Nuke-Proof Bunker Turns Out Not Waterproof

An anonymous reader writes "The AP reports on the opening of a vault in Tulsa, OK which was designed to withstand a nuclear attack by the Russians. 50 years ago they put a Plymouth Belvedere in the vault to preserve it so that we could get a good look at it in the (for that time) magical year of 2007. Unfortunately it turns out that the vault wasn't even waterproof. The once beautiful car is now a literal rust bucket."

Similar screw-up...

[Oswald]

When the air traffic control centers in the U.S. were constructed (late '50s, early 60's), it was decided that the buildings needed to be able to resist the effects of nuclear fallout. They were equipped with giant vertical steel louvers all around the perimeter and a washdown feature for the roof. But the roofs never so much as held out the rain, let alone the radioactive soup that trying to wash away fallout would have created. I've worked at Atlanta Center for about 23 years, and I think they just re-roofed for the fourth time. Within two years, it will probably leak again.

BTW, the Cold War systems were decommissioned about a decade ago. In the early 1990's the louvers needed painting, so they were removed from building, shipped to someplace (rumor said Texas), painted and then reinstalled. A couple of years later they were removed for good.

Blue Ray.... err, Peter

[Dogtanian]

The British kids' TV show, Blue Peter [wikipedia.org] had the same thing happen with one of the "time capsules" they buried on TV. When they dug it up again with great ceremony 16 years later, water had got in and it was a soggy mess [offthetelly.co.uk].

Not sure what the point of it was anyway; 16 years isn't that long unless you're like 6 years old when it's being dug up- seems pretty contrived and pointless to me.

nuclear and chemical waste management

[e**(i pi)-1]

the story should be looked at carefully by whoever designs nuclear or chemical wast storage areas. 50 years is nothing in comparison to the time frames deposits should last. In this case, there was the unexpected puncture of the hull, which was devastating. It shows how difficult it is to see all aspects of the problem.

Re:old cars

[Dogtanian]

I can't be the only one that finds classic/vintage cars beautiful. And I can't be the only one who thinks recent car designs are insipid.

Call me sacrilegious, but I was never (and still amn't) a big fan of 50s "Americana" style cars. Tail fins- overdecorative and contrived space-age kitsch. Too much chrome. Too reliant on their association with "rock-n'-roll and diners" nostalgia for their appeal.

Even though it was only 25 to 30 years old when I was growing up in the 80s, that whole 50s/early-60s style looked ancient and as cheesy as hell.

You're free to disagree with that, but it kind of annoys me that everyone is assumed to love that sort of stuff. Personally, I don't.

And for what it's worth I never really "got" Elvis Presley either. :-/

Re:Blue Ray.... err, Peter

[mikael]

That really sucks - moisture is a real danger when trying to preserve anything. Wasn't the time capsule buried in the Blue Peter gardens or something similar?

Our primary school were involved in a time-capsule project in the late 1970's. The capsule was built into the foundations of a brand new concrete council office block which was expected to last over 50 years. Thirty years later they are planning to demolish the "eyesore building" due to condensation problems with the concrete.

Re:old cars

[dal20402]

I'll stick up for the recent cars.

Especially in the '50s and '60s, design was only about form; huge sacrifices in function were made to have those pretty shapes. For me, a simple and functional design is much more honest and appealing. When I see '50s and '60s cars, I just see an enormous waste of space and weight, that doesn't contribute to performance, comfort, safety, economy, or any other part of the function of a car. I have the same reaction to those cars that I have to PC cases with fins and lights on them.

For me, some of the best designs ever are on very ordinary cars; they are those that allowed unusual innovations in function. The '86-'89 Honda Accord; the original Chrysler minivans; the current Prius (not for anything having to do with its propulsion, but for its packaging); the Volvo 145 wagon and its numerous descendants (through to the 740 and 960/V90 wagons); the first Scion xB, and, for an example from the '50s, the Mini.

