A Shelter From The Apocalypse | Secrets of the Exhibit EP5 | Absolute History

this is a national day of reporting an enemy attack is expected yes nuclear war could have happened it was always there was always a possibility there was great deal of anxiety young people who went to school in those days they didn't know whether they would never live to grow up had to be secret of course and when you think of it you've got to build this humongous building and keep it secret and get it done as little as 13 months the facility is over a hundred thousand square feet in size four stories underground and it was designed to withstand a nuclear blast of five megatons at a distance of one point eight kilometers I knew it was a special building but I had no idea what they were going to use it for [Music] even H bomb explodes at the first flash of brilliant light done then if possible keep going this warning was recorded in 1960 at the height of the Cold War it was never actually played for the general public it was produced in the event that Canada was under attack by weapons of mass destruction [Music] in the early 1960s the United States and Russia had begun the ultimate game of chicken with nuclear weapons the Cold War was upon us and Canadians like other world powers began making survival preparations in case of nuclear war secrets of the exhibit will take you behind the scenes of this living anachronism a tour of the bunker brings our secret nuclear past into the harsh cold of the present today it is a museum but in 1961 it was the best chance of survival for an entire government there were quite an arms race going on there are numbers of nuclear weapons were increasing very very rapidly we had sirens right across the country mostly near hospital and school so if they had a warning the kid were supposed to know what to do at the time and that duck under your table Prime Minister John Diefenbaker ordered several underground bunkers to be secretly built in key cities throughout Canada in the small town of carp just west of Ottawa Canada's capital a top-secret construction project began it was built in 1959 to 61 and it was meant to house certain members of our federal government and military in the event of a nuclear war presumably somewhere in North America here constructing a building that would survive a nuclear blast was no small feat it had to be a completely self-contained underground building with time of the essence it would represent one of the greatest engineering challenges of its time the first step was to find a suitable location close to Ottawa many bunkers were built in a mountain unfortunately the Ottawa area we don't have any militants that's why the soils not very good here it's Ottawa limestone basically breaks up into gravel eventually it's not a very good place to build a very deep facility so they really just thought well we'll build one close to the ground but we'll just make it extra strong compared to other bunkers the gravel however turned out to be a bonus when constructing a vibration-free building the engineers looked at about 15 sites in the whole Ottawa Valley and it just turns out that basically we're sitting on an area that has a very gravelly soil very sandy gravelly soil so if he built a structure underground the vibration of a bomb hitting the ground nearby would not be transferred in the building it actually only transmits about 8% of the vibration of a nuclear weapon hitting the ground within a mile or two of the structure the water table is also very very low as well below the buildings which means all of your your own voids in the gravel of the building is sitting on gravel are dry if they were full of water that vibration again would transfer rate into and touch the building and it would shake the building rather violently you may lose some of the building the engineers came up with a design that was sophisticated in its simplicity it's basically a giant cube of concrete 154 feet square it's set into the side of what was a hill it was actually partially excavated as a gravel pit so it's a giant concrete cube with a sword on top of it designed to survive a nuclear blast equivalent to five million tons of TNT the bunker called for 32 thousand cubic yards of concrete and five thousand tons of steel enough for the normal construction of a 20-story building concrete was poured by hand using wheelbarrows and in some cases the pore lasted up to 45 hours in order to have one solid mass of concrete slab it was reinforced with rebar so thick that companies no longer manufacture it we simply can't even find samples of it the companies simply just don't make it anymore so when you look at some of the construction photographs to me it's just unbelievable that they could make walls several feet thick using that the smallest rebar is about two and a quarter inches and the big stuff is four inches and is actually wrapped around several times as well so it's almost like solid steel walls the rebar would support a four-story underground building with walls five feet thick a series of 36 massive support columns spaced every 22 feet would span from top to bottom of the structure they put in about 36 columns which are rather big in diameter they also have what's called the shear head on the top it spans out to try to collect as much weight as it can to transfer the loading down into the concrete the concrete goes all the way down to the bottom each pillar and it comes out again I try to make a bit of a foot so that it can not punch the concrete pillar right through the bottom the bunker engineers were working with the most up to date specs on nuclear blasts available it's called a blast wave some people call it a mock front when a nuclear weapon goes