Link – Descend Into Great Britain’s Network of Secret Nuclear Bunkers

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An interesting article about Britain’s collection of now-disused-and-abandoned bunkers from the Cold War. I’m always fascinated by these types of articles because, in true Jerry Ahern fashion, I’ve always not-so-secretly longed for a hidden bunker out in the middle of nowhere.

We’re standing in a room buried 10 feet below the North Yorkshire moors in northeast England, near the village of Castleton. The wind howls over the hatch above our heads as Hanlon—no expert, just an enthusiast—describes how the room would have been used, as an outpost of English civility and resourcefulness in the face of a nuclear attack. This bunker is one of hundreds just like it, scattered across the country. They’re no longer in use, having been decommissioned for decades, but they’re a nationwide network of relics of fear—a fear that seems never to have left.

The closest thing I’ve ever come across in regards to something like this is an old AT&T fortified microwave relay station in Whitehall MT that I looked at about twenty years ago. It had walls a foot thicj, blast shielding around the vents, and a wonderful flat-topped tower to emplace a .50. Didn’t get it, but there are many of them still out there now in private hands.

Someday I’ll probably just put a cargo container on a slab, encase it in concrete, and call it good. But until then, articles like these give me ideas.

9 thoughts on “Link – Descend Into Great Britain’s Network of Secret Nuclear Bunkers”

  1. CZ if you like this stuff you have to watch shiey.

    He has explored and filmed dozens of these.

    Here he explores one of the Blitz bunkers under Londer, but check his back catalog. He has gone all over the world, including a bunch in Russia. Absolutely amazing.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZHDsaJG0EI

  2. there is a Titan Missile Museum not too far from me that is an absolutely amazing complex, if anyone ever gets a chance, take the tour.

    Designed for long term stays and fortified for a near nuclear blast the amount of engineering and security is impressive. Trillions of taxpayer dollars were spent on these things and then they were just abandoned. I always wonder about the complexes we don’t know about, probably some cool stuff, like the Greenbriar that was built for congress to escape a threat, just imagine what replaced that megastructure.

  3. FWIW, the cargo container is superfluous expense for an item of dubious utility.

    For less than the going price of one, you could construct a structure of mortared cinderblocks, waterproof the whole (roofing tar, pond liners, etc.), and puncture it appropriately, and have the same thing without the hassle or expense of an expensive, largely worthless, and soon-to-be-rusted cargo container.

    Cargo containers are fine if you want to do a lot of work, and stack up a castle aboveground, but by the time you harden it to resist gunfire, brushfire, zombies, and what not, you could have just built out cinderblocks, concrete, and rebar in the first place.

    BTW, AFAIK, those Cold War bunkers were just RAF/MOD fallout monitoring stations for a month or two for a couple of guys. On the dubious theory that after the fallout decayed in 41 days or so, it would be safe to come back out. And/or just die, in which case it was all pissing in the wind from the get-go.

    A lot like the dispersed WWII Home Guard partisan bunkers for three guys scattered all over Old Blighty in case of Nazi invasion.
    They only packed in a month or two of supplies, because the assumption was they’d all be dead before the tea and biscuits ran out anyways.

    • Hi Aesop!
      While you are correct about Containers for standard items, I would still use one if I was creating a “Faraday Cage” to protect electronic equipment. The steel case adds another level of protection.

      Ceejay

      • A regular shipping container will not work as a Faraday cage, I would expect. The floor is mostly wood construction, and gives better forklift traction. There are some containers with steel floors.

  4. I was an exchange student at Moscow State University in the 90’s. Our Russian buds would sometimes take us way, way, way underground into their 40,000 man bunkers. Those things were VAST. You could literally get lost down there.

  6. Personal knowledge here – make sure you cn inspect the 40-footer (or whatever you buy) before delivery. At different times I have owned 2, both high cubes – those are the best for shelving/racks. Both were supposedly a “single trip only.” Yeah.

    First one was great, water tight all around, Had it over a decade, never leaked a drop. Then, different time/place, got another high cube. LOOKED great, could detect no problems, but leaked year 1. Now smells/moldy. Did not have the opportunity to encase either with concrete, just parked each under a tree.

    YMMV. Good luck

  7. One thing to remember about those Cargo Containers – while the Frames are built to take upwards of 200 Tons of Load to be able to Stack them, the Sides and Roof Panels are NOT Load-Bearing – if you intend to Bury one, you need to use Steel or Timbers to prevent the pressure of the Fill from pushing in the Sides or collapsing the Roof.

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