This story opens up in the home of Dr. Bill Stockton where his family and neighbors are celebrating his birthday with a cake and some speeches in his honor.\u00a0 But as they are celebrating, a television announcement tells them to tune into the radio and listen to CONELRAD to hear a bulletin on an emergency situation.\u00a0 The bulletin tells them that the Distant Early Warning radar has detected incoming objects that may be a missile attack.<\/p>\n
The neighbors leave and run home.\u00a0 Dr. Stockton, and his wife Grace and young son Paul start collecting supplies and fill water bottles before heading into their bomb shelter.\u00a0 Just before they locked themselves in their neighbor Jerry Harlowe shows up and begs Dr. Stockton to let Jerry and his family share the bomb shelter.\u00a0 Stockton explains that he can\u2019t because the shelter only has the capacity to provide air for three people.\u00a0 After a heated exchange Stockton locks the shelter door with Harlowe still outside.<\/p>\n
Now the rest of the neighbors who were at the party show up and start panicking and come up with a plan to smash in the shelter door.\u00a0 But then they start fighting about who gets to be in the shelter.\u00a0 There are even the obligatory racist and anti-immigrant sentiments from one man against his Hispanic neighbor.<\/p>\n
Just as they finish bashing in the door, they hear the CONELRAD announcing that the incoming objects aren\u2019t missiles but a satellite and there is no danger.\u00a0 The rampaging mob collapses in relief and shame.\u00a0 They all start apologizing to Stockton and each other for their insane behavior.\u00a0 When someone says that the bombs didn\u2019t destroy them after all, Dr. Stockton says that maybe they\u2019ve destroyed themselves.<\/p>\n
So Serling reveals his liberal bona fides for all to see.\u00a0 He manages to make a bomb shelter an Un-American abomination and reveals all of our neighbors and families to be racists and hypocrites.\u00a0 Charming.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll grant that anxiety over impending thermonuclear war might not have us acting like saints but painting us as Nazis is a cheap shot.\u00a0 F.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This story opens up in the home of Dr. Bill Stockton where his family and neighbors are celebrating his birthday with a cake and some<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240,1661],"tags":[38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,1811,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-6546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-the-shelter","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n