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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 🙁
The large bunker in Inverness Is this the one where a guy brought a farm house and after signing for the property was informed he had a mini city under the farm house
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 😔
@@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.
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.
@@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.
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.!
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.
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....
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
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.
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.
@@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.
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!
I would have only been 4 when the ROC was stood down but it sounds like you had a great time doing your bit and met some very interesting characters. I bet they had some stories to share. Thanks for sharing and supporting the ROC.
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.
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.
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. :)
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.
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!
@@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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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....".
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
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 can not even imagine what a pointless waste of resources those were. Communication via copper telephone wires that would have been melted by any nearby blast. A huge case of pointlessness to make out that government could respond in any meaningful way after such devastation.
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
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.
I'm absolutely fascinated by this moment in time & other moments around that era. Whatever we did, we did it with our full focus and dedication. I admire that & i wish we could still have something like that to this very day.. Looking at the cold war now is oddly strange because we are currently experiencing more activity and atrocities by Russia than at any moment during the Cold War.. I hope we start taking this situation more seriously and I hope European countries also take it more seriously.. The main point is Russia should not be able to feel like they can get away with this terrible behavior. Invading Ukraine & committing war crimes against Ukrainian civilians and civilian locations for 2+ yrs now.. I really wish countries would get behind Ukraine and make it clear this is utterly unacceptable from Russia.. Just thinking about the cold war I can't help but think about what's currently going on..
I'm assuming there is a fairly large invite list from the 10 or so current ones i have found in our region that appear to be being actively maintained. Pretty sure I'm not invited either....haha
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!
How did the communication between the individual small posts and the command bunker work back then? Were there special dedicated telephone lines laid underground just for these posts? I mean, the public telephone network, usually hanging from telephone poles, would have been vaporized and blown away during an attack.
I was a member of the ROC at 10 post Winchester group (Devizes). It was a great time as the social side was at the ta club for the weekly meetings. The exercises usually done on shifts between all members meant eating ration packs one minute and clearing off home for pie and chips 😆 The posts were small, but you were busy so you didn't notice it that much. As the 3 man crew meant one person slept on the bunk bed in rotation. I spent most time outside smoking and listening to my walkman 😆 I still have my uniform and training folders. Although it ran on batteries, we had a generator up top. Usually stored in the john. We all got free entry to airshows as a bonus. And as a teenager it was fun and we got paid (a pittance) but it was just random folks who liked to sit around underground I guess, a bit like a womble 😆😆😆🇬🇧
Anyone who survives an all out nuclear war will wish they hadn't. Be careful who we elect to lead us. Be careful what you wish for. There's nothing romantic about nuclear war. Godspeed.
In the early 1980's, I was introduced to these bunkers while I was an Air Cadet. It was interesting to me at the time, that the UK had bothered to use these bunkers and still had the foresight to continue them to be manned. These places and people, were decimated by short sighted politicians, with only their budgets in mind to please ignorant leaders. The world continues to be a dangerous place, but this has been lost to leaders more interested in furnishing their own wants.. Even now, war rages in Europe with no response from blind government's. The history of warfare shows, that our enemies are never far away and in different guises will raise their ugly heads again. Regarding the analogue way of doing things, there are two ways of looking at this method. One: computers were in their infancy and were unreliable. Two: an analogue system was not susceptible to nuclear EMP's. Electric - Magnetic - Pulse, which fries modern transistors. Technology, has become fragile to all types of attacks, even today with GPS being disrupted over Ukraine being a clear indication, that we rely on to much digital technology, while forgetting the old skills. One does hope war is not inevitable, but removing the coup was a mistake and in a time of need, could not be replaced. It can be difficult for youngsters to understand the past, but through teaching and demonstration of the past, be it physical items or discussion by mouth, it is hoped our younger generation will learn from past and future mistakes. But also retain skills and knowhow so often lost.
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.
