you talked about that if you add water could probably double up as like cement patch.

35:38Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I guess. But I think people would wrestle you to the ground if you tried to use the water for anything but drinking after, you know, in the event of this.

35:47Josh Clark:Sure. I mean, that's one thing we didn't mention. If you go to build your own fallout shelter, you should have some food, but water obviously is far more important. We've talked about that a lot, about how long the human body can go without food and water. Got to have a lot of water. I think I would stock it up with some of that Mike's Mighty Good ramen. Sure. Course. Which, by the way, we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that they actually sent us a coupon code for Stuff You Should Know listeners.

36:15Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah. This is not an ad, but we talk about that ramen so much.

36:20Josh Clark:They said, you know what? Tell everyone stuff you should know, 20. We'll get them 20 % off ramen if they want to order some.

36:26Chuck Bryant:Very nice. Do you write the number 20 or write out T-W-E-N-T-Y?

36:32Josh Clark:The number 20 after stuff you should know.

36:34Chuck Bryant:So 2-0.

36:35Josh Clark:Yeah, and you could stock up your own fallout shelter. You can eat that stuff for lunch. Doesn't take up a lot of room. Good calories.

36:42Chuck Bryant:It's multipurpose food.

36:43Josh Clark:You got to use some water for it, though. Right. But I mean, hey. Or you could collectively spit in it, I guess, and heat that up.

36:50Chuck Bryant:That's grody. You're going to get that water anyway, though, you know, because you're going to drink the juice. That's true. So back to the public shelters.

36:58Josh Clark:They have these pretty well stocked. They said there was an actual booklet in there that said if you want a toilet, cut a seat out of a chair and put a bucket under it, and there's your toilet.

37:09Chuck Bryant:And so when that pamphlet came out in particular, the American citizenry said, like, for real, this is what our tax dollars are doing. This is what we're getting from our government. Cut a hole in the seat of a chair and put a bucket under there. That's your advice for the nuclear war that you're half responsible for having us live under the threat of, right? They said, we're not socialists. You take care of yourself. Yeah. So the thing is, is like people would read newspapers or people would like watch the news or whatever. And they would be getting one channel of information that was saying like, yeah, here's what this, you know, what a one megaton bomb could possibly do to you.

37:51Chuck Bryant:Or if this blew up over New York City, this is what would happen. And people would say, well, what's the point of having these fallout shelters? because if a bomb goes off over New York City, all of those fallout shelters are going to be totally obliterated. There's no point for them. And the government in doing something like trying to at least lift some finger and make people feel less anxious actually had the opposite effect because it drew a lot of attention and focus to the need for fallout shelters while at the same time reinforcing the idea that these fallout shelters weren't going to be worth anything for anybody unless maybe you lived in Topeka or somewhere where there wasn't what's known as a key target, that you might actually survive in a fallout shelter that was well-stocked and had few enough people.

38:42Chuck Bryant:It could work, but for most Americans, especially ones in major cities, you're going to be in bad shape. And the fallout shelter program really kind of pointed that out. All right, should we take a break? I think so.

38:55Josh Clark:All right, we'll take our last break, and we'll be back right after this.

39:25Josh Clark:Hey, our ride's almost here. Are you ready? Just grabbing my shoes. That's what you said 10 minutes ago. I just dropped a video call, uploading this giant file on my tablet, looking at my watch go bananas with the group chat, and, of course, still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone. All at once? Yep. Story of my life. That's why I switched to T-Mobile. They have the fastest 5G network. Okay, multitasker. I see you. Honestly, I never imagined I could do all this at once. It's awesome. Say no more, I'm totally switching. My post is taking way too long to upload. That's a sign. You've got to get T-Mobile.

40:06Josh Clark:So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile.com.

40:14Josh Clark:Fastest based on analysis by Uklah Speed Test Intelligence Data of National Speed Score Results incorporating 5G download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026.

40:27Hey, everybody.

40:28Chuck Bryant:YouTube Premium takes something you already love, YouTube, and makes it even better. The content, the creators, the feeling of finding exactly what you're into for every mood and moment of your day. Like, for example, let's say you want to learn to cook, but you don't have time to go take cooking classes across town. Well, you can find tons of instructional cooking videos, all without ads, on YouTube Premium.

40:50Josh Clark:That's right. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube. A YouTube Premium subscription gives you access to exclusive YouTube features and benefits, including, but not limited to, ad-free, so we're talking about uninterrupted videos, background play, so background play lets you keep listening with your screen locked, and offline downloads, so you can download your videos to watch anywhere, even without Wi-Fi connection.

41:14Chuck Bryant:That's pretty awesome. And Smart Downloads automatically downloads videos by your favorite creators. So even if you forget to download it ahead of time, Premium has you covered. So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

41:34We'll be right back.

41:59Josh Clark:mention, but, you know, we talked about game theory earlier about how the reasoning was, no, you don't need to worry if you're in a big city because there aren't military bases there. Right. But, you know, that sort of goes the way that war goes once anything goes wrong. So if one bomb from the opposition, from the enemy, goes to somewhere it isn't supposed to go, then all bets are off, basically.

