Y: The Last Man; half of all mammals suddenly drop dead, a man & his monkey are the only 2 surviving beings with Y chromosomes, and the Pentagon is sheltering what’s left of the US executive branch & surviving dependents. The Pentagon is the world’s largest office building so most people are naturally living in cubical farms converted to makeshift barracks, but the VIPs are living in what appear to be fully furnished hotel suits complete with sitting room and en-suite bathrooms.
Now I get that the Pentagon is a military base so even if nobody actually lives there it probably does have some kind of sleeping quarters for staff in the even of an emergency, but I was imaging something that looks more like actual barracks or at best college dorm rooms. Are there really hotel-style rooms for high ranking VIPs? Even the Greenbrier would’ve housed Congress on bunk beds in large dormitories.
My favorite movie and I was miffed to see this scene. The movie is for seeing sexy ass birds, not…sexy ass birds.
On topic, I would be very surprised if they didn’t. Most places where staff might regularly be expected to stay overnight do have some sort of facilities to sleep.
Or maybe the US military doesn’t believe in that?
This is probably one of those things where those who know are not permitted to disclose the answer. My guess is that there are probably rather nice accommodations for the president and secretary of defense and bunks for others. I presume there is a bomb shelter as well with some sleeping quarters as well.
I can’t prove a negative, but I’ve never seen any indication that there’s any sort of hotel rooms in the pentagon. I worked there, and I worked with VIPs, and the VIPs would stay in lodging at one of the local bases (Bolling AFB, e.g.) or in a local hotel (there’s a bunch 1 metro stop away). Nothing comes up on dodlodging.net.
If anything, maybe some SCIF somewhere in the pentagon with a 24/7 mission has a bed or two, but the important thing for people to realize is that the pentagon is an office building for DOD policy makers. There are no operational units stationed there. Any “war room” that you might be picturing from Dr. Strangelove is going to be ancillary to an actual war room at an actual operational base somewhere. Security is provided by the pentagon police, and they clock in and out like regular police, so there’s no barracks there. The whole place basically shuts down at 1600.
I don’t know if there’s a bomb shelter in the pentagon, but SOP is to get everyone the heck out of dodge to an “undisclosed location” at the first sign of trouble. All of DC is a giant target so that’s really the only feasible option. Also one of the reasons there’s no operations happening out of the pentagon. I don’t think people realize how little anyone was concerned about hardening the pentagon against attack until 9/11. Prior to 9/11 you could just walk right up to the building. There’s a subway stop underneath it. Municipal buses drove into the pentagon interior with anyone on board up until the 90s.
I doubt that there is any accommodation for the president in the Pentagon. When would it be useful? In peacetime, the White House is nearby. And in wartime, the building is a huge target. There are “undisclosed locations” for the president to hide out elsewhere.
I was thinking along the lines that suppose the military situation was tense and the president needed to be with all the military advisors in a hardened facility. Should full scale war break out, he might be safer there than in the White House. How bunkers in the White House compare to those in the Pentagon, I have no clue.
I think there’s a difference between “hotel room” and “a place to sleep”. If there are such in the Pentagon I expect it will be like the places in hospitals have for doctors to nap while on-call. There’s a bed and door to shut, maybe a place to hang a change of clothing/wash up a bit, but all pretty Spartan. In other words, NOT a hotel room, more like a closet with a cot, even if it’s a nice cot.
Of course you’d put the VIPs in a hotel room in normal circumstances - the room-with-a-cot would be for unusual circumstances/emergencies and very utilitarian.
Back when I worked in the higher levels of corporate America some executives had a set up of that sort - a tiny room that might have a couch that you could crash on, a closet with a change of clothes, etc. because they have to keep up appearances and often have disrupted schedules due to travel, but the actual plan for an overnight stay anywhere was a hotel room. Not a common setup but not unknown either.
If the situation is that tense the PotUS is either on Air Force One and in the air (the airplane can function as a mobile Oval Office) or the PotUS has been evacuated to an “undisclosed location”. It’s been 20 years so maybe a lot of folks have forgotten, but that’s essentially what happened on 9/11/01.
