Nathan Masters: For more than 4 decades, the threat of nuclear annihilation hung over Southern California as heavy as L.A.'s suffocating smog.

Thankfully, the dreaded mushroom cloud never appeared in our skies, but the Cold War left its mark, quietly invading our schools, entertainment, advertising, and everyday life.

Traces of that era are still scattered across Southern California, often hiding in plain sight, reminders of a time ruled by vigilance and secrecy.

This program was made possible in part by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation, a Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropy, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

[Siren wailing] Man: The alert is now sounding.

Remain calm.

You have 5 to 8 minutes.

If you are driving, park immediately.

Take shelter in the nearest building.

Masters: These are the chilling sounds Angelenos might have heard during an actual nuclear strike.

In 1950, local authorities began bracing the city for what seemed like an inevitable Soviet attack.

They tapped a retired Navy admiral to lead the Civil Defense and Disaster Corps, which distributed booklets to 600,000 households, appointed thousands of block wardens, and posted hundreds of fallout shelter signs across L.A. A prepper mentality swept through the Southland.

Buildings were designed to double as fallout shelters and pool companies, already in the business of excavation, began offering underground bunkers as part of the package.

To get a glimpse of this Cold War mindset, I headed to a nondescript backyard in the San Fernando Valley to meet D.J.

Waldie, a child of the Cold War and one of Southern California's most perceptive chroniclers.

So, there is so much Cold War history hiding in plain sight across Southern California.

Unless you were to--invited in this backyard for a barbecue, you would never know that there is a fallout shelter in this backyard.

Waldie: You would not know that.

In fact, you'd probably want to keep that information away from your neighbors because you might never know when you have to keep them out of your bomb shelter.

Masters: That's right.

Waldie: You know, here we are in a fairly ordinary part of the San Fernando Valley.

And here in this backyard, right outside the back door of this house, is this--a fallout shelter.

Masters: Yeah.

Waldie: What that says to me, Nathan, is that the Cold War was not fought on a battlefield thousands of miles away.

It was fought in your backyard, and in your kitchen, and in your parents' bedroom, and in your brother's high school classroom.

And here is ground zero for one warrior's attempt to beat the odds in the face of nuclear holocaust.

Masters: Ooh.

Now, we've looked at these plans.

Curiously, this bunker, this shelter is not on any of the plans we can find, even ones up to the 1990s.

And this might be the original landscape plan.

Waldie: Exactly.

Masters: What is your theory as to why it wouldn't appear on the plans?

Waldie: I'm speculating, and it's pure speculation... Masters: Please speculate away.

Waldie: that this particular fallout shelter, not at all like what someone might build from plans found in "Popular Mechanics," was clearly designed to be a hardened space to protect this family.

Masters: Well, I'm-- I'm going to take a look inside.

I'll go.

Let me--let me open this here and--wow.

That's heavy.

That is not built out of aluminum.

That's got to be steel.

Solid steel.

Are you gonna join me or-- Waldie: Not for me, sir.

Masters: OK.

I guess I just carefully step in here.

Waldie: Imagine the Colorad sirens are blowing.

You know, the-- Masters: I mean, don't take your time, right?

[Laughter] Waldie: The ICBMs are only 12 minutes away.

Masters: Ha ha!

Wow.

All right.

♪ Man: The shelter is a real good idea.

If we should ever have a nuclear war, we could get a heavy fallout, even though we were not anywheres near the target area.

Waldie: What did you see down there?

Masters: Well, there's an antechamber with a wine rack, and then there's a big steel door that opens into, I guess, what's the main shelter with 4 beds.

Bunk--two bunk beds.

There's a toilet seat.

Some pipes, including, you know, these that are sticking out.

They must be connected to what's sticking out of the ground here.

But, I mean, more importantly than what I saw is sort of what I felt.

Waldie: Exactly.

Masters: It's horrible.

It's eerie.

Just the thought of spending months down there haunts me, you know.

