Britain’s Incredible Abandoned Nuclear Bunker Network | Cold War UK
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- Опубліковано 21 тра 2024
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Hidden all across the United Kingdom are thousands of abandoned nuclear bunkers - but why? Britain's Nuclear Monitoring posts were fascinating, analog system that would build a picture of where nuclear strikes were happening and where fallout was spreading in the event of a nuclear war. I climb underground to find out more about this amazing network.
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Sources & References:
Skelmorlie Secret Bunker:
www.skelmorliesecretbunker.co.uk
28 Group Observed:
28group.org.uk
The Royal Observer Corps Underground Monitoring Posts by Mark Dalton (the best book on the topic in my opinion. Great coffee table book!):
amzn.to/3VEQ7LK (UK)
amzn.to/3vva9xB (US)
Attack Warning Red:
amzn.to/3vx2oHs (UK)
amzn.to/3TY7HZO (US)
Nuclear War in the UK by Taras Young
amzn.to/3IXAY0v (UK)
amzn.to/3xp5OfI (US)
WAR PLAN UK by Duncan Campbell:
amzn.to/49noZnA (UK)
Great Video on a post restoration with a history of the ROC:
• In The Dark: Cold War ...
Sound an Alarm (1971)
• Sound An Alarm (1971) ...
The Hole in the Ground (1962)
• @DavidCobham's "NUCLEA...
Thankerton ROC Post Stand down 1991:
• Thankerton ROC Post at...
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00:00 - What's That Hole in the Ground?
02:40 - Thanks Incogni!
04:40 - The Atomic Age
05:55 - Britain Prepares for Nuclear War!
07:13 - The Royal Observer Corps
09:22 - ROC Monitoring Posts Layout
14:04 - Exploring a Complete ROC Post
16:08 - ROC Monitoring Posts Equipment
18:45 - Coordinating ROC Posts
20:20 - Rise & Fall of the ROC
21:25 - Exploring An Abandoned Time Capsules
29:00 - Exploring the Massive Sector Headquarters
33:38 - Waffling on a Bit - Наука та технологія
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10 points if you can identify the ominous music I used in the opening 30 seconds.
'S math a rinn thu, a Chaluim. Bhideo sgoinneil! I've been fascinated by ROC posts for 30 odd years. Visited a fair few myself.
I absolutely love the 'advert coming soon' black and white bar you put before the advert. I remember those well!
Yeah, alright. You can have a like. Got no idea what the music is though.
0:55 ... What an interesting door stop
I hope that bunker outside Inverness you showed us has been secured again ? I'm surprised you mentioned & showed where it is. It would be a tragedy for it to get vandalized by imbeciles 🙁
I wonder if there was a similar effort in Ireland.
Probably not.
We would have just piggy backed.
Like we mostly do today. Lol.
I was a member of the ROC until its Stand Down in 1991. I wasn't a Post Observer, I was trained to work an No2 Group (Horsham) HQ as plotter. My job was to mark the big Perspex map with China graph pencils, I was trained to write the details of each bomb burst backwards for the 'heads of sheds' to view on the other side. I never envied the job of the person who had to go outside and change the GZI paper. A really good summary of the duties of an ROC volunteer. By the way, thanks for the heads up on Mark Dalton's book, purchased! I used to have all my loose leafed training manuals, probably chucked now 😔
Wow, what an experience that must have been. Were the HQs shut down most of the time and just opened for training? Something I never asked at Dundee!
@@CalumRaasay No2 Group was inside an above ground building which we used to train in every week, so it was accessible. I think there was a caretaker who kept it ticking over. Remember the kit had to maintained. Those glass maps like the ones in your video were cool; side lit so the china graph lit up and we had red (ground burst) and green (air bust) mushroom stickers for the attacks. We used templates for the fallout plume and a circular slide rule to calculate whether it was ground or air burst. This was dependant on bomb power (yes, that was the expression) and altitude.
Funnily enough, years later (I subsequently joined the TA) I was a CBRN instructor and I found myself on a nuclear reporting course using the same templates and circular slide rule! Sorry if I've started to ramble, the Stand Down still leaves a bad taste in mouth even though I hadn't been in for very long.