There is rumour that the Post by the A5 in the midlands was not decommissioned as the guy had the wrong keys and never came back. A new industrial estate has been built around or over it, so it may still be fully intact. It’s just a rumour and I’ve propagated it…
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.
You should always be super careful when visiting places like this, and carry a gas detector with you. Places that are sealed up without ventilation, can sometimes have a build up of carbon dioxide or other gases.
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 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!
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. 🙂
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.
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.
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.
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.
Many up north east UK lay untouched i opened one near newcastle and hadnt been opened since it was closed down , beds , drain , lights , toilet , paperwork , it was all there! Until a crew of chavs smashed the concrete around the hatch and got into it , its been burnt out and everything now . A huge loss of history
Thinking of the analogue nature, is it possible that this is partly a hang-over from the set up, and partly intentional to avoid the electromagnetic disruption caused by nuclear explosions?
It's mainly a holdover from the original ROC network but you're right that it offered a level of redundancy. Visual observations could also offer a level of detail that automated systems of the time could never do.
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.
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.
@@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.
13:15 getting the chemical toilet out my boat is hard enough, let alone climbing a ladder like that while holding onto it, I bet they used a rope or cable to lift and lower it.
Given the political climate and wars happening at the moment, If a nuclear strike happens the bomb will go boom 4.4 mils away from me. But if I've got my calculations right there's a good chance the house will survive, there a couple million tons of granite out the back. But we the people of Britain can die happily in the knowledge that our government(s) has survived and they can carry on afterwards. (Sarcasm) At least some of the general public who know where the bunkers are can survive and that makes me feel better. London, Birmingham, Plymouth, Strathclyde and many more places will be gone, but a cup of tea will be available.
So i dont know exactly what type of photographic paper was used. But those sheets at 24:10 look a LOT like old school blueprint paper. (also known as Cyanotype) Basically its paper coated with Potassium hexacyanoferrate and Ammonium iron citrate. Back in the day you would of used a carbon arc lamp to expose it. But thinking about it that also works quite well for this purpose. As the paper wouldnt be ruined by the small amounts of light in the bunker. And you also just need to wash the unexposed areas off with water to develop and fix it. No need for other chemicals.
Yeah there are a lot of them these and others in the UK but most have been left as ruins or lightly maintained service areas. I sort of wonder if even the UK gov knows where some of them are. IMO if they keep pushing war with Russia they should refurbish what they can as they will need them.
@@CalumRaasayYeah, just interesting places of history like you said. Problem with the one I went to as well is the hatch was removed a long time ago, so it's been open to the elements for god knows how long
Those bunkers would be useless if the Russians drooped one of their Tsar Bomba's anywhere near them 55 Mega tons. Any one in the bunker would be turned into spam, that would be your best case scenario.
Thank you for researching and publishing this interesting and accurate account of the ROC and UKWMO. I was a Post Observer in No2 Group Horsham from 1988 to 1991. I well remember going up and down that ladder during exercises - you only needed to hit the hatch counter-weight once - after that you remembered it!
Come to Alderney or Guernsey, we have some really interesting history here. There is loads of Nazi ww2 bunkers here, the only Nazi structures on british soil
I wonder if its possible for anyone doing a video to ever discuss nuclear weapons/war without showing a mushroom cloud or a bomb going off? So far I have yet to find one.
Yamato - A lesson that seems to have been forgotten. Yamato= 8 billion dollars. Douglas SBD Dauntless: (bomber 38 thousand dollars), Grumman TBM Avenger: (bomber +/-40 thousand dollars). 280 planes were sent, including bombers and torpedo bombers: 40x280: 11 million dollars. Swarm attack will most of the time win. The difference between the demand for material and human resources to build a warship versus a drone is abysmal!
We recently visited the York regional ROC HQ Cold War Bunker. A very interesting tour and history of these facilities and the network of smaller posts. I have located my nearest bunker in Eastchurch but unfortunately not accessible as it’s now on private land. Well done for an excellent video….ever considered visiting the ‘Red Sand Towers’ in the Thames Estuary??