off of course there's a very bright flash which is extremely bright but basically as the reaction starts it actually super heats the air very very fast and this air produces a pressure wave and it proceeds out from the weapon very very fast actually about 15 times the speed of sound initially and then it slows down and at the distance that the bunker was meant to survive a five Megaton bomb at one point one miles well at one point one miles where I'm standing that pressure wave would be between 7 to 10 tons per square foot and it only lasts a few seconds but it's literally going to try to crush anything it can come across as it recedes away from the weapon and this building is meant to survive that repeatedly the general population of Canada had no idea that their tax dollars were being used to provide a safe haven for certain government personnel so the site was intended to hold approximately 535 military and government personnel for a shutdown period of 30 days after the bomb detonated so that meant the designers of the site ensured that there was everything necessary in the site for that 30 days so you've got your medical center the communication centers rations kitchens washer facilities anything that a community of the 535 people might need for a 30 day period of time there was a top-secret list of people who would staff the bunker in the event of a nuclear attack who exactly would have been on that list is is at this point still unknown we've had a lot of visitors come through and say oh yes I would have been here I would have made such and such we do know that there would have been a lot of communications personnel they would have been military the government that would have been here would have been 10 to 12 cabinet ministers there support personnel the prime minister and the Governor General and of course their support personnel and then the civilians who would have been here would have been some maintenance personnel as well as some kitchen personnel but the interesting thing is none of that 535 we're permitted to bring their spouses everyone who is designated to be here had to have preparations made at home for their family to withstand whatever the crisis end up being and they chose to come here alone one of the legends about this site is that Prime Minister Diefenbaker actually refused to come to the defendent bunker because his wife was not permitted so he was going to stay at 24 Sussex with olive and that was to be the end of it the Deputy Prime Minister would have come in his place and he would have stayed with his wife almost 50 years since its creation the bunker is no longer top-secret and finally opened to the public rooms have been faithfully recreated to present an accurate representation of a time when the world was literally minutes away from annihilation this is a national take cover warning an enemy of tech is expected listen for further instructions [Music] as the threat of nuclear war changed from possible to probable world powers scrambled to ensure the safety of their nations leaders in the small town of carp just outside of Ottawa Canada's capital construction on a top-secret underground bunker had begun built by many yet seen by few it stood in readiness to shield our nation's leaders the general population of Canada however was kept in the dark about the bunker even construction workers had only been given enough information to complete their particular job people who worked here are not allowed to talk about it some people are only allowed to work a certain length of time and then they were left that engineers who designed parts of machines they were never allowed to see the whole thing that they were designing even people who work here were not allowed to go around this building even the commanding officer was not allowed to just wander around pierre Remillard worked at the construction site in 1959 I knew it was a special building but I had no idea what they were going to use it for later on we find out but nor the beginning nor the entrance to the bunker is deceptively simple wide open fields house a small Quonset hut with a garage door but that's where the simplicity ends visitors travel down a long dark tunnel to arrive at a set of heavy steel doors the boss tunnel is almost 400 feet in length and it was designed at 90 degrees to the entrance so what its purpose was was to take the fire ball from that nuclear bomb and channel it straight past the entrance so rather than attempting to construct a door that was thick enough and powerful enough to withstand a thousand mile per hour wind barreling down at it they said ok forget it what we'll do is we'll construct the entrance at 90 degrees the window rip right past there'll be some suction and a fair bit of pressure on the entrance but it'll be able to withstand it so the tunnel literally is just in one end of the hill and right out the next [Music] entrance doors made of two tons of steel are located midway down the tunnel they were monitored around the clock by armed guards the passenger doors are approximately 18 inches thick there are two sets of those and they would have been opened only one at a time to provide first of all an air lock in terms of letting personnel in so you are controlling the air as it's coming in and going out but also for security purposes if you've always got one door closed you know whom you're letting in and whom you're letting out Doug Beaton knows the layout of the defend bunker better than most of those who were stationed here now there are two sets here the building is under positive pressure so there's a bit of an airlock here so you this door but open for you once you inform the guard you would walk in several feet that door will close behind