Amazing. Those maps in the Dundee one are actually hand drawn ones done by the volunteers, they’re incredible! Worth visiting if you’re ever up this way.
Great comment though, appreciate it! The whole stand down thing really did sully it for a lot of members from what I’ve seen. A real shame to have ended it that way.
Started at 16 in a post in north Devon 10 group ended up in sector command 21 group Preston C/obs, ROC all volunteers and a great bunch all ages when I started my C/Obs had been a wartime bomber pilot learnt so much from that crew. Great memories.
Aw no, I would have loved scans of those old manuals! Thanks for sharing!
Bunker can’t protect you from spam, but it was likely stocked with it during the Cold War 😂
Damn I wish I’d thought of that gag. Should have taken a run of spam down there!!
@@CalumRaasay 😊
spam, Minnesota's greatest gift to the world.
@@CalumRaasayWell... If you ever do a deep dive into spam with the same sponsor... There's a chance...
Lol😅
I heard a lecture from a retired ROC member on these bunkers, and the thing I remember most strikingly was that they needed to know if their phone line was ever broken, so there was a speaker that beeped every few seconds. If the beeping ever stopped, it meant that a bomb had cut the line. He played a recording of the beeps for a few minutes, and you could see everyone in the room getting agitated and thinking that nothing less than the threat of nuclear war would persuade them sit in a room with that noise for hours.
The Carrier Receiver.
@@Daniel-S1 Yes. The position in a bunker of the Receiver Carrier WB400A is shown just above the folding table in the diagram at 10:10
At 15:17 there is a grey WB1401 model nestled between two more grey boxes on the wall.
You may be surprised to know that the same system was fitted in the substantial basement bunker of the standard pattern fire stations built in the early 60's, and in a surface room called the "Post office telecom room in later more modern fire stations. My first post as a new recruit fireman in the late 70's (as we were called at that time) was one such station, and once every 6 months at a set time and date 1 person was posted to sit by the receiver and listen out for a test signal. Once received, the information was written on a brown postcard and sent to HQ for processing to, I suppose, a central government office.
There was also an air raid siren positioned at the top of every station drill tower and not far from my house there used to be a metal tower with an air raid warning siren that was infrequently but routinely tested, and now removed as were the sirens from the fire stations following the end of the Soviet Union.
I do wonder if any such plans even exist now or has it been decided that should a nuclear attack occur today it would be pointless to bother being prepared and purely academic as the potential destruction would be almost absolute and the casualty numbers being so high, the ruminants of society would eventually die of radiation poisoning.
What now then, since the resurgent threat from Putins Russia? I see no signs of any preparation of warning the public other than the faulty mobile phone alert tested recently that failed to reach many across the country, and no efforts to prepare personnel for any kind of recovery or management of survivors.
@@geoffcampbell7846 However. Revised December 2022, the Swedish government has sent a booklet or brochure out to every household in Sweden entitled: If Crisis or War Comes. The English version can be down loaded free and gives advice on how to prepare etc.
The Swedes have also embarked on recommissioning all the shelters that people had to have built into their homes by law but have been neglected since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Three comms systems
My mother was a member of the ROC back in the day and spent many hours inside one of them up here in Orkney. Apparently after being locked in there for a full 24 hours as part of an exercise, there wasn't enough oxygen left in the air to sustain a match when one of the folk tried to light a cigarette at the end....
They'd probably start off with high levels of CO2 before they even used the bunker too, it's heavier than O2 and likes to sit in places like this.
@@laurencedavey3121 can you stuck a vacuum down the shaft and suck the CO2 out or how can someone poor release CO2 from enclosed places like this?
I was at Number 6 Group near Norwich.I was in communications looking after the mechanical teleprinters and radio equipment. Sadly the bunker no longer exists, it was destroyed by a building developer who wanted the land for housing.
We trained and war gamed every Tuesday evening, and from time to time there were longer exercises that lasted for many days. Although we were volunteers we were paid by the MOD at the same rate as regular RAF staff.
