Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Declassified Bunker of the USSR

englishrussia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 76 posts

Re: Declassified Bunker of the USSR

#51

Post by eps »

flexd wrote: post #47
eps wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timeframe is off. The bunker is in the vicinity of Taganskaya station (the one on the "ring") which was opened in 1950. The bunker was built between '58 and '63 - so not only it was built much later, it also took much longer than a typical subway construction project.

Still since there is access to the subway they could have moved stuff out through the subway system at night?

That's clever, but Moscow subway is open between 4:45am and 1:00am. That doesn't seem to give much time to move out a lot of dirt, not quickly.

Re: Declassified Bunker of the USSR

#52

Post by [deleted] »

nikcub wrote: post #48
adriand wrote: post #12

I love this line: "Now a museum of cold war is organized in the bunker where one can try on respirators, protective gear, hold different guns, etc." You know, the usual sort of museum experience. As interesting as this is, it's also tragic if you think about the vast resources humankind has spent on building terrible weapons and defenses against those weapons. Imagine how much farther we would be ahead as a society i…

gave us the internet. also employed a lot of people and we didn't get the large-scale war that most thought was due since WW2 was, like WW1, unfinished business.

[deleted]

Re: Declassified Bunker of the USSR

#53

Post by aw3c2 »

patrickk wrote: post #19
adriand wrote: post #12

I love this line: "Now a museum of cold war is organized in the bunker where one can try on respirators, protective gear, hold different guns, etc." You know, the usual sort of museum experience. As interesting as this is, it's also tragic if you think about the vast resources humankind has spent on building terrible weapons and defenses against those weapons. Imagine how much farther we would be ahead as a society i…

I agree with you in one sense, however the huge military expenditure allowed Silicon Valley to emerge. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=secret+histor... You could drive yourself mad playing a game of "what if we did things this way instead?"

You posted some weird redirection link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo is the actual target

Re: Declassified Bunker of the USSR

#54

Post by smacktoward »

avar wrote: post #37
smacktoward wrote: post #26

If you want to visit a similar facility in the US, there's one at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia: http://www.greenbrier.com/play-here/the-bunker.aspx The Greenbrier bunker was built in the late 1950s/early 1960s as the emergency relocation point for the U.S. Congress in the event of a nuclear war. Its existence was kept secret until 1992, when a Washington Post story revealed it: http://www.washingtonpost.com…

That's amazing. A facility with 1600 employees that needed untold resources to construct is decommissioned as useless because the Washington Post writes an article about it. They're of course within their rights to do so, but it's sad to think that all the work needed for the facility went to waste and its employees were laid off just because someone wrote an article on it.

It wasn't an unprecedented decision. Mount Weather in Virginia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Weather_Emergency_Operati...) was an even bigger project designed to house and protect the executive branch, but it was compromised through sheer bad luck when in 1974 a TWA flight happened to crash into it. Reporters came to report on the crash and were surprised to find this huge, massively secure, fenced-off Federal installation in the middle of nowhere.

Mount Weather wasn't shut down after that, but its role as a key relocation point was scaled back considerably. The problem with Mount Weather after 1974 was the same problem as the Greenbrier bunker had after 1992 -- the entire value of a facility like that is dependent on the Soviets not knowing it exists, because hydrogen bombs are so powerful that it's pretty much impossible to build anything that can survive a direct hit. The only way facilities like the Greenbrier, or Mount Weather, or even Cheyenne Mountain could hope to survive in a full-out nuclear war would be if they were secret enough so that the enemy wouldn't target them directly.

Thankfully the prospects of full-out nuclear war aren't as bad as they used to be, so the investment in most of these facilities isn't totally wasted; many government leaders were relocated to Mount Weather on 9/11, for instance, when it wasn't clear if more terrorist attacks were imminent, and Dick Cheney is said to have worked for a time in the days after 9/11 out of Raven Rock. Neither facility would survive a direct hit from an ICBM, but when your enemies don't have ICBMs they're pretty much as secure as you can get.