you and at this point this door which was closed will now open so field perhaps a bit of air come by you because of course the building is now pushing the air out once you step through the doors you are on the main level of the bunker known as the 400 level anyone admitted to the bunker was immediately directed to the decontamination area this was the original guard area now that guard would have measured you if you had had some radioactive particles on you you would have had to take a shower at this point the guard to look through these lead glass windows and you would have gone this way through a double shower area if you had had some radioactivity on you some particles stuck to you you would have had to come through the shower area you would take one shower with your clothes on those clothes actually go into this container up here which falls into a concrete room you will then take a second shower then at that point you will be given your uniform or your civilian dress then you will actually come into the bunker for the first time after being decontaminated personnel would be directed down the hall to the hospital for further examination the hospital is the only area in the bunker under negative pressure the room does not have an exhaust fan that way disease cannot be spread to any other part of the building chair of the corner x-ray unit everything was provided because of course at this point you would assume you are in a lockdown position you simply can't exit the building so everything you need has to be inside with space at a premium and beds scarce rooms were fitted with bunk beds beds often did double duty with people using them in 12-hour shifts 6 bunk beds in here you needed two of course you could have actually had 12 people in here if people are going back to work or anything like that with every detail of the facility fashioned to duplicate the outside world it would be easy to think you are in just any other building until you begin to notice that all the furniture is bolted to the floor the simple reason being even though this building weighs 64,000 tons and it's 154 feet square it would have moved that had a blast we've pushed on us from the outside even though we have five feet of hardened concrete above us and 25 feet of soil this building would actually move about 3/4 of an inch visitors will notice that heavy pieces of equipment are mounted on giant shock absorbers heavier pieces of equipment on this floor it suggests an air conditioning unit however it does point out one interesting feature this whole building is meant to move approximately three-quarters of an inch of a blast wave hit well that's actually you think of it that's the space between this spring here so this air conditioning unit is sitting on this very heavy mass and hopefully would survive some of the shaking and simply bikes bouncing up and down for the while the teletype room and teleprinter repair room are also situated on the 400 level since communication lines were buried underground it made sense to locate the teletype room as close to ground level as possible it was manned by personnel whose knowledge of the bunker was on a strict need-to-know basis Mike Greene was a corporal in the Canadian Armed Forces when he was stationed at the karp facility when I was posted here I knew absolutely nothing about Bob carp other than the fact that it was I made your communication site and it was underground and top-secret that's all the day we would tell you when I arrived here they brought you inside the door and you assigned all the necessary papers got your picture taken and they put a bag over your head and walked you all around the top floor and said these are all the secret places and you don't get to see them security throughout the bunker was extraordinarily tight the safety of Canada depended on it I was cleared for this where we are right here now in the teletype shop and next door was the communication center in the Mexico Center I was allowed in there the back of the message center was a large computer called the Strad room and I wasn't allowed in there down the hallway outside here I couldn't go down that hallway because there was no need for me to go down that hallway so I went from this room basically in the message center and from there I went downstairs to the kitchen area or down to where the quarters were if I was going down to see somebody but otherwise you were pretty restricted in where you went if you were found in a hallway you weren't supposed to be you had a lot of questions to answer as the amount of regular bunker personnel increased bits of information about the building might be quietly shared but only among the staff Oh people talk to each other here but when you were outside of here you didn't discuss anything that went on here or what happened here what it was for here I couldn't even tell my wife what I worked on here what we did here how many people were here all of that was secret information and and I know it was kept that way if you started open your mouth at the wrong time you soon had some rather large men arrived with to escort you away and they took that very very seriously security was a very high priority [Music] as a teletype technician my job here was to repair the teletype machines now the teletype at that time were a British made model and they had to be kept going we had we had the ones that were in service and there was about sixty or seven them in operation that at one time but we also had a hundred percent backup and then another 100 percent spare on top of that so we had lots of equipment but if things were locked down for an extended period of time that equipment had to be available in order to maintain the communications across