The Secrets of Underground Britain - MODERN MYSTERIES

since the dawn of time man has found refuge underground skeletons cave drawings and ancient tools tell of our ancestors using caverns for shelter and as hiding places as man became more adept at engineering he was able to dig deeper and construct bigger and better underground structures from Smuggler's passages to hidden fortresses from Forgotten mines to wartime bunkers discover the secrets you were never supposed to know travel to the places you were never supposed to see in the secrets of underground britain join us as we lift the lid on Britain's cold war bunkers from the tiny to the enormous journey deep deep underground as we reveal the places our government built to protect themselves and our country after the Second World War here is an emergency announcer an air attack we traveled to one of the few remaining royal observer Corps bunkers on the tip of Cornwall uncover the places and the plans our government had to try to keep us going at Kelton hatch in Essex and another secret bunker near Anstruther in Scotland and finally we uncover the once secret location deep in the heart of wilcher that the British government itself planned to retire to had a nuclear war actually happened the Cold War had led Britain to once again look underground for his safety and security and in this program we'll uncover a series of underground structures designed to withstand an atomic explosion and enable our government to keep the country going in time of a nuclear war the victory over Nazi Germany was a bittersweet pill to swallow Britain and the Allies had won but the nation was exhausted rationing continued and in the late 40s to the west horror Soviet Russia began testing atomic weapons the Cold War had exploded into a deadly international shoulder this Herald in an era of nuclear paranoia spies and double agents much of which was played out in clandestine cloak-and-dagger operations the future looked grim and for decades Britain was deemed to be on the verge of a nuclear war the government prepared scripts to be broadcast by the BBC from the safety of bomb-proof bunkers and rehearsals were regularly staged to ensure both civilian and military personnel knew where to go and what to do if the Cylons warned of a nuclear attack while some of the bunkers would house hundreds and in some cases thousands of government officials soldiers and ancillary staff others were much more modest in scale the one I'm about to visit here in Cornwall belonged to the Royal observer Corps when these bunkers were built they were deliberately located in remote locations so members of the public or indeed spies would be unlikely to stumble upon them so they're not exactly easy places to get to this is variant one of the hundreds of loyal observer Corps bunkers placed all around the country there are just two rooms the very smallest room of the bunker with the eltechs chemical toilet every bunker should have one and in here the main room it's tiny I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for the crew posted down here well it's really uncomfortable because these places were designed to be basic survival units there was no heat there was no water there no main services apart from a telephone line the Air Ministry or the observer Corps saw effective issuer's with duffle coats and said all that's alright and try keep warm well this is a basic Royal observer Corps monitoring post it had ten observers on it any eight hours there were three observers operational crew and it was their role to simply man this place and take readings to any nuclear burst which may happen and also record the level of radioactivity should that occur this place and indeed all the Royal Observatory never manned in earnest because we never did have a nuclear war we played our nuclear war games we practiced we had nuclear exercises four or five times a year the idea was that had there been a tightening of the international situation and had the Royal observer Corps been activated then three observers would have come here made it operational and serve for eight hours if nothing happened there wouldn't be a change of shift another another three observers would come on in several other three hours had the balloon gone up when any three observers were on duty at any post that would be the only crew that would ever serve because nuclear war is totally unlike a conventional or you would not be changing over shifts in a nuclear situation when the posts were originally built between 1955 and 1963 or for there was some 1,600 built we had a big reorganisation in 1968 and that many of those posts were made redundant then the number of posts went down to roughly 875 and between 1968 and 1991 they stay that they stayed at that 875 and of course it all came to an end when communism collapsed and the rule observer Corps was stood down in September 1991 first in the case of a nuclear burst down here will be a reading on the bomb power indicator if that needle went up then that would be reported to the parent operation room and then the 60 seconds after that the papers in the Ground Zero indicator would be changed that would mean an observer leaving the safety of this post on the ground and going up top to change the papers he would come down again with those papers they will be assessed in terms of bearing elevation and the size of the spot in degrees and that information will be reported to the operations room as well if we were downwind of the bursts