Pronunciations
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/əˈtɑː.mɪ.tæt/
Pronunciation notes
- General-American
Noun
A luxury underground bunker; an underground house designed for habitation during a nuclear fallout or other catastrophic event; a luxurious (and often large, homely) fallout shelter.
Usage- US usage
- Rare
- Broader terms
- Examples
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More examples (6)
Visitors to the New York World's Fair in 1964-65 will get a chance to share the "oohs" and "aahs" in Plainview for the last year and a half. Jay Swayze, Plainview contractor and president of Underground World Home Corporation, is building another of his famed "Atomitats" at the World's Fair site.
It has a den, living room, dining room, kitchen — and even a patio, all enclosed within a concrete shell. The atomitat resulted from an idea Swayze had some years ago at a civil defense discussion on family fallout shelters.
The steel door is secured and the family and their friends gather on the entrance patio to wait out the threat. In last year's tornado, numerous people went to the atomitat and the Hammans were the only ones who had electricity for several hours, using their emergency supply until high lines were repaired.
His first "subterranean house for the nuclear age" was for his own family, a 10-room, 2800-square-foot ranch house three feet underground. To market the atomic habitat (atomitat) he built a version of his home for the 1962 World's Fair.
Fair attendees experienced Michelangelo's Pieta, Walt Disney's animatronics, and NASA's latest space rockets and satellites. One could tour an "atomitat," short for atomic habitat, an underground house to ease fears of a nuclear war.
Construction began in 1974, and by 1978, Henderson's dream became a reality. The estate, costing an estimated $10 million at the time (equivalent to roughly $68 million today), remains the largest private luxury bunker ever constructed in Nevada and one of the last accessible Atomitats in existence.