Canada and around the world and it was very very important the shop operated 24 hours a day seven days a week the same as the message centre did we had more people on during the day than at the other hours but there was always a couple of people on in the evening and at least one person on overnight so it was very necessary to have a technician available in case one of the printers went down then we'd have to bring it into the shop here repair it and make sure checked out ready to go for the next for the next one that broke down if an h-bomb explodes at the first flash of brilliant light duck then if possible keep going if you cannot go on and get your car off the road find a faller protection take what supplies you can including the radio well we had to maintain communications in today's world the telephone or the Internet is is the equivalent of what the teletype machines were at that time today we're in Sedona at at an Internet at our computer and we're on the Internet we're talking all around the world here everything was fixed line and so well there was wire and hard wires running from here to places like Renfrew and arm prior and Smith Falls and then from there was just disseminated across the world across Canada on railway lines and Bell telephone lines but the communications had to be maintained 24 hours a day seven days a week because this was our lifeline if something happened anywhere in Canada concerning the military then the information had to get back to Ottawa or to every also it was pertinent at the time so the communication was vital 24 hours a day seven days a week the fields up stop up on top of the bunker was covered with antennas and there are actually statistics we've got in our archives that show that I believe it was 80 to 90 percent of those antennas would have survived that initial blast and so one of him in available to transmit that would have been for the amateur and the high low and mid frequency radio stations with the CBC station there were a little more kg what they did is they buried the cable for transmission and took it about 50 miles west of here so the actual tower for transmitting for CBC radio was buried 50 miles west of here in the anticipation that the enemy could track that particular radio station and if they wanted to bomb it they would bomb 50 miles west of here not the actual site just down the hall from the teletype room is a small room set up for amateur radio it was thought that in addition to teletype bunker staff would be able to keep in touch with survivors on the outside world through ham radio the government began to organize the general population of Canada for the possibility of war amateur radio people were of course going to be a tremendous asset to the recovery of Canada the communication of course was global and was at very low power so of course any bombers couldn't really find them so government actually gave you a small monitor and they can turn it out and tell you to get you your station and you would be expected to help out with civil defense matters all across North America stock your shelter for survival you need food water medicine eating and cooking utensils flashlights and batteries or candles clothing bedding the sanitary items first-aid supplies and all the other essentials which will keep you alive in the shelter for 14 days don't forget the battery radio if you don't have one turn up the radio you are listening to so that you can hear it from the shelter more details on survival supplies will follow while the rest of the population maintained a state of vigilance the country's leaders prepared to go underground emergency measures within the bunker were well underway commissioned at the height of the Cold War the defend bunker was designed to house the Prime Minister of Canada and his War Cabinet in the face of escalating world tensions secrets of the exhibit will take you behind the scenes to level 300 we're 100 feet below the earth's surface the emergency government situation center would have been manned around-the-clock these people here would be trying to keep track of how many casualties there were and as a result of whatever is happening on the outside this map here was used for training purposes now people would come here once every so often to well pretend they're certain scenarios that happen this for example shows here in North America are quite a few number of nuclear bomb hits there is a weather office on the break down on the next office next door you would have to of course knowing that Obama's hit just to the west side of Toronto here just an example you have to find the effective wind direction and you can actually go ahead and construct these balanced semi complicated shape here but actually shows the fallout pattern from this particular bomb after approximately a few hours so that would tell people here how many casualties and they would report that to the War Cabinet Room to the prime minister exception in times of war the Prime Minister and several of his ministers would have been able to form an emergency war cabinet decisions would be made here that would affect Canada and the rest of the world forever here is the War Cabinet Room we know the Prime Minister and a number of other ministers could have formed a war cabinet in times of emergency we know from the one picture we have this is basically the shape of it and here of course they would have pulled in all of that information from the outside from all these other ministerial departments that were represented here about thirteen or so and all this information is being fed in to our government and they will hopefully make some decision how we're going to help Canadians survive what we're going to do militarily