Civil Defense

My battery wouldn't start the engine when we were leaving Shreveport and everybody told me to replace it rather than risk it not starting again. Since the Beetle was loaded up with all of our luggage and enough Christmas jazz for a two city tour, I stayed with it at the Sears automotive center outside of Mall St. Vincent. It took about an hour and a half and I stood outside the garage watching the mechanics tinker with it (they were busy that day and replacing anything in the Beetle is a hassle). One of the things I saw was a sign marking the auto shop as a fallout shelter.

I think that I've been passively curious about fallout shelters since I was in grade school and the public school where we had soccer practice had a sign for one. Looking at the sign on the Sears, my curiosity started to grow. What exactly qualifies something as a fallout shelter? Is there some remnant government organization that maintains the network? How were these things funded? Who owns them? What laws or regulations govern their access and use? My assumption is that none or few are wheelchair accessible, if there is an ongoing government program, are they working to make fallout shelters accessible? In my first Google search, I found civildefensemuseum.com, which seems to consist of one guy in the Dallas area.