Take a 360 degree tour of a fallout shelter.

ost of my life I was afraid that the world would blow up," says Marshall Berman, professor of political theory and urbanism at the City University of New York, author of the book "All That Is Solid Melts into Air" and longtime resident of the city. "The fallout shelters make me remember that fear."

The shelters first appeared in 1951 after passage of the Defense Emergency Act, and were symbolic of the attitudes and culture of the time. They were part of an emergency response plan in case New York was the target of Soviet nuclear fire.

"The shelters were placed in large sturdy buildings, usually with a basement," explains Chris Griffith, head of the Atomic Archive, an educational CD-Rom and Web site on the history of the atomic bomb.

"Almost all government buildings were designated as shelters, libraries, schools, etc.," Griffith says. "The only characteristic of these places was their ability to house some number of people, but I do not think any public buildings were upgraded to withstand the effects of the nuclear blast."

The act defined a shelter as "a building, structure or other real property, or an area or portion thereof, so constructed, altered or improved as to provide protection against harmful radiation resulting from radioactive fallout."

The entrance to a fallout shelter at 530 W. 112th St. in Manhattan looks the same today as it did 50 years ago.

he Northeast was the "vulnerable heart" of America with its large cities and a large concentration of heavy industry. New York City was a prime target for the Soviet attacks, as it was the nation's most populous city, its financial center, and an important business and transportation center.

The nuclear threat also resulted in the creation of a nationwide network of air defenses: long-range radar sites to detect the approach of Soviet bombers, interceptor aircrafts, antiaircraft gun batteries and surface-to-air missile sites.

"Many of these remnants are still in the New York City area," explains Donald Bender, an expert in Cold War relics who works on a restoration program of defense facilities for the state of New York.

Parts of that culture were also the gags. "The jokes about the fallout shelters were endless," says Berman. "Jules Feiffer, the cartoonist, MAD Magazine, everybody joked about them because everybody knew that they were completely futile.

"MAD Magazine was always doing something or other often related to nuclear war often ridiculing governments and defense policies," says Paul Boyer, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and author of the book "By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age."

Integral in the development of the atom bomb, this cyclotron was used during the first stages of the Manhattan Project. It can still be found on the Columbia University campus.

The government’s futile defense policies during the Cold War were the reasons why they were the targets of jokes and ridicule, says Berman. "The most incredible thing of all is that the Eisenhower administration kept on saying that there was nothing to fear."

The Cold War reached a critical point during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

"During that event," recalls Bender, "my father created a sort of makeshift bomb shelter in the basement of our house. There were emergency food supplies and sealed bottles of water, which we kept for many years. The idea that we might have actually had to hide in our basement for a week, or two weeks, or more, following a massive nuclear attack was frightening."