Short Stuff: Greenbrier Bunker

The Greenbrier Bunker was a secret nuclear hideout for Congress, until it wasn't. Once it was exposed as a thing, it ceased to be a thing. Listen in to a fascinating short stuff today!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck in again. This is short stuff, and this
one is pretty cool because it's about uh secret bunker
hidden at a resort hotel. Not something you come upon
every day. No, this is I've never even heard of

(00:24):
this until the other day, actually, and I'm not even
sure how I heard about it now that I think
about it, but it seemed like the perfect short stuff
because what we're talking about is during the Cold War,
the United States government saying, you know what, if the
bomb happens, we need our government to function. And in
order for our government to function, we need are the

(00:46):
people of Congress to be safe and not fried from radiation.
And the only way to do that is to build
a massive underground bunker for everyone to go and live.
And that's just what they did. Yeah, but they didn't
they didn't like put it on a military base. They
didn't put it like underneath the Capitol building. They they
went to a resort in West Virginia called the Greenbrier

(01:09):
that had been around for a very long time already
it was. It's a very well known resort. It's still
around today. It's beautiful and in fact, um Dorothree Draper,
probably the greatest interior designer of all time. Um macked
out the Greenbrier I think in the thirdies or forties
and brought it back to life. It's an amazing place.
But they they chose the Greenbrier in part because no

(01:32):
one would ever suspect that they built the bunker to
house Congress during a nuclear attack four hours away from Washington,
d C. And West Virginia, beneath a resort that everybody loved. Right,
No one would think that would happen, except for the
people that built it. Because when the construction crews showed
up and they're like, all right, we're gonna need three

(01:54):
foot concrete walls here. Uh in these huge areas, we're
gonna need about eleven bunk beds. They went, Okay, what's
going on here? And they said, don't worry about it.
Just build what we tell you to build, and and
stay quiet. Because obviously something like this had to be secret,
and it was secret for many decades until I don't

(02:17):
know was it a reporter or just a writer that
basically wrote an article about it. Reporter a guy named
Ted Gup who sounds like the kind of person who
just out something for fun. It sounds like someone who
now they would use the word like he gut that
thing up right, which he wasted billions of taxpayer dollars

(02:38):
with one single article because it was then useless and
everyone said, well, thanks, gup. Now we don't have our
super secret bunker anymore. It's very much bombable because this thing,
although it's built to withstand um to like be three
you know, a few hours from Washington, d C. Where
the big bomb lands. Uh it can it will stand

(03:00):
like a direct hit. And no one would have bombed
White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia had it not been for you. Yeah.
Within three years of tag Gupps article, the Ultimate Congressional Hideaway,
the Greenbrier Resort was giving tours of it because it
had been decommissioned that quickly. And again this thing was
in was in ready operation at a moment's notice for

(03:23):
thirty years. Over the course of those thirty yearsunk beds
were assigned to a person, and these were it wasn't
like they assigned it once. As new congress people came in,
they got assign bunk beds like if something happened, this
place was ready to go. At a moment's notice to
accept all of Congress, and I say, we take a

(03:44):
break and then we'll come back and talk about some
of the details behind this ingenious plan. Let's do it. So, Chuck,

(04:12):
if you went to the Greenbrier between the I guess nine,
you might encounter somebody wearing a Forsyth Associates uniform and
they if you ask them, what what Foresight's Associates? Did,
you say, Oh, well, we we actually take care of
all the TV sets here at the Greenbrier. And then

(04:34):
the next thing you know, you would wake up in
the Cryptan Mexico wearing someone else's clothes and that would
be that. Yeah, And the last thought that you had
in your head was, man, there's a lot of people
taking care of these TV sets here, right, Because it
turns out that the Forsyth Associate TV technicians were actually
the government employees who are secretly tasked with keeping the

(04:57):
Greenbrier Bunker at a state of operational readiness at all times. Yes,
it was called when they built it, I saw fifty
seven and fifty eight, so somewhere in there it was
called Project Greek Island. And again was the location was
determined because it's close enough to d C to where
it's not super far if he had to like get

(05:17):
there in a hurry. Um, but it's it's safe enough
to be there. Like, I think they could withstand radiation
for how many days? Could they survive on just the
air in their three But then the filtration system was
so amazing that it could actually filter out radiation, so
they were Okay, that's right. It cost about fourteen million bucks.
Was completed in sixty two, right before the Cuban missile crisis. Uh,

(05:41):
seven hundred and twenty ft underground, A hundred it's two levels,
a hundred and twelve thousand and change square feet, so
roughly the size of a couple of football fields stacked
on one another. Yeah, think about it's seven hundred and underground.
That is, that's a skyscraper down. And what's nuts to
me is it still couldn't withstand a direct hit from