Waldie: The terrible psychological isolation and not knowing what was going on up here.

Because all you might have is a AM radio.

Who knows if that even would receive through these thick concrete walls.

You might be cut off from all news until you opened this hatch and looked out and saw what?

A sea of ash.

Masters: These were built not necessarily to survive a direct blast.

Waldie: This is designed to keep your family safe in the hours and days and weeks after the bombs have fallen.

Masters: And presumably you'd have supplies stocked down there.

Waldie: That would be the game plan, but again, how livable is this space, as well-designed as it might be?

Masters: Yeah.

Waldie: You know, growing up in the Los Angeles area, I felt the Cold War in my gut.

The air raid sirens that went off, the duck and cover drills under my elementary school desk, TV programs like "Twilight Zone" that portrayed the effects of a nuclear war, and the fact that I had buddies and friends from high school whose fathers might have worked in the defense industries, where they could never tell their family what they did or what they made or how it worked.

A veil of secrecy covered so much of our lives then.

I tend to think the Cold War turned the entire nation into a continent-sized Area 51.

A secret, locked-down space where things that couldn't be spoken about had to be done.

Masters: But despite this veil of secrecy, you had a pretty good sense why Southern California would be such a prime target for a Soviet nuclear strike.

Waldie: You saw the fact of that in every Sunday, "L.A.

Times."

The ads for workers at Convair and Northrop and North American and Douglas.

The list goes on of the important defense contractors clustered here, literally right around us here in in Northridge.

I had every reason to know, living where I did between downtown L.A. and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, that I was pretty near somebody's ground zero.

Masters: What a terrifying thought for a boy to behold.

Waldie: If you had your eye on what was going on around you, if you read the newspaper, which I did, you knew the risks.

You knew the risks of a small crisis turning into a big crisis, turning into all-out war.

Masters: Decades after the end of the Cold War, this still conjures up some-- some thoughts or feelings.

Waldie: It brings up fears that I had as a child.

It brings up a certain degree of anger I had as a--as a young adult.

Recognizing that some people were more worthy than other people to survive the war.

It saddens me, too, to think that someone invested so much in this thing, but it also maybe heartens me a little bit.

Never used, never used.

So, maybe mutual assured destruction, maybe the balance of terror, as immoral as it is, as immoral as it was, had a use.

Masters: After our visit, we uncovered the original building permit for the shelter, revealing its owner, Billy Pelton, an Air Force captain and Western Airlines pilot.

His son Richard remembers that he had ties to aerospace giant Lockheed, and as it turns out, Pelton didn't have to worry about his neighbor discovering the bunker because it was engineered by the man next door, who'd built a shelter of his own.

[Siren wailing] Man: Once you hear this, act fast.

Masters: More than 200 air raid sirens still pepper the L.A. landscape.

First installed during World War II, they took on an even darker significance during the Cold War.

On the last Friday of every month at exactly 10 a.m., the sirens wailed for two minutes.

A test, but also an ominous reminder that the unthinkable could happen at any moment.

To explore how Cold War anxieties shaped Los Angeles and its suburbs, I met up with Claremont McKenna historian Lily Geismer.

These air raid sirens, they're a permanent feature of the landscape.

But what--what would they have done?

Geismer: They would have sent out a sound to tell people to duck and cover.

So, they actually tested them every Friday at 10 a.m. to coincide with children who did those duck and cover drills every Friday as well.

The message is, especially with the kind of educational materials that the Civil Defense Administration put out, was very much to say that if you take these actions, you can be--you can protect yourself against a nuclear attack.

And the reality is it probably would not be true, but I think it was there to create a certain sense of security and the sense of being prepared.

Man: Our cities are prime targets for atomic attack, but mass evacuation would be disastrous.

An enemy would like nothing better than to have us leave our cities empty and unproductive.

Geismer: I think people often think of L.A. as being for its entertainment industry, but really in the postwar and Cold War period, it was the epicenter of the aerospace industry and especially the aerospace defense industry.