all these sort of decisions would have to be made here as the countries command center the bunker would rely on the best computer technology of the times here we are in the Ottawa semi-automatic exchange room this is the computer room a relay room again where computers made by the Burroughs company in that era would have been used to send messages across the country around the world there's an encryption room next door so encrypted messages could be sent it's a router device a computer device and we've been able to recreate it using some old computers we got from a local university the interesting thing about this whole room is actually called The Tempest room it's clad not only and steel but even the pillars are clad in steel as well so that no electromagnetic radiation can leak out and you'll be given away interviewer secrets of course communication with the outside world was critical as the rest of Canada waited for survival instructions CBC created its own studio within the bunker it would be the Center for Canada's national emergency broadcast so any total emergency a person sitting there would be talking to virtually every single Canadian the CBC radio station actually was part of the emergency Broadcasting System station so it was a network of seven stations across Canada which was actually also as far as I understand allied with all radio stations so in essence there was an understanding if the air-raid sirens went off all public broadcasting stations dropped off the air the citizens would go to one of two points on the old radios which were civil defense bands and that's where you would pick up CBC radio signal initially the recording from CBC would have been a pre-recorded message basically just saying to people what the state of affairs was these instructions are for those who are staying in target areas take cover null in your blast shelter or protected area take your battery radio with you lie down and protect exposed parts of your body so the Aryan Science have gone off an attack is expected take cover and keep listening for more information as the crisis progressed that recording would have been replaced by live CBC reporters the Prime Minister and the governor-general also probably would have given reports as to what the state of affairs was conveniently situated just around the corner from the broadcast booth is the Prime Minister's office and attached to that his own private bedroom here we are in the Prime Minister's bedroom rather luxurious of course the Prime Minister and the governor-general the only two people in this entire building that have a separate bedroom to themselves is rather large there are 28 single bedrooms if you're a minister you would have a single bedroom which is a little bit bigger than this bed actually but it is single of course everybody else isn't going to be in those larger bedrooms that we've already seen also the Prime Minister and the governor-general the only two that have a separate shower to themselves unlike the other secretaries the Prime Minister's secretary has her own spacious office so Mr Diefenbaker secretary would have had a rather large office actually it's one of the biggest ones and the entire building now the television system is again a live feed from the emergency government situation centre so one can just imagine that secretary city here and mr. Diefenbaker could have come in here in the 1960s and you could actually see basically the damage done to Canada right here on the screen there's a closed-circuit feed rate from the building itself it's not an exterior feed bunker engineers realized if hit by a nuclear blast the front steel doors could sustain damage and become inoperable strategically located on the 300 level just steps from the Prime Minister's quarters an escape hatch was built it was simple in design yet crucial to the bunkers inhabitants and this is one of the two escape hatches for the bunker now if you ever wanted to get out this is a one-way oh there's swimming the front doors or those blast doors may be jammed or for whatever reason they're not functioning and you have to get out there are two other ways out of the bunker and this is one of them here the theory is of course that you've got will go into this area that we'd be on the outside of the bunker at this point you've got about 25 feet of pea stone above you in a tube there's a trigger that you leave her up here you just have to pull that at that point the pea stone falls down into a pit you've got welded on runs going up to the surface that the cover would have collapsed and broken at that point just because of the suction and Allah you're free to go and go down get our bulldozer which may have been down at the underground garage and maybe chop the tunnel and try to get those doors open so here we have a model of the escape hatch now the idea would be once this set is triggered all of this pea stone will fall down into the pit that you just saw on there [Music] one floor below the office of the prime minister level 200 housed a cafeteria large enough to feed 500 inhabitants around the clock for 30 days here we are in the cafeteria it is really the largest room of the place about 65 feet square officers ate in a certain lounge area over there and everybody else would eat in this area here we have a few of the original tables here but generally you have to imagine this place if we're locked down this place got all the tables and chairs in order to feed five or six hundred people basically for meals today since they'll be course around the clock here this would be a very crowded in a very noisy area this shutdown period was for 30 days and that meant they did have enough supplies for the 30 days the thought of the time was