The Fort

The Fort centers around an underground bunker built by a wealthy eccentric named Bennett Delamere. The videotapes and records stored there suggest that he built his bomb shelter in the 1970s, but the apex of American concern about nuclear attack came much earlier. By the end of World War II, America’s military alliance with Russia transformed into a competitive arms race. Anxiety in the United States accelerated when Russia tested its first nuclear weapon in 1949.

The American government responded to this new threat by suggesting that citizens could survive a nuclear blast if they built underground shelters adjacent to their homes. By 1955, the Federal Civil Defense Administration provided detailed specifications for such structures. The intention was to shelter underground for a week after a nuclear attack. Families were advised to stockpile seven days’ worth of canned goods and other supplies. During the late 1950s, it was not uncommon for department stores to feature collections of items needed to stock a fallout shelter. The Fort alludes to this practice of keeping a large quantity of nonperishable goods on hand as the boys eat their way through Bennet Delamere’s stash of canned entrees.

During the Cold War era, brochures promoting the advantages of bunkers generally showed a white middle-class family consisting of a father, mother, and one or two children. The racial profiles and gender stereotypes displayed in these ads excluded apartment dwellers of all ages, races, ethnicities, and socio-economic levels living in large cities. The bunker ideal was a white, middle-class, suburban family. From a practical standpoint, this demographic might have been a logical choice for bunker promoters since only such families would have had the acreage and financial means to construct a shelter.

The low-level anxiety of the 1950s accelerated to full-blown national paranoia in 1962 because of America’s standoff with Cuba during the Bay of Pigs incident. At this point, school children were commonly drilled in duck-and-cover procedures in case of aerial bombardments. President Kennedy even urged citizens to invest in underground shelters. The result was a rush to build bunkers that peaked in 1965 when it is estimated that 200,000 of these units were purchased.

As political tensions eased, so did America’s interest in burrowing underground. In the 1970s, the Vietnam War produced an attitude of disillusionment. By the 1980s, the anti-nuclear movement projected a sense of nihilism. What would be the point of trying to live in a radioactive world? The 1990s brought a wave of nostalgia for the Cold War bunker era in movies such as Blast from the Past (1999) or video games such as Fallout (1997).

Contemporary Americans now regard the bunker era as a quaint national obsession, and the novel depicts Bennett Delamere’s behavior in a similar light. However, recent events in Ukraine might spur a new wave of anxiety as teens in that embattled country post their experience of daily life in a bunker on TikTok. These posts have gone viral and collected millions of views, personalizing the struggle for Americans. Potentially, the vision of people sheltering underground in Ukraine may set off another wave of bunker-building in America.