42:25Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

42:25Josh Clark:And then it's just bomb away.

42:26Chuck Bryant:I also want to give a shout out to Robert Clara from History.com who wrote, Nuclear Fallout Shelters Were Never Going to Work, who wrote a pretty great article about how this whole program was kind of doomed from the start because it was ill-conceived. But not only was it ill-conceived, they were also like poorly stocked. Some of these things that were designated fallout shelters never got their supplies. Water drums were leaking. And then others worked really well, so well, in fact, that there's one they found at the Oyster Adams Bilingual School in D.C., which is a school still functioning today, part of D.C.

43:06Chuck Bryant:Public Schools. But there is a fallout shelter that's like a time capsule, basically, that has all of the original provisions in it, just frozen in time still. Wow. It's really neat. Yeah, like that house in California. Yeah, basically. Except this was one of the designated public fallout shelters below a school.

43:25Josh Clark:Yeah, I think, didn't they try to build them to house at least 50 people?

43:30Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm.

43:30Josh Clark:And I think they recommended for the personal ones that they be at least six and a half feet tall. Yeah. And that was one of the things that sort of would have been the toughest, I think, about fallout shelters. So many of them had very low ceilings. Right. Obviously, there's no windows. I mean, bunker life is tough going. And they recommended two weeks, which is nuts to me. Like, there's no way I'm poking my head out after two weeks just to see if it's how things are going up there.

44:03Chuck Bryant:Right. And I mean, like, there was some logic and reasoning to that two weeks and that there's that you would have exceeded the half life of a lot of the radionuclides that are created. But, yeah, there's plenty that would still be around. Yes, it was it was never, never going to work like Robert Clara put it.

44:20Josh Clark:No, and I think that was sort of the idea of what you were talking about with the public being so disheartened and feeling helpless about our civil defense was like this is the general public and they didn't think it seemed like a good plan.

44:36Chuck Bryant:But it makes me wonder, though, is that a good thing? Like it sucks to have that kind of mental anxiety that we all collectively had during the Cold War, especially at the height of this stuff, like in the 60s. Yeah. But I think it might have actually been good because then the public was aware of just how dangerous things were and would prevent a kind of cavalier attitude toward nuclear war because they knew what was at stake and what was at stake were their very lives. Maybe.

45:05Josh Clark:I mean, and maybe that's a bottom-up sort of like a groundswell of public thought ekes its way up into government. And, you know, I mean, I guess we'll never know how close we ever got. I mean, I don't think we've ever done one on the nuclear, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Have we not? I don't think specifically. But, you know, we've been on the brink in a way that history has recognized. But I'm curious how close it's been in times that we never even knew about, you know.

45:35Chuck Bryant:There's one guy who celebrated every year. I can't remember what the day is, but it's basically like Save the World Day where this one Soviet, I guess a missile commander, basically had a few minutes, was being told by his computers and all of his underlings that the U .S. had launched a massive strike. and that, you know, it was up to him to call and order this counterstrike or call the people who would order the counterstrike. And he sweated it out. He said that he just didn't believe that the Americans would have launched an unprovoked all-out nuclear strike like he was being shown. And he stayed his hand and literally saved the world from a nuclear war, like single-handedly.

46:21Chuck Bryant:And the scary thing is, Chuck, is that has happened more than once.

46:24Josh Clark:Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. It's funny that, like, we're basically the last generation that grew up with any knowledge of the threat of nuclear war like this.

46:35Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

46:35Josh Clark:Like, we sort of experienced the tail end of the Cold War.

46:38Chuck Bryant:Perfect generation.

46:39Josh Clark:Yeah, but it's hard to—and the Friendly Fire podcast, which is one of my favorites, the war movie podcast that our buddies Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica and John Roderick do, they're younger. Roderick's, you know, a few years older than me. Way old. So way older than you. But John kind of drives this point home a lot about like it's really hard to put into words what that does to a set of generations when we're all sort of living under this, you know, very real threat that we could all die the worst possible death. And, you know, not like, oh, you kids have got it made or anything like that. But it's a different sort of mindset, you know.

47:22Yeah.

47:24Chuck Bryant:I mean, it definitely affects you from every stage of your life, you know?

47:28Josh Clark:I mean, it went away by the time we were in college. But, you know, I remember my early years, obviously, we were digging a fallout shelter. It was a big threat. And movies and TV reinforced that every day.

47:40Chuck Bryant:Yep. So if you wanted to build a fallout shelter, we have to say there was a time in addition to designating fallout shelters. By the way, if you find one of those old fallout shelter signs, hang on to it. You can pretty much take it. And unless there's a close-watching groundskeeper willy type who takes care of that building, nobody's probably going to notice it's gone.

48:06Josh Clark:Yeah.

48:06Chuck Bryant:And the U.S. government has no idea how many are out there because they never kept track of the fallout shelters. There was no registry or anything.

