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Underground 'Cold War City' For Sale
Hogwash McFly writes "A huge underground complex that was built as a nuclear refuge for the British Prime Minister in the 1950s has been put on the market. Code-named Burlington, the bunker now has a population of only four maintenance workers, yet sprawls over 240 acres and accommodates 60 miles of roads. Underground power stations supply energy for 100,000 street lamps and amenities include a railway station and a pub called the Rose and Crown. Among ideas suggested for the £5,000,000 bunker include a data centre, wine cellar, rave club or fifties theme park. It is not clear whether a tank for keeping laser-equipped sharks is included, however."
I've always wanted to start my own city.....
There's no place like localhost
I recall some Canadian relatives discussing a bunker called the Diefen Bunker. I think they said it's a tourist attraction now. They give tours as if it were a museum.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Imagine the killer bud you could grow in that place.
as stated before, we really need to filter out these damned ad articles.
But... isn't he going to need it when the terrorists attack?
http://www.coderoshi.com/
I think it's worth spending that money just so you can say you live in motherlands basement.
Actually I remember an episode of "The Avengers" where emma and steed were trapped in an underground city..
The Canadian version is the Diefenbunker. Located in the village of Carp (near Ottawa), it's now decomissioned, and a tourist attraction. Guided tours are available in the summer.
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd like to turn in into my own British Bat Cave. Kind of like where a combination of James Bond and Bruce Wayne would live.
Do I get the "four maintainance workers" with the city? Is slavery illegal underground? Oh, and I welcome our new underground mole-people overlords (couldn't help myself)
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
For a time, the massive bunker's only inhabitant was Margaret Thatcher's previously unknown geek son, who wasted away his days coding, playing D&D with his online friends, and playing scrabble against himself while sheepishly avoiding the opposite sex.
He is noted to have posted on many USENET boards, "oh yeah? Well you should see MY mom's basement, where I live. It's soooo much cooler than yours."
Sorta makes you wonder what kind of place they replaced it with.
> ...sprawls over 240 acres and accommodates 60 miles of roads...
...100,000 street lamps...
60 miles of 30 foot wide road covers 218 acres.
>
That's 417 street lamps per acre, or one for every three feet of your 60 miles of road.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The history of the place has to be put together from different parts of the article. At first glance it seems that it was created from scratch for government officials but read the whole thing: First it was a mine which was worked out. The mine was converted into an ammo dump for WWII, at which time it became a military installation. And then in the 50's, before ICBMs and missile submarines, it was finally made into a bomb shelter. Fairly reasonable then when nuclear warheads numbered in the dozens worldwide. The only real question is why it wasn't decommissioned in the 70's (when ICBMs and subs made getting there from London unlikely) and turned into something else instead of waiting til now.
Starring Christopher Walker, Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, and Sissy Spacek. Oh, nevermind!
Click here or here.
Here is a report on the bunker with many photos. It is actual the "Burlington" bunker in Corsham, declassified by the MOD (==DOD). More photo's here.
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The Federal Government of Germany tried to sell of its bunker some years ago.
Despite some more or less reasonable offers it never got sold as the potential buyers were not willing to accept certain obligations, such as equipping it with a new structural fire protection. It is now sealed and flooded.
Too bad, actually
Alex
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
But I just could not find an aerial photo! WTF!
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
They should make it into a real life Half-Life theme park. That would kick ass.
60 miles of 30 foot wide road covers 218 acres.
umm...yeah, you see, in the middle of the american heartland, in the south, southwest, and west, 30 foot wide roads are pretty common place. However, in places that are really cramped for space (New England and old England, for example) you have roads that are noticably less wide. Some one way roads in my neck of the woods (Boston) are barely wide enough to accomodate 1-way traffic. The street on which I live, on which it is permitted to park on both sides of the street mind you, is about 12 feet across. There are even some "roads" in Boston's oldest neighborhoods that really are just narrow alleys that could never accomodate a car.
By road here, they could mean a series of very narrow one way roads and well-paved footpaths. Or maybe everyone in the underground city was supposed to be riding a vespa (a very logical idea, I'd think), or something similar, in which case all of one's roads could essentially be well-paved footpaths. In fact, in such a situation, electric scooters would be the ideal vehicle (low-power requirements, non-polluting, not very loud).
my pet machine
In the plains east of Denver there are a number of abandoned Titan missile silos. They were built under land leased from farmers and ranchers, and when the missiles and classified equipment were removed the government returned the structures to the landowners. For many years, teenagers snuck into them at night to toke up and hook up, and the owners had little success trying to block the entrances.