Re: Declassified Bunker of the USSR

#55

Post by smacktoward »

jarek wrote: post #43
avar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's amazing. A facility with 1600 employees that needed untold resources to construct is decommissioned as useless because the Washington Post writes an article about it. They're of course within their rights to do so, but it's sad to think that all the work needed for the facility went to waste and its employees were laid off just because someone wrote an article on it.

It's likely that, being 30 years old, it was outdated and replaced by a newer secret structure anyway.

I would actually doubt that, myself. The costs of building those structures were enormous, and by 1970 or so hydrogen bombs had become powerful enough and ICBMs accurate enough that it was pretty much impossible to build something that would survive a direct hit. Once that point is reached the only protection that the site has is its secrecy, and it costs the enemy less to hire spies and launch satellites than it does to build a new mountain. It's a losing race.

Facilities like these are a remnant of the civil-defense mentality of the 1950s. When the weapons were Hiroshima-style atomic bombs and the guidance systems were a guy 20,000 feet up looking down a bombsight, it was possible to build buildings that could survive an attack. Once you have hydrogen bombs and reasonably sophisticated inertial guidance systems, though, that possibility evaporates.

Re: Declassified Bunker of the USSR

#56

Post by slipperyp »

azov wrote: post #50
gregschlom wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, those are LG monitors, and you can see a PC workstation under the desk. Too bad they replaced whatever was there with those monitors

"Whatever was there" was removed before the bunker was declassified. As far as I understand from the original text (english translation on the blogspam site is incomplete at best), the monitors were installed by the company who now manages the bunker and are apparently used for simulation of nuclear strike on NY, one of the exhibits in Cold War Museum.

Fascinating - one of the most interesting things to me is the characterization of the US soldier on the picture translated (on englishrussia) as "If you forgot where our borders start, we'll help you to land!"

Also the pictures toward the end which, if I'm not mistaken, might have been used as maps and textures in Fallout 3...

Re: Declassified Bunker of the USSR

#58

Post by jarek »

smacktoward wrote: post #55
jarek wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely that, being 30 years old, it was outdated and replaced by a newer secret structure anyway.

I would actually doubt that, myself. The costs of building those structures were enormous, and by 1970 or so hydrogen bombs had become powerful enough and ICBMs accurate enough that it was pretty much impossible to build something that would survive a direct hit. Once that point is reached the only protection that the site has is its secrecy, and it costs the enemy less to hire spies and launch satellites than it doe…

You're correct - I should have said, more generally, that the complex was outdated and replaced with newer defense/mitigation strategies.

Re: Declassified Bunker of the USSR

#59

Post by rbanffy »

arethuza wrote: post #24
DuncanIdaho wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably the nuclear weapons have prevented continuation of WW2, where USSR and US would duke it out in the 50's and 60's. Just wanted to point out that world of geopolitics and strategy is way more nuanced than an average person believes.

"nuclear weapons have prevented continuation of WW2" I would tend to agree with that. However, the levels of weaponry that were deployed were arguably far higher than was actually required to achieve effective mutual deterrence - by a huge factor. If you actually read the details of what would have happened if the Cuban Missile Crisis or Able Archer 83 had ended as shooting wars then prepare to have your blood run co…

> the levels of weaponry that were deployed were arguably far higher than was actually required to achieve effective mutual deterrence

Hindsight is always perfect. You build a larger than required stockpile of weapons because you don't know if the other side will be able to shot your weapons down.

> one of the actual heroes of the Cold War was actually Reagan

The Soviet Union was already crumbling due to the financial pressure required to maintain their deterrence. The dialog that was started at that time prevented a very dangerous situation that could result in a nuclear strike by either side.

Re: Declassified Bunker of the USSR

#60

Post by Duff »

jarek wrote: post #43
avar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's amazing. A facility with 1600 employees that needed untold resources to construct is decommissioned as useless because the Washington Post writes an article about it. They're of course within their rights to do so, but it's sad to think that all the work needed for the facility went to waste and its employees were laid off just because someone wrote an article on it.

It's likely that, being 30 years old, it was outdated and replaced by a newer secret structure anyway.

Not a structure; it was replaced by airborne command posts.
Post reply on HN