after 30 days the radiation would have dropped to a safe enough point where one could venture outside surveyed the countryside see what's going on reestablished communication lines if necessary and then come back to the bunker as well as collect more supplies so on site there was always approximately 7 to 10 days worth of fresh food normally for approximately 150 people if there was an increase of international tensions that quantity of fresh food would actually be bumped up to enough fresh food for 5 to 10 days still but for 535 people there were to survive the last 20 days of a 30 day lockdown rations fortunately for the personnel who staffed the bunker at the time meals never came down to rations the food here was fabulous we operated 24 hours a day seven days a week and when I first arrived here and and even when I left here in 1972 at that time fresh rations were brought in every week and rather than let them go bad they prepared the fresh rations for the people that were that we're working here just off the side of the cafeteria was a lounge area with a television a pool table and card tables down in the lounge area downstairs there was a shuffleboard there was darts and of course you could play cards they didn't have a pool table here at that time but most of people played either cards or darts and tied around shoot the breeze it seemed the engineers had thought of everything when designing a self-contained bunker level 100 the deepest level housed machines that would allow people to live underground for 30 days and in a far corner sat a secret room encased in double cement intended to hold Canada's most valuable commodity [Music] this is level 100 the deepest reaches of the bunker designed to house the Canadian government in the event of a nuclear war within its depths a special room encased in its own separate 18-inch concrete walls had been constructed the Bank of Canada vault was built to survive a nuclear blast even if nothing else in the bunker did this Bank of Canada fall which contains about 40,000 cubic feet you can actually see you can walk on top of it and there are mirrors in the corners showing of course that it is actually building within another building so you could actually walk all the way around it and of course had a very ordinary bank vault doorways anywhere your guests as good as mine five to ten tons they would have locked it of course if you had indeed brought some of the gold in Canada here in the early days later on there wasn't quite so much pressure to bring all the gold here this would have been our Fort Knox so to speak the rest of level 100 houses mechanical equipment not as glamorous as a bank vault but just as important to survival in an underground bunker systems to produce electricity air and water were monitored around the clock Pierre Remillard was on the bunkers maintenance crew from its first day of operation at the beginning I work on the construction of the bunker and in 1962 when the building was in operation I started working on maintenance pierre quickly found out that even maintenance staff did not have access to the entire bunker everything was top-secret when I work everybody had a past different color like mine was yellow and I was working on the 400 level I was not allowed to be on the 300 or 200 or right here the machine room at the time so that you were another floor you had to tell him why you had to be there or the ways you had a big problem since nuclear attack could come at any time the maintenance crew had to keep the bunker in perfect working order every day we were trained to keep that building in operation in case of a nuclear war while every week we had to check every room in the building to make sure the light were working we had their lists stuff that we had to check to make sure that they had a problem through the night you leave us a message and we had to fix it through the day if something broke at that time we stay here till was fixed and in a four-story building with more than 300 rooms most housing some type of mechanical equipment it was an exhausting daily routine and it was not negotiable this battery room has enough batteries in it to keep the emergency lights going for quite some time though they would come on immediately one would have to assume that of course power exterior power is off now and maybe offer a very long time for these batteries in here turn on the emergency lights there's another very large battery room and it's going to give you enough power for the essential equipment that computers I mean Krypton machines and that sort of thing after a number of minutes there are four big murli's diesel engines that would have to be started and that will give you about another eight hundred thousand watts of power and that will essentially run the building you have enough fuel stored outside and some inside for at least a month you have approximately fifty to sixty thousand gallons of diesel fuel stored within the structure within the compound an air filtration system was essential to survival in the bunker since a nuclear blast would have contaminated the outside air if they actually did have a filtration system in place so when the rad sniffer picked up any detection of heat pressure or radiation from a nuclear blast this device would actually send a signal to basically the computer that ran the building saying seal the building down shut off the air intakes shut off the exhaust make sure the doors are closed it would have remained in that closed shutdown fashion for probably a couple of days depending on the rate of oxygen usage and carbon dioxide production when the levels got to the point where it was no longer safe they would actually go in outside air now there was a high