This memorable episode aired less than two months after President John F. Kennedy—in a nationally-televised speech as the Berlin crisis rapidly escalated—urged Americans to start making plans for fallout shelters to save themselves and their families in case of a nuclear attack. 
https://twitter.com/CONELRAD6401240/status/1438109359788240896
Almost overnight, Kennedy's address set off a nationwide fallout shelter frenzy. Heated debates ensued on the morality of turning away or even shooting neighbors trying to enter a family shelter in an emergency. Here's an article in TIME from August 18, 1961: “Gun Thy Neighbor?”
Harshly criticized (incl. by Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rev. Billy Graham) for triggering the hysteria, JFK subsequently pleaded, “Let us concentrate more on keeping enemy bombers and missiles away from our shores and concentrate less on keeping neighbors away from our shelters.”
When the fallout shelter frenzy ended in December 1961 (after tensions over Berlin had diminished), Congress had appropriated more than $200 million (then-year dollars) to clearly identify and restock existing public shelters. But only about 200,000 families had built their own.
Before that happened, however, Rod Serling and “The Twilight Zone” dramatized the ethical and moral quandries presented by the family fallout shelter in the now-classic episode simply titled, “The Shelter,” which was first broadcast on September 29, 1961.
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