World War Three has broken out.
All across the globe, nations with nuclear capabilities are firing off hundreds of Inter-Continental
Ballistic Missiles, ready to turn their targets into irradiated ash.
This is, for all intents and purposes, the end of the world as we know it – but the
US government needs to do everything it can to preserve order in the aftermath of the
nuclear Armageddon.
First order of business is getting the President of the United States to a safe and secure
location.
Is there a secret base beneath the Whitehouse?
No?
Well, what about the Pentagon?
Still no?
Wait, what do you mean the secret presidential apocalypse bunker is beneath the Greenbrier
Vacation Resort in West Virginia?
As it turns out, the Eisenhower administration foresaw this end-of-the-world scenario.
In preparation for this catastrophic event, they built an apocalyptic bunker and fallout
shelter seven-hundred-and-twenty feet into the mountainside behind the successful White
Sulphur Springs vacation resort.
They were thinking bigger than just a glorified presidential panic room, too.
This 112,544-square-foot subterranean bunker (which is about the size of your average Walmart)
was designed to sustain five-hundred-and-thirty-five members of congress, as well as government
staff to ensure all occupants had a safe and pleasant stay.
People are probably wondering what exactly goes on inside this huge bunker, and how it
was kept secret from its construction in 1958 to its eventual public reveal in 1992.
We’ll answer all that and more, but for now, the sky’s on fire – and you need
to get the president to safety.
So, you take the Commander in Chief on an express trip to White Sulphur Springs, West
Virginia.
Thankfully, he was already in the area, giving a rally to local supporters just twenty minutes
away from the Greenbrier.
The first strike is already on its way, so you better hurry to that resort before it
actually hits and turns you all into the world’s first Fallout 76 players- complete with all
the disappointment of, you know, actually playing Fallout 76.
The Greenbrier is a historic resort that’s hosted over twenty-six United States presidents
since its opening to the public in 1778, so it’s only natural that President Eisenhower
– who frequently played golf there – would decide to put the world’s most luxurious
apocalypse bunker right underneath it.
It’s a race against time to enter one of the bunker’s four entrances before the air
is clouded with deadly radioactive fallout.
Thankfully, being an impeccably-trained member of the secret service, you get him there in
the nick of time.
You close the twenty-five-ton blast door behind you, sealing out the bursts of nuclear fire.
You’re now officially in the Greenbrier Bunker, also referred to by the Washington
Post as “The Last Resort.”
President Eisenhower approved the creation of the Greenbrier Bunker as part of his “Continuity
of Government” program.
As the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union started to look like
it might turn hot, Eisenhower felt the need to anticipate a deadly nuclear exchange between
the two superpowers.
Mountainside bunkers like Greenbrier were constructed in order to preserve some arms
of government in the event of a first strike against the United States.
All the COG (cog) shelters needed to fit a specific criterion: It had to be within five
hours of Washington D.C. but far enough away to avoid heavy nuclear fallout.
It needed to be accessible by train, air, and highway, and it had to have prior experience
in working with government projects.
The Greenbrier fit the bill perfectly.
Eisenhower struck a deal with the owners of the hotel – he would fund the construction
of a new wing of the hotel, if the hotel would allow the US military to build the Greenbrier
Bunker underneath it.
A deal was struck, and simultaneous construction began on the West Virginia Wing of the Greenbrier
Resort, and the Greenbrier COG Bunker hidden behind it.
This all came under a secret project codenamed “Greek Island.”
The hotel and the government worked hand-in-hand to both create the facility and maintain its
secrecy.
These people were working with a real sense of urgency, thinking the bomb could drop at
any time.
Of course, keeping a project this huge under wraps is easier said than done.
They were building a giant, complex building underneath an active hotel with hundreds of
members of staff – none of which had government clearance.
In order to reduce suspicion, they used all of the dirt excavated to make room for the
bunker to make a new golf course on the resort grounds.
Much of the resources used to build the bunker – such as the immense quantities of concrete
and steel – were delivered under the cover of night to keep suspicion low.
However, plenty of Greenbrier employees still cottoned on to the mysterious construction
going on beneath the hotel and resort.
These employees – and numerous White Sulphur Springs locals – were aware that some kind
of secret bunker was being built.
Rumours circulated that the bunker was intended for the president in the event of a nuclear
standoff, and they had no idea just how right they were.
In 1962, construction on the bunker was finally finished.
Just in time for the Cuban Missile Crisis – the tense, thirteen-day standoff between
the US and Soviet forces that brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon.
The bunker was placed on immediate alert, even though nobody was ever officially evacuated
to it.
Government workers did, however, install a new seven-thousand-foot runway at a local
airport for the secret purpose of bringing in evacuees from the country’s capital in
the event of a Russian first strike.
This runway ended up mainly being used for tourists rather than refugees of a nuclear
holocaust.
As the missile crisis was resolved, and the Cold War eventually came to a close, the Greenbrier
Bunker thankfully never saw official use for its intended purpose.
President Eisenhower died long before he’d ever be able to make good on his investment.
Letters from the Eisenhower administration, revealing the paranoia and genuine fear of
the possibility of nuclear annihilation, were only released to the public in the last ten
years.
But Eisenhower’s paranoia just saved your life.
You, the President, and a select group of government officials are the chosen few who’ll
wait out the end of days in style.
Thanks to the hard labour of Eisenhower-era workers, you’re now surrounded by five-foot-thick
reinforced concrete walls.
Far from the cramped, dingey setting you probably picture when you hear the word “bunker”,
the Greenbrier Bunker is extremely well-appointed.