probability that that air would be contaminated be it with biological chemical or nuclear agents and so they had a massive filtration system in place that would have removed all of those contaminants from the air so making it safe to breathe again and then the fans would have distributed that air throughout the building for the personnel as well as an air supply system engineers had also thought about a water supply the bunker is built over an aquifer an underground source of well water which provided a constant source of fresh water there are two deep wells here at the site they go down about 198 feet and they can deliver water virtually forever we're actually sitting on an aquifer so waters not a problem there's also three tanks inside about 36,000 gallons of water the construction of the bunker required the coordination of hundreds of engineers and more than a thousand construction workers toiling non-stop for months on end time was of the essence and delays were not permitted to tackle the logistics the engineers used a novel construction technique one of the reasons it was made a National Historic Site of Canada is because we use the critical path method of construction here which means everything was gonna happen great on time they were gonna design one floor while they're building the one underneath and that's doing as quickly as possible the facility was constructed just under two years and the figures that we have for how much it cost is around 20 million dollars and that's at the time when the average family income was about five thousand dollars per year so the sums are considerable and that 20 million dollars is just the construction it's not the computers that were inside or any of the mechanical system so it was a fairly expensive project the bunker was finished in record time considering the number of personnel involved and the amount of construction materials required to complete the project it was an incredible feat of engineering and political influence but like any big secret it only takes one person interested enough to find a leak to break the dam wide open intrepid reporter George Brummell of the Toronto telegram released the story to Canada and the rest of the world in the early 60s it was in 1961 in fact and I was the junior man in the parliamentary Bureau Peter demson was the bureau chief and he was on vacation when I got a call from the North American desk the telly wanted to find out what was going on out of carp which is about 23 miles from Ottawa there had been bits of stuff in the papers about construction work going on but nobody seemed to be entirely sure what was really happening the government put it out that they were working on an army signals establishment but that our our editors didn't really believe that they felt that this was something more more important more significant so I was instructed to get out the carp and find out what was really going on I hooked up with Ted grant a photographer who do work for the telly from time to time and I would we went to carp we weren't surprised to be turned away and we went into town and began chatting with the townspeople among those we spoke to was a tool and die maker named Louis Hubie who know all sorts of folks who are working in the job and he told us they have got everything imaginable in there they've got storage lockers they've got communications equipment Wireless they've got 78 bathrooms can you imagine it well Ted grant hired a plane and flew over the construction site and got some remarkable aerial photographs they could keep us out of the place but they couldn't keep us from being over it I went into the end of the city and got back into the gallery cut on the phone to started digging up as much material as I could about this project and a few days later the telly came out with this story full-page across the top 78 bathrooms and the army still won't admit that and then enlarged type this is that deepened bunker well that really put it on the map it was a big scoop everybody else jumped on it of course all the other papers the radio stations television which was pretty much in its infancy in those days the telegram having been a big Tory newspaper from its beginnings back in the 1800s gave the thing that much more authenticity and it was well it was one heck of a big story so this mysterious site turned out to be as we now know the building of a secret underground bunker for the government to use in the event of a nuclear attack I have been given credit for it for naming the place I don't believe I dreamed it up convenient diefenbaker was the Prime Minister this was a bunker deep in bunker but I believe I was the first to publish the name and so I'm identified with it the repercussions were almost immediate my bureau chief was Peter Demps veteran of the gallery in their years and years he was thick with with Diefenbaker thief was he was outraged that the telegram would would print this stuff Peter in his memoirs wrote that deef was standing there he was living he had underlined passage of this piece and red pencil he said that you're gonna be sure this is on its way to Moscow even though right now he said this is the very kind of information the Russians want he also said this is going to cost me 100,000 votes in Toronto in the next election which was a rather amazing claim you would think that diefenbaker would would feel he should get credit for this very astute move to create a safe place for a government to carry on in the event of a nuclear attack no he felt that this branded him as a coward well the upshot of this was that he phoned John Bassett who was the publisher of the telegram demands that Brummell be fired Bassett instead of firing me sent the editor-in-chief