As a former security guy, it’s hard to imagine an end-user who’s worse than the current dumbass-in-chief. He’s the kind of idiot who would post photos including the GPS co-ordinates. Not because he’s a 5G warfare expert, but because he’s 6G stupid. The 5G AIs are still cycling in tight loops printing “brain hurts brain hurts brain hurts brain …” over and over.
So, it looks like Turnip has completely blown the cover of an extremely expensive op that was going to be concealed as a ballroom with cost and labor overruns, while building a new continuity of government/nuclear bunker AKA “bolthole for the idiots who started a nuclear war.” This all started to go into overdrive during the Eisenhower administration. That was when Camp David was turned into a nuclear bunker (or, more precisely, the golf course covers a nuclear bunker). You can learn a lot more about this in the book [wc] Raven Rock, which does not talk much about Raven Rock, but talks a lot about Mt Weather, and Camp David and The Greenbrier. The Greenbrier, now, is mostly declassified and you can even visit it. It’s on my list of things to do, someday, but I am trying to find suitable company – you can’t go to that kind of place alone, you need someone with you who can look at the hinges you are pointing to and nod and whisper, “overpressure relief.”
How big are these places? Humongous. Raven Rock and Mount Weather are not declassified, yet, but – for example Greenbrier is humongous. There is a similar large “continuity of government” called Dienstelle Marienthal which has been beautifully documented in black and white by Andreas Magdanz, who managed to visit it with a large-format black and white camera. There’s a book, which will run between $250 and $2500 on ebay depending on the serial number. Magdanz’ exposures and prints are really high quality, and his compositions are excellent (as a photographer, that’s a compliment: I know he had a tripod in there, and given those facts it’d be hard to do a bad photo) Given the content, it’s creep-o-rama. I’m happy he was there, but I have some envy, it’s a great subject. His photos are good, and he got a show at the MoMA. (Hey, the rungs of the art world are bloody and competitive, too) – it’s a big deal to be one of the early photographers in a special spot. [Hey, I visited Chernobyl before it was generally open, but never pushed for a show]
a regular photo of a non-important person bunk in the greenbrier
The big thing about the destruction of the East Wing is that they are going to secretly build a bolt-hole for presidents. When I was in high school, a bunch of us played a lot of Ultimatum, and we had a huge litany of fallout shelter jokes, before Bethesda Games even existed. One of the jokes was that there was a big sign over the entry to the presidential bunker, which read, “you fucked up.” Personally, I remain deeply puzzled that anyone would have bothered to rescue, specifically, the subordinates that they otherwise planned to leave behind. I have no doubt that the president’s helicopter pilots will get their useless piece of shit cargo to Raven Rock in one piece so that, what, who, huh, why? Raven Rock is intended to instantly host a classified number of people for a classified period of time. To my knowledge there are no photos published of the interior.
A normal people’s room at Dienstelle Marienthal. (Andreas Magdanz)
I hope someone can, someday, publish a portfolio of art photos taken inside Jeff Bezos Bunker (“The Azunker”) (and the “facebunker”). I’ve done a lot of reading about nuclear winter and I do not want to live through it. Nor do I want to live through a nuclear strike. [Does anyone want me to discuss exit plans?] If there is a nuclear war, I will probably try to live a while, if only to spitefully shoot some of my [undisclosed] neighbors. It really won’t matter, until nuclear winter kicks in, but I want them to know who done it. I don’t want the people at Raven Rock to think they got away with something, either, since it’s almost certain the piece of garbage they are protecting is the one who ordered the whole menu.
On the other hand, can you imagine being stuck underground with Stephen Miller, and not slowly and artistically vivisecting him just to get him to shut the fuck up? You know that the only thing that will shut that guy up is a .45 in the face. In his case, I’d start with his toes while we discussed the flaws in Nietzsche’s theory of the ubermensch. That’s a complicated argument, but basically: David Hume. Etc. I have always wanted to see a movie where the villain has the victim immbolized and says, “so, I understand you’re an objectivist. Are you the nihilist sort or the liberal sort? i.e.: should I just shoot you because of the random nature of the universe, or should we talk a while so you display that moral calculus to me and then I shoot you?” Isn’t this weird to even contemplate: being hundreds of feet underground while humanity on the surface is ash interrupting the rain-fall, and we’re arguing Nietzsche? Ah, screw it and let me show you me precision shooting. It’s impressively tight. The only creatures worthy to survive into the bunkers are dogs.