A12 between Witham and Hatfield Peveral, the central reservation had a gap in it. This was filled in the during the early 90's but at the time, even I as a kid, could never understand why such a dangerous road feature existed - the number of cars attempting U-turns on a busy trunk road!!! Then in 2000, I understood why: It was a turn-off, into a field, north side, featuring one of these bunkers. I only found this out after accidentally stumbling across the _'Subterranean Britannica'_ website one night in my University days. There's also one in Wickham Bishops, now converted to a fibre optic junction for BT. The A12 bunker is fully extant and pretty much vandalised and flooded.
Thanks for this video, I've been interested in them ever since I found one as a kid, around 20 years ago. I've never been fortunate enough to go inside one though, so I really appreciate the video and well-gathered footage & images to portray the story. Would you know when AAOR bunkers actually became public knowledge? I've never been able to find this. I imagine that they were top secret for quite a time, but when did the ordinary person first find out about them?
In America we didn’t have these. Our country I believe was too prideful thinking we will never be hit on our own soil. I think that’s a very scary outlook to have with todays times. I did however run across an old booklet by the civil corps of engineers that tells you what to do in case of a nuclear attack here in the states. I thought it was ironic considering the leaders that are governing our world. I think we all need to be like Finland and create and maintain all the nuclear bunkers that house entire cities basically. It’s very sad that’s where they have had to put their resources, but we all really need to do the same. A lot of the world leaders seem to be unhinged today & I don’t believe any country is safe from nuclear threats. Perhaps if we were as secured as Finland is maybe our presidents wouldn’t take the cowards route when Putin’s cronies (and other nefarious leaders) begin to threaten nuclear war. 🤷🏻♀️ This was a great video. 😎👍🏻👍🏻
How nice of them. In recognition of the valuable service of the Observer Corps, they will now be known as the Royal Observer Corps. We won't pay you but you will sound a little more distinguished than before.
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10 points if you can identify the ominous music I used in the opening 30 seconds.
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.
The large bunker in Inverness
Is this the one where a guy brought a farm house and after signing for the property was informed he had a mini city under the farm house
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 😊
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@@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
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...
Something horribly ironic about spamming the middle of your own video with a anti-spam spam.
😂
Spam spam eggs and spam?
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.
The hatch was open so I doubt it was a air tight seal anymore
That was my thought too
Enclosed spaces without a gas detector is terrifying to me
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?
@@MuzzaHukkasimple ventilation should do it
@@blurtlingin a nuclear bunker 😂
@@YouSmokeChed hahaha
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.
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.
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
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!
I would have only been 4 when the ROC was stood down but it sounds like you had a great time doing your bit and met some very interesting characters. I bet they had some stories to share.
Thanks for sharing and supporting the ROC.
Gotta love that gallows humor at the end there, nothing better to keep spirits up!
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.
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. :)
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.
@@glenndouglas8822
They are free on UA-cam
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!
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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....".
Exactly and sadly it remains true today more than ever!
Really watch out about oxygen levels in enclosed spaces, it's a killer!
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!
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
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 can not even imagine what a pointless waste of resources those were.
Communication via copper telephone wires that would have been melted by any nearby blast.
A huge case of pointlessness to make out that government could respond in any meaningful way after such devastation.
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!
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
Just discovered you today, already on my fourth video, subscribed, and I'm so happy I found you! Can't wait to keep watching more!❤
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.
I'm absolutely fascinated by this moment in time & other moments around that era. Whatever we did, we did it with our full focus and dedication. I admire that & i wish we could still have something like that to this very day.. Looking at the cold war now is oddly strange because we are currently experiencing more activity and atrocities by Russia than at any moment during the Cold War.. I hope we start taking this situation more seriously and I hope European countries also take it more seriously.. The main point is Russia should not be able to feel like they can get away with this terrible behavior. Invading Ukraine & committing war crimes against Ukrainian civilians and civilian locations for 2+ yrs now.. I really wish countries would get behind Ukraine and make it clear this is utterly unacceptable from Russia.. Just thinking about the cold war I can't help but think about what's currently going on..
