Fallout Shelters of New York City

I have a rather weird side hobby; when I walk around New York City, I keep my eyes trained just above head level and I scan both sides of the street. I look for signs of a particular nature: fallout shelter signs. As you no doubt have noticed, the image in the header of this blog is of a fallout shelter sign. I even have a large mounted against the exposed brick wall in my apartment. Why the fascination? To understand my hobby, you should know that the signs were all created and mounted in the early 1960's, so they represent a very paranoid time in our history. They are anachronisms.

So far, I have collected pictures of 88 different signs. That number is sure to go up this summer when the weather is warm enough to walk more than a couple blocks for no good reason. Here is a gallery of the pictures I have taken. They are all done with my iPhone. I do take higher quality pictures with a digital camera (as you can see above), but I am saving those for more impressive applications.

                                                                                                                                                                               

My goal this year is to reach 200 and to actually visit the inside of a former fallout shelter. (Bonus assignment: parse the EXIF data from each of these photos and plot them all out on a map.)