Atomic bomb shelter pass

Robert Polidori: Cold war era bunkers

Death wears bunny slippers

In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie | Danger Room | Wired.com

Vivos underground shelter

Is this the Vault-tec of 2010? io9 posted a couple of videos from a company called Vivos that builds an underground shelter network in various cities in the States. For 40000$ you can secure your place for the worst case - but only if you bring the right set of skills. No, I don't think "internet writer" is very high on that priority list, too.

Ride Out 2012 In Style With Vivos Apocalypse Shelters - Architecture - io9

Holy shit, that stuff exists...2 person nuclear shelter

Long time no post,
but here I am back, finally posting from work.
I first saw this playing Fallout 3 and even then i thought "amazing", but hey, what do you know - this things really exist.
Imagine sitting in there while the wolrd outside goes down, realizing after a couple of hours that you will not be able to go out FOR THE NEXT MILLION YEARS?

Beijing underground city

Vice Mag takes a look in the abandoned underground city of Beijing, which was built by Chairman Mao in the 1960s and was originally plannes to house all 6 million of Beijing's population at the time.

CHAIRMAN MAO’S UNDERGROUND CITY « Viceland Today

Self-made fallout shelters

GOOD magazine shows some pictures from the book Waiting for the End of the World by photographer Richard Ross, who spent five years traveling and photographing the interiors of bomb shelters.

Picture Show: Waiting for the End of the World | GOOD

Evasion seat

Last weekend I visited the recently opened museum of the former atom bunker of the German government near Marienthal / Bad Neuenahr. The bunker (built between 1960 and 1972) is located about 20 km near the former capital Bonn in a strategical location constructed to enable quick evacuation of the German government in case of a full-scale nuclear attack. The bunker, titled "Ausweichsitz", literally "evasion seat (of the government)", was constructed to house 3000 people for 30 days, in order to keep the German government in a functioning state even when under nuclear attack. For this purpose around 900 offices and 950 dormitories were available in the bunker, plus support systems including 5 canteens, power plant, factory, spare parts storages etc. The bunker tunnels spanned a total of 17km underground and covered 85,000sqm of usable space. Today only a small portion of the bunker is still preserved in the museum, 99% were deconstructed in the phase after the decommissioning of the bunker in 1997.


A visit to the bunker is a veritable Fallout experience, however it's pretty astounding how naive and rudimentary these facilities were planned (all in good German bureaucracy and orderliness, of course). Take the "decontamination chamber" for instance, pictures below, which is located right after the heavy entrance gates. Decontamination consists of two shower rooms, one with regular showers and then another one with "acid" showers. Through a small window with a manually operated wiper, nuclear doctors are watching if everybody has showered well enough...it makes you wonder if this is all there is to dealing with a nuclear catastrophe on a major scale? Same goes for the sick bay, complete with exactly one operating table and one cupboard.


There were more problems with the bunker. For once, it didn't even satisfy the NATO standards for construction which called for at least 200m of rock cover. The Marienthal bunker reached a maximum of 115m, which wouldn't have withstood a direct hit of a hydrogen bomb and the resulting shifts in the bedrock. Also, the whole business of an atom bomb emitting an EMP strike and thus rendering useless most circuits was apparently forgotten, too. I'm not getting into the problem of why bother..? if the whole of Europe is a nuclear wasteland anyway. The whole project cost a large amount of millions in construction, maintenance and ultimately dismantling, and can be termed a conceptional disaster, showpiece to the madness of the Cold War.

Still, the museum is worth a visit and holds a couple of interesting exhibits, such as a "explosion-proof portable phone", vintage posters, and a great Command Center complete with old-school situation map. So a visit is highly recommended if you can find the place. I'm definitely going again soon to catch some more pictures. Unfortunately my camera broke, so I'm using pictures from the (much recommended) web site of the museum for now (see link below). While there, be sure to download the original Bunker Gate siren ringtone!


Ausweichsitz der Verfassungsorgane der Bundesrepublik Deutschland - Historie

Felsennest

Es ist der 10. Mai 1940 um 4.30 Uhr in der Frühe. Der Diktator ist mit seiner Gefolgschaft auf dem Weg nach Rodert, einem kleinen Dörfchen bei Bad Münstereifel. Hier, unweit der belgischen Grenze, hat der Diktator eines seiner geheimen "Führerhauptquartiere" einrichten lassen, es trägt den Code-Namen "Felsennest". Vom "Felsennest" aus will Hitler den Feldzug gegen Frankreich und die Benelux-Staaten kommandieren. Kurz zuvor, während der Anreise im Führersonderzug "Amerika", hat er dazu den Angriffsbefehl gegeben.

Um 5.00 Uhr trifft Hitler während der ersten schwachen Anzeichen des Morgengrauens in Rodert ein und wird von Hauptmann Spengemann durch die Anlage geführt, die ihm bis zum 6. Juni als Hauptquartier und Wohnsitz dienen wird. Ab 5.35 Uhr ist beim "Führer" und seinem Gefolge im "Felsennest" dumpfer Geschützdonner aus westlicher Richtung zu hören - der Zweite Weltkrieg hat nun auch im Westen Europas in seiner ganzen Härte begonnen. [...]

Christa Schroeder, eine von Hitlers persönlichen Sekretärinnen, erinnerte sich später, wie der "Führer" vom "Felsennest" schwärmte: "Er war immer wieder begeistert über die schöne Landschaft und äußerte den Plan, nach Beendigung des Krieges in jedem Jahr einmal mit der gleichen Besetzung eine Erinnerungsfahrt hierher zu machen."

Hitlers vergessenes Hauptquartier - einestages