There can't be many of us left now, I am nearly 70 years old.
Hi, there is a no. 6 group ROC sticker on a Wessex helicopter in the Weston-super-Mare Helicopter Museum... 😊
It caught my eye because my father was an ROC Observer in 10 Group (Exeter), also up to 91.
If you ever served in the ROC then age has addled your brain. Volunteers were not paid anything by the MOD as it was run by the Home Office. Volunteers were 'paid' a very small 'attendance allowance' to contribute towards transport costs. As paying actual mileage would would have cost more. It sure would have been nice to be paid the same as RAF staff.
Please post an image of one of your 'RAF' payslips; as a Crew and Post Chief Observer and later Home Office Scientific Advisor I must be owed a very large amount of back-pay. Looking forward to it.
The ROC was a great organisation, but with 6 Group seemed to have a ROC Post at Mundford , just outside Thetford that had a fetish for wearing camouflage clothing.
Also had a sandbag Sanger. Outside their ROC post.
I always wondered why they got away with it.
The rest of ROC Posts at 6 Group were very professional.
I love it. So cool. You should watch out though. If they're sealed and have steel in there corroding, the corrosion process will consume all the oxygen. Lots of people have had their lives cut short because they enter vessels and tanks and then just drop due to lack of oxygen. You should really have a gas meter when you enter places like that.
As teenagers, me & my mate broke into... Errr... I mean repurposed 😉 one of those near Balintore on the North East coast of Scotland in the mid 90's (it literally only took 2 bent nails to lift up the latch) 😉
There's also a WW2 aerodrome there & another near Tain.!
There was still bunkbeds with matresses, a toilet, air filters, a telephone, a bench & a map on the wall with the locations & numbers of all the other observation posts marked on it.
It was just the coolest thing ever.!
We hooked up a 12 volt car battery to a portable stereo & light bulbs & it became our little den..
We used to go up there with our girlfriends, something to drink, something to smoke & have a grand old time. 😉 😉
It wasn't until years later that I understood the true role & significance of them.!
Lol taking ur girlfriend to a nuclear bunker
@@AckzaTV epic
@@AckzaTVwhere else can you scream as loud as you want without anyone hearing you? in a good way though...
Interesting how bunkers in movies always look more expensive than the real ones
Room in a real bunker: Looks like a room
Room in movie bunker: pipes everywhere, riveted walls, dramatic shadows, panels with blinking lights
Every ‘big’ cold war bunker I have been in look like a 1970’s office building, only difference is the lack of windows.
The old 11 Group/Fighter Command bunker at Bentley Priory, before upgrade in the early 80's, was no doubt. not too dissimilar to when it was first built. I think anybody from WW2 walking in, would have found it much the same. Compared to the ROC bunkers shown here, it was the poor relation. Considering BP was HQ ROC, there wasn't much there for them in the bunker. No doubt decamping to elsewhere if the shit hit the fan. The old WW2 Bomber Command bunker at High Wycombe, if I recall, didn't have much room allocated to them either. In 1971 ish, a thermal lance was used to cut through a reinforced internal bunker wall to provide an entrance to a new room for them. E & O E.
The thing with analogue, it can survive the EMP from a nuke.
Great work Calum, I'm 50+ and never knew these things existed.
Be careful of bad air
Yeah I would recommend people do this: stick to the nice restored ones!
Being round my dad in the morning I have the same concerns
And mould, especially black mould.
@@patrickm.4754Brits are immune to black mould most homes in the South East have a perpetual black mould problem. Unless you're allergic to mould spore, have breathing issues or encounter an unnaturally dense patch of mould, black mould won't do much with short term exposure.
and tocsin gases
- I'll get my overalls
Great video, excellent research. My father-in-law was one of those volunteers and went down to RAF Waddington to attend the parade to be stood down by HRH.
Very interesting video Calum, I was in the RAF during part of the cold war and I remember the government some years earlier sending by post an information package called 'protect and survive' to every household about what to do after the nuclear attack, then joining up, carrying out nuclear training and discovering how useless that information was. Thank god it never happened.
