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"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood."
- Daniel Hudson Burnham - Source: The Life 101 Quote Book
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The entrance to the former U.S. Government Relocation Facility at The Greenbrier in West Virginia is protected by this 25-ton blast door concealed behind a false service door and a sign that warns "danger - high voltage". This view is from inside the main entrance to an elaborate Cold War bunker designed to protect members of Congress in the event of a nuclear attack. The facility was kept ready in secret for more than 30 years until 1992, when it was exposed and shut down. Now it's open for tours. |
Friday, June 4, 1999
The Secret Bunker
When the 25-ton blast door is closed, an enormous sound explodes through the tunnel. We are forewarned, but the sound is worse than we expect.
"Everybody all right?" our guide asks. "Good, now we'll go on to decon."
We continue down a long tunnel to the decontamination area, where under the worst of circumstances we would have been asked to remove all our clothes so they could be incinerated.
Scattered about are some Cold War remnants oddly mixed amid props that reveal this facility's newer purpose. Boxes of freeze-dried rations, honey-lime chicken and scrambled eggs, represent a small portion of the supply once housed here. An airplane fuselage off to the side was used as decoration for a recent party, balloons from which dot the ceiling here and there.
Next we head into a turquoise-tiled area that looks like a James Bond movie set. There are multiple silent but eerie shower heads lining the narrow passageway.
Just beyond are the rooms comprising a secret bunker designed to house 1100 people for up to 60 days in the event of a nuclear war. It had its own power plant, air and water filtration systems, but little in the way of exercise facilities -- one small exercise bike in a tiny lobby.
But for more than 30 years, this facility was ready for each and every U.S. senator and representative, with all their individual prescriptions, even, kept in constant supply. There are 153 rooms within its 112,544 square feet of space on two levels.
The bunker was maintained, primarily, by military personnel disguised as television repairmen.
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| Congressional sleeping area, one of 18 dormitories. |
The facility was phased out once his story, "Last Resort," appeared in the Washington Post Sunday magazine. Most of its insides were moved to other government facilities, but enough remains to give visitors a good idea of what it was like in the hey day of Cold War fears, fallout shelters and "duck and cover" drills among Baby Boomer schoolchildren.
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| The bunker's senate chamber |
Some of the bunker was hidden in plain sight, its elaborate exhibition hall and congressional chambers open to visitors who did not know their real purpose, other entrances camouflaged behind false walls and hidden blast doors.
It's no holiday resort; sleeping quarters for all but the leadership contained tightly packed bunk beds and a single drawer and locker for each member. A briefing room and nearby television studio could make use of backdrops that depict the U.S. Capitol in various seasons. "The lunar landing," someone jokes, as if this could be the kind of place that event could have been staged, as a few skeptics have maintained.
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| A dentist's chair in the bunker's dispensary/clinic. |
Our son, 12, and daughter, 8, are only beginning to comprehend their generation's inheritance. This Cold War scenario may be recent history, but we still fear the risks of our technology and the fragile nature of our world politics.
Perhaps there's a similar facility somewhere out there, ready, still secret. If not, God help us all. We have been lulled into a false sense of security. To me the world is perhaps more dangerous now than it has ever been.
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| The bunker's cafeteria |
Yet this tour, taken on a recent Memorial Day vacation with our family, brings to life things our children could never fully appreciate in the classroom. Our guide was especially proud to say that none of the locals "in the know" about the bunker ever revealed its secrets to the outside world. "There was a lot of patriotism then," she told us. "We didn't tell and we didn't ask."
At the time there were some rumblings about there being "a bomb shelter for the president" on the grounds, and employees could easily dismiss such false rumors. After all, the bunker was never designed to accommodate the chief executive, who would no doubt be airborne, our guide said.
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| The briefing room's backdrop for television production. |
At the close of mankind's most technologically advanced and dangerous age, it is my hope that the secret bunker at the Greenbrier will always be a tribute to a day that never arrives. I'm grateful we had the opportunity to tour it; its educational lessons for the next generation are perhaps its greatest feature. The Greenbrier knows this, and for the several years the tours have been available it has opened its 25-ton blast doors for many schoolchildren from around the area.
We leave the bunker through a doorway adjacent to an elevator we had used before to take us to our room six floors up. We hadn't noticed it before, of course. Hidden in plain sight.
Links:
- The Greenbrier
- "The Ultimate Congressional Hideaway" (by Ted Gup, published May 31, 1992, in the Washington Post)
- Harvard Project on Cold War Studies
- Cold War International History Project
- The National Security Archive