There’s the Greenbrier. It turns up in great detail in the Fallout games by Bethesda. That massive edifice, between the wings, to a depth of 6 storeys is a bunker. It was built in the era when a full-up nuclear exchange would take 45 minutes. Can we share a collective boggle over that? A bunch of gormless congresspeople expected to ride out armageddon down there while the rest of us fried and then they’d climb out and bitch that the NASDAQ was down.
Just in case any of you haven’t caught on, yet, the Cliquot-and-caviar set expects service to continue uninterrupted. They are, of course, wrong. The effects from the ash cloud from a nuclear war (AKA: “nuclear winter”) will not cancel out global warming, they will synergise into “global fuckage” and we need to do a better job of talking about “deep time.” Deep time is 100,000 years. Global climate change will last 100,000 to 250,000 years. The Cliquot in Bezos’ bunker will run out before that. But I still hope someone bulldozes dirt over the entrances so he has time to think long and hard. If I could, I’d send him a copy of Schopenhauer or Kant, first, so he dies miserable and mystified.
That’s what the Greenbrier bunker looked like while they were building it. What is/was it for? The winners/losers of a nuclear war? Who wants to hear their opinion about what the stock market should be at, whereever it is? Why would these people be important, to continue our way of government? Our way of government that was always a pack of lies, founded on genocide, and enforced by a massive military? Uh, the one that … you know, scoured the rest of the planet? That one.
In case any of you have read Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream – that’s the sort of future I think our leaders should look forward to if they wind up down there with someone like me. Yes, they would wish they had stayed to face the music, until they escaped into death.
It has since apparently been turned into a sort of casino/club [club] with modern stuff:
- 19 miles of conduit and 100 miles of wire
- Five megawatts of power generation capability
- Seven miles of crown molding
- More than seven miles of audio and video cabling
- More than 300 loudspeakers, 20 power amplifiers, and 25 High-Definition LCD displays
All oligarch-approved, I suppose. It looks like they gutted the old bomb shelter because it was probably full of depressing things and asbestos. But, mostly, imagined skeletons. They planned to helicopter out of Washington and leave us holding the bag.
The civil engineers who build such places know what they are doing, and – I suppose- pretended to be going along with the program. What beauties of retro-kitsch were ruined in the process? The Greenbrier is built on a granite pocket and is as close to indestructible as human-made bolt-holes get. It makes me wonder how many engineers made sure there’s a reverse-purge valve so the whole place can be slowly filled with water from a nearby river if the right knowledge is brought to bear? Yes, I want you to feel my hand on your throat. It’s not enough to trust that time wounds all heels.
Somewhere, there are engineering diagrams for these masterpieces. Somewhere, there are engineering diagrams for the fuhrerbunker, I hope. Did any of the builders, who built the fuhrerbunker under a ballroom in the Reich Chancelry, keep the plans? The engineers and construction workers did their jobs. How many of their families died under showers of high explosive dropped by American bombers? Stanley Kubrick was trying to show a bit of it, in Doctor Strangelove and Len Deighton’s Bomber, if you can bear to read it, finishes the job. As does Hershey’s Hiroshima.
I have not written much here about “The Button” or “The Football” but I hope long-term stderr readers can guess what I am about to say: those are a bit more than simply special effects. They do enough not to interrupt the grown-ups when the adults are playing. Not even significantly. If Trump says “launch them all” it will take the same military that is currently dropping missiles and bombs on civilian targets in Tehran. Really, what do you think they’re going to do?
The good news is: their shelters are bullshit, too. We need to get them to understand that there is no hiding from any of it whether it’s crop failure or nuclear war. You cannot hide away in deep time without speciating. And, absolutely, they need to understand, “it’s not like you’re going to sit there in a prison cell and watch me starve. We’ll part you out like a deer, asshole, and your peers will appreciate the calories. By the way, this is why I support term-limits: we don’t want them to be too old to dig. It’s disgusting enough that we watch the current one play golf.
Any adversary that can hit Washington is going to tunnel 10 storeys down below where the East Wing used to be now that Trump spilled the beans.
There is already a semi-secret train between the capitol and Union Station and another to the White House. There is allegedly one from the White House to across the river from the pentagon … you got it: the Watergate. None of this gets any of them far enough away or fast enough. My solution: if the balloon goes up, the secret service shoots the president and vice president. After all, they just became the two least valuable people on earth. Unless they are tasty.
