ABOUT FACTS NET Weapons and War

As the title indicated, I have talked about this subject before, but there is something fascinating about it. Humans have felt that being underground offered them protection of a sort and in modern times, this feeling still exists thanks to reinforced concrete and steel. If we were to take an inventory of all the countries in the world we would probably find thousands of these underground bunkers. Some would be new, some from around World War II and yet others would be much older.

Bunker at Ft. Hancock, NJ
Photo Source: Me

Castle Valkenburg is in the Netherlands. It has seen many wars and is basically a ruin. It was believed to have been built around the early 1100s. Napoleon sold the ruins to Maximillian, after he confiscated them in 1795. What nobody knew at the time, was that there were extensive underground passages under the castle. The knights originally used them as escape routes and maybe even hid in them. The passages led to a cave. There is also a chapel underground. Some of the passages were used during World War II to hid from the Germans.

Many underground sites exist in Great Britain. An underground stone quarry was used by the Bamthampton Patrol during World War II. A small entrance led to a cavern. Even though this was underground, I wonder how safe it would have been from bombs since you wouldn't want to be sealed in the cave? They also hid their explosives in a similar quarry. Not all British underground fortifications were originally built for that purpose. A good example of this was Down Street station in London. During the war it served as the headquarters for the Railway Executive Committee and was used occasional by Churchill's war cabinet. The station is closed now.

Scotland had a great secret bunker, it's entrance was under a farm house. It is 100 feet underground, has two levels and consists of 24,000 square feet of space.

I guess everyone out there knows about the underground bunkers in Iraq. Saddam had them built by a German company and they were quite sturdy. It was said that the bunker he lived in, beneath the guest house in Baghdad, could withstand a direct hit by a bomb the size of the one we dropped on Hiroshima. Tunnels connect the bunker to huge storage rooms and shelters. Supposedly the story was put out that Saddam was building a subway in the 1980s when the bunker and tunnel construction began. Iraq contains dozens of these bunkers. This bunker was put under a surface building, the guest house, that is really a buffer to protect the bunker. The guest house is made of reinforced concrete, has 3 floors and contains 40,000 feet of space. Thirty feet under that building is the bunker. The wall are reinforced concrete and are at least 5 feet thick. It has a ventilation system that protects against chemical and biological weapons. The designer suggests that the bunker can not be destroyed from the air.The truth is that this type of bunker may be impervious to bunker buster bombs, depending on it depth.

There is said to be a huge bunker built under the White House. Would this be a surprise to most of us? I think the answer has to be a resounding NO! A bunker to protect the president and his close aids seems natural, especially in this age of terrorism, not that it wouldn't have come in handy during the cold war either.

There are underground bunkers and tunnels everywhere, there are even some in New York City. Fort Totten is located in Bayside, New York and is in one of the five boroughs of the city. The borough is Queens. The fort has bunkers and a tunnel. The tunnel entrance is marked by an arch and it extends for over 500 feet and is about 18 feet wide. The fort was constructed in the early 1860s and is built on a 150 acre plot.

Germany had their share of bunkers in World War II. They built them everywhere, even in France to be used in conjunction with the famous Atlantic Wall. The strange part of all this is that Germany showed nothing but contempt for underground fortifications when they conquered the Maginot Line in France. Even with this contempt, Hitler finished up his last days in a bunker.

Today we are researching ways to destroy bunkers that don't involve dropping bunker busting bombs on them. One of the ways we are experimenting with is using robots to blow up the bunkers. The U.S. could develop nuclear bunker busters but if they ever use a nuke again, that will be equivalent to giving permission to the rest of the world. Let's hope this never happens. The best alternative is the robotic one. You send in several robots that are mobile. One or two may have to blow up doors etc., to get in and the rest just walk to the target and detonate. If you need a lot of explosive power you just group more robots together. Some extra, non explosive robots would accompany the explosive ones. These robots would contain tools for crossing obstacles, gaining access for the rest of the robots.

We may have finally reached a point in human history where no one is safe underground.