America was fed the same "you can survive the bomb" propaganda too. Ours were mostly in short film form and volunteer training. Several years ago I found a DVD compilation of those old films e.g. Bert the Turtle, Duck and Cover etc... and to be honest, there were more than a few that contradicted each other... "it's treason to evacuate (NYC) in the event of a forthcoming attack, but vital to evacuate Portland Oregon..." Many of the films (which originally came on TV or at the movies before the main feature were funny as can be. Especially if you are blessed with a peculiar sense of humor. My late Father used to forbade us kids from watching that rubbish. He was adamant and always said that the living would envy the dead. I believe him.
If you buy...When The Wind Blows..blu ray, you get all the government nuclear war protect and survive tv programs.
29:37 outstanding tablecloth
Amazing mess room in general. It even had an Xbox!
Got to keep the MOOd up somehow ;)
@@CalumRaasayit also has a decent set of speakers :) I've been Lucky enough to stay at the 28 Group bunker for a weekend and can confirm the table cloth is awesome too :)
Gosh, we had LAN parties in Kelvedon Hatch in the early 2000 when lugging around a beige box and a CRT still seemed like a good idea. The H&S upgrades to make the space OK are hilarious.
Hatch? Was that the name of one of the bunkers?
No idea if that was the original name but that's what the place is called now. It's a (much larger) bunker which housed a phone exchange among other things and is open to the public.
@@AckzaTV Kelvedon Hatch is the name of the village/parish.
Back in the late 70’s , early 80’s used to watch a guy in Birmingham building a bunker in his garden as we passed by on the bus to school. Started with a massive hole, then concrete and then finally saw that he was lining it with metal (probably lead) before he started the block work. Think I just found it on Google maps!
My family is having a very crap time at the moment (sickness, hospice and all that stuff). It's been a very terrible time for the last week or so. So, when I saw a new Calum video come up I made sure to take some time off this evening to just sit and watch and learn about something interesting that I'd never heard of before.
Thanks man. I really needed this. :)
Hope things get better for you soon 😊
@@AdamB8791 Thank you. :)
Excellent video and a fascinating topic. I like that you added that ‘bleak’ ending as I was watching this I thought of ‘Threads’ and how it’s not the war, it’s the aftermath. ‘Threads’ haunted my nightmares and I didn’t sleep for two days after first seeing it in the 80s. Watching the town council hole up in a bunker and then being pretty much useless after the attack and finally dying underground kept coming to mind watching about these posts and bunkers. “The only winning move is not to play.”
I worked for the ROC in rural Aberdeenshire in the late 80's and worked in one of these bunkers, LOVED it. I remember it being damp and the sound of the generator thumping away above ground to charge the batteries. Always a bugger to start unlike a modern Honda engine, this was a Lister from memory
Always a treat to see one of your videos appearing, another excellent wonderfully researched edited and presented vid. Your efforts to capture these pieces of history are wonderful!
Calum contacted me a few weeks ago to use some footage I had shot while serving in the ROC at stand down and I'm glad I did as this is an informative and entertaining piece of work. I was relatively young when I served in the ROC, 15 at entry and 28 at stand down. It was serious, in so much as those Soviet missiles could reach us very quickly and we did think carefully whether we would be taken out on first strike, survive the blast or perish with the radiation. The posts could not survive a close strike but would survive a distance strike and certainly radiation. Your location (and we knew all the targets) and whether the missiles were accurate were all factors in your survival chances. Many Observers didn't think too much about the grisly business we were in but rather enjoyed the friendship of the Corps and the social life. Often it was not the Russians who were our greatest enemy but CND and the cold! It was very uncool to be in the ROC if you were young but I enjoyed the secretive nature of it all and also the Dad's Army aspect of people of many ages and backgrounds all working together. We had a pensioner who had been in the ROC since World War Two and an officer who was an ex RAF Vulcan navigator plus a gravedigger and a guy who worked in a crematorium. They always joked on how they would dispose of us all after the bomb dropped!
Lovely video.
