Atomic Cave

Mrs. Kathleen MacDonald had read a lot about the atom bomb, and it made her uneasy. Said she: "Being a widow, there's so little you can do [for protection]. It's different when you have a man to lean on." But one thing Widow MacDonald could do: build a bomb shelter for herself and her twelve-year-old son.

Last week Canada's finest private atom bomb shelter was finished. Although it looked like a simple mound of concrete in Mrs. MacDonald's backyard (see cut), the roof was steel-reinforced and 32 inches thick. Inside, the shelter was 8 by 4 by 6 ft., had six-inch walls and floors of waterproof concrete, was equipped with a food storage locker, oxygen tanks, electric lights. The underground entrance had a 30-inch, lead-lined door fitted with a oneway safety valve to equalize the interior air pressure after a bomb blast.

To warn her of radiation, Mrs. MacDonald has a portable Geiger counter linked to a detector tube in the garden. When the counter sets off an alarm bell, Mrs. MacDonald will go to her shelter, taking the counter with her to connect up inside so that she will know when the area is clear of radiation and she can safely go out.

Mrs. MacDonald's shelter was designed and supervised by tall, greying Allan A. Eccles, an X-ray expert in Vancouver. Working with information from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. Office of the Surgeon General, Eccles built the shelter in ten days, and says it is "calculated to afford protection against blast, flash and gamma radiation within a reasonable distance of ground zero of an atomic bomb burst." Although Eccles does not plan to go into the business, he is willing to make his specifications available to contractors if the government approves Mrs. MacDonald's shelter. Eccles thinks similar shelters could be mass-constructed in Canada for about $500 each.

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