Logistics official devised fallout shelter sign

Robert Blakeley, whose yellow-and-black fallout shelter sign became a grim symbol of the Cold War and, in many places across the country, a now-rusting reminder of the perils of nuclear brinkmanship, died Oct. 25 at a senior-living community in Jacksonville. He was 95.

The cause was complications from a bacterial infection, said his daughter, Dot Carver.

Blakeley was a logistics official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers when he devised and perfected the shelter sign, an ominous image of three downwardpointing triangles that evoked the international symbol for radiation and, in the event of a nuclear explosion, pointed toward the nearest public shelter.

The shelter system, created by newly elected President John F. Kennedy in 1961, was designed to safeguard millions of Americans in the event of a nuclear strike, offering a more substantial, concrete-walled means of protection than the oft-repeated suggestion to “duck and cover.”

At the time, a strike seemed imminent, if not inevitable. A summer standoff with the Soviet Union over the control of Berlin placed U.S. military forces on high alert, and later in 1961, Life magazine ran a cover story showing a helmeted, plasticgloved man in a “civilian fallout suit.” The story promised that “97 out of 100 people can be saved” from nuclear fallout if they take proper measures. Meanwhile, a 46-page civil defense pamphlet elaborated on the dark arts of “fallout protection.”

That October, the first federally backed shelters were unveiled to the public. Located in the basements of churches, bank buildings, apartment complexes and municipal structures, the shelters were stocked with food and water and designed to prevent radiation exposure as well as the kind of mass chaos envisioned by television’s “The Twilight Zone,” where neighbors in one episode came to blows over access to a small private shelter.

Blakeley, a Marine veteran who served in two of the fiercest battles of World War II and the Korean War, was an expert on chaos, but not graphic design. Still, he knew enough to dismiss an early suggestion that the signs be made of railroad board, a papery material that would be difficult to hang and would likely go up in flames after an atomic blast.

“Whatever we developed,” he told writer Bill Geerhart for a 2011 post on the Cold War blog Conelrad Adjacent, “it would have to be usable in downtown New York City, Manhattan, when all the lights are out and people are on the street and don’t know where to go.”

Blakeley enlisted Blair Inc., a design company based in Fairfax County, Virginia., to come up with a few options for the aluminum sign’s image.

Blakeley’s choice, and subsequent development, proved fateful. Working with what is now the manufacturing company 3M, he settled on a durable form of reflective paint that has helped thousands of his signs remain visible (if faded) signifiers of shelters that have long gone out of use.

In time, the design Blakeley developed also became an instantly recognizable emblem of Cold War fear and uncertainly.