Has there been any more research on chemical or biological weapons and defenses? What is the status of nuclear power?
Edifice: A History of the National Redoubt
- Thread starter JessAH
- Start date
Yes to both (although not really a focus). Nuclear power is becoming more popular, which is discussed a bit in upcoming updates.
Chapter 13
New
13.
In the United States, the political situation continued to be shaky. Civil rights protests had died down somewhat. A smattering of laws appeased the protestors and a steady stream of small victories in Vietnam helped reduce anti-war protests.
Bunker fever continued unabated. A handful of science fiction authors, some satirical and some visionary, proposed their versions of the future. Robert Heinlein, a controversial but genre-defining author, wrote the famous novel Worlds Below, which discusses a future post-nuclear conflict between two underground societies, representing individualism and collectivism. Popular 70s movies focused on the possibility and themes of global thermonuclear war, including the hastily produced but critically acclaimed 1970 drama Second Sun, which depicted the results of a nuclear attack on New York City, something which would become the subject of numerous conspiracy theories.
In late 1970, many local bunker manufacturers consolidated into regional chains, serving multi-county or state areas. Bunker designs also began to converge on a few common designs.
…
The acrid scent of cigarette smoke mixed with the sharp smell of freshly poured concrete. The home’s backyard was in shambles. Where there had once been a pleasant green lawn, the ground was torn and churned. Bob watched as a crane slowly lowered the corrugated steel shelter into the foundation pit.
At the beginning of the day, the pit had been empty, and a week ago, the yard had been undisturbed. The week before that, Bob and the rest of his crew had been putting the final touches on a different bunker. Next week, they’d be putting the final touches on this one.
The homeowners watched from an upstairs window, with a mixture of interest and trepidation. The bunker business was an odd one. Like many businesses, it was based on fear.
…
One major design was called the “breadbox”, which was based on prefabricated metal (usually steel) rectangular or cylindrical boxes being lowered into a pit. Multiple boxes could be connected by welding tunnels between them. The quality of these shelters varied, with the most important variable being water protection. Some breadboxes were built from unprotected steel, and quickly corroded or even flooded. Others were given thorough protection that would last for decades to come, with a few even surviving hurricanes and floods due to their airtight design. This was the second most popular type of shelter.
The most popular was the “basement kit”, which was a set of parts that could be ordered by mail for home installation or installed by a professional, intended to turn a basement into a suitable fallout shelter. These ranged from relatively barebones kits with tent-airlocks to keep radiation out and metal racks for storage to highly elaborate systems with lead-lined ceiling tiles and light blast doors. Some department and hardware stores even stocked these “bunkers” on shelves! There were intense advertising battles between different models, with TV demonstrations of testing. The wealthy bought full bunkers, and everybody else went with what they could afford. These off-the-shelf shelters went largely untested.
Infamously, a family’s tornado shelter, “upgraded” with lead tiles to protect against radiation, seriously injured the family’s children when the tiles came unglued from the ceiling. In another case, a panic room reinforced with an airtight blast door proved to be vulnerable to a simple crowbar, and the incensed family- now the victims of a burglary- were able to successfully sue for false advertising. Overall, though, this industry was and still is very lucrative.
Another interesting design was the “igloo”, built based on the PZ and QZ shelters in Albania by enterprising immigrants. This variant was designed to be mostly buried, and to seal against nuclear fallout or chemical weapons. The igloos were usually assembled from interlocking, prefabricated concrete sections, and then coated with a chemical sealant, but some smaller versions could be shipped fully constructed on the back of a flatbed truck. Because of the later disasters in Albania, many of these were later removed or demolished on the spot, but due to the inherent durability of the dome shape, some proved to be impossible to get rid of.
Bunker firms catering to larger companies developed their own systems. The “parking garage” system acted as an analogue to the residential “basement kit” - a set of premade parts that could retrofit an underground parking garage (still somewhat unusual in 1970) into a structure that could be sealed off in case of a nuclear attack. Very few of these were equipped with blast doors, however, and most experts believed that they would not be effective shelters.
