Northampton author Joshua Shanley says he gets a scary feeling when entering some of the defunct Cold War buildings still standing across Massachusetts.

“You’re going down these long concrete [hallways], through these vault doors and see all this stuff,” Shanley says, “and I started to think about the history.”

Shanley, a retired Northampton and Amherst firefighter-paramedic, said he became curious and went looking for a comprehensive resource about the vast history of Massachusetts Cold War infrastructure, only to find that one did not exist.

“So I figured it was up to me to write the book, and so I did,” he said. 

“Cold War Massachusetts” is Shanley’s third book, which was published by Arcadia Publishing on April 22.

The book looks at the network of bunkers, communications centers, military sites and missile siloes that have stood the test of time in various condition since the onset of the Cold War in the early 1950s. Through hours of research, Shanley contextualizes this infrastructure with the social and political climate at the time. 

As a former emergency management director in both Northampton and Amherst, Shanley has experience in disaster mitigation. As an author, he mixes this knowledge with his interest in history.

“I do try to understand the politics of the time, [and] the government, because it’s important for context, but mostly my work is focused on the infrastructure,” Shanley explained about his process.

His first book, “Connecticut River Flood of 1936,” released in 2020, does just this by looking at what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers developed for flood mitigation after this historic flood, and how it has fared over time.

In his latest book, Shanley is looking at how the U.S. viewed a nuclear conflict during the Cold War, with bunkers, communications centers and military complexes built for a “when” — not “if” — scenario for a bomb dropping in Massachusetts.

Some of the structures Shanley investigates in his book include locations he’s visited before, like the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) Framingham bunker, or a Nike-Ajax Missile airbase turned FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force headquarters in Beverly.

Through these visits, and connecting with people who have historical records related to Cold War infrastructure history, he’s put extensive research into this book. 

Shanley said that, despite the threat of a nuclear bomb dropping on the Pioneer Valley being less than that of eastern Massachusetts, western Massachusetts was still very much involved in the planning and preparation for a possible missile strike.

In the book, Shanley includes a defunct Gap-Filler Annex radar station in New Salem that was used to detect low-flying enemy planes. It was built in June 1957 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and operational until June 1968. A bunker in Framingham was one of the first federally planned and funded of the era. In Rowe, the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station was one of the first commercial nuclear power plants in the United States, and played a role in bringing Cold War infrastructure to rural Massachusetts.

Additionally, the book includes details of a booklet given to residents in the 1970s to prepare for a nuclear attack. The book also details an evacuation plan called “Hububb” to get Boston residents out of the city, and which designated Greenfield as an evacuation location for Cambridge residents.

Although Shanley doesn’t delve much into the media and public perception during the Cold War, he says the fear that people felt around the threat was very real.

Despite all the money and time spent to create the infrastructure for a nuclear attack, that worst case scenario never came to pass. Shanley says with his book, he aims to look at how the vast network of nuclear-ready developments across the state was used at its prime, and how it functions today, several decades later. 

“The big theme to this book, especially with the critical infrastructure, is it’s hidden in plain sight,” Shanley says. “There’s always stuff that’s built all around us, and much of it is still standing. It’s either been repurposed or destroyed or just abandoned, frankly, so they’re all in different conditions.” 

Now that the book is available, Shanley says he hopes readers will remember the historical context of disaster planning when looking toward the future.

“I try to direct it in a positive way,” he said. “What are we going to do for this current hazard and this evolving hazard that we’re likely to be facing in the very short term future?”

“Cold War Massachusetts” is available online (both in paperback and on Kindle) and in bookstores.

Erin-Leigh Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.