36:10 seeing that old school unearthed anglepoise next to a wash basin is giving me anxiety lol
Hahah Never noticed that. Lovely lamp!
There's a huge 2000sqm ex-soviet one in Līgatne, Latvia quite similar to the sector HQ you showed. It was hidden under a former Spa (now a rehab centre) and only declassified in the 2000s. It's in pristine condition as it was only actually used once during a wargame, you can visit it and take a tour, of the rooms, and they even let you press all the buttons etc, and on weekends you can even enjoy some traditional soviet cuisine in it's functioning period correct canteen.
Another excellent video, the time and effort you put in really shows. Always a treat when a new one pops up. Thanks and keep up the great work!
I appreciate your storytelling and the research you put into it. Big thanks, and I'm waiting for the next one.
If you haven't already been; there's a bunker in fife called the "Secret Bunker" and it's a very good example of a cold war bunker. It's a bit out of the way to get there but it's massive. Just the ramp that takes you down to the bunkers level is quite impressive.
I live relatively near it ,been in it once, really interesting place, I was told that when it was being built the lorry drivers stopped at bottom of road and got out then a soldier would take the lorry in and empty it then return it to the driver
Something horribly ironic about spamming the middle of your own video with a anti-spam spam.
😂
I always enjoy your videos. Thank you for what you do. Cheers from Austria - keep up the great work.
I visited the 28 Group HQ in Dundee a number of years ago, and that was in my mind all through the opening sections of this wonderful video. I was on the edge of my seat when I realised you were about to feature it! A brilliant place, and well worth a trip. Keep up the great work, Calum!
So crazy that you managed to see an old bunker basically untouched! Such a great video again!
Awesome video Calum, we had one just beside our village in Aberdeenshire and when I saw your video thumbnail I recognised the entry hatch etc and knew that’s what it must have been! We would sledge on the hill beside it. Also remember it getting filled in unfortunately, I guess due to its close proximity to our village! Thanks for finally educating me on its history!👍🏻👌🏻
Such a fan of your video's. Interesting subjects, quality content and such a nice voice to listen to. Keep it up!
Yet again, a very interesting and informative video. The topics you cover are so interesting. Keep up the great work.
Wonderful. Always Quality and Interesting. 👍👍
Thank You Calum
Glad you enjoyed it!
14:03 Great informative video, Calum. During the early 1980s before I joined the RAF I was in the ROC (25 Group/Barrhead Post). During an exercise period our post had to man Skelmorlie Post for 12 hours due to personnel shortages. I didn't even get to see the sea due to the thick fog! Happy memories of a dedicated group of volunteers. Great to see Skelmorlie Post maintained.
I just watched a few videos about these bunkers and the ROC a couple days ago. You have a eerie habit of doing that!
Hi Calum, well, another awe inspiring video with great attention to detail. Thank you. Roll on the next one.
Love the NEC APC computer just chilling on the desk at 31:35
Great video! Very well written, produced and edited
Well done
As always, an excellent documentation. Thank you very much for your great work!
I was with 9 group Yeovil Somerset I was there for 7years my job was then to help in the telephone exchange and radio backup I sometimes was on post comm's . we could have 50 or so people on an exercise at any one time.
The movie tracking shot at 33:04 is epic, and those guys look hard as nails! Brilliant.
Stunning episode Callum. Well done.
Thank you so much Jonathan! Was a satisfying project to bring together, especially managing to find posts in all types of condition!
Another great video! I always love your amazing way of presenting information you do throughout all your videos! You deserve so many more subs for your hard work, ha ha
Great video. The "secret bunker" in Fife is well worth a visit. Must have been a command one built to keep people alive. Has a good cafe too!
Calum, if you produce another video to further elaborate on this subject I will happily watch it. Great content, thank you.
Good video and a subject well covered, we all love an ROC post, you might be surprise how many are in good condition with plenty of bits and bobs inside.
I bet more in England where it’s drier too! Flooding has done a lot in up here
Love your work!