48:13Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, they started shutting these down in the early 70s officially. Yeah. Started giving away the food, sent some of it to organizations in Africa and Bangladesh. And then those signs started, I think, in the mid-'70s, started pulling those signs out. And I think finally, just three years ago in 2017, they said that they got the last of the signs out of New York City. Right. And I don't think we mentioned it's hysterical that they built these fallout shelters in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Right. As if that would, you know, that would lead to good things. Be spared. Yeah, or be spared.

48:49Chuck Bryant:Right. So if you did want to make a fallout shelter, there was a pamphlet put out by Oak Ridge National Laboratory where they basically hired— The Oak Ridge Boys? Yeah. They had a sideline in studying nuclear disaster survival. Like you couldn't tell with their beard, you know? Right. But this pamphlet basically was the result of Oak Ridge hiring a bunch of families, regular old American families, and saying, a nuclear war is happening right now. Go build a fallout shelter. Here's your instructions. And then seeing how easy it could be done and then adjusting the instructions and so on and so forth until they finally got to this pamphlet.

49:31Chuck Bryant:And the pamphlet basically came up with this really good fallout shelter where you just basically dug a trench in the ground that was several feet deep, covered it with wood poles, covered the wood poles with something like cloth, the old bed sheet, something like that, put dirt on it, put shower curtains, something waterproof, and then put more dirt on that. And they actually figured out that this particular fallout shelter had like a protection factor of like 300. Really? Yeah. And it would also survive a blast that most houses would not survive. Wow. Because you're just basically hunkered down in the earth.

50:09Chuck Bryant:And it would work for you if you wanted to. And they said that it can be done. They used the example that two non-athletic college-age girls did it in 36 hours. That was how they were selling it. We got a couple of girl couch potatoes. Right. Look at them.

50:27Josh Clark:Wow. Yeah. When I was reading about that, I figured you'd get maybe a 20 out of that. A 20? What do you mean? For PF.

50:38Chuck Bryant:No, 1 300th. Wow. Yeah. So there you go. Thank you, Oak Ridge boys. Giddy up. Oom papa. And since Chuck said that, everybody, it's time for Listener Mail. All right, I'm going to call this a series of apologies to Australia.

50:58Josh Clark:Oh, boy.

50:59Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I know what this is about.

51:00Josh Clark:So before we get into the email, I do think we should address this, that we've had some ads running in Australia only that have been no good. And these aren't ads that we knew about. These aren't ads that we read. We have a separate company in Australia that's doing that for us. And everything is under review right now because we don't want these ads out there.

51:25Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's a new relationship, and we're kind of figuring each other out.

51:29Josh Clark:That's right. But we do want to say that none of these ads were our decision. if you're out there and your interest is peaked and you're like, oh my gosh, what are they talking about? I'll never know. They were ads for mining companies and stuff like that, among other things.

51:44Chuck Bryant:Not super SYSK type stuff.

51:46Josh Clark:No, that's right. And we wanted to address it head on. But also, we wanted to address our own foibles in the billabongs terminology that we were talking about in the wetlands episode.

51:58Chuck Bryant:Just shameful, man.

51:59Josh Clark:It is. And this is something we should know even though we are not Australians. But we use the term Aborigines very sort of willy-nilly. And this is an email from Tanita. She said, in the episode on Wetlands, you used a number of terms talking about billabongs that were not correct terminology. The term Aborigines is considered outdated and offensive as it groups all indigenous groups into one term and as connotations of colonial Australia. Some of the current terms and correct terms for traditional owners of Australia include Aboriginal people, Indigenous, First Nations people. And this is something that, you know, we just should have known.

52:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah, plus, I mean, it applies to more than just the native people of Australia, too, you know, so of course.

52:49Josh Clark:Yeah, and we got a bunch of emails from people that said if you really want to do right by these people, you need to research the exact people that you're talking about. like the Palawa people from Tasmania, where she's from, or the Anaiwan people from the area around Armadale, where she lives now. And we didn't do that. And she said there were 250 different languages in Australia before invasion. Only 120 are now spoken. Bilabong, in fact, comes from the Wirajuri language from central New South Wales and is now a common Australian English term. And that is from Tanita and many others.

53:27Chuck Bryant:Thank you so much for taking it easy on us, Tanita. That was very nice. Super Australian of you as well. Just laid back and nice and not at all like chest pokey. So we appreciate that.

53:39Josh Clark:That's right. And, you know, if you're in the United States and you're not quite sure what even this means, it'd basically be like just saying Africa as a lump all term for like any tribe in Africa and the culture and the language that is very specific to that region. Right. And we're not hip to that.

53:58Chuck Bryant:No. So thanks again. Who was that? Tanita?

54:01Josh Clark:Yeah.

54:02Chuck Bryant:Okay. Thanks again, Tanita. Thanks again, Australia, for taking such good care of us over there. We appreciate you guys. And thanks to everybody who listens to Stuff You Should Know. And if you want to get in touch with us for any reason, no matter where you live in the world, no matter what language you speak, you can send us an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

54:25Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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