And even from a purely aesthetic perspective, I find simpler better. Some of the prettiest cars for me are the '93 Mazda MX-6; the '92 Acura Legend; the current Audi A6 and A8 (especially the S8); both the original Infiniti G35 and new G37 coupes; and of course the 2000-era Volkswagens (the previous generation of Golfs, Jettas, and Passats). I'll be in the market for a new car in about a year and a half; if nothing changes, I'll probably buy a G37.

I live in Tulsa

[qwertyatwork]

Ive remember hearing stories about this car growing up. It was really neat watching Ms. Belvedere (thats what we call her) finally come out of the ground. It was a little disappointing to see her rusted out, but it gives her character. They took guesses at what the population would be in 2007, and the very first guess was 388,000, and the population figure they are using is 380,000. That was one hell of a guess. Whoever guesses closest wins the car. I hope they give it to a museum. She belongs to all of Tulsa. Take that Oklahoma City!!!

Re:Hey, they never claimed it was!

[Dun Malg]

It looks to me like whoever designed the vault didn't think about water, or at least had little idea about underground vaults.

One thing I've noticed working as an electrician on exposed enclosures is that if a product is labeled "watertight", all that means is that once water gets in, it never comes out. The Luxor hotel in Las Vegas (the pyramid one) was originally built with in-ground floodlights shining onto each palm tree. These lights were hellaciously expensive because they were supposedly completely waterproof. I was on the crew replacing them with standard above-ground floods, and every single one of those triple-sealed waterproof lights was full of water. Water is insidious and never gives up.

Archiving for cheap is hard

[arth1]

I think the moral of this story is that archiving anything, even if it seems durable, is hard.

I think the moral of the story is that anything built by selecting contractors based on the lowest price meeting the minimum specifications, instead of on proven skills like master and journeyman papers and family businesses who care what their rep will be fifty years from now, will invariably prove to be of shitty quality.

If properly designed and made, there's no reason why a shelter can't be made today that's as good as the several hundred year old basements and cellars in Europe. In areas that see a lot more weather than Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Re:What did they expect ...

[ehrichweiss]

Funny but it was Chevy that had the bad reputation for rusting back then. A former teacher once remarked that he knew someone who took extremely good care of their Vega, or the like, and in under a couple years it had a rust hole in the fender "so big you could throw a cat through it", referring to the way a cat would sprawl its legs. I see old Ford cars and trucks all the time but almost the only Chevy vehicles I see are the old collectibles, otherwise most don't seem to have survived.

Re:Archiving is hard

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, all you need a hermetical seal. The time capsule that my high school class did was dug up after 25 years. Several of us ignored the idiot instructors and placed our items inside PVC pipe with glued ends on it. Everything else was pretty mildew covered except the items in the PVC pipe, all of that was clean and new.

I know of several people that use PVC pipe with end caps as waterproof backyard buried safes. It works great and today you can throw desiccant pillows in there to keep things fresher.

it's just the reatrted "experts" from the 50's to 80's were more full of their importance than trying to use the best way of preserving some thing for 50+ years.

And yes, i feel really good about the box of Bernulli disks I have stored. 15 years old and still very readable.

If you want to see a nuclear bunker done right...

[pongo000]

...pay a visit to the Minuteman Missle National Historic Site [nps.gov] in South Dakota. They offer tours of an underground Minuteman Delta launch bunker on a appointment-only basis, 6-8 to a group. The bunker itself, built in the 60's, is actually an air-tight, climate-controlled concrete capsule suspended on giant shock absorbers about 150 feet below the surface. The only entrance into the capsule is via a 5-ton vault door that could be opened and shut in under a minute. It provides a fascinating insight into the Cold War and the level of redundancy that was in place to ensure that if a launch was ordered, it would happen (for instance, launch orders would be given to a number of different launch sites simultaneously, so no launch site personnel would be aware of who actually launched a missle).

Interesting story: There was an "emergency egress" hatch in the capsule that led to the surface through a corrugated pipe. There were only a few problems: The hatch door weighed over 200 pounds and dropped down from the ceiling, ensuring the first one out would probably be the last one out. And the government was afraid the Russkies knew where the egress points were on the surface, so the government poured a parking lot over it. Only problem was they failed to tell the launch controllers that their "emergency egress" system led to the underside of a parking lot. This was all top-secret stuff, never came to light until after the sites were decommissioned and dismantled.