I enjoy historical videos about the Cold War preparations and bunkers. I'm an American and over here we didn't have anything like your ROC mini bunkers. Our Civil Defense Corps had observers detailed to rooftops. What America did have was a myriad of Command Bunkers of varying sizes and capabilites throughout the U.S. The one I'm most familiar with was right in the area of New Orleans where I was born, and I saw the outside of it every day. One day long after we'd moved, we were back in the old neighborhood and being a member of the Civil Defense in my current County, I stopped in and was given the full ten penny tour. To begin with, the New Orleans Civil Defense bunker was staffed 24/7/365 from the late 1950s until the early 1990s when it was closed. It was staffed by a representative of the Police, Fire, Civil Defense, Mayors Office, Air National Guard, and the Army National Guard. It began 3 stories down, and went down for 2 more. It was completely circular in design. It's purpose was to be a command and control setting for city operations in the event of war/attack. It had a staff auditorium (or bull pen), a mini TV & radio station, mini emergency room, dental clinic, kitchen, sleeping quarters for 200 (men & women separately). A radioactive fallout decontamination station, an armory, and several "escape" tunnels. Its gone now... it was flooded during Hurricane Katrina. It was eventually filled in and pricey condominiums built over it. Unless you knew it was there, there's no trace. You can still find a few news articles and old black and white photos online. The New Orleans Civil Defense Bunker on West End - Pontchartrain Drive.
Great video. First time I have ever heard of these.
Another apsolutely incredible documentary. Thankyou Calum for your efforts and excellent Appendix at the end ❤
Amazing video well done
You just had me googling the history of fluorescent strip lights, genuinely surprised they were in use that early!
Fantastic as always and superb research. thanks
Coming from one of those kids who were taught to "duck and cover" in the early seventies, It's hard to believe that we're still under the threat of nuclear war.
The tech college I went to gave us all lectures on iodine pills and what the sirens meant from Plymouth Dockyard. When at Torpoint secondary we also got told if we had 3 siren blasts the teachers would tell us what to do and we were to be given the iodine pills.
@@GavinEarnshaw I vagally remember being told about the Iodine pills when I was young in the 1970s.
Another fascinating video Calum, thank you.
Hey Calum, interesting topic as always. Thanks for the in depth research and accompanying footage.
Question about another topic though, is Project Azorian a topic you potentially could make a video about?
Heck, I believe that could be a series with all the interconnected topics going on. 🙂
Amazing! Great work Calum. Thank you for sharing this.
My pleasure!
Excellent and informative as usual 👍
Amazing video once again, thanks for sharing this amazing piece of history
Excellent video as always Calum. We have one just up the road from us in Pytchley, Northamptonshire. They do open days and it’s definitely worth a visit. If s amazing when your down there thinking about what they were built for. Sends shivers down your spine.
Do you have a google map reference for that? Thanks.
Amazing video as always Calum! 👍👍
Great video about something I didn´t even know existed: a relic of the past but, sadly, also a stark reminder of the latent dangers of the present.
Glad to see you had the rare chance of being a sort of cold war Howard Carter.
I couldn't help feeling a little chill creeping up my spine when the gentleman remarked and cautioned when leaving the bunker: "Whatever it is outside, it's not peace....".
YES! New Calum upload 🤩
impressive.. the most shocking.. maybe not that word.. but most wow.. since walking around the underground hospitals in the channel islands..really enjoyed being informed.. many thanks.
Fascinating, as always! I'm reminded of all the decommissioned Nike missile bases scattered around the world. Built to a very consistent plan, many blend into fairly urban settings since they were often intended to defend cities against nuclear strikes. Neighbors have no idea that the live next to a former underground nuclear missile base (yes, the later Ajax missiles used nuclear warheads to defend against nuclear strikes, strange as that may seem). I have visited several, one abandoned and two repurposed as firefighting helicopter bases. There's plenty of material there for a video Calum, should you ever run short!
Fantastic video as always 😁
Loved the throw back to adds Incoming in the top right corner.
Visited one of these ROC posts today. So glad you released this brilliant video - doubles down on my exploration with all this context :)
Dude you're awesome for this!!!
Another pearler mate! Very interesting thanks! I’d love to see your treatment of the uk sea forts.