(06:03):
a nuclear bomb. That really kind just says a lot
right there. But um, so when you when you went
to this place under a nuclear attack, Um, if you
were a member of Congress, you would be hustled off
to the Greenbrier. The first thing that would happen once
you entered the secure sealed off area. UM. Is that
you would be decontaminated, you'd be given new clothes, your

(06:25):
other close being sinerated. UM. And you would find very
quickly that entire swaths of the Greenbrier had also been
ingeniously included in this. Even though it was open to
the public. They were used as as meeting rooms and
stuff during normal times. In the case of a nuclear emergency,
when Congress took over the bunker, they got sealed off

(06:45):
with the rest of this bunker too. Yeah, so like
they were literal uh me, like companies would have a
not a retreat, well, I guess a retreat there. Uh.
And you know they would go and listen to people
lecture out their industry and not, you know, unknowingly the
whole time they're sitting on top of this underground bunker.

(07:06):
It's like it was pretty ingenious to not have it
a military base and to sort of hide it in
plain sight in some ways. Uh. There's if you're wondering, like, well,
how did you access it from the Greenbrier, it would
of course be behind the door that says danger high voltage,
keep out danger, danger. It's all I got of an

(07:29):
Austin Powers movie or something. It's like I just put
high voltage and no one will open that door. Yeah,
I think it works. I mean you're kind of a
chump if you go through that door anyway, you know, Yeah,
you'd be a real gup. Nice call back, dude. So
we else is in there. You got your decontamination room,
you got your dormitories, which are eighteen rooms with sixty

(07:50):
beds in each. You gotta have a cafeteria in a kitchen. Uh.
They even had like media room set up with fake
views of like the capa all in the background and
stuff like that, so they could uh that had you know,
like a production facility essentially because they had to be
able to broadcast out in case anything went wrong. Yeah,
And they had three meeting rooms. One that could house
Senate the Senate, one that could house uh, the House

(08:13):
of Representatives, and one that could house joint um joint
congressional meetings like where everybody was involved. Um. They also
had a pharmacy with tons of antidepressants. Apparently had a
good stuff. They had a little jail, and then this
to me was pretty revealing. I think either MPR or

(08:35):
the Atomic Heritage Foundation pointed out that they had in
this little jail area they had weapons, but that the
weapons amounted to like a couple of rifles, some pistols, uh,
like some batons, and like helmets, like stuff you would
have for riot here. And I realized, like, that's that
wasn't meant to be used on you know, Soviet forces

(08:58):
trying to gain entry. That to be used in case
of like some sort of crazy mutiny like below ground
by by Congress people who are losing their marbles, just
old grudges, like they're finally they're finally going to take
Belosi down once and for all, put her in a
straight jacket because there were straight jackets. Uh that there

(09:21):
were two boxes of straight jackets with this jail, uh
in case something happened like that. Yeah. So um, the
whole thing was completed, I think you said, in time
for the Cuban missile crisis, right, Yeah, that's really really
good timing. And again when they did this, they did
it under the auspices that the Greenbrier was building a
new wing. And indeed the Greenbrier did build a new wing,

(09:42):
but there was some really weird parts of it, so
it did raise some, uh, some questions. But apparently the
locals kept it to themselves because it does not seem
to have been one of those you know, UM open secrets,
like it seems to have been like a real secret secret,
which is, you know, hats off to everybody who managed
to keep that a secret all those years. Well, yeah, because,

(10:04):
like we said, the construction crews were immediately suspicious, but
a lot of people worked on that thing and clearly
knew what was going on. And I guess it was
just a different time where people, uh cared this is
about their country such that they knew it was important
to keep it a secret for national security reasons. Yeah,
hats off government on keeping some secrets. How fast would

(10:26):
this be tweeted out today? It was a drywall person
working on an underground bunker. Check it out. Supposedly, the
UM Supreme Court was destined for the Grove Park in
in the in the case of a nuclear emergency that
would find of the Greenbrier. Yeah, where's that Asheville? Okay,

(10:48):
really yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it's in Nashville, So
they would do that's where they would go and bunk
her down to Wow, pretty amazing stuff, Chuck. I wonder
if this, I mean, if there were eleven hun red beds.
This seems to indicate that they would have their families there, right,
I guess, but I guess, yeah, it must be. And
I think there's a there's um a train route from

(11:11):
d C to the Greenbrier, so they would probably be
time to be like maybe at the Amtrak station, we
gotta go right to your family. That's the only explanation
I can find all those staff. Maybe I could see
Congress people choosing their staff over their family in a
nuclear a nuclear disaster. That's eleven d bucks though. That's

(11:33):
that's plenty of room for staff and families and maybe
even an enemy or two. Sure again though, thanks to
the Atomic Heritage Foundation, great article on this as well
as NPR. We we we always love yes and great thanks
to you too, Chuck, and and you sir, thank you. Well,
we thanked each other everybody. That means short stuff is out.

(11:56):
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