And so, this is where most of the large-scale work was done.

So, that made many people fear that it would be one of the crucial sites for an attack by the Soviet Union.

Masters: L.A. wasn't just the-- a source of soft power represented by Hollywood.

It was a source of hard power represented by all these aerospace companies.

Geismer: Yeah, absolutely.

This is where they were headquartered, and they were both manufacturing weaponry, but also it's where they were doing their research and development of those weapons as well, and it wasn't just building the planes and things like that.

It's all the electronics that went into really building up the US defense capabilities.

Masters: When you see some of these old vintage Cold War or nuclear preparation films, they're easy to ridicule.

But the possibility of a nuclear strike on Los Angeles was a terrifying reality.

Geismer: Yeah, I think that's a--it's a really important part of it that people often think about when they think of 1950s suburbia as this time of security, complacency, conformity.

But the other side of it is one of--of intense anxiety, and especially as intense anxiety about a nuclear attack.

Man: If you are at home when a surprise attack occurs, crawl beneath a table if it is very near, or drop to the floor with your back to the window.

Masters: So, if the government had these preparedness programs, it had these air raid sirens going off once a month that created all this anxiety in people, is there an element of social engineering to that?

Geismer: I definitely think there's a component of that, and I think there's a couple things that are interesting about it.

One is this idea that you're sort of creating the idea that, like, average citizens are on the front lines, and that does create a kind of a sense of compliancy or obediency, and that, to me, is actually one of the things that's, like, most amazing about it, or about the kind of postwar era, was this kind of faith in government, that, like, the government is telling us what to do and we will listen to them.

Woman: Wouldn't it be best to just get out of the city?

Man: No.

If any evacuating is to be carried on, the proper authorities will decide it.

We'll be notified and get orders and instructions.

Right now, the safest place for us is right here.

Masters: What, if any, impact did the Cold War have on the--the built environment in Los Angeles?

Geismer: L.A. already had a tendency to decentralization, but even before the Cold War, there was fear of a--just conventional bombing.

Masters: During World War II, for instance, right?

Geismer: Yeah.

Masters: We're right here on the Pacific Ocean.

Next country over is Japan.

Geismer: Absolutely.

And so, one of the fears was you would put manufacturing or industry concentrated in dense areas, and so, you then have to build housing for the people who live there.

So, there's a large amount of government subsidy that's coming through, but also the corporations themselves were actively wanting that kind of development to happen, so, this really does help to reshape the suburban landscape.

Masters: Air raid sirens made no effort to blend in.

Being conspicuous was the point.

But other Cold War installations took a stealthier approach.

Strategically placed throughout the Southland, radar-guided missile sites quietly scanned the skies, ready to defend L.A. Man: NIKE missile batteries of the Army Air Defense Command are on continuous 24 hours a day vigil, ready instantly to meet an attack.

Masters: Named after the Greek goddess Nike, not the sneaker brand, these surface-to-air missiles were primed to obliterate enemy bombers with atomic firepower.

Anthropologist Mihir Pandya has studied the secrecy that defines Southern California's Cold War defense industry, with a special focus on the rise of stealth technologies.

I met up with him at a NIKE missile site tucked deep in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Here in L.A., we are just surrounded by remnants of the Cold War.

Some of them were meant to be conspicuous, but others were designed to be more or less secret, like this NIKE missile control site.

I think about the soldiers who were stationed here.

They had these very important Cold War jobs.

Probably had security clearances.

They probably were sworn to secrecy about exactly what they were up to.

Pandya: Absolutely they were sworn to secrecy.

And they were amongst tens of thousands of other people in and around L.A. who were part of this sort of completely classified universe.

Masters: There's a sign over here.

It says, "Danger," but I think that's meant to be tongue in cheek.

Pandya: Ha ha ha!

Masters: Let's hope.

Pandya: Ha ha!

Masters: "How the NIKE missile system worked."

OK. Yeah.