then we would get fallout and that will be recorded on a device in the post called the survey meter and had we received first fallout then thereafter readings would be taken on that meter every five minutes and reported to the parent ops room and in that way the option would be able to port areas of high intensity fallout and low intensity faller and indeed more importantly areas which were free of fallout well thankfully we never did have a nuclear war and in that sense one could argue that the Royall observer Corps was part of a successful deterrent and the government saw fit to disband not only squadrons and regiments but also almost the whole of the royal of silver core and we were stood down on the 30th of September 1991 all these posts were made redundant and many of them were sold off many were demolished some reverted to the original land owner in this particular case Varian post they reverted to the National Trust thankfully they didn't demolish it and we duly took it over and restored it as part of our royal of of a core heritage and we're now open it up to the public those royal observer Corps lookouts would have reported to a secret regional headquarters which itself would be hidden away such as this one at Kelton hatch in Essex massive bunkers built with high security cover and unobtrusive entrances that looked just like bungalows but they were in reality guard houses which stood sentry over a passage which led to a base where hundreds of staff both military and civilian would keep Britain running in the time of a nuclear war you the scale of these establishments is mind-boggling each is equipped with a wall room stations for an army of civil servants a BBC radio studio so that the public outside could be kept appraised as to what was happening a telephone exchange a hospital dormitories private sleeping quarters for senior members of staff and aware that all provisions will be in short supply the government made sure that everything had a purpose they even had a supply of labels printed to attach the dead or wounded to make identification easier in the early 1950s there were certainly a bunker mentality the threat from the Soviets was very very real so everybody had bunkers Britain was divided into regions and each region had what was called a regional war room which would be controlled by regional commissioner so each region could be run separately if central government had been taken out of action and there was no way of getting in contact with central government or with other regions so London actually had four war rooms there was one in southwest Northwest northeast southeast and but most of the other areas for example Nottingham Tunbridge Wells Birmingham Manchester all those areas had regional war rooms Kelton hatch was originally built as an RAF bunker but as the nuclear threat intensified it was redesigned and redeployed to become the north-eastern regional headquarters for London one of its most important functions was the ability to keep in contact with both central government and the host of smaller bunkers that will be feeding them information on bomb drops and fallout patterns with that in mind the bunker was equipped with a telephone exchange that was widened to a secret phone network running all over the country fallout warning message mates turn black morning five one five two five three five five five six message Aires the most important thing about any emergency bunker this time in civil defended the important thing is communication government can't control the country if it can't communicate throughout the secondly warned and in earlier years telephone lines tended to go from city centre to city center and of course city centres are the bits that are most vulnerable to bombing and the big cities in particular like Birmingham Manchester and London a particularly vulnerable bombing so at the end of the Second World War and in years after the GPO the general post office Byrne predecessors to British Telecom they started to lay new trunk lines and they laid trunk lines that were routed around the big cities and they built deep underground emergency telephone exchanges below the major cities as well like Birmingham has got an underground telephone exchange called anchor Manchester's got a deep underground telephone exchange called Guardian Z deep underground Kingz wagster exchange in London as well as a secure phone system kelvins other link with the outside world was fire an air filtration plant that strained and filtered out any radioactive contamination from the air all the larger nuclear bunkers had similar systems installed Kelton was further protected by the fact it was located over a hundred and fifty feet underground which meant staff had a long long trek to get in or get out and Kelvin is just one of the many similar bunkers scattered across the country another is hidden beneath a farmhouse near an Strother Scotland it too was a secret regional headquarters spread over two levels and would have housed over 300 people one hundred feet beneath Scottish soil although it was kept hidden for over 40 years today it survives as a tourist attraction known as Scotland's secret bunker whilst these bunkers are authentic nuclear shelters over the years their use was changed and adapted for a variety of functions now they're open as museums and the artifacts in them reflect the bunkers uses at a variety of times over their history many of the original items were stripped out and the present owners have gone to great