Berlin's Abandoned Bunkers

Beneath the overwrought reportage on Kim Jong Il’s death and speculations whether Li’l Kim is fit to reign lies fear-mongering about North Korea’s nuclear instability. We now know the technology is so advanced that an attack will vaporize human flesh immediately, but back in the days when people still thought it was possible to defend themselves from one of those gnarly things, a unique bunker system was put in place to defend the people in Germany’s capital. Some of them are still around today.

One of the biggest underground bunkers in Berlin is located in U-Bahn station Siemensdamm, which is not really a station but more of a complicated bunker system that could shield a couple thousand people from a nuclear blast. After 9/11 they put a lot of money into refurbishing the bunker, just before the government decided for good to give up on the whole project. Most of them were sold or rebuilt for another use. Despite all of that, around 4,500 people could survive for 14 days in this very bunker without any contact with the outside world. I felt like getting a whiff of apocalypse so I asked Andreas Ulbrieg—lord of the bunker manuals—to give me a guided tour through the steel and concrete construction.

We accessed the bunker via the railway tracks where the only four doors to the bunker are located. Everything inside the bunker was covered in a thin layer of brown dust. Looks like not a lot has happened here since the last bunker training in 2004.

In order to prevent a mass panic, people can only access the bunker one by one. The whole bunker is steered mechanically with all its gates and doors.

The facility is equipped with an emergency generator and access to two wells that provide water. Additionally, there are eleven water containers with drinkable water that can provide 4,500 people with 2.5 liters of water per day for two weeks. Oxygen is another must if 4,500 people are squeezed together like that. A clever air conditioning system provides fresh air that is pulled through two towers from outside, filtered to get rid of radioactivity and then cooled down. The inside door is barricaded through hundreds of bricks made from armored concrete. A couple inches of this concrete reduces nuclear radiation to less then 1 percent. To prevent contaminated air entering the facility, there is a slight excess pressure within the whole bunker.

I guess these bunk beds are OK if you don’t have an option.

Inside the bunker you won’t be able to escape your 4,499 fellow randomly selected people, and you will be stuck with them for 14 days with zero personal space.

Ehh. Maybe it'd just be better to stay above ground.