what the us government did to andrew ezell wash
Maybe Doomsday preppers aren't so crazy subsequently all.
As nuclear threats loom from countries like Iran and North Korea, the United states is knocking the grit off decades-quondam bunkers intended to protect government officials — and even start a new civilization — in the case of only such a nightmare event.
Journalist Garrett Graff takes readers through the lx-year history of the government's undercover Doomsday plans to survive nuclear war in his painstakingly researched book "Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government'south Undercover Programme to Relieve Itself — While the Rest of Usa Die" (Simon & Schuster), out now.
He focuses on the Cold State of war-era government bunkers across the land that were built to house the President and diverse Washington elites — members of a and then-called "shadow authorities" in the worst nuclear Armageddon scenario.
Since September xi, 2001, Congress has intensified their interest in and funding of top secret "Continuity of Government" (COG) in ways not seen since the Common cold War. With hundreds of newly declassified documents, the volume, currently in development with NBC every bit a Television receiver bear witness, includes never-earlier-heard intel on the country'south top secret bunkers — mythical places like Raven Rock and Mount Weather.
Here's the depression down on some of these bunkers down below…
Raven Rock
Lillington, NC • For military
Built near Camp David to business firm the military, as a backup for the Pentagon — and maybe fifty-fifty the President — during an emergency, Raven Rock has retained an air of secrecy e'er since construction started in 1948.
Not that it could remain completely hugger-mugger, given the 300-person squad (including miners poached from the Lincoln Tunnel dig) who carved a 3,100-pes tunnel out of granite in Raven Rock Mountain nigh Blue Ridge Acme, Pennsylvania.
"There were very few engineers with the expertise to hollow out a mountain and build, in essence, a free-standing city within of information technology. The US authorities turned to the construction firm Parsons Brinckerhoff, which had adult unique tunneling expertise working on the New York Urban center subway," Graff told The Mail.
Locals caught on and give-and-take spread to the media, who dubbed the projection "Harry'south Hole," afterwards President Truman who greenlit the project.
Opened in 1953 and designed "to be the centerpiece of a large military emergency hub," Raven Rock provided 100,000 feet of part infinite (not counting, Graff writes, "the corridors, bathrooms, dining facility, hospital or communications and utilities areas") that could hold about 1,400 people comfortably. Ii sets of 34-ton blast doors and curved 1,000-pes-long tunnels reduce the bear on of a bomb nail. The compound has undergone several rounds of upgrades — new buildings were added as well equally updated technology and air filtration systems.
Past the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many government officials recommended closing Raven Stone for skillful. "You'd feel like y'all're walking into a dinosaur," i said. In 1991, President George H.West. Bush ceased 24 60 minutes operations, effectively forcing the site into standby mode.
Then September xi happened. By the second anniversary of the attacks, the government had injected $652 million in upgrades. The annual budget ballooned and construction started on new buildings.
The hole-and-corner city "added 27 new fuel tanks in 2012, each of which could agree 20,000 gallons," Graff writes. Raven Rock is believed to have 900,000 square feet of part space now. Today it holds between 3,000 and v,000 government employees — no familiies.
"Families would take been prohibited from Raven Rock — as they would accept been from finer all of the Doomsday bunkers," writes Graff, "although in recent years as the veil of consummate secrecy has lifted, family members of Raven Rock personnel are allowed to visit it for specific ceremonies. And then at the very least, family members today tin can picture where their relatives will spend Doomsday, even as they're barred exterior."
Peters Mountain
Appalachian Mountains, Virginia • For intelligence agencies
"Peters Mountain, Virginia, is a long-standing facility, run undercover as an AT&T communications station — there'southward fifty-fifty an AT&T logo painted on its helipad — but its real purpose is as one of a half-dozen secret facilities known as AT&T "Project Offices" that are actually fundamental hubs for government continuity planning. Information technology'due south a department-store-sized bunker, capable of housing several hundred people, and has undergone a $67 million renovation in recent years that would help it serve as one of the relocation sites for intelligence agencies in the event of an assault on Washington," says Graff.
Mount Weather condition
Bluemont, Va. • For noncombatant government
The President could finish upwardly at any of the Doomsday facilities, but in general terms Mountain Atmospheric condition is designed to hold the civilian leadership of the Usa government, including the President, the Supreme Courtroom, Cabinet officials, and some senior congressional leaders.