lengths to replace the missing part effects with equipment that will give us an idea of how the shelters would have looked when in commission what changed was the development as a nuclear bomb as opposed to atomic bomb an atomic bomb maybe an equipment 20,000 tons of TNT nuclear bomb we're talking millions of tons of TNT so a completely different measure of things and the threat posed by the nuclear bomb called for a different civil defense response it called for bigger and deeper and more hardened bunkers so by 1958 these regional war rooms have been pretty well abandoned the whole new raft of bunkers would be under construction then deep underground the majority of these bunkers were originally built during World War two and we'll re-engineered for the Cold War such as this raf bunker in Epping Forest that was reborn as a regional nuclear headquarters and Langley Lane bunker in Lancashire which started life as a world war two group headquarters and then became part of the Royal observer Corps before finally being converted into a regional government Center most of these bunkers were built in rural areas but the 1960s saw one constructed right in the middle of a housing estate in South London we're in London Road se 19 just down the hill from Crystal Palace where the TV masks are and this is pear tree house it's the most unusual bunker you can imagine the basement is two floors and that's the bunker and this was built in the early 1960s to provide a safe haven for local government for southeast London the function of the bunker as with the regional government headquarters was to provide safe haven for government officials science officers who could actually determine where the danger areas were in the event of a nuclear strike so it operated as a control centre the individual borough controls the Royal observer Corps posts would all have reported to this group control and they would have been able to plot the direction of any fallout the position of any bombs and exactly which areas were safe which airports could remain open and exactly how London could remain functioning in the event of a nuclear attack when this bunker was designed in the 1960s the idea was to have an ordinary four-story block of flats with the bunker beneath it so that people would actually be living on top of the bunker but by the time the bunker was completed in 1966 civil defense planning had changed so its life was short-lived in 1968 civil defense was stood down and the bunker became surplus to requirements and was placed on care and maintenance the original generator from the 1960s is still in full working order and looks as new as the day was fitted in London civil defence was reactivated in 1973 so the bunker was totally refurbished over a six-year period and was brought back into use as the southeast group control in 1979 this centre remained in use until 1993 the borough controls would have reported to here and this in turn would have reported to the regional government at Calvin hatch sadly today the bunker is closed to us because the council have discovered asbestos in there but I've been in a few times and the layout is quite clear to interpret behind us you'll see the massive steel blast door that forms an airlock so you've got two doors once you're through those doors you're almost immediately into the central control room the walls have maps of the burrows on all walls and next to that is the communications room where there would have been booths with telephone operators so all of the agencies reporting to this bunker would have telephoned in and then the messages could have been passed through to the controllers in the control room on the roof the two radio masts that would have supported the aerials are still to be seen to this day the use of bunkers was forever changing in fact many of their uses changed before they were completed in at the end of the Cold War a lot of new bunkers were being built and it was often cheaper to finish them and not commission them than actually cancel the contract - to complete the bunker so we had a lot of bunker building still going on in the early 1990s but it wasn't just people that needed protecting if Britain was to carry on after a nuclear attack the basic utilities needed protection - and the most basic of utilities is water in times of war this was the vital thing to keep flowing to the general public and then here we're going to meet John Foxley who had a very important job John good to see you hi good morning hi tell me about the place right this is a nuclear fallout shelter it was built about 14 15 years ago to accommodate up to 50 people in the event of a nuclear fallout type of situation so we keep the water supply side of the process under good control well the first thing I notice are these huge doors that ever so heavy it literally is that a blast or some sort oh it is fantastic actually yes they are we've built to withstand the ordinary sort of nuclear blast and they are intended to actually screen out all the effects of nuclear radiation having been outside you would need obviously to wash off the contamination with the shower units that we've got here and then as you pass in through the rest of the bunker let me show you the first of all the wash room and this is obviously a key facility here but with pretty meager facilities can we get were they well they arrived just to try the facility here and just wash your hands how do I do it it's all by means of pumping there it goes careful that's all we can