More credible were the “silo” and “tunnel” styles, which were exactly what they sounded like. Silo shelters were dug straight down, usually in a spiral pattern. Because of this, some ended up with a conical shape. Tunnel shelters were dug sideways into a rock face, producing a regular and horizontal space, and then closed off with a blast door. Occasionally, the two were combined to create star-shaped structures, in cases of very large facilities. Some shelters were essentially just a bare rock tunnel with some provisions and a blast door, but most were fully equipped for an attack. The silo-type shelters would have to be fitted with floors and then covered with a cap, generally concrete or steel. Some silo shelters were built to resemble missile silos, due to a misguided belief that missile silos provided exceptional protection against attack. This would later have international consequences; the Soviets believed that the United States was disguising missile silos by claiming them as private shelters, which contributed to the extreme nuclear arms racing of the 1970s.
In November of 1970, the Republican party would be predictably routed in the midterms, with the Republicans losing a whopping 26 house seats, 5 senators, and 13 governors to the Democrats. Richard Nixon’s perceived complicity in the Red War and betrayal of his campaign promise to end the fighting in Vietnam had dealt major blows to his popularity, as had the general atmosphere of paranoia, reduced crop yields across America, and general economic slump.
Many Americans felt that the world was becoming increasingly dangerous, and that American foreign policy was doing more harm than good, both for foreigners and Americans. The proliferation of bunkers appeared to be having unintended consequences for the mental health of Americans, although many of these effects were not noted until later, with a greater focus on mental health today. The rate of suicides increased slightly and journal entries and correspondence from that time indicate major increases in feelings of anxiety and depression.
Everybody was getting ready for the world to end, and so it felt like the world was ending, but in slow motion. In some ways, this was a self-fulfilling prophecy. While statistics are unclear, it appears that many families were driven apart or into debt while preparing for Armageddon.
Similar private bunker initiatives began to kick off across the Capitalist world, with big businesses from West Berlin to Vancouver digging their own fortified structures. At this point, a few people began to ask awkward questions about the bunker projects.
With the publication of new climate models based on the Red War, the idea of a “nuclear winter” began to grow in popularity, first in the scientific community and then with the public. In the event of a full-scale nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and United States, it seemed entirely possible that the world could be plunged into a years-long period of cold, dark weather. Not necessarily frozen summers (as depicted in many movies), but dead crops and starvation seemed like looming problems for any would-be survivors of a nuclear war.
For the wealthiest, largest shelters, this could be mitigated. One university experiment, which lent its visuals to a wide swath of comics, movies, and television shows, used a series of mirrors and windows to provide sunlight to the underground facility- at twice the brightness of the outside world. Geothermal power was another “affordable” option, which could be used to power indoor grow lamps, but the setup costs were high, a consistent problem. Nuclear power was even more expensive and required a supply of fuel. Most simply opted for generators and thousands of gallons of diesel fuel, which was cheap and easy to acquire.
Religious leaders began reacting to the atomic craze. Pope Paul issued a condemnation of the Red War when it happened, along with the expected calls for sanity and kindness. This was followed by pleas for nuclear disarmament and general détente, which were tragically ignored by the nuclear and soon-to-be-nuclear powers of the world. Millenarian beliefs profited greatly from the apocalyptic events in the temporal world. All religions saw surges in membership, with people looking for meaning or salvation, but those that preached an imminent end seemed far more credible after a few nuclear explosions.
Like the Italian example, some American apocalypse cults moved underground, sometimes in sophisticated underground metropolises but more often in retrofitted mines or basement networks. Even conventional religious leaders began to participate. The Vatican saw large quantities of concrete go in, and larger quantities of rock and dirt go out, although nothing has been officially declared. The Mormon authorities in Utah also prepared an extensive shelter system in Salt Lake City, the extent of which is a closely guarded secret. Recent controversies and legal battles seem to indicate that their facility might be multiple square miles in size, although this seems improbably large.
The bunker craze also added a new type of complaint to the Civil Rights Movement, which was one of equality in shelter. Although some public shelters were constructed in the inner cities, most ended up concentrated in relatively affluent suburbs and urban areas. Ironically, the shelters that were built to serve poorer inner-city populations tended to lead to gentrification or relocation for residents, which frustrated many non-white Americans. Apartment dwellers also did not have practical ways of constructing their own shelter at home, and could not afford space in a paid, multi-family shelter. This issue was not nearly as serious as most of the others in the Civil Rights Movement, but remained a contentious one through the 70s, and a few measures were proposed to remedy it.
