This article explores how filmic portrayals of fallout shelters from the 1950s to the present defined them as a space of social and cultural containment through the theme of time perception and management. Films envisioned the space as a retreat from upsetting historical processes, in which everyday life could be brought to a standstill and preserved from complete annihilation. By examining a wide variety of films, ranging from Hollywood productions to governmental releases, this article shows how the nuclear shelter entered American material culture as a moving image, in which narratives of containment of time and space – or rather, containment through time and space – offered the temporary illusion of escaping the passing of time in an everlasting present, safe from man’s own destructive power.

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