spare what is that it's that's it and we shall recycle that as well it's gotta last us for two months yes should we go in here apart from very little water well we have chemical closets which have to be used in a normal sort of caravan situation and they've pumped out to waste periodically and so on and through the doorway we've got the actual water tanks for storage the water tanks themselves are there to actually last 50 people for two months although this bunker is more modern than the others we've seen the basic principles remain the same this is the air filter plant which cleaned and purified the air allowing the staff to get on with their work safely my job with southern water was to act as the regional water supply manager east of England what does that mean what it means is that I'll be responsible for trying to actually maintain water supplies to up to two million people in the southeast of England but specifically as far as this facility is concerned to provide water supply in the Hastings area so there are bunkers like this essentially all over the country that would be looking after those important utilities yes dotted around all over the country to keep that vital service of water supply running as much as possible and in a safe way so we've got the mess from here and the canteen just through the opening there which is enough really to enough space for 20 or 22 people to sit down in one go and through here is our rather special secret is still left over from when the bunker was originally built this is a Faraday cage this is the key face for communicating in and out of the bunker facility here now I remember this is part of my studies when I studied engineering these are important because when a nuclear bomb goes off they emit all sorts of horrendous waves the EMP electromagnetic pulse and I'll take it this isn't here to protect computers and stuff like that because all computers we rendered useless wouldn't in the event of a nuclear attack absolutely right and of course on the run-up to a nuclear attack the key bits of kit would actually be put in here for safekeeping anyway now as far enough looking after the computers in the technology but what about you even your family didn't know that in time of nuclear attack you'd be the one coming in there yes I'd be one of fifty coming in here my family at the time I'm sure would have been pretty upset and gutted by the whole thing personally I would have felt so also because I would have been in here away from not only my family but also away from the operational chaps that are I'd be reliant upon to keep the show on the road now one of the amazing things of these places is that the age of them they go back quite a long way this really isn't that older toddlers it it's extraordinary this one because this one was built in 1988 and it was finished in 1992 which is a matter of just few months after the Berlin Wall came down it's extraordinary how the Cold War melted really we have seen bunkers of every size and shape from tiny royal observer Corps dens that house just three or four two massive regional headquarters that could house hundreds but at the start of the Cold War there was one place that was less of an underground bunker a more of a subterranean city its tunnels and roadways stretch in a seemingly endless maze and it's to here that we take our next trip a place that few people have heard of and even fewer have visited so now we know that all over Britain there a series of bunkers so the local authorities could coordinate any cleanup after a nuclear strike and run any military response needed locally or what a central government where would the Prime Minister the cabinet and the top military brass run the whole show now intelligence suggested that London will be heavily bombarded so a base that could take not hundreds but thousands of people is needed outside of the Capitol and the site that was officially selected was here in caution in Wiltshire up until a few years ago this bunker didn't officially exist and was subject to the strictest levels of security but in this day of open and accountable government the mo D officially acknowledged as existence in 2004 when I came here in August zero for this was what classes a top-secret site to do with the bunker so it was a question I thought folks I was maintaining it then as a secret bunker but with this change of scenario there was a view of it do we still need it that was questioned Parliament considered it and I got a letter of appointment to say no you can decommission it so in December Z before it was decommissioned that allowed me to open it up then to go to allow people to go and see what was down there to see what we had in that era underground so this top secret as it was is no longer top secret and probably flex the changing world that we're living in this is Andy quim he's the minds manager for the mo D here at caution Andy what's that round building behind us he's actually one of the main air intake shafts and that takes air into the facility itself now this is the entrance itself is it the original one it's the original entrance into the nuclear facility what we have is a nuclear proof surface building giving passenger access down below like to follow me and here we are what safety issues do you have here well first and foremost yours we better caution was originally a quarry that was purchased by the government during World War two and converted into an ammunition store and aircraft factory with over 25,000 people