Falling out

Last week, while driving to work through Beverly, a certain sign happened to catch my eye. I was passing the Beverly YMCA when I noticed that it had a sign on it designating it as a fallout shelter. I found this both nostalgic and odd. While it is important to know that in case there is some kind of nuclear disaster I can drive quickly to the Beverly Y, and I guess even though the cold war ended almost 20 years ago these are still fallout shelters... but do we need to designate them? Is it part of the building's code to keep these signs on there no matter what? Or does no one even think about it any more and I'm just the girl driving to work and thinking about weird stuff like that? Who knows.

I then thought on my drive that maybe this is important in case we have a nuclear accident, like Chernobyl, so maybe we do need these shelters. So perhaps it's not an issue of war, but an issue of safety. So I continued driving to work, chuckling at the fall out shelter and wondering if people wonder about it as well, but then lost thought of it.

Until today, when I was taking my weekend walk in Salem. As part of being healthy/enjoying spring, I walk all over Salem every weekend. Anyways, I was walking back to my car when I passed this corner of a building:



...another Nuclear Fallout shelter in the bank? I got in closer and took another photo of it:



Yes, indeed, there is a fallout shelter down the street from me in downtown Salem. It's a small one, as it only fits 55 people, so I may need to fight people for access to it. I honestly had no idea that public buildings were designed with nuclear fallout in mind, and that there were two so close to one another on the North Shore. It was very bizarre.

I also wonder what it looks like inside. Are there cots and canned goods and water? Or is it just a very secure room? Or maybe it's storage for the banks' files?

Inquiring minds...