If you grew up in the 1950s and '60s, you remember the Cold War like it was yesterday.

It was a frightening time for children. We were taught to "duck and cover" under our desks when the drill buzzer sounded.

And pray.

On the homefront the adults talked about building bomb shelters. No family that I knew did, but conversations about them came down to a moral question:

If the Russians rained missiles on us, what would you do if your radioactive neighbors came knocking and begging to be let into your shelter?

Let them in? Shoot them?

Thank goodness those days are behind us. Or are they?

In my e-mail the other day was a publicity release for Hardened Structures, of Virginia Beach, Va., a business that claims to make "surviving the impossible possibly possible."

You may want to read that last line again. The release goes on to say:

"There are many types of threat scenarios out there nowadays ... direct nuclear blast effects, fallout, biological war, terrorism, pandemics, famine, earthquakes, volcanic action, magnetic pole switch, high-energy solar flares, comet strikes, 2012 predictions coming true ... and civil unrest caused by the survivors of any of the above events — the latter is pretty much guaranteed by the way."

These people — who also build structures to withstand storms — don't build your father's bomb shelter. What they are selling are top-end concrete or steel-and-concrete bunkers and compounds that Hitler would have envied in his last days.

Prices start at $60,000 for a basic backyard-type home fallout shelter, but the release adds:

"If the threat is real or imagined, and if the client can afford the protection, then why not?"

Real or imagined?

And those neighbors?

"... the people at Hardened Structures can uniquely keep even the snoopy neighbor's nose out of the client's business," adding the company "has a staff of former military special operations people who advise clients how to protect themselves from civil threats and how they can implement covert construction."

I sent an e-mail to Brian Camden, a principal in the firm, asking if he's building any bunkers in Pennsylvania.

"We currently have two projects in Pennsylvania," he wrote. "One is a fortified home with an underground bunker and the other is an underground bunker complex. We receive several calls every day from people wanting bunkers."

I asked him several more questions in the e-mail exchange, including if he's ever been accused of playing on people's fears.

He replied:

"Are you a reporter? Is this information for a story?"

I had clearly written earlier that I was with the Sunday News, but that ended our e-mail conversation.

This is a "head-for-the-hills" mentality. When the going gets tough, it's every man for himself.

Maybe we've never really taken that New Testament commandment of "love your neighbor as yourself" seriously, but to hide in a luxurious hole in the ground while others suffer?

Whatever comes down the pike, if we're not in this together, what are we?

Drummed out
I've found another way to embarrass daughter Abigail, 14 — drumming on the steering wheel to her songs on the radio while I'm driving.

She told me:

"Father, stop! People can see you!"

Just be glad they can't hear me.

Marv Adams can be reached by e-mail at madams@lnpnews.com or mail: Sunday News, P.O. Box 1328, Lancaster, PA 17608-1328.