working there every day during the Cold War a previously unused section was converted into a nuclear proof bunker codenamed Burlington area ten is a work area it was so vast that motorized buggies were not just convenient but essential to travel around its acres of maze-like roadways well the importance of course and it's where government would have gone had there been a nuclear war and cautioned had several different roles in fact no one in government even seems to know really quite what caution of role would have been during the war initially it was sort of a hub for the regional seats of government because although in the mid-1950s had there been a war they wanted to devolve government to the regions central government was loath to let go of a lot of these functions and they thought of themselves as like the spider in the middle of a web anyway you had all of these outlying regional bunkers but ground policy was still have been determined from from central government and that would have been the role of caution we do know that area 15 would have been the administrative area down to that area 15 I'm surprised at the Rope we can actually have Road names underneath it well of course they had to designate the road names but actually they're all Geographic the we're on East Main at the moment and obviously we're heading eastwards and it's the main road despite cautions top-secret status over the years enough information has seeped out about its existence to fuel all kinds of speculation as to what was down here there are stories abound about the facility down here at one time we were said to be the UK's area 51 we have alien spacecrafts down here and we have experimentation with aliens which you people need to think that what I can go ahead and think that you get lots of rumors because it is so different you know if I took people down today and there were some areas I couldn't go into because of health and safety issues and the doors are closed they'd be convinced that behind those particular doors would be the UFO well there's not it's not that I found anyway it's just grab your torch off the United seat and there would have been actually three separate government departments all working in this area and the area is basic offices and if you'll notice the walls only go two-thirds way up to the ceiling and this room has been set out as basically office so this is exactly as it would have been exactly as it will have been including a bed sleeping duty the guys would have had to have gone on duty for 24 hour periods the papers are all from the date of the facility now this one's dated 1967 but this here kind of gets me scared nuclear training all arms Volume one pamphlet number two that's the name of the game they were down here to survive in nuclear war everything that you see in this room was in fact stored in the facility itself including this Imperial typewriter lovely army and this is the kitchen and canteen area this place is huge yes it is this part this canteen would actually support about 2,000 people scheduled to run from about four o'clock in the morning through certain o'clock in the evening so they'll set meal times for individual departments now it's incredible that all this stuff here and just seems totally unused there were any food served never any food cooked and of course the working area in the back is the kitchens fridges and preparation areas back in the 1950s this cavernous kitchen was fitted with all the latest ovens mixers and washing equipment to handle an army of civil servants and to this day none of it has ever been used it's as if time has Stood Still for almost 50 years and of course this is the dining area and coffee lounge but on these coffee machines fabulous they wouldn't be a missing Rome or New York actually made him Alden whilst caution was built to house the cream of Whitehall civil servants and the top echelon of the government the facilities are to put it mildly Spartan and they are expected to use communal washrooms cafes and dormitories this is the main storage space for L facility anything that was required they would find here the different areas would reflect what the government required as per Whitehall so everything that the government had to govern would be replicated down here because this was an area where the whole of the government would actually be 4000 civil servants and approximately a thousand support staff every piece of equipment every piece of paper everything the government needed from pencils toilet rolls cooking equipment beds furniture apart from desks not one desk in the whole facility but I do have 4,000 folding tables some has obviously been moved out since declassification but a lot of what was there we still have the world supply of waste paper winds and also water supply - straight and flat Patrik file trays years ahead of their time use ahead of their time very organic and green there's about two hundred and forty acres of underground city and 26 miles or so of roadways and and walkways and systems so you add the food that would be necessary the storage areas the beds the kitchens and canteens it is effectively at City and the priority for the population of that city would be clear to ascertain exactly what was happening above ground all over the British Isles because if the ministers found themselves relocated from Whitehall to caution and were working from the Burlington bunker then it could only mean one thing World War three had started nuclear burst original name 0 1 alpha