I always wondered what the politicians in those bunkers expected to do after a nuclear war. If the country was destroyed and much or most of the population was dead, what purpose would a national government serve. The only thing I can think of is that a lot of the survival bunkers in the USA were started in the 50s and early 60s, and at that time the USSR probably didn’t have the ability to destroy the US even in an all out nuclear exchange. Millions might die in the US, but the country had a good chance of surviving more or less intact, if impoverished. The Soviet Union in the early Cold War had a much lower chance of surviving a nuclear exchange because the US had a lot more weapons and delivery systems. By the 70s and 80s when I was a kid, though, it would be difficult to imagine either side surviving as any kind of coherent government, rendering the bunkers obsolete.
springa73@#1:
I seriously think that they would expect to pick right up where they left off.
You know: “Neither party has a majority in the house, so we’re going to have to pass an extension budget that doesn’t cover medical care for those of you in the affected areas….”
We desperately need to stop placing the worst among us in positions of power. Yet, because of how we arrange ourselves, we do.
The survival bunkers – and to a degree the brilliant series Fallout seem to premise that there may be a nuclear war but that won’t interrupt next weekend’s shriners’ parade. Instead we are dealing with social problems in deep time. Good luck with that!! [David Brin nailed some of this in The Postman]
you can see it so clearly in people like shitler. there is no one home! i wish i could talk about it without being ableist. like, i’m sure it’s possible to be as hollow as him and still be a cool person, but regardless, that person will have no emotional understanding of the world the rest of us live in, of life or death or a past or future outside of their fish-like momentary desires. he can’t lose because he’s a winner. nothing will ever go wrong for him because it’s categorically impossible for that to happen, especially now that he got the turbofascist mandate from the sleepy-time covid-loving electorate.
that is to second mjr’s assessment – he literally thinks he can be the boss of anything anywhere forever. death might have a literal meaning for him he could recite like the alphabet, but the emotional reality of what it means is not there, cannot ever be there.
The only use for these bunkers that I could ever see what surviving a one off. Some idiot launches a couple of missiles, the high ranking officials get hidden to ride it out, the president and the premier cut some sort of deal to limit it to a city or two. Both sides pray the deal is kept because they don’t have a lot of control at that point and default instructions point towards escalation. However, I also realized at a young age that there likely wasn’t a realistic rational plan for using them. Any plan likely depended on wildly optimistic estimates of survival chances, long term consequences and how the war would go.
I’m not entirely sure that Trump’s plan is a bolt hole though. Given what has been said about the construction I suspect the goal is installing a full scale hospital setup in the White House with full time staff and a surgery center. In case Trump needs some replacement organs and needs to keep it a secret so he doesn’t have to give up a scrap of power.
This is:
https://whitehouse.gov1.info/raven-rock/index.html
apparently a fake so good that a fake white house website links to it.
I have never heard of tours of raven rock or mount weather. If you know otherwise, please contact me.
The facility at Greenbrier used to be possible to visit with Big VIP Pull, but they turned it into a casino in 1990; there is nothing worth seeing there any more.
There are insane tales of underground railways from Mt Weather to Raven Rock to the Pentagon and NSA HQ. Non-conspiracists do not take them seriously. For one thing, they do not line up. For another, it would take alien technology and any nation having alien technology would just send flying saucers.
There’s a nuclear bunker less than 17 miles from my current home. I went there about 25 years ago. It was an interesting afternoon. It was intended to allow local government to continue in the even the balloon went up. One of the more entertaining things about it is the fact that on many roads around it are British standard brown tourist road signs with a museum symbol, an arrow, and the words “Secret Bunker” showing you where to go. It was closed (as a bunker) and sold in 1992 and reopened as a museum of Cold War stuff. It houses one of the world’s largest collections of decommissionined nuclear weapons. One of the main things I learned that day was just how surprisingly small nuclear weapons are. Another interesting thing was a collection of artists’ impressions of the sort of damage a modern nuclear weapon would do to a typical high street 25, 20, 15, 10 and 5 miles from the blast. I asked one of the staff why they stopped at 5 miles out (just a pile of rubble) and they told me that a mile out from the epicentre everything was vapour, so there wasn’t anything to draw.