Occasionally a developer would announce a plan to turn them into energy-saving underground homes, but none of those schemes got very far...by now, I understand most of the owners have sprung for a load of Ready-Mix to close the entrances for good.
rj
SOLD
I hear some company by the name of, The Umbrella Corporation, just bought it.
When work feels overwhelming, remember that you're going to die.
mm.. that link doesn't work
and i've got just the name for it...
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
The purpose of these bunkers was so the political elite could survive the nuclear holocaust brought upon their subjects. In my opinion they ought to have suffered the same fate as the people if anything really bad happened.
Of course only essential people were allowed--cabinet ministers, and attractive secretaries, and a few maintenance people. This way, the politicians could restart civilization with their superior genes and the young ladies who worked in their office.
Here's a tour. It's a huge installation. Not in bad shape for a bunker, but will need considerable work to be usable.
Two things could be done with this complex. Turn it into a museum, say The Museum of the Apocalypse. Include a amusement park, a bar, a cannabis 'chill center', a dance hall for raves, etc...
Or sell it to modern billionaires who are more important than the British Prime Minister.
After all, it's not like the 10000 Hydrogen bombs and 1000 ICBMs actually went away. They're still around. Which means that an underground shelter might still be a wise precaution.
Better yet, turn it into an art museum. That way, if the bombs do go off and the urban center surfaces of the planet are destroyed, the great art masterpieces will be saved for the human survivors living a hundred generations after WarDay.
Which is why the Yamantau Mountain complex in Russia, some 1 300 km from Moscow, has raised so many eyebrows.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
How about 'the worlds largest library?'
Not only would it have tons of books (literally), it would also act as a time capsule when the zombies come.
If I purchase it will they deliver it to my Texas ranch?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
... and buy that thing for the slashdot community! It's only 5.5 £ / user.
/. servers, underground soccer, ...
We could do whatever we want with it. Put in a thick internet pipe and have some fun. Lan parties, new secure location for the
"Hundreds of swivel chairs delivered in 1959 are still unpacked."
Frickin' rotating chairs!
It's value as a bomb shelter went away when slow flying bombers were no longer the weapon delivery mechanism. As the article says, once the warning time dropped to 4 minutes, evacuating to the shelter became impossible.
I believe I found a page with photos of the shelter in question. Not as glamorous as the article makes it out to be, but meh, it would make a good film location for a remake of Day of the Dead, perhaps.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Crikey, just sell it to Michael Jackson.
Imagine the possibilities!
... to find Vault 13. It's in England!
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
It's only 5 million pounds. It can house 4000 people, that works out to 1250 pounds each. I'll toss in a couple grand to be part owner. :)
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I bid 10,000 Quatloos for the Gates-thrall!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Or... you could put a house on top of the main entrance and have your mom live in the house while you live in the "basement".
Geez, if you're going to post on
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
The slashdot community should band together and buy the city, and make a techno-utopia. Then we wouldn't need to bother with stupid people.
I would dub it Alpha Complex and install the glorious regime of the Computer. Hail friend Computer! Let the paranoia begin :-)
Remember: Happiness is mandatory.
Yamantau is quite close to central asia. Central Asia is considered the strategic core of the planet by a lot of strategists, politicians, reporters etc. The reason it is so important is because of the abundance of resources in the region. According to energy analyst Michael T. Klare "... the region, which stretches from the Ural Mountains to China's western border, has now become a major strategic prize, because of the vast reserves of oil and natural gas thought to lie under and around the Caspian Sea." I'd imagine Yamantau will be some form of future command centre for a major war in the area probably for a last dash for resources between the US (from Afghanistan), China, Iran and Russia themselves. And that's just the nation states fighting, it doesn't take into consideration the major ethnic conflicts that are in the region.
In the early 90's th U.S. declassified the bunker under the Greenbrier resort in WV - http://www.atomictourist.com/green.htm - and while not as big as the U.K. city, it's open for tours...
Ramen
First, pictures? Please? Someone?
Second, think for a few moments: Great Britain, while a major world power, is hardly going to have been the only nation to think of this sort of thing. Moreover, I'd be a bit surprised if they built the biggest or even the nicest of the underground Cold-War cities. I'm not saying that the US did: Most likely some OPEC Sheik created something to make the brain stagger in the middle of some unknown desert.
Point is, how many of these things exist? How fancy do they get?
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Does $5M strike anyone else as cheap? I mean, 60 miles of roads - that's only 15.80 per foot of road, even if the road is only 8' wide, less than 2 pounds per square foot for any constructed item is cheap, and amazingly so for an underground bunker. The place might be a maintenance nightmare, otherwise, it's the cheapest bat-cave per square foot I've ever heard of.
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hope that helps