Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar

Michael Smith, 1983/2023

Okay so, in 1980, the federal government put out instructions for turning your basement rec-room into a fallout shelter. There's a snack bar in it. Actual FEMA pamphlet. So in '83, Michael Smith built the thing. Smith and a set designer named Alan Herman. They put it in a gallery in New York. Wood paneling. Linoleum. Easy chair. Records. Barrels of survival crackers. Liquor bottles. Basically, the basement at the end of the world. And the bar has a canopy on hinges. Fold it down, pile concrete blocks on top, and now it's a radiation shield. That part's straight out of the pamphlet. Smith even had a word for the menu. Cuisine. Because nuclear war, he said, is this great democratizing event. Rich guy, poor guy, everybody ends up in the same basement eating the same crackers. So, Smith had been playing this character named Mike since the late seventies. Mike started out as Blandman. A guy basically built to be bland. Mike follows instructions. Mike believes the brochure. And this time, the brochure was real. Oh, and there's one more thing down there. An arcade game. Working joystick. Coin slot. It's called Mike Builds a Shelter. Smith made it with a graphics designer and a teenager who coded the whole thing on a Commodore 64. You play Mike. You put your coin in and the air-raid sirens start. Little 8-bit Mike, carrying three concrete blocks down the stairs before the big one drops. And the game is programmed so nobody can win. Every game ends the same way. Manhattan gets nuked. Then the theme from Dr. Strangelove starts playing.

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