Re:I live in Tulsa and lived there then

[Coyote]

I saw the car buried and now I've seen it dug back up. It was built to withstand a nuclear bomb because fear of nuclear war was on everyone's mind in 1957, but it was never intended to be anything other than a vault for the car. At the time Tulsa's largest employer was Douglas Aircraft, building Boeing B-47 bombers for the Strategic Air Command, so Tulsa folks considered the town a prime target for a nuke attack.

The car was buried in a spirit of celebration of Oklahoma's 50th anniversary of statehood, but I think in many people's minds, they thought it might be the only thing that survived the unavoidable nuclear attack. (What a legacy, eh?)

As far as the bunker not being very good protection against a nuke, we school kiddies of the time were being taught to duck under our desks and cover our necks when we saw the flash of a nuclear explosion. If THAT was good enough... just imagine how cool a concrete-covered bunker was.

Re:Duck and Cover

[TheBracket]

That's the funny thing about deterrence in general. The only way to prove that it worked is to prove a negative - there wasn't a nuclear war. It's pretty much impossible to prove a negative, so we can't be sure that the cold war didn't turn nuclear-hot because we deterred the soviets (and were in turn deterred by them). Do we really want to rely on the same unprovable approach in the new, multi-polar world (especially when Chinese leaders have in the past commented that China shouldn't fear nuclear war, because a few million deaths would still leave them with many million more people - I believe that was Mao, but Deng Zhaou Ping [spelling?] supposedly repeated it)?

There are broadly three ways to look at it (from a military/strategic point of view, since all this really does is support the political/diplomatic arena anyway); not mutually exclusive:
- Rely on deterrence. It might be existential deterrence (that is, "we have nukes - they deter"), or it might include a genuine willingness to use the weapons if a certain line is crossed. If it isn't obvious that you will use them at a certain point, the deterrent loses credibility - and your influence is whittled down by a thousand papercuts (see below). Some deterrence theorists have stated that a nuclear-armed neighborhood is a polite neighborhood, although the jury is still out on that (certainly Israel, India and Pakistan have had no shortage of wars since becoming nuclear powers).

- Rely on might. In this case, you want to have a really effective nuclear force, the strongest defenses you can afford, and a doctrine that makes it obvious that you will escalate to the nuclear option if you need to.

- Rely on arms control. Basically attempt to keep the lid on the nuclear can of worms as much as possible, and try to agree upon arms levels with other countries. The only problem here is that it's really easy to agree arms control with countries you weren't really going to fight anyway, and rather hard to agree with countries with whom you are genuinely likely to have a shooting war.

I remember talking to some of Bush Senior's administration while I was in college, talking about their discussions of the nuclear option in Gulf War 1. A large part of the government wanted to rule it out altogether, regardless of chemical-biological threats. A committee did actually draft a strategy for using tactical nukes in the initial attack, but it was ruled out very fast - not because of long-term problems (a small tac-nuke isn't much worse for the environment than an FAE), but because it would have taken far too many tactical nukes to really make much difference militarily! In the end, the decision was made to formally "not rule anything out" if Hussein used chemical/biological weapons; a decision to not have a policy. Discussions were ongoing, but an answer was never forthcoming to "will we even consider using nukes?" - let alone "how badly do they have to hit us before we'll consider it?" I'm told that similar discussions occurred for various other small-medium regional contingencies over the years.

On the other hand, we've built up the word about deterrence so strongly (including the nuclear armed neighborhood statement!) that world leaders who might be invaded are all scrambling to get nuclear weapons. Even if they don't plan to use them (who knows?), it's a fair gamble that the big powers will be less willing to invade if it means a nuclear attack.

One day, there will be a small nuclear war with modern weapons. When the dust settles, and we discover that it was nothing like Armageddon, the can will be off the nuclear can of worms forever - and we'll be stuck having to come up with policies that rely on capability and actions, rather than an abstract, unprovable and arguably purely philosophical notion of deterrence.