in time of war communications is everything we've already seemed throughout this program the bunkers were their small communications Bay while they're all connected to hearing caution the headquarters and let's just say that this place is well just a little bit bigger the important thing about the caution bunker was to maintain communications with every aspect of life in the country so for instance underground hills this is huge absolutely fantastic telephone exchange old-fashioned plugboard telephone exchange and that the thing about these plugboard exchanges which you know you think of sort of dating from the interwar years is that they're very simple and the most important thing that is a completely immune from electromagnetic pulse which was a bit of an invulnerable you know the scientist knew that the electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion would have a pretty dramatic effect on any kind of electronic equipment including electronics and radio equipment electronic telephone exchanges and all the rest of it but by keeping to this really old-fashioned mechanical plugboard exchange system that they knew that it would be immune from electromagnetic pulse so that's why you've got this really really old technology still in use fifty-four position exchange when it was put in it was the second largest of its kind it is the largest left in sets you obviously and I wish there was a museum big enough to take it but that's a problem for me into the hospice area a small hospital for the size of the facility actually only six ward it's strange to think that had there been a nuclear war Prime Minister's such as Eden Wilson Heath and right up to Thad sure could have been treated here you and of course every hospital almost have its kitchen keep the staff happy and this is the small Hospital kitchen well I recognized pretty well most things here but what's that ah well if you consider the type of persons that would be actually using this facility at ten o'clock every morning high-level civil servants would have a cup of tea slice of toast and a pat of butter and they would use this machine use this machine to actually make the Pat's of butter well it's good to know in times of nuclear war but with civil service today we will still get there back and this is the library in that room and this is where the British government brought together all the information it thought it would require to carry on governing the country if London was destroyed the attacks of atomic weapons and of course they were only Hiroshima and Nagasaki every type of industry would be represented because they might need to rebuild the country Connery Guardian add multicharts a whole of the UK coastline and trade documents pilots Navy pilots who's-who international one more thing I have noticed that pasa before we move on why does the British government need a dartboard a standard mo D operations okay now this is the Lampson room and very basic yes Lampson it's the name of the company that devices system and it's a internal messaging system very basically you have a message pod in which you can place a tight piece of paper roll this up pop it in there back up and then the address would be on these two breaths leaves which you can rotate around to define where it's going and then you've popped into the correct room and off it would go compressed air system vacuum system it's a metal system and would have been incredibly noisy now they would come all then into here because this is effectively the exchange yes this is the main registry or concept is the modern-day equivalent right so the operator would actually stand here it would probably be 2 or 3 operators but it also tells us which of the areas were the more important I mean you see here area 21 which was the government communications area that's got quite a few lamps and receivers and of course the judges next door of all the secret bunkers that we've been privileged to visit caution is undoubtedly the most impressive incredibly we've hardly scratched its surface as there were acres of other dormitories offices and passages within its grounds all of them designed and built with one purpose in mind to protect the government and keep the country running during World War three it's been remarkable to see caution with our very own eyes it truly is a secret we were never supposed to know a place we were never supposed to see but what does the future hold for caution now the cold war's over and the bunker has been decommissioned it is an unmanned facility but parts of it are still maintained and utilized by the air OD I would like it to continue so that in 50 years time somebody else can look back at this era and say that was part of the quarry history I'm working very closely with eNOS heritage and defense estates and ourselves and the mod-2 to try and provide that opportunity in some cases it will be possible in others it won't be but yes there's a lot of effort going in to restore and maintain what we can for the future on November the 9th 1989 after civil unrest and the resignation of the East German head of state Erich Honecker the gates in the Berlin War were unlocked the crowds climbed upon it and tore it down this is perhaps the most significant event marking the end of the Cold War the Cold War may have finished but it hasn't stopped Britain building underground secrets and many of them are in places who wouldn't expect this is a time of bridge built in 1961 a fairly standard suspension bridge at the time