Great video.
The secrecy around theses was amazing, not many of the general public knew much if anything about them. I remember a friend telling me about the network before 1990 and I was surprised, I did not have a clue, he also said about the what he called the UK Civil defence force and a bit about the collapse of the funding. Apparently it still goes on but under a different name.
Oh wow, this was fascinating, thank you!
Another fascinating video.
I've visited the ROC bunker in York a few years ago which was a larger regional HQ.
One thing I found shocking was that the guys going outside to remove the photo paper were not provided with proper NBC gear, only boiler suits.
Yeah, no one got anything other than a basic uniform really! I think the early days the ROC mainly used old RAF kit.
@@CalumRaasay That sounds very likely, make use of the old surplus kit.
To be honest you wouldn't want to use a WW2 respirator anyway as the filters contained asbestos but you would have thought that later the Avon respiratory and NBC clothing used by the armed forces could have been made available.
Top notch presentation!
Thank you!
I've never been so early to watch one of your videos but this subject got me interested straight away as about 15 years ago I visited quite a few of them in varying states of disrepair. A handful of us even managed to rent one for a few years sadly last year the land was sold for building so a really good condition one will soon disappear.
Amazing video, thank you!
Calum video to enjoy on Easter? Yes please!!!
There's one in the wheat field opposite my Dad's house. The farmers painted it in "Calass green" so from a distance the superstructure looked like another pice of farm machinery.
Turn it into a man cave!
Thanks Calum for your indepth review. We had one of these bunkers outside the villages of Augher and Clogher in the townland of Knockmanny County Tyrone, back in my younger day. Always strange to see cars in the middle of nowhere one evening per week, but I was told by my parents that it was ROC. Sadley all is gone, the whole area was excavated for building sand materials. Best wishes from Northern Ireland.
Here in Finland we have cold war bunkers all over the place. Every apartment building used to have one and the hospital I work for has one that they use as changing room for us workers. I know there were people who were taught how to use the doors and ventilation.
Easter treat, TY Calum. 👍
We have one of the Regional War Rooms just down the road from here in Nottingham, and i would love to see it restored. It is grade 2 listed, but the local developers would love nothing more than to see it removed as new housing has been built up to it.
Really enjoyed the video. I run the replacement network. It didn't actually disappear, it was just replaced by a fully digital system in '92 and currently being replaced again.
Did my amateur radio training at the nuclear shelter in North Weald, Essex. Was quite the experience! (mid 90s)
This is such a cool infromative video. Glad I found this channel. You just gained and extra sub
Excellent video
Another great video
I used to sometimes go with my father who was in the ROC to do his checks on out local bunker in Suffolk, which was one of the areas that was shut down in the 1960s.
We found a vintage 80's grot mag in one near RAF Stenigot.
This was amazing
Great video
Having a space like this to go and just relax without distraction sounds really nice, an office would be great for the focus
Outstanding!!!
Great video. I live in Scarborough N.yorkshire and there are two ROC bunkers within half an hours drive from where I live! According to the research however, they are in a sorry state. These are of interest to me as being a ham radio operator, love communication and there are some radio clubs that still operate from them.
Hi Calum. If you ever find yourself in East Yorkshire, the Sector HQ bunker at Holmpton near Withernsea has been fully restored and is open to the public as a museum, it's well worth a visit. There's also a restored observation post bunker a little further up the coast between Hornsea and Skipsea which may be of interest, not least because it is situated a couple of hundred yards from the car park at Mr Moo's, a fantastic little Ice Cream parlour/café where you can sample some of their many delicious flavours of ice cream, which they make with milk from their own dairy farm next door.
I've been in these bunkers when they were operational during the 1980s. I was a Chief Observer.
Living conditions if we had gone to war wouldn't have been great. And personally I'm not convinced that we would have been at all effective.
flicking through the pages of that book almost gave me an Airborne Headache
Back in the day it was 'be prepared', sadly today I'm not sure we are prepared for anything. If you look for them you can spot all manner of cold war assets all over the uk, it is history that needs to be remembered. Another great story Calum.