So, radar would detect enemy airplane, would send the location to the computer here, then would activate the missile guidance radar.

So, a missile would be launched from Sepulveda Basin down there close to Van Nuys.

Pandya: To me, what's also interesting is that this battle between radar and the folks fighting radar.

Masters: Right.

Pandya: So, this is another iteration of-- of that whole system... Masters: Right.

Pandya: that I had no idea was here.

Masters: It wasn't just people in the military or even people who worked for the US government, for that matter.

There was this veil of secrecy that covered a lot of industries, a lot of people.

Pandya: I ran across this fascinating document from the California Senate Legislative Analyst's Office.

It was this crazy number that something like 250,000 people in L.A. County worked for private defense contractors or were part of the military.

Masters: And of course, they have families, they have spouses, they have children, and so, those people are all-- they have neighbors, and those people are affected by-- by the secrecy that they're sworn to.

Pandya: To clarify, I think those people worked for these companies.

Like, I think that the people who are, you know, read into these programs were a smaller bunch of those people.

But there are still, you know, tens of thousands of folks.

And for me, anyway, stealth became a kind of metaphor, right, for this whole massive economy that was here, right, that was both seen and unseen.

Masters: Yeah.

Pandya: You know, people couldn't really talk about it.

Lots of stuff was classified.

Masters: Yeah.

Pandya: And I think it has a lot to do with why it's this sort of absence in our sort of public imagination of, of the middle of the 20th century.

What I've come to appreciate about secrecy during the Cold War is that everybody knew a part of part of something.

Masters: It's compartmentalized, right?

Pandya: That, I think, is actually the sort of profound dimension of secrecy that's sort of not really acknowledged, you know, that it's actually-- everything is fractured.

So, you might have a kind of sense of something.

You knew that you worked on something really major, or you knew kind of what it did, but you didn't know the specifics.

Masters: Sights like this, we might think that they were protecting City of Los Angeles, population 4 million, right?

But I imagine that they were also here just as much to protect the defense contractors that were situated here.

Pandya: You know, making something as complicated as an airplane required, you know, lots and lots of different sort of places where they assemble airplanes, subcontractors.

Between, say, here and Camp Pendleton, I mean, it was just a carpet of big and large companies.

Masters: So, you've interviewed a lot of people who were involved in the Cold War defense industry.

I can imagine that that can present some challenges.

I mean, the secrecy is-- did you feel like it's still affecting them to this day?

Pandya: What's sort of fascinating, places where I've really seen it sort of become to cohere are in people's homes.

You know, you go to someone's house who's worked on a project like this where publicly they can't talk about it.

But when you come and you interview them decades later and you go into their office and it's surrounded by awards, pictures, photographs, and it's this sort of, like, miniature museum to not only their own lives, but to a whole sort of period of Californian history.

They want their place in history, but it's hard to memorialize something that's been classified.

Masters: Eventually, everything becomes declassified, if you wait long enough.

Pandya: Yeah, I guess.

Masters: Tucked away in Laurel Canyon on Wonderland Avenue, another Cold War installation operated under the same cloak of secrecy.

But the Lookout Mountain Air Force Station didn't house weapons, just lights, cameras, and Hollywood magic.

Decommissioned in 1969, the complex is now the residence of actor Jared Leto.

I wanted to respect Jared's privacy, so, instead of knocking on his door, I went to the home of photographer Ken Hackman, who worked at this top-secret movie studio during its heyday.

You were sworn to secrecy about what happened at Lookout Mountain.

Hackman: Everyone who worked there had top-secret clearances.

You couldn't work there unless you had one.

Masters: We're not getting you in trouble right now, right?

Hackman: Well, hell, I hope not.

[Laughter] Masters: Yeah.

The photographs you were taking were of great intelligence-- military value to the Soviet Union, to any avowed enemy of the United States.

That's why this all had to be done in a secure facility.

Hackman: Absolutely.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Masters: So, for several decades in the middle of the Cold War, there was a secret Air Force facility in the middle of Los Angeles?

