Will Fallout Shelter Make a Post-9/11 Comeback? 'Shelter in Place' Recommended

(Dec. 16) -- It might be time to dust off your old fallout shelter, if you have one. Federal officials and disaster experts are telling people the best place to be in case of a terrorist-style nuclear attack might be your own home.

"The government has a surprising new message," The New York Times reports. "Do not flee."

In fact, there is little new about this advice: It's what officials have been saying for several years now.

fallout shelters and homeland security advice in event of nuclear attack

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A couple with three children relax amidst bunk beds and shelves of provisions inside a 4,500-pound steel underground radiation fallout shelter in May 1955.

"People upwind would not need to take any action [after a nuclear explosion]," Ashton Carter, now the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, said at 2008 congressional hearing, according to National Journal. "Downwind, but outside the hot cigar, the best move for many people would be not to move at all, but to seek moderate shelter."

Experts have long suggested that the safest place to be after a nuclear attack might be your home, or at least a nearby building. But the idea of "shelter in place" -- meaning staying where you are rather than evacuating -- has received renewed attention after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which heightened fears of a rogue nuclear bomb.

While this advice hasn't started a new rush to build backyard fallout shelters, some cities are making their own preparations for a worst-case scenario. Huntsville, Ala., even received federal funding to convert a cave into a fallout shelter.

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It does appear, however, that this advice is becoming codified into official guidance. "The best initial action immediately following a nuclear explosion is to take shelter in the nearest building or structure and listen for instructions from authorities," says a homeland security handbook developed to provide guidance on how to respond to a nuclear attack.

For many, the "to flee or to stay" question is academic, and experts are divided on how real the threat might be of an actual terrorist-sponsored nuclear attack on a major city. The Times notes that New America Foundation fellow Peter Bergen has said the chances are "near zero for the foreseeable future." But Richard Garwin, a longtime nuclear weapons adviser and the designer of the hydrogen bomb, has warned that the chances of a nuclear attack are relatively high.

"I think there's a 50 percent probability that we'll have such a nuclear explosion [in the United States] in the next four or five years," Garwin said in 2006.