This is the Pentagon, the world’s most important
shape, and headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. Inside this single building is the head of
the army, the head of the navy, the marines, the air force, the national guard, the coast
guard, most of our four-star generals, pretty much all of our classified military secrets,
an inexplicably-large archive of UFO videos, and one Dunkin’ Donuts. Now, if you’re the United States, it’s
very much in your best interest for this building to not explode, given that that would leave
Arlington with only fifteen remaining Dunkin’ Donuts. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that,
given the stakes, the Pentagon is one of the most secure buildings in the entire world. But then again, it kind of just looks like
a normal office building—so what, exactly, does the Pentagon do to keep all five of its
sides intact? When the Pentagon was first constructed, security
was not the top priority—it was built as quickly as possible, so as to speed up the
killing of Nazis, and was built as cheaply as possible, because we needed high-quality
steel to kill Nazis with. At the time, FDR was like, it’s fine, surely
no one will invent terrori0sm and blow up the Pentagon. Now, fast forward about five decades to 1990
and the US Department of Defense is under attack—not by terrorists, but by asbestos. This required tearing down this wedge of the
Pentagon and rebuilding it from scratch, so the DoD said, “hey, if we’re gonna rebuild
this part of the Pentagon from scratch, let’s build it with experimental world-class anti-terrorism
measures, just for fun.” And so they did, completing construction in
2001, just in time for al Qaeda to take it for a test run. Fortunately enough, the plane that crashed
into the Pentagon just so happened to crash into the special anti-terrorism wedge, which
is the last wedge you want to crash into if you’re trying to do terrorism. The outer walls of Wedge One had been reinforced
with steel beams, with a kevlar mesh stretched between them that prevented the destroyed
portions of the walls from becoming deadly shrapnel. Every window was made out of an inch and a
half thick pane of explosive-resistant glass that weighed 500 pounds, and none of them
managed to shatter, even though they were literally hit by an airplane. The DoD looked at this and said, “huh, well,
we should probably put that stuff in all the other parts of the Pentagon,” and thus,
Project Phoenix was born. Apart from renovating the building itself,
this massive effort to turn the Pentagon into one of the world’s most secure buildings
largely focused on the area surrounding the Pentagon. Two of the Pentagon’s biggest vulnerabilities,
for example, were here and here. For one, there was a metro station that fed
directly into the area under the Pentagon, so that entrance was closed to keep all access
points to the Pentagon above ground. The other problem was right here: Route 110. At the time, this unrestricted highway passed
directly next to the Pentagon, which meant that vehicles carrying anything scary, like
bombs or clowns, could get within meters of the building without undergoing any kind of
security screening. To remedy this problem, the Department of
Defense had the entire highway rerouted through the Pentagon’s north parking lot, creating
a sort of force-field around the building where no bombs or clowns could enter without
passing through a security checkpoint. So that’s the underground and the above
ground secure, but what about the above-above ground? Well that’s where everyone’s favorite
integrated air defense system—the National Capital Region Integrated Air Defense system—comes
in. Across the river here are a whole bunch of
radars, cameras, and other sensors that watch the airspace over DC and much of Virginia
and Maryland. If any aircraft enters that space that’s
not supposed to be there, this airbase will shine a laser at the cockpit that any trained
pilot will recognize as “please turn around before we replace this laser with something
more explosive.” Assuming they don’t turn around, the air
defense system can then use what they refer to as an “engagement asset,” which kind
of sounds like a beautiful diamond ring, but is actually one of the following missiles. Now, all of these external security features
aren’t worth much if you manage to get something dangerous—like, let’s say, a small clown
holding a bomb—inside the building. And that doesn’t seem like it should be
all that hard, given that you can just… ship stuff there. Like, here’s the mailing address for the
Secretary of Defense, go crazy. The Pentagon receives thousands of shipments
a day—so how do they stop your mail-bound bomb clown from planting his bomb in the Pentagon? Well, when you ship something to the Pentagon,
it doesn’t actually go to the Pentagon—it goes here: the Pentagon’s Remote Delivery
Facility. This was one of the most major renovations
of Project Phoenix; one of the Pentagon’s parking lots was torn out and replaced with
a dedicated mail-sorting facility with 38 loading docks that’s nearly as big as the
Pentagon itself. After arriving at the RDF, each truck is searched
with mirrors, and then examined by canine teams to check for explosives. The drivers themselves then go through a metal
detector before they’re allowed to open the truck, and finally everything inside the
truck is thoroughly x-rayed. Once the team has removed the bomb from your
clown, then the neutralized clown can be sent through a tunnel to the Pentagon itself, to
do whatever it needs to do at the Pentagon without hurting anyone. So, there you go: successfully infiltrating
the Pentagon in the modern age is all but impossible. That is, unless, you’re this bunny, which
somehow, in February of 2022, managed to bypass every single security feature that I just
described without being detected and possibly proved that this whole thing doesn’t matter
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