If zombies turn out to be real, you guys, you're gonna make everyone safe in Whittier.
Absolutely, we'll seal the doors.
Hey!
Alaska is the largest U.S. state,
it's also the coldest. The least densely populated, and the least connected.
Of all it's many towns, 70% are not accessible by road.
I've always been facinated by the variety of what and where we call home.
And that fascination led me here, to Alaska, to one of the most impressive examples of nearly
uninhabitable and being craved a strong home.
Whittier, Alaska.
Whittier is a small town whose fewer than 200 residents live almost exclusively in the same building
The town is impressively self sufficient and as accessible or inaccessible as it wants to be.
Bordered on three sides with behemoth walls of earth, the only entrance by car into Whittier
is not over, or around mountains, but through them.
Give me a quick history of this tunnel, when was it made and why?
Well, it was developed during the 1940's, and we were going to go to war with Japan,
they wanted to create a port, that was kinda undercover and of course you can tell with the weather here,
that it's kinda a concealed place.
Looking at the entrance to the tunnel, it's a nice little triangle shape.
That is because of the potential for avalanchea hitting the portal building itself.
So there's no roof that the snow can pile up on top of.
Yeah, it just gets split off the side.
It's rated at 2000 pounds per square foot. Wow!
It'll take some abuse.
Whittier is clearly not about accessibility.
Instead it's about challenges and beating them.
The people who live on the other side of this tunnel, and the technology that makes it possible
are a testament to human cleverness, strength, and the lenghths we will go to to make something feel
like home.
Their bullet-proof, bomb resistant doors, and they were developed for mining.
If there was some sort of apocalyptic event, a virus outbreak, zombies turn out to be real,
you guys, you're gonna make everyone safe in Whittier!
Absolutely, we'll seal the doors.
You keep the doors closed at night?
Yes, we do.
That is a security procedure.
It's pretty mind-blowing to be inside a mountain.
It is, under a glacier.
Now where's all the rock go that they dug out of here?
Well you know all that land in Whittier? All the rock went to fill in and make the land in Whittier.
Oh really? Yeah. Whittier's a lot bigger because of this hole.
It's cool to be in the belly of the machine.
It is, it's a big machine.
A lot of this seems like it would be relevant to terraforming other planets.
Well it's certainly an alien environment for humans in here trying to survive, so...
We're doing a pretty good job.
We are.
Something I love about this tunnel and about Whittier is the almost poetic sense of clastorphobia
You're in a town bordered by rock, accessible by a road bordered by rock,
it's like the opposite of open space.
People do get claustrophobic.
I did get a little scared when we first came in.
It's kinda like living in the bush, you live out in your cabin and you stock up maybe once a month
from Costco and spend $1,500 dollars in groceries.
And then the rest of it is living off the land. Salmon, and fish, and crab and shrimp and deer and bear,
anything you want. I love it out here.
Fascinated by how the whole town lives in one building.
Is that weird to you?
No it's like a giant dorm facility.
The great Alaska earthquake of 1964 was the 2nd most powerful earthquake ever recorded in human history.
But in Whittier, the two most prominent structures, capable of houses 100's of residents
as well as an indoor shooting range, a theater and a network of underground tunnels,
remain standing. And today, nearly all Whittier residents still live in one of them.
It's called Begich Towers.
This building was built in 1957 by the army corps of engineers,
for all the military families that were stationed here during the Cold War.
How many people live here today?
We probably have about 167.
We have an entire community. We have a police department, we have the city hall, we have the clinic,
we have a little store, we have the post office. Everything you need actually is in this one building.
I saw a vending machine downstairs that will make you a hot pocket.
Lot of dogs, cause the bears come down. They smell the dogs and they go. Oh the come right in the building.
We had one that crawled through one of the windows on the first floor
got into the fudge room.
Now what's a fudge room?
That's where the fudge lady, makes all her fudge.
What do you think draws such a diverse group of people to Whittier?
You can live the live that you want to live, you don't have to conform to any other way of life.
I mean you know, we got 2 dogs and a pig. A pig? Yeah. In the apartment building?
Yeah a little guinea pig. About that big.
You gotta see him on the boat. Can pigs swim? Not very well!
And then I tried to put a doggie life jacket on him and he just floats with his butt up and his head in the water.
That's not the right way to float. That's not the right way to float.
Why build so tall and put everyone in one building?
There is just not a lot of flat ground available here in Whittier.
so it was easier just to go up.
We've had, so far in this year, we've had over 300 earthquakes in Alaska.
This is one of the expansion things right here.
This is a gap? This is a gap.
It's covered over, but if we took all this off, there'd be like, what, an 8 inch...
Yeah, about an 8 inch gap between the two buildings.
All the way down to the ground. All the way to the ground.
It was built in 3 stages, just in case there was an earthquake that it'd have the ability to have some
sway motion without doing any structural damage.
The components in this building are still the original 1957 components.
It's like a big, copper covered, rubik's cube.
It's a puzzle and there's only one correct answer and it's my job to find that correct answer.
The problem with this wonderful old building, that houses this great community?
It's dying.
And me and my crew are doing everything we can, everyday, to keep it operational, till we can find the funds
to save this building.
Because if we lose this building, we've lost the city of Whittier.
And what happens if you lose Whittier?
Where you live, the house or the home you live in, it's not just a place to hang your hat and keep your stuff!
It's your home.
We have to save this building.
Whittier is a fortress. It was built to be one.
But it's since become a home, and not an invincible one.
It's vulnerable to itself, to time, to the elements...
The earth around Whittier is not always a friendly place, but so long as people call it home,
Whittier stands as a magnificent gesture of defiance. Of human ingenuity.
And the strength of inertia.
Of our desire to stay.
Whittier is a reminder, that even when we are dared to turn away, and when doing so would be easier,
we nonetheless, build, stay, thrive, and make our home.
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