Britain’s Stylishly Mod Secret Underground City

By on May 6, 2011 in News 6

How To Be A Retronaut has an arresting set of images of Burlington, the 35-acre “Cold War City” lying twelve stories beneath Wiltshire, England. Built during the 1950s, it was to be home to the prime minister and a few thousand others in the event of nuclear apocalypse. With record players, rotary phones, and Singer sewing machines folding out from enclosures in the walls, it makes the prospect of a post-disaster future seems quite charming:

It was equipped with the second largest telephone exchange in Britain and a BBC studio from where the prime minister could make broadcasts to what remained of the nation. 100,000 lamps that lit its streets and guided the way to a pub modeled on the Red Lion in Whitehall. The bunker’s very existence was meant to be top secret until it was decommissioned in 2004.

Cold-War-City-222

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  • Simiantongue

    In a way the whole idea of shuffling the decision makers at the time of a nuclear apocalypse off to these types of shelters is kind of counter intuitive really. Shouldn’t the official procedure be that the top government officials at that time need to be taken to the ground zero of the prime target in case of a nuclear apocalypse? And that it needs to be made clear that this eventuality will happen with or without their cooperation. That way we can all rest assured that they would do everything they possibly could to avoid such circumstances in sharing their portion of said risks.

    It’s not a foregone conclusion that those officials personally need safety for the continuity of government. There are always others to pick up the reigns after all. It’s not like they are irreplaceable, we replace politicians all the time after all.

    • JoiquimCouteau

      “we” “replace” politicians? Since when?

  • Simiantongue

    In a way the whole idea of shuffling the decision makers at the time of a nuclear apocalypse off to these types of shelters is kind of counter intuitive really. Shouldn’t the official procedure be that the top government officials at that time need to be taken to the ground zero of the prime target in case of a nuclear apocalypse? And that it needs to be made clear that this eventuality will happen with or without their cooperation. That way we can all rest assured that they would do everything they possibly could to avoid such circumstances in sharing their portion of said risks.

    It’s not a foregone conclusion that those officials personally need safety for the continuity of government. There are always others to pick up the reigns after all. It’s not like they are irreplaceable, we replace politicians all the time after all.

  • GoodDoktorBad

    “Lord” help the survival of the human race if the last people left alive are politicians.
    Complete annihilation might be preferable…

  • Anonymous

    “Lord” help the survival of the human race if the last people left alive are politicians.
    Complete annihilation might be preferable…

  • Anonymous

    “we” “replace” politicians? Since when?