If the government wants to get into a nuclear slap fight with another country just remember you're not invited to the bunker.
I’ll climb into that water logged on!
I'm assuming there is a fairly large invite list from the 10 or so current ones i have found in our region that appear to be being actively maintained. Pretty sure I'm not invited either....haha
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!
How did the communication between the individual small posts and the command bunker work back then? Were there special dedicated telephone lines laid underground just for these posts? I mean, the public telephone network, usually hanging from telephone poles, would have been vaporized and blown away during an attack.
The reality is.
They wouldn't
I was a member of the ROC at 10 post Winchester group (Devizes).
It was a great time as the social side was at the ta club for the weekly meetings.
The exercises usually done on shifts between all members meant eating ration packs one minute and clearing off home for pie and chips 😆
The posts were small, but you were busy so you didn't notice it that much. As the 3 man crew meant one person slept on the bunk bed in rotation.
I spent most time outside smoking and listening to my walkman 😆
I still have my uniform and training folders.
Although it ran on batteries, we had a generator up top. Usually stored in the john.
We all got free entry to airshows as a bonus. And as a teenager it was fun and we got paid (a pittance) but it was just random folks who liked to sit around underground I guess, a bit like a womble 😆😆😆🇬🇧
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!
Anyone who survives an all out nuclear war will wish they hadn't.
Be careful who we elect to lead us. Be careful what you wish for. There's nothing romantic about nuclear war. Godspeed.
In the early 1980's, I was introduced to these bunkers while I was an Air Cadet. It was interesting to me at the time, that the UK had bothered to use these bunkers and still had the foresight to continue them to be manned. These places and people, were decimated by short sighted politicians, with only their budgets in mind to please ignorant leaders. The world continues to be a dangerous place, but this has been lost to leaders more interested in furnishing their own wants.. Even now, war rages in Europe with no response from blind government's. The history of warfare shows, that our enemies are never far away and in different guises will raise their ugly heads again. Regarding the analogue way of doing things, there are two ways of looking at this method. One: computers were in their infancy and were unreliable. Two: an analogue system was not susceptible to nuclear EMP's. Electric - Magnetic - Pulse, which fries modern transistors. Technology, has become fragile to all types of attacks, even today with GPS being disrupted over Ukraine being a clear indication, that we rely on to much digital technology, while forgetting the old skills. One does hope war is not inevitable, but removing the coup was a mistake and in a time of need, could not be replaced. It can be difficult for youngsters to understand the past, but through teaching and demonstration of the past, be it physical items or discussion by mouth, it is hoped our younger generation will learn from past and future mistakes. But also retain skills and knowhow so often lost.
Love the NEC APC computer just chilling on the desk at 31:35
I always enjoy your videos. Thank you for what you do. Cheers from Austria - keep up the great work.
A job where sciencey nerds live underground away from everyone? Sounds great!
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.
There is rumour that the Post by the A5 in the midlands was not decommissioned as the guy had the wrong keys and never came back. A new industrial estate has been built around or over it, so it may still be fully intact. It’s just a rumour and I’ve propagated it…
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.
Having a space like this to go and just relax without distraction sounds really nice, an office would be great for the focus
So crazy that you managed to see an old bunker basically untouched! Such a great video again!
You should always be super careful when visiting places like this, and carry a gas detector with you.
Places that are sealed up without ventilation, can sometimes have a build up of carbon dioxide or other gases.
I did carry an oxygen detector, and an emergency ladder on the surface. I wouldn’t really recommend any goes into these, stick to the reconstructions!
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
oh my god i was taking a picture of my bike resting against one of these just the other day
i had no idea what it was
You just had me googling the history of fluorescent strip lights, genuinely surprised they were in use that early!
Wonderful. Always Quality and Interesting. 👍👍
Thank You Calum
Glad you enjoyed it!
