I’m sure that in real life the crater for a surface burst of given yield would vary depending on what kind of surface it was bursting on. Playing with NUKEMAP, a 500 kiloton surface burst makes a crater with an inside radius of 150 meters, depth 70 meters, crater lip radius 310 meters, regardless of where you put it. So it’s clearly an approximation. (Wannabe super-villains seeking to construct atomic-bomb-proof underground lairs, take note.)
Fair enough, but there’s still the issue of what happens if your expensive secret underground bunker ceases to be secret. Once the beans are spilled on something like the Greenbrier then (at least in the event of a full-scale nuclear war) that location presumably will now be targeted by the Other Side. (The beans could be spilled by your own nosy and loudmouthed journalists, politicians, or taxpayers; by the Other Side spotting the bunker from space, especially during the construction phase; or by old-fashioned spying.)
I guess you could build a very large number of bunkers all over the country (and keep it a secret which ones you actually plan on using) so at least the Other Side will have to waste a lot of firepower playing nuclear Whack-A-Mole with your Continuity of Government plans.
Wikipedia says so, and there appear to be official pics of it abound. However, in the classical sense, a bunker need not be underground, nor safe from nuclear blast.
I imagine something like the PEOC would be a secure area to make decisions and pass on leadership or continuity of operations to a remote party if need be.
I think… it’s safe to say that more than one nuke would be on it’s way to DC. Probably a combination of air, surface, and sub-surface warheads. The whole area and like miles around will become an irradiated crater. We’d have a lake though for sure.
The User Name & Location field coupled with the very specific question is sure to trigger a government surveillance response. Good luck Paul.
My wife’s uncles owned a small construction company near there, and both of them and her grandfather each drove hundreds of truckloads of concrete in there during an 1970s expansion. The most the one uncle will say about it is “they did some work for the Army.”
No, Washington was not built on a swamp.
Any bunker worthy of the name will have it’s own generators (plural) and fuel tanks to run them for days until they can be resupplied, by military convoy if needed.
A hole full of water? It’s called a well, and would be a worthwhile thing to have if you were expecting to spend a few weeks hiding away. It’s not a bug, it’s a design feature.
Evac by aircraft? Depending on who you’re talking about, you’re right, DCA is right out. Andrews, on the other hand, has several aircraft of various sizes that belong to the government, all available if need be.