Nope, if the situation is that dicey the big wigs are all well away from DC and the Pentagon. If there is a place to sleep in that building it’s a “nap room” - a place for someone to crash briefly and maybe change clothes. I doubt there would be toilet facilities in it - the Pentagon has plenty of toilets, after all, and so far as I know the top brass don’t have special ones, they pee and poop in the same toilets everyone else does.
Official information indicates that the Pentagon has exercise facilities among its amenities, so I’d expect there to be shower rooms there, like any health club, and anyone needing to clean up could use those facilities to do what they need to do.
Even if there aren’t designated nap rooms there might be cots stashed somewhere just in case. “Shelter in place” is something that can occur, after all, and the military tries to cover all contingencies. So not a designate room, but perhaps the ability to set a room up with a cot (or several) if the need arises.
The OP says the show has the VIPs staying in what looks to be hotel rooms.
Most of the executive offices have couches that one could crash on. Almost everyone in the pentagon regardless of rank keeps a spare uniform or two in a wardrobe somewhere, but especially executives. Running home to change when your commute is 2 hours isn’t feasible. Still, that’s the most I’ve ever seen. There’s generally not a lot of space in most offices so a dedicated room for a cot would be out of the question.
Yeah. I mean, this is a military facility, even if there are a large number of strictly civilian workers there as well. The military is very good at housing large numbers of people but it doesn’t tend to do that in luxury.
I think there may some nuggets of fact buried deep in the notion mentioned in the OP - such as executives (and even others) keeping a change of clothes around, exercise facilities having a shower for post-workout clean up, and top military brass being the equivalent of high-level executives in some ways morphing into “hotel rooms” or other luxury accommodations.
I would bet that in reality, what they have is probably a combination of sleepable couches, hide-a-bed couches, spare uniforms/clothing in wardrobes/closets, etc… and whatever sort of shower facilities the Pentagon gym has.
And all that above is more used for all-nighters/crisis situations where the people in question have to be on the job for extended periods.
I doubt there is any kind of protective shelter at the Pentagon. It is, as others have noted, essentially an administrative center, and was quickly built early in WWII to accommodate the expanding Department of War (back when we still named things without euphemisms) in one facility instead of sprawling out of the bursting-at-the-seams War Department Building. There are two underground levels that I assume are poured concrete foundations but it is a predominately timber-framed structure with little steel structural reinforcement other than what is necessary for the facade and the post-2000s reconstruction and reinforcement.
And yes, you can literally walk up to the building; Norman Morrison, the Vietnam War protestor who self-immolated under then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s office walked right up to the building. There is obviously more security now but given the location it is really possible to secure as you could a military base or reservation.
Presidents rarely visit the Pentagon, again because of the difficult security situation and because, well, they are the President and military advisors will be called to the White House or wherever the President is at to brief him or her. The “War Room” set in Dr. Strangelove is such an iconic stage that it has been replicated in numerous films and shows but there is no such actual facility in the Pentagon, and in the case of an imminent attack, any response planning would actually be done at operational bases like Offutt AFB (headquarters of USSTRATCOM) or Peterson SFB (US headquarters for NORAD), which do have large combat information rooms albeit not as artistically lit as Hollywood portrays them.
In the case of an attack the President would likely either be removed to the reinforced bunker below the White House, or if there is sufficient time evacuated to an “undisclosed location”, most likely the Advanced Airborne Command Post (AACP, a small fleet of Boeing E-4s purpose designed for airborne strategic command capability) or Camp David, which also has a reinforced bunker designed to survive nuclear attack. Ditto for the Vice President and other members in the immediate National Command Authority (NCA) line of succession including Speaker of the House.
If there were a “military situation that was tense” and culminated in an attack on the Pentagon, it might interfere with the ability to requisition paperclips or directly call up the National Guard and non-active Reserves but all of the operational units have their individual command structures that, in exigency could be commanded by brigade or fleet flag-level officers as directed by the NCA and the Secretary of Defense. Frankly, nuking the Pentagon might actually be the most counterproductive action a hypothetical attacker could undertake to inhibit counterattack because it would essentially set in motion a set of preplanned responses with no really discussion other than the NCA and his immediate advisors. Think of the Pentagon as the headquarters of a large networks of banks, which may control a lot of financial decisions but has no vaults or cash on hand itself.
