Hey, think about the fact that four of us were composing Chicago Tunnel Co. posts simultaneously.
Debunked by the Great Master, no less: The Mole People revisited - The Straight Dope
He quotes railbuff Joseph Brennan who says: “Every fact in this book that I can verify independently is wrong.” Then he has a tense conversation with the original author.
Interesting-I also recall reading that a top-level Soviet era defector talked about a massive underground command center, which was built hundreds of meters underground-in a solid granite formation. I don’t recall all the details, but it was said to be able to survive a direct hit from a nuclear warhead. Location? I think he said that it was somewhere in the region of Kursk.
Anyone know more about this?
I didn’t mention the caves because they weren’t “built” but they were a big part of St. Louis history. The old city had a lot of natural caves, sinkholes and the like. Quite a few of the larger ones were dug out (the clay was used for brickmaking) making large underground rooms. Those were used by the city’s many breweries for cool storage and a few of them were even outfitted with lighting and set up as banquet halls.
There is a recent crime novel about mole people in Stockholm (not available in English). The authors claim that details about tunnels and people living there are the only things that haven’t sprung from their imagination.
Neutral Sweden built vast underground shelters, for use in the event of nuclear war. These places included hospitals, schools, etc.
Are they still maintained? Or left to rot?
And for more than twenty minutes, too.
I have no definite answer to that, but in Stockholm one underground shelter is used as a garage and there are plans to convert it into a bus terminal, one contains a computer centre (I think) and one is used by the Museum of East Asian Antiquities for special exhibitions.
The Wikipedia article about this hospital claims that “The hospital has an underground complex measuring 4,500 square meters (48,500 square feet) called DEMC (Disaster Emergency Center), which was completed and inaugurated on 25 November 1994. In peacetime the complex is used for training and scientific research. In case of disaster or war the complex is fully operational as a normal hospital.”, but I think the underground facilities were there already when it opened in 1944 as I have heard about them long before 1994.
Then there are all sorts of military underground installations that are no longer used, but I think they are just sealed off in case they have to be put to use again in the future. I saw a TV program the other year about a couple of disused fortresses in the archipelago outside Stockholm that had been sealed, but with openings to allow bats to fly in and out.
The prequel to The Tripod Trilogy series of books reveals that disused underground shelters in Switzerland were the genesis of the human resistance.(or their base of operations at least.)
EDIT:In case anyone is interested in fiction involving underground infrastructure.
You’re probably thinking of the “Zhiguli” complex, made famous by 'Viktor Suvorov’s 1982 book, Inside the Soviet Army. Much of the text can be found online here. The relevant part of it to your question follows: [paragraph structure changed from the original]
The thing is, like most of Suvorov’s book, it sounds cool, but I don’t think it’s actually true. (See, e.g., the whole brouhaha in the book about the Defence Council, and being able to ID them by who stood next to who on Lenin’s Tomb during the May Day parades. Which, IIRC, was later discovered to be total bullshit.) Stalin did build a very deep bunker in the general area, in 1942, IIRC, andit’s a tourist attraction today. (Scroll down to the blurb about “Stalin’s Bunker”.). This site claims to have photos taken during a tour of it.
As far as the current Russian equivalent of Cheyenne Mountain, I haven’t been able to find one in cursory searching. I’m sure they’d have several, but I couldn’t tell you where they were.
Congress had a huge underground bunker at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, not revealed until 1992: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/july/25/brier1.htm
**When I was in NYC recently we visited Grand Central Station and my mom told us about a hidden underground entrance somewhere in the building…unfortunately we were too stricken by the buzz of the city to search for very long and didn’t find it. Here’s an interesting read:
**
A Look at One Forgotten Station
The MTA doesn’t want people exploring the abandoned or lost station stops. But for those that want a first hand glimpse, there is one option. MTA worker Dan Brucker gives tours of Grand Central Terminal that feature a visit to a secret station far below ground.
“That secret train station out there was built for one customer only,” he boomed to a tour group late last year under the vaulted constellation of the terminal’s main hall. “It was built for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
He said Roosevelt’s custom-built train would pull in and open its doors. A limousine with the president in it would be driven from inside the train, down a ramp and into an elevator next to the platform.
“He and his limousine and his staff would be lifted up and then backed out into the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria,” he said, where the president would give a speech.
http://media.wnyc.org/media/photologue/photos/cache/Subway_18thSt_1_Duncan_storyslide_image
http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2012/jan/03/new-yorks-lost-subways/
Remember the TV show “Beauty and the Beast”? It took place on a then disused rail tunnel on the far west side of Manhattan. After Grand Central stopped having long distance trains the tunnel was reopened for the trains coming down the Hudson into NYC. I think these include the trains coming from Albany and I know they include the one train a day from Montreal that I take once or twice every year.
Cincinnati began building an underground subway in the 1920s, and then later abandoned the project. Many of it still exists under downtown. Here are some pics taken by someone who explored it.
Going on display this Friday is a map of subterranean London by artist Stephen Walter: Stephen Walter's Map Of Subterranean London | Londonist
With all the underground train lines (not just the tube lines and abandoned tube sections but also Post Office train lines, Eurostar and national train services amongst others), sewers, old military bunkers, catacombs, cellars and so on, I’d imagine there’s rather a lot. Oh and all the London-based Thames tributary rivers run underground too.
So Anhaeuser Busch down by Hwy 55 and Arsenal has its own “underworld”? Makes you wonder about the nearby Defense intelligence installation.
Speaking of “underground” cities-I remember visiting the crypt in the church of St. Clement’s Dane , in London.
The crypt is at the level of the street, when the cathedral was built. Over time, the level of the street rose, as stuff got dumped in the streets, and other buildings rose. There was a neat little museum in the crypt-showing some ghastly stuff (like coffins made so that the bodies inside could not be stolen-for anatomical dissection).
I can see that happening to abandoned cities, but hell, nobody sweeps the streets for a few hundred years?
The lower east side of New York City has an abandoned train terminal. Two guys want to convert it into an underground park, with solar lighting pumped in with fiber optics. They call it the Low Line. Last month they raised over $150,000 for a pilot project at kickstarter.
During a recent trip to Berlin we visited a vast nuclear bunker built under Kurfustendamm in the 1970’s . Designed to house over three thousand members of the public (first come, first served!) it still semi-operational, lined with tiers of bunks and enough food to last two weeks.