Talk:The Shelter (The Twilight Zone)

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The local neighborhood of a typical suburban community is having a small dinner to honor the local Dr. Stockton at his house. Everybody is especially friendly and mention is made of his late night work on a fallout shelter that he has built in the basement. A scary radio announcement is made that unidentified objects have been detected heading for the United States. Everybody knows what it means, nuclear attack. The doctor locks himself and his family into the shelter. The neighborhood becomes hysterical and wants to occupy the shelter. All the friendliness disappears and is replaced with hate. The last scene shows the once friendly neighbors breaking down the door to the shelter with a battering ram. Just then, the radio announces that the objects have been identified as harmless satellites. Rod Serling makes the final statement. "For civilization to survive, man must remain civilized." This episode is historic in that it aired days before the Cuban Missile Crisis and helped to create the hysteria of the greatest crisis of the cold war.

                  Larry Goynes