It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report.

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From WBEZ.

Hi, I'm Chris Bentley.

Kyle Bulliard teaches in North Suburban Niles.

When he drives to work, he passes a strange sign.

It's on the side of a sturdy brick building, owned by the regional wastewater treatment authority.

So we're here right now at Howard and McCormick where this sign is.

And I, you know, I pass this building every single day.

And at some point along the way, I just kind of noticed it.

It's a pretty small sign.

It's kind of rusted a little bit. It says fallout shelter on floors one in basement. Fallout shelter as a nuclear fallout after an atomic bomb blast.

You know the symbol on the sign, three yellow triangles pointing down inside a circle. That sign

got Kyle thinking. I was wondering if there were any nuclear fallout or nuclear blast shelters left in the city of Chicago or anywhere in the suburban area.

Kyle's talking about underground bunkers built during the Cold War when people worried about a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.

By some estimates, the U.S. built hundreds of thousands of these shelters in the 20 years after World War II.

But are any left in our area?

And what are they like today?

We did find some old shelters, but we couldn't turn up any apocalypse-proof bunkers that were fully stocked and ready to weather a nuclear war.

Still, the echoes of these things are everywhere. Often in places

you might not expect. Five, four, three, two, one. It might be hard to imagine now, but for years,

the nation was gripped by fear of a nuclear attack from the USSR.

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