Underground Bases

One of the curious things about the cold war, and I suppose about the development of aerial bombing and missile technology anyway, was that bunkers did not stop with Hitler. Huge amounts of money have been spent over the past half century on developing very deep facilities underground, some of which are still active.

True to form, the British cold war bases, dotted across this island but not, as far as I can tell, in the other islands of the archipelago, have mostly been closed down on health and safety grounds. In other countries the military would make an exhibition of them, along the lines of the Churchill Museum or the old cabinet war rooms. Some have been sold off with that in mind ; others, like this base in Wiltshire, which I suppose I was near today, would make a lovely exhibition. It even had an underground lake reservoir for drinking.

In Russia and America, however, the idea of the under-mountain or underground base is still going strong. Dick Cheney's 'undisclosed location', for instance, where he has gone in the course of the past few years more regularly than other Vice Presidents, seems to be Raven Rock in Pennsylvania, the famed 'underground Pentagon R' within the national park there.

There are numerous acknowledged bases of that sort in the US, and indeed, after the development of satellite technology, an effort was made to thwart Soviet spies-in-the sky by placing minuteman missile silos near cornfields too. Just about the only thing one can be more or less sure not to find on the plains anymore are native Americans, and I don't mean that to seem a snide Euro thing to say. It just strikes me as tragic. You can buy one of the missile bases here, if you fancy a safe sort of house with possibly one or two damp problems.

This whole line of thought was occasioned by my reading about two places. The first is the huge Russian base at 'Bad Mountain' otherwise known as Yamantau or Mezhgorye, though it has precious little to do with the Holy Virgin Mary. Finding it also led me to this panorama of an underground submarine base in the Ukraine/Black Sea area, which is now more or less either converted into a museum or in residential use.

Yamantau is one of many Russian facilities that have been or are being maintained and upgraded since the cold war ended. It contains an area greater than Washington DC within the beltway, and extends for many stories underground. It has also been designed to withstand up to six nuclear blasts. I wonder if that isn't just a way of saying that these sorts of things have to be built so strongly that they could take six nuclear blasts, which is a different thing.

The images of the discarded black sea submarine base remind me of the French underground complex that would have made up the Maginot line, and of the cisterns and canals beneath Istanbul. Even before the Maginot line, there were large underground hospitals and networks in world war one, and between the French Forts, that were abandoned and lost. People keep uncovering them, and apparently they have quite a haunting quality.

The second thing that I thought of was the series of bunkers where European Union information on individuals are now stored. I suppose I could have mentioned the Dimona nuclear plant in Israel, but being an old fashioned sort of a Zionist I didn't see the point. The Strasbourg bunkers are interesting though; real bunkers left over from the world war and before, since Strasbourg was so much in contention. Strasbourg is also, however, where the Schengen Information System, the world's most detailed and successful inter-police data sharing system is based. While most Europeans could logically suspect its existence, few know of it, even though it operates in the open.

Such strange things that states have done with the people's money. If you are reading this in the USA, you might know of private underground facilities, or even backyard bunkers from the cold war fear of nuclear attack. I'd be interested to know if there are any near you, and I guess that applies to anyone living near Pine Gap in Australia too! Here are The Jam going underground....