Paranoia during the Cold War led to a lot of weird things. Schoolchildren were made to watch instructional videos telling them to get under their desks in the event of a nuclear bomb (I’m sure they’d be just fine), and the average person went about their days thinking that every third person they ran into was a secret Communist.

One of the ways that this paranoia manifested was through the construction of fallout shelters. In the event of a nuclear explosion, these shelters were designed to keep people safe until it was okay to go back out into the open. Sure, their town would likely be a nuclear wasteland once they were able to leave the shelter, but the thought is appreciated.

Recently, one TikToker went viral after claiming to have found one of these shelters. While the video has since been deleted, many other TikTokers stitched with the video to show the urban explorer’s discoveries.

@clarkepayne Go check out @⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ! #backrooms #backroomsentities #clarkepayne #thesecretswithin ♬ original sound - The Secrets Within…

The video is cool, but I’ve got a few issues with this. First, everyone is saying that it was filmed in Chicago. It wasn’t — at least, it’s fair to say that some shots from the video weren’t filmed in the Windy City. At the beginning, a mural can be seen across from where the alleged fallout shelter is located. This mural is actually located in Milwaukee.

Curiously, this actually points to some places where the video is legitimate. The mural is located next to the abandoned Modjeska Theatre, which appears to be the theater seen later in the video.

Local publication OnMilwaukee has a series called “Urban Spelunking” written by a man named Bobby Tanzilo. In one edition, he traveled to the Modjeska Theatre and documented what he saw. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that he does not report an active basketball court nor a massive bank vault in the basement. A website documenting a plan for redevelopment of the theater also doesn’t make any claims about a basketball court or bank vault.

So, the video is probably fake. All that said, the kid posting these videos does actually do a lot of cool urban exploration videos. For example, he’s visited everything from abandoned movie theaters to random buildings in the middle of the woods, leading to some interesting discoveries.

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@tj_zalenski you think they torture people down here? #urbex #abandoned #fyp #fypシ ♬ you not the same - slowed down version - tilekid

As it turns out, there’s a lot of cool stuff out there in abandoned buildings if you go looking for it. Just don’t expect to be able to hoop in whatever you discover.