DeKALB | For students in the 1940s and 50s, hearing an air raid siren was almost as common as hearing a tornado siren today. How prepared was DeKalb if the Cold War ever turned hot?

Rather than just following Bert the Turtle’s advice to “Duck and Cover,” a number of fallout shelters were built on campus.

One of Davis Hall’s primary purposes when it was built in the 1940s was its bomb shelter. Now it serves as a severe weather shelter. Other shelters also dot the campus. Signs reading “Fallout Shelter” are still on Swen Parson Hall and Grant Tower.

The Davis hall basement shelter, despite serving as a severe weather shelter, is mainly used for storage: wooden boxes, old computers and air tanks fill the shelter. All of the former fallout shelters have since been converted to storm shelters or storage areas.

“In case of a major weather emergency or nuclear attack, the protocol is basically the same,” said Gilbert Sebenste, NIU Staff Meteorologist.

“People should head to a shelter and a wait further instruction from a radio or television,” he said.

President John Peters was in grade school in the 1950s and said he remembered there were regular drills where students had to march into the hallways and put their head between their legs.

“We were all pretty scared, to tell you the truth,” Peters said. “People took this seriously.”

His family did not have a bomb shelter but said he had relatives who stocked theirs with World War II rations. He said a good example of the paranoia at the time was Christopher Walken’s character in the movie Blast From the Past.

Sebenste said since storm and fallout shelters both serve about the same purpose, the ones on campus could still be used.

“The good news is, if heaven forbid it did happen, they could be converted very quickly,” Sebenste said.

The current state of world affairs, including terrorism and the North Korean weapons tests, has also brought the fear of nuclear war to the forefront.

“My fear has always been when there is a limited number of superpowers, you hoped the people involved would be rational,” Peters said. “The real danger is what we’re experiencing now with rebel regimes.”