"People felt totally helpless -- it was kind of wishful thinking that you could get into a shelter and survive."

Bomberger remembers being a fourth-grader at Randolph Elementary School during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, contemplating whether the world was going to end.

He wasn't going to the shelter, he told his classmates. He was going to live it up.

Those who chose otherwise could've flocked to the shelter, which was designed to sustain its population for two weeks.

It was stocked with specially made survival rations called "Nebraskits" -- hermetically sealed, 5-gallon tins of bland-tasting wheat bars, along with water, medical supplies and blankets.

Bomberger cleaned out the place when Parks and Rec acquired it, uncovering a ration of cherry and lemon drops.

"They were so bad, not even my kids would eat them," he said.

But why, of all places, was Lincoln the site of one of the first and largest nuclear bomb shelters?

For one thing, then-Gov. Val Peterson was head of the federal Civil Defense Administration at the time and helped develop the plan.