The Shelter (The Twilight Zone)

Everyone is friendly and jovial, even when mention is made of Bill's late-night work on a fallout shelter which he has built in his basement.

Suddenly, a Civil Defense announcement overheard by young Paul is made that unidentified objects have been detected heading for the United States.

All of the previous cordiality is now replaced with soaring desperation: pent-up hostility, nativism, and other suppressed emotions boil to the surface.

Tonight's very small exercise in logic - from the Twilight Zone.The episode aired after a summer in which the fallout shelter had loomed large in national discourse, due to the Berlin Crisis of 1961.

[1] Meeting with U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Vienna, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev insisted—not for the first time—that NATO troops withdraw from Berlin, handing over the city to an independent, Soviet-aligned East Germany.

"[3] Rod Serling saw an opportunity for urgent social commentary and "rushed into production" an episode that would comment on prevailing anxieties.