Late in the afternoon on the eighth day of the Cuban missile crisis, as President John F. Kennedy and his tightly drawn circle of advisers mulled
their rapidly constricting options, talk turned from the steely language of brinkmanship to the question of what might happen to U.S. citizens if
ballistic missiles were launched. "What is it that we ought to do for the population in affected areas," Kennedy asked, "in case the bombs go
off?"
Of all the presidents who served during the Cold War, Kennedy was the strongest proponent of sheltering citizens from atomic attack. Before the Cuban
missile crisis, as one story goes, Kennedy called navy assistant secretary Paul Fay to ask if he had built a bomb shelter for his family. "No," Fay
answered jokingly, "I built a swimming pool instead." "You made a mistake," JFK responded. As Fay recalled, "He was dead serious."
jfk's bunker.
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On Peanut Island, near Palm Beach, Florida, a five-minute helicopter ride from the former Kennedy estate, one can imagine life in the atomic age at
its most terrifying extreme: when nearly one-eighth of the Strategic Air Command's nuclear force was airborne and loaded, the nation's armed forces
were on standing five-minute alert under DEFCON2, and anywhere--even the president's vacation home--was a potential target. In December of 1961 the
U.S. Navy Seabees came to this tiny "spoils island"--formed out of dredge material in 1919--to covertly build an emergency fallout shelter for
Kennedy and his family
bunker entrance.
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