A heavy steel door, with latches bolted to the wall, would protect them from the seeping radiation.

"They would have survived, but I don't know how long," observed Sit-In Movement administrative assistant Lois Boyd. Not long, judging from an apparently unfiltered air vent within the 26-inch-thick cement.

Boyd discovered the long-forgotten bomb shelter and its contents -- tagged "Survival supplies furnished by Office of Civil Defense" -- while surveying a dusty out-of-the way area in the basement of the old Woolworth's department store.

The suite of rooms is large enough to hold 100 people standing. Aspirin bottles bear the date November 1962.

Workers are now overhead demolishing the interior of the building, preparing for the multimillion-dollar civil rights museum that will pay homage to the sit-in movement -- a national movement sparked by four N.C. A&T freshmen who were refused service at the once whites-only lunch counter. The International Civil Rights Museum is set to open in 2004.

But step into the bowels of the building, behind the septic-tank system, into this dark, damp and musty room, over concrete floors and past the occasional spiderweb -- and it's easy to step back to a time when the department store overhead was bustling with customers and the country was wary of the growing Russian nuclear threat.

"This really puts into perspective what people who lived through that time said about the shelters and worrying about what Russia would do," Boyd said. "Imagine being locked in a crypt, because this is it."

Some of the survival supplies found in the shelter. (Tom Copeland/©News & Record)

By 1960, "radioactivity" was a household word.

President Kennedy called for a naval blockade of Cuba in 1962, demanding that the Soviets withdraw their missiles. As the military prepared for an invasion that could launch a nuclear war, Americans were increasingly concerned about fallout. Once the crisis ended, fallout shelters sprouted like weeds where homeowners could afford them -- especially in Greensboro, which was identified by federal Civil Defense officials as a "critical target." Public buildings were designated as bomb shelters -- even though they could accommodate only 8 percent of the local population.

The problem with the shelters in homes and in buildings such as the old Woolworth's is that they provided a false sense of security, says Marilyn Braun, longtime coordinator of the Greensboro-Guilford County Emergency Management Agency.

One of Greensboro's public fallout shelters was an open-air parking garage downtown that planners said could hold 10,000 people. Some home shelters were made of cinder blocks that had never been mortared together.

Braun caught the federal government's wrath for speaking out about the inadequacies of fallout shelters decades ago, saying that they did not offer protection from radiation or starvation. She began taking down fallout-shelter signs and refused to update a "war plan" for the county in 1982 because she said it gave the public false assurances. She declared that local governments could not protect residents from nuclear war.

The state wrote her a letter after she removed signs from 170 public buildings designated as fallout shelters.

"It said, 'Maybe these are not necessarily safe shelters, it's just the best available.' But that's not what the signs said," Braun said.

She appeared on all the major networks, National Public Radio and other media outlets.

The federal government threatened to cut off funds for her office. Braun was summoned to Washington to explain herself -- which she did so well that the government eventually left her alone and began to emphasize that shelters were the best available but not necessarily safe.

In Greensboro, a 17-member War Plan Evacuation Committee, led by UNCG physics and astronomy professor Gerald W. Meisner, began looking into the allegations. The committee agreed with Braun, concluding that fallout shelters would become crematoriums, and surrounding "host" counties could never handle the overflow of Greensboro evacuees who would flee there under a "crisis relocation" plan.

Back at the old Woolworth's bomb shelter, thousands of tiny aspirin tablets rattle inside their plastic bottles without crumbling as Boyd shakes them. Six toilets, round cardboard cylinders with lids, are filled with toilet tissue and sanitary napkins and other toiletries.

Bars of Philip Morris-made surgical soap -- a substitute for antiseptic solution, according to the instructions -- kept their shape but cake off with a scratch. Also inside the room is a stainless-steel can opener that would be used to open those tin cans of biscuits.

And what about those "Survival Ration Biscuits"? They're actually 25 pounds per can -- 89 biscuits per pound -- of white-flour crackers.

The items, part of a planned exhibit at the museum, probably have not been replaced since they were placed there, Braun said.

"Items were issued once under the Civil Defense program and never replenished -- but the public was never told this," Braun said.

In the 1980s, the War Plan Committee had two physicians go through medical supplies found in other abandoned shelters to see if anything was usable, and virtually nothing was.

"The crackers were so rancid. I remember a television station showing a picture of pigs turning up their snouts at them," Braun said.

As the nation prepares 30 years later for war with another country that might use nuclear weapons, finding the crackers and other items gives them more value in Boyd's eyes -- if only for the irony.

"What a piece of history," Boyd said.

Contact Nancy H. McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nmclaughlin@news-record.com

Some of the survival supplies found in the shelter. (Tom Copeland/©News & Record)