Hackman: Yes, there was.

Masters: How many people were aware of its presence?

Hackman: Very, very few.

It was up the Laurel Canyon and Wonderland Avenue up to the top, and here's this building, and Lookout came into existence because of the atomic detonations out in the Pacific.

They wanted documentation.

Yeah.

They made the Air Force executive agent and said, "Create a facility that's secure where you can do everything," and staffed it with many Hollywood people, mostly older guys and gals who, you know, had been in the rat race of Hollywood, said, "Hey, I'd like a steady paycheck."

Masters: So, it was no accident that Lookout Mountain was situated in Los Angeles.

It's the proximity to--to the film industry that--that really made it... Hackman: That made it attractive, yes.

We made a lot of films.

Masters: Yeah.

Hackman: Not only for the Atomic Energy Commission but for the Air Force.

Masters: I mean, I've seen a picture of Jimmy Stewart here.

You must have had quite a few celebrities cycle through the station.

Hackman: We had Henry Fonda come up.

Tennessee Ernie Ford and Vic Morrow.

Marilyn Monroe.

Ronald Reagan.

Masters: Really?

Hackman: That was when he was still selling refrigerators.

[Masters laughs] What was your role at Lookout Mountain?

Hackman: I was in still photography.

Masters: So, what did that entail?

What sort of things did you photograph?

Hackman: Same thing the motion picture guys did.

Masters: Mm.

Hackman: Atomic detonations.

Masters: How many atomic detonations did you photograph?

Hackman: I was only on one operation, which was Dominic, which was the last atmospheric test we did, which was in '62.

Masters: So, you photographed an atomic detonation.

I mean, what was that like?

Hackman: Well, it was-- it was--it was different and, you know, and I was very young.

We were on the beach of Christmas Island.

Masters: This is in the Pacific.

Hackman: Yeah, South Pacific.

Well, they gave us goggles, but they said, "At the point of detonation, look away.

Look out towards the ocean, away from where it's going to be."

So, I did.

You know, we all did.

We're not stupid.

When this thing went off, it was total white as far as you could see.

Masters: Even--you were looking the other direction, and still surrounded by white.

Hackman: It was so bright that it washed all the color as far as you could see.

Even as a young 24-year-old, I was impressed.

I said, "Wow, this is not good stuff."

[Masters laughs] Hackman: We--we should not be doing this because this power is just incredible.

And then you--as soon as that happens, then you turn around and start photographing.

You see the mushroom cloud start to build and build and build.

Masters: How were you feeling?

I mean, were you-- You were in awe?

Were you terrified?

Hackman: No, I was just-- I gotta get pictures.

Masters: You were just doing your job.

Hackman: You're doing your job.

You have to do-- that's what you're there for.

Masters: Right.

Hackman: So.

Masters: Wow.

Man: On all counts, Operation Dominic proved to be a significant milestone in the ever-vigilant task of keeping the nation's ramparts secure.

Masters: Much of Ken's work was never meant for public eyes.

But outside the walls of Lookout Mountain, other masters of mass media were crafting a government-sponsored marketing blitz designed to inform, educate, and prepare Americans for the worst.

One of the best places to see the fruits of this campaign is the Wende Museum in Culver City.

I met up there with founder Justinian Jampol, who's been collecting Cold War relics for nearly 3 decades.

I've never used a Geiger counter before.

This is pretty cool.

[Laughter] Jampol: We're going to put him to work.

Masters: Now, this is a--what, a East German car?

Jampol: East German car, 1977.

And if you get a little close to it, you'll get a little-- you'll get a little reading there.

We're heading to our air raid siren right over there.

This is a Scream Master air raid siren from 1950.

Masters: Scream Master?

So, they had the branding down.

Jampol: They had the branding down and it was almost exactly like buying a car.

You could option them out.

Masters: And you could get it in sleek Cold War red.

Jampol: You can get in all different kinds of colors, shades, options.

