MOUNT WEATHER
VIRGINIA, USA
THE HOLLOW MOUNTAIN A 20-minute flight from the White House lies the nuclear bunker of the U. S. president. Most of the facility exists deep beneath Mount Weather. Only a few government building are located on the mountain (image).
IS THIS OBAMA’S PANIC ROOM?
An early morning shortly after 5: 30, somewhere in the mountains of Virginia. The trees lining Blue Ridge Mountain Road get denser, the road becomes narrower—and suddenly you are facing a 10-foot-high fence. An alarm sounds and seconds later heavily armed soldiers approach— and ask a question: What are you looking for here? Yes…what indeed. What kind of place in the woods is this, where—as the people who live nearby say—“snow doesn’t stick in winter because the entire mountain is hollowed out and gives off heat”? The answer: At the end of this road is Mount Weather—aka President Obama’s bunker—able to withstand a nuclear bomb and just 20 minutes by helicopter from the White House. A high-tech fortress hidden under a mountain. In fact, Mount Weather is a place that does not officially exist, though if disaster were to strike top officials would meet here. Until the late 1970s even Congress was not aware of the high-security bunker. But just what really lies beneath the mountain? Reputable sources on the matter are rare—but they exist. Say insiders who managed to leak information through the close-knit networks of intelligence agencies: The journey into the underworld of Mount Weather is a long one. If you manage to get into the compound, you’d then have to get past a 37-ton paddle that’s 23 feet wide by 5 feet thick. Hundreds of guards line the way as large tunnels lead more than 300 feet into the depths. The area of the bunker itself is around 65,000 square feet. In addition to multistory office buildings there are enough beds and supplies for 2,000 people, as well as a hospital, crematorium, TV and radio station, independent power station, a fresh water storage reservoir carved into the mountain, and multiple monitoring centers— the convergence points for sensors from across the country, which can detect a missile strike anywhere on the continent. It’s also the place from which the U.S. would strike back…