Description: On Peanut Island, near Palm Beach, Florida, a five-minute helicopter ride from the former Kennedy estate, one can imagine life in the atomic age at its most terrifying extreme: when nearly one-eighth of the Strategic Air Command's nuclear force was airborne and loaded, the nation's armed forces were on standing five-minute alert under DEFCON2, and anywhere--even the president's vacation home--was a potential target. In December of 1961 the U.S. Navy Seabees came to this tiny "spoils island"--formed out of dredge material in 1919--to covertly build an emergency fallout shelter for Kennedy and his family. |