We got interested at first in people who collected or preserved shelter remnants from the Cold War and had found a bit about this topic on the web (there's even a Civil Defense Museum online).

This was interesting, but not really enough. What tipped the scales was that we started finding newspaper and magazine stories about people who were buiding bomb shelters right now.

Then we found out about a conference for an organization called Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, where we met several more people intensely interested in building shelters. With the articles and these new contacts, we were well on our way.

The project was our masters' thesis for the Documentary Institute at the University of Florida. Research began in January 2003, and editing finished in August 2004.

Photo: Don looks into the shelter hatch in his Peachtree City safe room