Background
Abo Elementary School was built partly in order to further the development of American fallout shelter design and to further knowledge about the long-term effects of life underground in a shelter environment. The U.S. civil defense film Duck and Cover was produced with students in mind, in the hopes that they would learn how, in the event of a nuclear blast, to be shielded from glass and blast waves using desks and chairs. However, educators, school administrators, and government officials soon realized that such measures would be inadequate, especially if a school received a direct hit from an atomic blast or was within the immediate blast radius of the weapon. One official argued that his school district was "in no position to guarantee physical protection… from a thermonuclear explosion or radioactive fallout." Many state departments of education viewed the school shelter plans as "worthless." California's Department of Education, for example, was given designs intended to reduce radiation levels inside the school to 1/100 the level outdoors. These plans were rejected. When the California Department of Education then specified protection which would increase the protection factor to 1/1,000, it judged the costs to be too high, and the plans were rejected. Other departments of education and administrators rejected such plans because of their concern for the psychological well-being of their students, who, they believed, would be "constantly reminded of the possibility of a nuclear war" if kept in such a school for extended periods of time.
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