Despite the actions of both well-meaning and conniving lawmakers, inequality in bunkers has not yet been solved. The wealthy and powerful, all around the world, are inevitably sheltered better. Only they can afford private geothermal plants or nuclear reactors, and only they can afford the construction and maintenance costs for the concrete edifices required to preserve humanity after a true apocalypse. This has been true around the world. In the United States, the CEO of General Electric has always been better defended than the average American. In the Soviet Union, any director of a major concern has more shelter than the average Soviet. This leads to a greater focus on large bunker projects but should not be seen as an intentional attempt to ignore the experience of the average person. The concept of the national redoubt applies to an entire nation, not a small group of people, even if this ideal is rarely realized in practice.
Some things did change for the better for the average North American or European citizen. Nuclear power would come into style, with the use of nuclear weapons drawing a clear delineation between nuclear accident and nuclear attack. The US government provided additional funding for public shelters in communities with nuclear power plants, which helped ease any fears. After all, if you can survive a nuclear attack, why should you worry about a nuclear accident? In the 70s, many new nuclear power plants were built, to replace old fossil-fuel plants. Of course, this also raised the question of where all this nuclear waste should be stored. The government was especially interested in reprocessing nuclear waste to reduce the cost of new warheads.
In addition to this, the US Government, especially the military, was uncomfortable with relying on oil supplies from Middle Eastern countries, which seemed increasingly unstable and were actively pursuing nuclear programs. Of course, the country had enough oil for critical applications, being one of the major producers of oil, but a loss of foreign oil reserves could cause economic chaos and leave the country vulnerable.
The Department of Defense investigated all kinds of projects, hoping to mitigate these problems. Some like the nuclear fleet, ended up being practical and would gradually be implemented over the 70s and 80s, and are generally regarded as excellent planning for the future. Others, like the various concepts for nuclear-powered military transport trucks, have come to be regarded as preposterous boondoggles, although some proponents describe them as advanced tech demonstrators for the still-nascent hydrogen car. In between are the somewhat plausible concepts of nuclear main battle tanks and atomic generators, which have seen prototypes and operation concepts for a few specific purposes. Nuclear planes were considered, but never went past the design stage in the 70s, at least for most projects. Still, the B-1C and B-2 programs are proof that the nuclear-powered bomber is a workable concept, even if they continue to have their controversies. The nuclear-armed artillery rounds developed in the 70s are an important fixture of modern combat as well.
Computing technology was developing in this period as well. ARPANET, the first prototype of what would eventually become the modern Internet, was first activated in 1969 and was beginning to grow into a national network in the early 70s. It attracted government attention as reports on the aftermath of the Red War began to surface. One noted problem was that communications were often disrupted in attacks, both between cities and within them, and the government began to see ARPANET’s technology as a potential solution to mitigate this. The basic protocols used, which still exist (in modified form) today, were designed to send signals around destroyed servers and make up for damage to the network.
While originally designed to mitigate problems with the reliability of the hardware involved in connecting computers across the country, the system was seen as a promising way of preventing nuclear communication blackouts caused by the destruction of cities or infrastructure. The military also saw the potential for the system to send messages to nuclear silos or defensive systems while under attack.
I think there would also be a rise in hedonism and alternative movements. maybe even back to the land or remote settlements.
Big clue with the reference to New York... More private nuclear reactors equal more risk of uranium being diverted.
With the building of various bunkers and underground facilities I could see the rise of underground shopping centers built around transit stops in Europe and East Coast cities. These would start out as convenience stores and shops geared to commuters that slowly expand. These locations would be out of the elements and climate controlled. They also could be used to hide Civil Defense supplies or other government assets.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to give details about the risks but I've heard a serious variety of responses when people who should know are asked. I've seen people claim in interviews that tunnels are actually safer than aboveground structures during earthquakes, but I doubt it. For the really serious military stuff, a lot of critical components would likely be shock isolated (this was done IOTL for Cheyenne mountain) and when possible people might try to avoid fault lines and other geologically active areas. A lot of US military infrastructure is in places that are seismically mostly inert, but this can't be depended on in California! I'm not as familiar with other parts of the world, but I'm guessing that some countries would struggle more than others.
Thanks for the compliment! Unfortunately, that's not an area that I've read too much on, but I think that financially not much has changed at this point ITTL. The war in Vietnam did change a lot, though, and cultural attitudes have shifted somewhat, which will inform art. Probably, lots of artists, writers, movie makers, etc. would be inspired by the imagery and details of ongoing conflicts. The West's exposure to the Red War in Asia would be mostly limited, but I imagine that journalists would get lots of good coverage on the conflict in Eastern Europe, and the mass movements of refugees would be significant for culture.