I believe it was diesel. Either that or gas. We never turned it on. It was vented out below ground and into the yard. My parents never used it and thought the shelter was a joke.  My dad told me if the USSR launched a nuke at us that stupid shelter wouldn't save us. 

electric generator? As in a gas or diesel generator?

premitive1

You say it and it sounds like a movie, how great

bief57

Wow... I will need a lot of capital to build/buy one, in 1950  you could buy those things. It's a topic I like, mostly how to disconnect from the outside environment, the airflow :S ... fail-safes and redundancy in almost every life support system.

nikotsla

The house I grew up in had an old 1950s cold war style bomb shelter. It had an electric generator, a bathroom, and a stockpile of canned food and water containers. We loved playing in it. It was a real neighborhood curiosity. 