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!
I'm guessing they would be able to tell where the impacts were from the lack of response
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. 🙂
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.
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!
So the bunkers from Threads were real.
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.
"After 30 years the locks had disapeared" Scottish humor. Someone def did that for you... lol is it technicly public property?
Haha they definitely didn’t do it for me! But yeah they get cut into an opened a lot. That one has actually been open for close to a year
Ha! I see you trying to trick me into leaving a like with your less than liminal messaging. Jokes on you. I already did it.
Hahaha I was wondering if anyone caught that 😂
Anything cold-war era is so interesting to me. I cant imagine feeling the tension of nations preparing for a potential nuclear war..
Google ....
Struggle for survival written by
Steve Fox
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.
Many up north east UK lay untouched i opened one near newcastle and hadnt been opened since it was closed down , beds , drain , lights , toilet , paperwork , it was all there! Until a crew of chavs smashed the concrete around the hatch and got into it , its been burnt out and everything now . A huge loss of history
Thinking of the analogue nature, is it possible that this is partly a hang-over from the set up, and partly intentional to avoid the electromagnetic disruption caused by nuclear explosions?
It's mainly a holdover from the original ROC network but you're right that it offered a level of redundancy. Visual observations could also offer a level of detail that automated systems of the time could never do.
@@CalumRaasay huge thanks for the info! Another fab video btw!
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.
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.
It's a good day, a new Calum video!
I don't want to touch anything.""
Proceeds to touch the battery box and timer switch. :) Should have taken pictured of that manual. All the pages.
Haha I think they could handle a few finger prints!
@@CalumRaasay True. Looks like the timer know was made of plastic. 60 year old plastic luckily wasn't brittle.
Look at burlington bunker in corsham
Loved the throw back to adds Incoming in the top right corner.
A very interesting watch Calum thanks. Have you visited the bunker at St. Andrews too? I remember going there as a child
13:15 getting the chemical toilet out my boat is hard enough, let alone climbing a ladder like that while holding onto it, I bet they used a rope or cable to lift and lower it.
Oh god don’t let that rope slip 💩
Given the political climate and wars happening at the moment, If a nuclear strike happens the bomb will go boom 4.4 mils away from me. But if I've got my calculations right there's a good chance the house will survive, there a couple million tons of granite out the back.
But we the people of Britain can die happily in the knowledge that our government(s) has survived and they can carry on afterwards. (Sarcasm)
At least some of the general public who know where the bunkers are can survive and that makes me feel better.
London, Birmingham, Plymouth, Strathclyde and many more places will be gone, but a cup of tea will be available.
Fun fact, Highland Council is selling theirs in Inverness.
So i dont know exactly what type of photographic paper was used. But those sheets at 24:10 look a LOT like old school blueprint paper. (also known as Cyanotype) Basically its paper coated with Potassium hexacyanoferrate and Ammonium iron citrate. Back in the day you would of used a carbon arc lamp to expose it. But thinking about it that also works quite well for this purpose. As the paper wouldnt be ruined by the small amounts of light in the bunker. And you also just need to wash the unexposed areas off with water to develop and fix it. No need for other chemicals.
I just watched a few videos about these bunkers and the ROC a couple days ago. You have a eerie habit of doing that!
The movie tracking shot at 33:04 is epic, and those guys look hard as nails! Brilliant.
Am so glad we never had nuke drills in Australia. Fantastic episode thanks
Yeah there are a lot of them these and others in the UK but most have been left as ruins or lightly maintained service areas. I sort of wonder if even the UK gov knows where some of them are. IMO if they keep pushing war with Russia they should refurbish what they can as they will need them.
I ventured to one near me the other day, if I'd had someone with me I'd have gone in, but it was deeper than I expected
It’s probably not worth it considering how dirty and flooded they tend to be 😂
@@CalumRaasayYeah, just interesting places of history like you said. Problem with the one I went to as well is the hatch was removed a long time ago, so it's been open to the elements for god knows how long
Those bunkers would be useless if the Russians drooped one of their Tsar Bomba's anywhere near them 55 Mega tons. Any one in the bunker would be turned into spam, that would be your best case scenario.