of the paper Burton T Richardson down to talk to diefenbaker and persuade him that that would be wrong and it would have been - it wasn't my fault it wasn't even my idea I was simply I was assigned to do a story I carried out my assignment very well and the story had a lot of impact why should I be fired he finally saw a reason and that was that with construction complete it seemed the bunker engineers had thought of everything there would be enough food water air and electricity for five hundred people to survive underground for thirty days the big question was would the structure survive the blast they knew there'd be a huge pressure wave you've got approximately 25,000 square feet of space of course and you've gotta call it ten tons per square foot so you've got a quarter of a million tons of weight on this building and it's it has to survive this is our war cabinet this is our Canada we we have to survive somehow when that pressure wave comes over we have huge steel doors coming into the place there was a long tunnel before you get to the door so yes we felt very safe here this building was made for that it was gonna survive a nuclear attack as the government prepared to go underground they began to ready the population for nuclear war posters brochures and handbooks extolled the virtues of being prepared for a nuclear attack homeowners were advised on how to build simple yet effective bomb shelters in their own homes we do have some statistics we know there were about 1700 air-raid sirens across Canada and they of course would have been concentrated in urban areas and I think for instance in Ottawa I think there were probably about 10 of them so they would have been loud enough to notify the populace and at the height of the Cold War through the 60s and I think even into the 70s people did know what to do when the air-raid sirens sounded go to your home fallout shelter if you've got it or the community fallout shelter if there is one or hightail it into whatever safe corner you can find because something's gonna happen stop your shelter for survival you need food water medicine eating and cooking utensils flashlights and batteries or candles clothing bedding the sanitary items first-aid supplies and all the other essentials which will keep you alive in the shelter for 14 days we've got some sets of 11 steps to survival which we're publications put out and this in the 70s by the government that basically outlined how you were to protect your family so what to do if you saw the blast where to go what supplies to have in your home fallout shelter and we do also have actual plans for going down to your basement gathering up the cinder blocks and putting together your own fallout shelter closed for operation by the Department of National Defense in 1994 the bunker has been declared a national historic site this top-secret bunker is now toured by young and old all fascinated by this Cold War tribute to Canadian history as philosopher George Santayana said those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it I think it's very vital to preserve a site such as the defend bunker to ensure that the future knows what happened during the Cold War the Cold War was a global conflict and Canada did have a small role to play in that conflict so it's important that that memory be preserved this site has been designated Canada's most important surviving Cold War site by the historic sites and monuments boards so it's the only site that's left of that period of time in any shape or form and given what the current political state is with North Korea testing their atomic weapons the Cold War really has not left us it simply shifted its sphere of influence so it's still a very relevant topic it's a fascinating place really anybody who has the time and the opportunity and is anywhere near carp would benefit from a look at this thing it gives one a sense of how simple things were that long ago our fears were grounded in pretty basic things nowadays with communications around the globe so instantaneous it's hard to imagine but this was somewhat primitive in its way and yet it's most impressive the whole building is built on Springs he's enormous Springs that envisaged an enormous enormous explosion which could shake the entire structure and yet it would would survive on its Springs it's fascinating there are about three radar lines across the north of Canada should there ever be a an attack detected of course then things will go into motion as people would come here the right people would come here your your hunker down the doors are locked we'll never really know if the defend bunker would have sit up to a nuclear blast the Cold War eventually cooled enough to fade into the background we do know that with today's sophisticated weapons an underground bunker would no longer be a viable safety option but back in 1961 with our country fighting tooth and nail to survive a war the likes of which we've never seen the bunker was our greatest hope [Music] this is a national take cover warning an enemy attack is expected listen for further instructions [Music]

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Rating: 4.8319325 out of 5

Keywords: history history documentary funny history fun history school, timeline, full length documentaries, history channel, history documentary, full documentary, absolute history, documentary movies - topic, apocalypto full movie, apocalypse documentary, cold war documentary, cold war documentary bbc, cold war documentary history channel, war documentary cold war, war documentary marines, war documentaries playlist, secrets of the exhibit

Id: w4_7Eff9pE8

Length: 53min 33sec (3213 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 23 2019