So, cities would buy these packages.

So, Claremont had a package.

L.A., of course, had a big one.

Masters: Sure.

Jampol: They had hundreds of them.

And inside this control box, instead of the original guts, we've overlaid that with a Bluetooth enabled, uh, jukebox I can play from my phone.

The sirens on this thing still all functional, all work.

Masters: This might be the most powerful Bluetooth speaker in the world.

[Jampol laughs] You know, this is the only Bluetooth speaker that could withstand a nuclear blast.

Maybe.

[Rapid beeping] We're standing in a former National Guard armory from 1949.

They have about 12 of these across the state of California.

And this was one of these case studies to see if they could withstand an atomic blast.

They never tested it, but they was--it was built around the time of the atomic bomb, and by the time they were done being built, it was the hydrogen bomb had been introduced and there was no way that they could withstand that, especially-- this has two aboveground bunkers, one for guns, one for people.

Masters: "Fallout Protection.

What to Know and Do About Nuclear Attack."

Jampol: Yeah.

This is kind of an instruction guide for what to do in case of a nuclear explosion.

Masters: This is terrifying.

"A nuclear explosion.

First, the blast."

[Laughter] Jampol: With this cute cartoon.

Masters: It does try to make something utterly terrifying a little more approachable, right?

Jampol: Now in hindsight, of course, we can look at these things as being, you know, silly or ironic or funny and--but at the time, you know, people were so anxious and so scared.

Masters: I mean, today, you still have some of the same literature being produced, I'm sure, but they--they don't usually lead with nuclear attack, right?

Jampol: Right.

And schools were a huge part of the civil defense initiative.

Masters: Yeah.

Well, I see right here, "Civil Defense in Schools."

Jampol: Yes.

I mean, one of my favorite pieces, to reach across you here, is this textbook.

You have the Civil Defense logo right there.

Everyone knew what that meant.

"Know the warning signals.

Know where the nearest shelter is."

You know, it's for kids.

Masters: But this isn't an actual text--this is not a civil defense textbook.

This is, say, a mathematics textbook.

Jampol: Right.

Masters: And this was a wrap that you'd put around the cover.

Jampol: Totally.

And then Bert the Turtle was another iconic figure.

He's this turtle that warns you about civil defense.

And "Bert the Turtle says, "Duck and cover.""

That was his thing.

There was even a "duck and cover" song.

Singers: ♪ There was a turtle by the name of Bert and Bert the turtle was very alert and... ♪ Masters: What you're describing here is a pretty sophisticated advertising campaign around civil defense.

Jampol: Right.

They had their own logo.

They had their own branding.

They wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that the government was prepared, and here's what you do in case of emergency.

Masters: So, this is what the American government produced.

I'm curious how this compared to what happened in the Eastern Bloc.

Jampol: In East Germany, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, during the time of the Cold War, civil defense in the East Bloc was purple.

They had their own color.

Their own logo.

Masters: They chose a different color, but same concept.

Jampol: And you had also the same sort of atomic symbol.

The USSR had their own air raid drills.

They had their own songs.

They had their own brochures.

All of these things, to me, collectively, when you look at them, it sounds so simplistic, but everything that we're experiencing now where we are in this world is a product of what came before.

Masters: Los Angeles may never be as synonymous with the Cold War as Berlin or Prague, Moscow or Washington, but while most of us think of the conflict as something that happened over there, some historians argue that the Cold War was won right here in Southern California.

The Soviet Union, locked in a race for technological supremacy, simply couldn't keep up with the innovations coming out of L.A.'s defense and aerospace industries.

Though the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989, and the Soviet flag came down over the Kremlin in 1991, the Cold War's legacy still lingers, etched into the landscape and culture of Southern California.

Jampol: This is actually an East German air raid siren, hand-cranked, and this is what the beginning of the end of the world would have sounded like.

[Siren wailing] This program was made possible in part by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation, a Margaret A. Cargill philanthropy, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.