A twelvemonth after Raven Rock opened its doors, work began on Mount Weather, once an observatory for the Weather condition Bureau (hence its name) and, for a brief time, Calvin Coolidge's summer White Firm home. Tunnels excavated through thousands of tons of greenstone pb to a true underground city that tin can house thousands of staff. Under JFK'due south tenure, the bunker expanded to sewage treatment plans, reservoirs for drinking h2o and even its own burn and police departments — all underground.
Mount Weather boasted "extensive calculator systems" — including the precursor to now ubiquitous chat programs like AOL Instant Messenger and Skype, to respond to possible communication crises. Mount Weather also housed a "Survivor's List" of 6,500 names and addresses of people — government employees and individual citizens — viewed equally "vital" and key to maintaining "essential and non-interrupted services" in an emergency.
Unlike Raven Rock, Mountain Weather has an extensive above ground facility that FEMA uses for routine staff preparation and seminars. "At that place'southward fifty-fifty a bar, the Airship Shed Lounge, the proper name a nod dorsum to the site's origins as a weather balloon launch station," Graff tells The Post. In 2016, it embarked on "a significant infrastructure upgrade" so the facility is "capable of supporting 21st century applied science and current Federal departments and agencies' requirements," Graff adds.
Mountain Weather has been updated after 9/11 considering "there'south now a greater focus in authorities planning on 'devolution,' that is, ensuring that backup facilities are always staffed and set up to assume control if the worst happens — rogue states or terror groups today offer more of a threat that a surprise assail on Washington could destroy the capital without alert," Graff says.
NORAD
Colorado Springs, Colo. • For air defense force
Unlike Raven Stone and Mount Weather, the military'due south N American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was never kept undercover from the public. "NORAD is specific to North American defense — it includes the command post responsible for defending both Canada and the US from air attacks, whether that's terrorists, Russian bombers, or North Korean missiles," Graff says.
The hard, iii-year project — started in the 1950s equally a reaction to creeping Cold State of war paranoia — was congenital when we were first agreement the impairment that could be inflicted by electromagnetic pulses (EMP) that would follow a high-altitude nuclear explosion. Information technology became ane of the first facilities protected against EMP. Today well-nigh new facilities are protected against it (including Doomsday planes built for the president), but "it's an intensive and expensive process, and so it's useful to rely on older sites" like NORAD.
Five chambers within Cheyenne mountain hold reservoirs for water and fuel. There is fifty-fifty an underground lake, which requires rowboats to patrol. In the beginning, nearly $40 million went into equipping it with the best computers and electronics, including three room-sized Philco 212 computers and 15 panel displays (cutting border technology at the time). During an emergency, NORAD could house 1,000 people for a month.
The Pentagon nearly closed the book on the facility, which costs well-nigh $250 million a year to operate, only reversed grade afterward 9/11 — installing about $700 1000000 in communications and estimator upgrades v years subsequently the attacks. One $15 million project in 2004 virtually doubled the main command center's 540 square feet to adapt more staff.
Later on a brief render to standby mode in 2006, the Obama administration brought NORAD back to life. Information technology began running full-scale continuity drills and even sealed the smash door entrance for 24 hours — the first time a exam of that magnitude had happened there. In 2015, the Pentagon announced that it was restaffing the bunker as "the rise threat of electromagnetic pulse attacks against the United States, perhaps fifty-fifty past a new nuclear-armed nation like Iran, meant that the NORAD bunker . . . was a perfect bastion from which to defend the nation," Graff writes.
White House Front end Lawn
Washington, D.C. • For the President and cardinal officials
The most mysterious of all bunkers is this i, located right in the centre of our nation's capital.
"There's definitely a bunker under the White House, known every bit the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), which is where Dick Cheney was rushed on September 11th and where he spent the day helping to lead the authorities'south response. Information technology's a small facility, not designed for long-term utilize, but to concur a few dozen people for a few hours, which traces its roots all the way dorsum to FDR, when the offset bunker was built to protect against a surprise Nazi assail. Later, Truman expanded information technology and the facility has been updated once again in recent years since 9/11 when the attacks showed how limited the communications systems were. For case, Vice President Cheney couldn't listen to both CNN and to the government's videoconference at the aforementioned time on 9/11," says Graff.
Far less is known about the bunker update done during Obama'due south offset term. The massive expansion was congenital below the North Lawn of the White House and was intensely guarded from the prying eyes of the press. The $376 1000000 project seemed "far too all-encompassing to exist just an air-conditioning upgrade," writes Graff.
Source: https://nypost.com/2017/06/10/this-is-where-the-government-will-hide-during-a-nuclear-war/
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