was along the suspension bridge in the country now it's the fourth longest the the suspension bridge it consists of two towers with the main cave all suspended over the top of the towers think of it as a big washing line if you like with two line prop supporting the line and everything is then suspended from the bridge the road and the hanger cables we've got four angry chambers there's one on each corner of the suspension bridge and the Anchorage chambers are the strength and the integrity of the whole bridge if we go back to our washing line the washing line is fixed to one fence post and one fence post on either side the garden and that's what gives the the washing line its strength and same with the suspension bridge we've got the main cable which drapes over the two towers on either side of the river one on the Plymouth side and one on the selfish side of the river and they're anchored into the ground usually reinforced concrete and this is what gives the suspension bridge its strength and integrity the main cable enters Anchorage chamber and the main cable is made up of 31 individual wires individual ropes if you like those 31 cables as they enter the Anchorage they split into separate individual Anchorage points and that means the loads and the stretches on the cable are all spread through the earth into the Anchorage point so we're not putting one big point load onto the ground Anchorage chambers are all very similar throughout the country and indeed throughout the world so Road bridge like forth like Humber similar to seven those those suspension bridges will have these these underground chambers these sort of secret places that nobody really gets to see in there they're the real sort of bowels of the bridge and our final underground secret is home to a remarkable scheme housed in a bomb-proof bunker in the basement of this futuristic looking laboratory the nuclear threat may appear to be over but recovering from an ecological or biological disaster is now a high priority in the 21st century the millennium seed project aims to collect and store thousands of seeds from every country across the planet so if a species is lost in the wild mankind has a fighting chance to try and reintroduce it it is about saving 10% of the world's flora as seeds by 2010 this is a bunker built for the future now and it's a bunker built to help us avoid I suppose an environmental problem we have a situation where quite a lot of the species from on which our livelihoods were first based and now been threatened with extinction due to habitat changes and the way we live our lives so this is a technological solution at least hanging on to the foundation stones and building blocks of the livelihood from where we came when scientists worked out the expected rate of loss due to deforestation and other man-made phenomena they were alarmed to find that plants were being lost at seventy to a hundred times the rate they expected this state-of-the-art bunker was designed to start the fight back before it was too late the dream was that we wouldn't [ __ ] by honoring our homes about the damage to the habitat that's going on and the loss of plant species we actually do something about it to make sure that that damage was as limited as it could be with the efforts of a small group of people around sixty experts were assembled to man the lab which was fitted with vast chilled storage rooms to keep the seeds in peak condition for the longest possible time the project has agreements with over seventeen countries in almost every continent around the world and a further 40 people across those continents are collecting cataloguing and sending seeds back to the millennium seed bank you could say on a sunny day at the risk of incurring the wrath of others that the Sun never really does set on the millennium seed bank project somewhere in the world it's light and people are doing their best the cold war produced perhaps the widest selection of secret underground locations that we know about today bunkers built at a time when there was a good chance that a nuclear Armageddon could be unleashed at any moment the policy now is not to build any new bunkers I'm fairly satisfied there aren't any bunkers that we don't actually know about there are certainly bunkers we don't we haven't able to get in yet but the military still use bunkers strike command at high wycombe is still run from a bunker but a modern bunker is not like a bunker that that we know and love it's really just an underground office block and they really are quite boring there's nothing to beat a two-level operations room with a gallery with windows looking down onto the map tables below the people pushing the tanks along with sticks that's my idea of a good military bunker as we have seen many of these lay forgotten derelict and abandoned but others must still be in operational use even today so the next time you walk over a manhole see a tunnel on the side of a hill or maybe even see a strangely locked door just consider what secrets might be lurking within you you

Channel: Ardee Video

Views: 485,885

Keywords: underground, tunnels, subterannean, hidden, caves, cold war bunkers, Biological Warfare (Film Subject)

Id: uLFHZVX2wpE

Length: 50min 29sec (3029 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Xertious]

Ignoring the cringy paranormal conspiracy style start it's not bad. Shows cold war bunkers, and I think you can arrange tours in all of them. There's loads more than they're showing too that do tours.