Thank you for researching and publishing this interesting and accurate account of the ROC and UKWMO. I was a Post Observer in No2 Group Horsham from 1988 to 1991. I well remember going up and down that ladder during exercises - you only needed to hit the hatch counter-weight once - after that you remembered it!
Come to Alderney or Guernsey, we have some really interesting history here. There is loads of Nazi ww2 bunkers here, the only Nazi structures on british soil
I wonder if its possible for anyone doing a video to ever discuss nuclear weapons/war without showing a mushroom cloud or a bomb going off? So far I have yet to find one.
I know these are all over the UK but I think that’s the one not far off where I live too haha
flicking through the pages of that book almost gave me an Airborne Headache
the newer ones are so much bigger and more secret.
Gteat video. I'll need to visit the museum one.
I was interested in this video, up until the lie about spam just as he was filming, just to peddle crap. I unsubscribed and closed video…..
Yamato - A lesson that seems to have been forgotten. Yamato= 8 billion dollars. Douglas SBD Dauntless: (bomber 38 thousand dollars), Grumman TBM Avenger: (bomber +/-40 thousand dollars). 280 planes were sent, including bombers and torpedo bombers: 40x280: 11 million dollars. Swarm attack will most of the time win. The difference between the demand for material and human resources to build a warship versus a drone is abysmal!
29:38 is this an xbox on the left?
imagine you have to live down there in that state.
We recently visited the York regional ROC HQ Cold War Bunker. A very interesting tour and history of these facilities and the network of smaller posts. I have located my nearest bunker in Eastchurch but unfortunately not accessible as it’s now on private land. Well done for an excellent video….ever considered visiting the ‘Red Sand Towers’ in the Thames Estuary??
A12 between Witham and Hatfield Peveral, the central reservation had a gap in it. This was filled in the during the early 90's but at the time, even I as a kid, could never understand why such a dangerous road feature existed - the number of cars attempting U-turns on a busy trunk road!!! Then in 2000, I understood why: It was a turn-off, into a field, north side, featuring one of these bunkers. I only found this out after accidentally stumbling across the _'Subterranean Britannica'_ website one night in my University days. There's also one in Wickham Bishops, now converted to a fibre optic junction for BT. The A12 bunker is fully extant and pretty much vandalised and flooded.
Thanks for this video, I've been interested in them ever since I found one as a kid, around 20 years ago. I've never been fortunate enough to go inside one though, so I really appreciate the video and well-gathered footage & images to portray the story.
Would you know when AAOR bunkers actually became public knowledge? I've never been able to find this. I imagine that they were top secret for quite a time, but when did the ordinary person first find out about them?
Love your work!
I’m just miffed they would supply headquarters with an Xbox360 while leaving their observers stuck in a box with scantly a Gameboy.
In America we didn’t have these. Our country I believe was too prideful thinking we will never be hit on our own soil. I think that’s a very scary outlook to have with todays times. I did however run across an old booklet by the civil corps of engineers that tells you what to do in case of a nuclear attack here in the states. I thought it was ironic considering the leaders that are governing our world. I think we all need to be like Finland and create and maintain all the nuclear bunkers that house entire cities basically. It’s very sad that’s where they have had to put their resources, but we all really need to do the same. A lot of the world leaders seem to be unhinged today & I don’t believe any country is safe from nuclear threats. Perhaps if we were as secured as Finland is maybe our presidents wouldn’t take the cowards route when Putin’s cronies (and other nefarious leaders) begin to threaten nuclear war. 🤷🏻♀️
This was a great video. 😎👍🏻👍🏻
How nice of them. In recognition of the valuable service of the Observer Corps, they will now be known as the Royal Observer Corps. We won't pay you but you will sound a little more distinguished than before.