Nuke-Proof Bunker Turns Out Not Waterproof

An anonymous reader writes "The AP reports on the opening of a vault in Tulsa, OK which was designed to withstand a nuclear attack by the Russians. 50 years ago they put a Plymouth Belvedere in the vault to preserve it so that we could get a good look at it in the (for that time) magical year of 2007. Unfortunately it turns out that the vault wasn't even waterproof. The once beautiful car is now a literal rust bucket."

Comments

Re:Ok, we get the idea

[jo7hs2]

What's more amazing is that you managed it with a quote that has nothing to do with Bush.

Re:Gamma particles

[Deadstick]

Water is good at turning corners.

rj

Waterproof?

[Dan East]

Even if the container were waterproof the car would still rust if the humidity wasn't controlled.

Dan East

Re:Waterproof?

[Windows Breaker G4]

I think this will answer your question. http://buriedcar.myphotoalbum.com/view_photo.php?s et_albumName=album04&id=DSC08671_1 The bag she was rapped in was also ripped around the rear drivers side fin. They figure that the water had been to the top at least a few times.

Re:Duck and Cover

[saibot834]

Duck and Cover: Watch on youtube / Download at archive.org (avi/mpg/mp4) / Wikipedia article
Nowadays we can laugh about it but consider that people might laugh in 30 years about what we think now.

Re:Was it a vaccum chamber?

[Detritus]

I read that it had been treated with cosmoline. That's a rust preventative that's often used to preserve military firearms that are being kept in long-term storage.

Re:Gamma particles

[Nukee]

If concrete acts anything like rock, the movement most fission products or decay products will be greatly slowed down by the concrete, so it would be very possible to have water coming thorough but little radiation. Some elements aren't really affected though, iodine, for example, will move at the same speed as the ground water, not slowed at all. It depends a lot of the porosity of the rock however, and I'm not sure how concrete measures up.

As for gamma rays, since they are simply high energy photons, a lot of concrete can be a pretty effective shield. At least, as long as your sources stay outside the concrete.

As with anything, take this with a grain of salt. I'm not consulting a book for this, I'm simply trying to remember what I can from my waste class. We were looking at the movement of waste from failed packages in a geological repository, but the concept seems pretty similar.

Re:Hey, they never claimed it was!

[Vellmont]

It was built to shelter people against radiation, not water.

The article is quite misleading. The "survive a nuclear attack" thing was just a boast about how strong the vault was. It wasn't a fallout shelter, it was a vault designed to hold a car for 50 years. On that level it failed miserably.

It looks to me like whoever designed the vault didn't think about water, or at least had little idea about underground vaults. Looking at this picture:
http://www.motoring.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=388 5529&fSectionId=751&fSetId=381
doesn't make this vault look terribly waterproof.

The damage was done in 1972

[night_flyer]

in 1972 there was somne excavation work being done 30 ft away, they said back then that they thought they might have damaged it but the city did nothing to fix the problem.

Re:The really sad part...

[tomhudson]

"is that they put the gasoline in there because they thought the world would be so advanced in the 21st century that we would've moved way beyond that. :P"

We HAVE moved far away from 50's-grade gasoline. No lead, and no more needing to change your fuel filter every 6,000-10,000 miles because there are way fewer contaminants.

You wouldn't want to stick that old gunk in todays cars, even if it did have a higher octane rating. You *might* go fast, but you won't go far.

Re:old cars

[starnix]

Good luck finding a 63 mustang to compare.