During your possibly rest-of-your-life stay here, you’ll be able to take advantage of
the state of the art (for the early sixties) decontamination chambers.
That’ll likely get…most of the radiation off of you.
And that’s better than having all of it, right?
In actuality, all of the technology in the Greenbrier Bunker is current, circa 1992.
Including the decontamination chambers.
This is because – during the thirty-year interim between the bunker’s creation and
its decommissioning in 1995 – government workers who maintained the base in secret
also continually updated the technology within.
For the most part, a lot of the technology in the base would be recognisable to the modern
secret service worker, engineer, or government official.
The conditions of the subterranean vault still seem pretty bleak compared to the West Virginia
Wing built above it.
The new wing was built with eighty-eight extremely luxurious suites, a state-of-the-art medical
centre, and a hall for trade shows.
The new wing was built into a large hill that was then entirely hollowed out to make room
for the bunker.
While you may be tempted to feel jealous of the people in the luxury hotel above you,
you really shouldn’t.
If they weren’t vaporised in the initial blast, they’re probably about to die a slow
and torturous death from radiation poisoning or be ripped apart by feral ghouls or… (loud,
dramatic sigh) ‘the scorched’- seriously, Bethesda, you skipped Fallout 5 for that?
At least in your bunker you’re safe from nuclear bombs and regular old Bethesda video
game bombs.
When you move further in, you’ll find the eighteen dormitories, designed to house over
a thousand government officials and employees.
There’s also a built-in power plant with water purification facilities, fixed to three
huge water tanks capable of holding over twenty-five-thousand gallons of water, each.
That should keep you from dehydrating a few hundred feet below the storm of nuclear hellfire.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Eisenhower and the people working under him were fully aware that the occupants of the
Greenbrier Bunker would be in there for the long haul, whether it was him or a future
president.
As a result, they went all out on the bunker.
There’s an additional three fourteen-thousand-gallon tanks for fuel storage.
Eisenhower also had the bunker fitted with a communication department, for sending messages
to whatever’s left outside via the Presidential Emergency Broadcast System.
The communication department was fitted with both audio and video production areas, so
the president can continue to put out presidential addresses even though the majority of the
country outside are likely all dead.
If people happen to get sick during your tenure in the Greenbrier Bunker, Eisenhower’s architects
and planners thought ahead for that, too.
The bunker has a clinic with twelve hospital beds, as well as the resources for medical
and dental surgery.
However, if you did manage to escape into the Greenbrier Bunker with a sizeable portion
of congress, only having twelve beds could begin to present an issue.
Congress members, on the whole, aren’t exactly spring chickens.
The average age for a member of the US House of Representatives is 57.8 years, and the
average age for a US Senator is even older at 61.8 years.
These numbers are a little concerning, depending on how long you want Eisenhower’s planned
“Continuity of Government” to last in the Greenbrier Bunker.
Thankfully, the bunker does have a pharmacy and an intensive care unit, to take a little
of the stress off the medical department.
However, this does raise one of the key concerns of the Greenbrier Bunker (and any fallout
shelter in general): These resources are finite.
While the bunker also has a laboratory, whether this lab could synthesise enough medication
to keep up with the demand of the ageing bunker population is an open question.
Lucky for you, you wouldn’t actually need to keep them in the bunker forever.
Unlike the radioactive blasts produced by nuclear reactor overloads – like the Chernobyl
reactor in Pripyat and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster – the half-life of radioactive
fallout from nuclear weapons is significantly shorter.
By the time that the intended six-month stay in the bunker is completed, the fallout outside
will have fallen below dangerous levels of radioactivity.
It’s likely that the infrastructural damage outside will be massive, but the air will
at least be breathable.
But I’ve got some good news and bad news, before we get ahead of ourselves here.
The good news is that you probably won’t need to worry about depleting those resources
during your stay.
The bad news is that this is because over ninety percent of congress is probably dead.
This is because of a fundamental oversight that actually got the Greenbrier Bunker decommissioned
in the mid-nineties.
While the Eisenhower administration and beyond had the foresight to continually update technology
inside the bunker, they didn’t have the foresight to consider how missile delivery
technology would adapt alongside it.
When the Eisenhower administration decided on their location for the bunker using the
“five hours from Washington” principle, this wasn’t a problem.
They anticipated nuclear bombs delivered by Soviet bombers flying over the North Pole,
which was the accepted method of Soviet attack at the time.
This would give US officials several hours to escape the danger zone and get comfortable
in the bunker.
However, like a reliable pizza delivery service, an ICBM can now reach Washington from Russia
in thirty minutes or less.
As a result, if the nukes start flying and you’re not in the immediate vicinity of
the Greenbrier Bunker, it’s a sad day for you.
You’re just lucky the Commander in Chief happened to be in West Virginia at the time,
or you would not have gotten him to safety in time.
The downside is, you’re also going to be working with reduced technological capabilities
– seeing as the military removed all classified technology in the nineties when the bunker’s
obsolescence came to light.
These days, the federal government technically no longer owns the Greenbrier Bunker.
It’s owned by the Governor of Virginia, and hosts ninety-minute tours for over fifty-thousand
tourists every single year.
Despite the base no longer being a well-kept military secret, taking pictures inside the
bunker is completely forbidden.
But that’s because large portions of the bunker have now been leased out as data storage,
so even if congress doesn’t survive the nuclear blast, the corporate data will be
just fine.
Thanks for watching this episode of The Infographics Show!
Curious about more weird, hidden bases and bunkers across the globe?
Why not check out “Why Did The Nazis Have A Secret Base In the Arctic?” and “The
President’s Escape Plan If the US is Attacked.”
Better hunker down and get watching!