What strikes me about the photos of bunks in this post is how luxurious they are. Normal people got a room at Dienstelle? I don’t want to get all Four Yorkshiremen on yo ass, but in Hack Green:
1. beds were half the width of those shown – it would have been like sleeping on a plank
2. they were stacked 3 high
3. there wasn’t room for a room – they were just in a corridor (“we used dream o’ livin’ in a corridor. Woulda bin a palace to us.”) Privacy was not a luxury afforded.
4. the beds would have been constantly occupied – the bunker was supposed to house three shifts of people, each scheduled to be awake & working for 16 hours. And if you weren’t on shift, you had to be in that bunk – there wasn’t anywhere else to go, like, literally not enough room to stand. The accommodations made a nuclear submarine look like life at the Ritz.
I assume this was largely because nobody “important” was expected to be there – this was a facility for monitoring the situation and maintaining… something (?) in Cheshire. The bunker is 50km from Liverpool, and also (coincidentally) about 50km from what I’d judge the nearest proper military target, the long wave communication station near Criggion that they used to use for communicating with subs (it’s gone now). Nobody of any significance was ever going to occupy it in an emergency.
I recommend the TV show “Paradise” (Hulu). It’s something of a spoiler for episode 1 to recommend it here – you’ll see what I mean when you watch. What’s interesting is that the “bunker” saves the US President, but is shown to be very clearly the project of, and under the actual control of, a sociopathic billionaire, not the US government. Season 2 is out but I’ve not watched it yet…
I’ve observed elsewhere that, when I was growing up in the 70s with young grandparents who’d fought in WW2, media bad guys were ze Germans. Later, it was da Ruskies. Later still, generic looking Middle Eastern (BUT NOT JEWISH FFS DON’T IMPLY THEY MIGHT BE JEWISH PUT EM IN KEFFIYEHS OH THANK GOD) types.
Now, however, in media I’ve noticed that (possibly because of woke) bad guys are often no longer coded racially, but financially. The bad guys these days are billionaires. Just, y’know, oddly given the demographic breakdown of the top ten richest guys in the world, never ever ever ever ever Jewish ones, don’t be silly (I asked ChatGPT to give me a single example of any modern media product where the villain was depicted or coded as Jewish. It seemed very skittish, and the best it could come up with was the goblins who run Gringotts Bank in the Potterverse, and Watto from the Phantom Menace, neither of which are villains. I pushed it further and it did come up with a couple of examples, but it was very reluctant, and when I instructed it to stop fucking about and just give me a list of 20 Jewish villain characters in media it flat out refused.). For balance, I asked Grok… but it wouldn’t answer at all.
I asked Claude, and it also came up with the goblins from Harry Potter. Again, I pointed out that I’d asked about villains, and as is usual for AI it obsequiously accepted that yes, that was bullshit and I was so very brilliant for having picked up how stupid it was. The list it did come up with was pretty incredible though. Here they are, in order:
– Lotso from Toy Story 3
– Blofeld in the James Bond movies
– Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds
– Ultron, from Avengers: Age of Ultron
So, to be clear, the examples it came up with of JEWISH villains were a CGI stuffed toy voiced by the not-Jewish Ned Beatty, a character for whom the word “Jew” does not appear AT ALL on their Wikipedia page, a literal SS officer, and a robot. It’s remarkable how assiduously both models avoid answering the question honestly.
We Germans like to cluster our consonants: Dienststelle Marienthal 😉
During TrumpOne, when we started to realise the likelihood of his refusing to leave office, I pitched this idea to various people:
Set off the klaxons, rush him into the bunker, seal the doors: “Because you, Mr President, are the only one capable to personally manage the War For The World.”
Then he could be played endless videos of military attacks, and graphics of military movements. There would be an endless series of reports from breathless minions rushed in every few days bringing news of vital resource discoveries in far-off lands that would need the Wurld’sIntelligentestPrezidant personally to order the bravest of invasions of Maidupistan. The video evidence would follow within two hours. Or however long his attention span lasts.
He would, of course, be invited to become Supreme World Leader for Life in gratitude. He’d live a live of bunker-luxury*, occasionally pinning medals on soot-blackened actors bringing him news of his military successes every few days.
Nearly eight years later, I think the idea is even better — but probably only as a film pitch. A reverse Truman Show, if you like.
(I probed the incredible Hans Landa example a little further. It said:
I responded: How many officers in the German SS in World War 2 were Jewish? Also, cite specifically and clearly where and when Tarantino said anything about Landa being or seeming Jewish.
To which it responded:
I’m yet to have an interaction with these sorts of AI that doesn’t very rapidly descend into this sort of thing.