The Secret Bunker

Briar

Hall of Famer
Location
Scotland
100 feet underground, a remnant from the cold war remains ... today it looks like a set from Thunderbirds or Joe 90, but in its day it was where government officials would have co-ordinated the country's response to any nuclear threats. Here are a few pics.
6148956634_6965bf9a76_b.jpg


The BBC would have broadcast the three minute warning from here.
6148958276_b312519c6c_b.jpg
 
Chilling, actually... great set and perfect processing for the subject!

I know it's a secret bunker, but any chance of a hint as to where this is? I'd love to visit!

Cheers

Brian
 
Those mannequins add to the creepy and chilling feeling, but you've upped the ante with your post processing of these images, Karen. You ought to see if they'd like to use your pictures in their advertising - a lot of people would be drawn in by seeing these...more than a dry, straightforward presentation. Well done! ...I can help but think that Peter Sellers would have been at home in there.:D

We've got something similar in West Virginia...but I never have had the opportunity to see the place. I'm not even sure they let people in anymore - perhaps it's still in use.;)
 
View attachment 41380
View attachment 41381

There is a farm house covering the entrance of the tunnel that leads you 100 feet below the surface. The actual bunker is the size of two football/soccer fields over two levels.

This brilliant series - of an underground cold war bunker Museum which almost looks like something out of a sci-fi film until you realize it was all 'real' - was shot and posted here by Briar a little more than 10 years ago - but today, at the beginning of 2022, these photographs are still capable of grabbing the viewer. They sure as hell grabbed me. And after spending some time looking (and relooking) at them, I think they deserve to be seen once more; so I'm posting this.
Props to Karen for some seriously cool images.
 
I missed this set of pictures when they were first posted. Actually, I think it was before I joined the site. Interesting stuff.

A few years ago I dragged my partner around a similar facility on the other side of the iron curtain. When it was operational, the nuclear bunker in Brno was roughly in the middle of Czechoslovakia, which places it in the east of the Czech Republic now. There wasn't much to see on the day we went, and frankly it was all a bit depressing. I think it was just a place where the military (or perhaps just local government) would keep their heads down in a crisis, and it lacked the interesting displays and mannequins in Karen's pictures. A few Joanna Lumley lookalikes like those would have helped I think.

I took a total of one picture with my phone that day, and that's not great. Brno is in the middle of the map, and I assume that the other places shown are also military bases. The lights show bad news - I’ve just looked up “radiačný poplach” and that’s "radiation alarm" …

-R

IMG_2433.JPG
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
 
Having recently emerged from another bunker, I thought I'd give this thread another airing. I only came away with a single smartphone image, which didn't merit a thread of its own.

Today's bunker is the former headquarters of No 11 Group RAF, now known as the Battle of Britain Bunker in Uxbridge. This is the underground control room from which the aerial defence of London and the South East of England was mounted during WWII. The room has been restored to how it looked on 15th September 1940, which was the climax of the Battle of Britain, a day on which about 1,500 aircraft took part in air battles.

Apart from the plastic cover on the plotting table, the room is pretty much as it was in 1940. The map itself is the same one, and you can see (when you're up close) where it became a bit scuffed in the places which saw most action - around Dunkirk, for example. Apart from the map, the most interesting thing in the picture is probably the display of airfields and squadron status on the back wall. This was a central component of the 'Dowding System' - the world's first ground-controlled interception network. Nothing like it existed on the other side, and it was key to the success of the RAF against the Luftwaffe in 1940.

I took this picture from the gallery level in the operations room, from which senior officers would direct operations. Winston Churchill watched from the same position on 15th September 1940, and it was as he left the bunker to get in his car that he first uttered the words, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few". Today's tour guide told us that when we were standing on the very same spot.

Actually, this was my second visit. I last went down into the bunker in about 1977. It had been out of use for about 32 years at that point, and now we're a further 45 years down the tracks, which makes me think that I shouldn't leave it so long next time.

-R

IMG_3294.JPG
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
 
Back
Top