No, propaganda posters aside, it was always seen as just plain nuts.
The end of the world may come, miniscule though the likelihood may be in our lifetime, but you hiding out in a bunker won't forestall it. Keeping a few guns, ammo and some food on hand for lesser emergencies has always been wise...but full on hiding in your bunker praying for nuclear apocalypse so you can laugh at your fellow citizens, not so much.
Your apparent perception of your fellow Americans is pitiful. Maybe you have been watching too many National Geographic Specials on teevee. What you call a "bunker" in this part of the world is known as a "storm shelter", "dugout", or "root cellar" and dates back to pioneer days. The mandan put their whole house in the ground and called it an "earthlodge". Catlin documented them when he came through, as did Lewis and Clark. Not only do these sort of structures take advantage of natural refrigeration/heating (58-60 degrees year round) but they are a great place to go if a tornado is imminent. That is prudence, not wacko stupidity as you seem to believe.
No one here is hiding, waiting for the end of the world. In fact, I have a ringside seat for WWIII, and the nearly 40 years I have had that seat, nothing much has gone up, and little has come down. So I haven't been hiding, but I've spent a career on oil rigs in seven different states and raised kids and grandkids and am enjoying great grandkids, and life goes on. But it would be folly in an increasingly complex world which has more points of failure and with more serious consequences than it did in my youth, to ignore trends, governmental stupidity, economic ludicrousness, and bask in the insanity of normalcy bias.
Those old shelters were stocked, the signs put up, knowing full well that the masses would not survive well, if at all, if they were needed. They were a placebo. But the people were thrown that bone while the Congress and even the POTUS had their bunkers built from the Greenbrier to White Sulfur Springs and Mount Weather, and Cheyenne Mountain, (to name a few) and I noticed the missile silos are dug in pretty well, too. Maybe there is something to having a bunker, there is even one in the White House.
Theirs seem to be a little better setup than the ones for the 'little folk'.
Amazing what you can do with other people's money.
Anyway, With the DPRK rattling sabers, who knows? We certainly took Cuba seriously enough, and Castro may have been a Communist, but he wasn't a nutcase like little Kim.
Oh, the rifles have changed. I have this black one that shoots smaller, faster bullets, and holds more instead of the old bolt action (well, I kept that, too, it's still good farther out). I have food for the family a couple of months, but not enough to feed the neighborhood for long, and I prefer having a pantry to running to town for every little thing-- it's just more convenient.
I don't think anyone is praying for nuclear apocalypse, no one who has studied the effects of radiation on people would wish that on even the most annoying people.
It is a possibility, slightly more likely that someone somewhere will pop one off than it was, simply because more unpredictable governments are getting the tech to start one, and they really don't give a damn who they kill, including their own with all those virgins in paradise just waiting for them, or a 50+ year score to settle in a war that never ended, just had a cease-fire.
Apparently your vision of the present differs, and that's okay. There are all sorts of ideas out there I find odd, counter to the survival of this country, and even the human race, that people embrace wholeheartedly as sophisticated, scientific, and correct. Y'all go right ahead and believe what you will, but that doesn't mean others will agree with you. And if we happen to point out a few things here and there, consider it isn't because we're hiding in some hole in the ground (although those have made me a living over the years), ti's because, well, folks might be doing things which will prove unwise in the long run and we would be remiss if we didn't pipe up.
So yep, having a 'bunker' and supplies and the means to defend them should still be patriotic, especially since we have a Communist leader threatening to nuke us--even if he is the product of the mating of a kimchi crazed outhouse rat and one of the guard dogs in the palace. He is still sending up missiles and setting off nukes.
Me, I'd just as soon he drop over dead as a post, but failing that, it bears paying a little attention to stuff.
