One of the many shelter structures constructed for the Plumbbob tests was an underground parking garage. [Yes, you heard me right.] With urban areas prime targets it seemed to make sense to study modifying underground parking facilities so as to be used for blast protection and fallout shelters.
The upper photo shows the drive down entrance to the underground parking deck after the test. Although the retaining wall facing the blast collapsed the rest of the structure, with it's buried 36 inch walls of reinforced concrete, remained intact.
The lower photo shows the entrance to the garage. The 3 foot thick blast door is in its retracted position. Information was a little vague just how this door worked but it was said to open easily after the blast. Important if the shelters occupants did not want to end up like King Tut. Dust off the ramp and drive out! I suppose you wouldn't have to stop to pay the incinerated lady in the glass booth. Oh well, she never seemed very happy anyway.
What a great location for a post-apocalypse movie or video game. All the suburban housewives who had driven into the city for a shopping trip, now living in their '55 Buicks deep underground, fighting with the marauding atomic mutants for the dwindling supply of candy bars.
Somewhere out there in the Nevada Test Site the parking garage is still there.
Why tear it down? How do you tear it down? It's tough enough to survive an atomic blast near ground zero. It's radioactive. Besides, someday we might need the parking.
1 comment:
Oh, so that's what that was. I saw it but didn't realize what it was.
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