Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers: The Passive Defence of the Western World during the Cold War (review)

Nick McCamley specializes in writing books about “secret” underground places, including underground cities, underground disasters, underground protective sites for British art treasures during war, and the quarries around Avoncliff in Wiltshire. Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers complements the theme and was designed as a sequel to his book Secret Underground Cities (London: Pen & Sword Books, 1998), which details the United Kingdom’s underground architecture of the Second World War. The enthusiasm demonstrated in his previous work for all things secret and underground is carried forward into the Cold War setting, where the challenges of providing command and control, security, and some elements of survivability in the era of thermonuclear bombs became even more formidable.

McCamley’s book is engaging, but I should note that my interest in the subject stems from my own related research into Cold War history and my shared familiarity with the United Kingdom, which, curiously, also includes stumbling across interesting and occasionally odd sights while cycling through the countryside. For readers who did not grow up during the Cold War, or who may not be that familiar with Western strategic thinking during the Cold War, the book may be challenging. McCamley makes it clear that his objective is not to examine the strategic assumptions or doctrine underpinning the rationale for the nuclear bunkers, command-and-control centers, and civil defense sites, other than in a perfunctory manner. As such, this is not a book for the uninitiated reader.

McCamley’s book builds on previous work in the field, such as Duncan Campbell, War Plan UK: The Truth about Civil Defence in Britain (London: Burnett Books, 1982) and William Arkin and Richard Fieldhouse, Nuclear Battlefields: Global Links in the Arms Race (Pensacola: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1985). McCamley’s book is limited to the passive defenses of the “Western World,” which means North America and the United Kingdom. He commences with the American “Big Bunkers,” most notably Raven Rock Mountain in Pennsylvania, which serves as the Alternate Joint Communications Center, and Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center in Virginia, the alternative seat of civil government in nuclear war. Greenbrier, which serves as the congressional bunker, and Mount Pony, as the Federal Reserve bunker, also make appearances. In each case the reader is treated to considerable, almost overwhelming, detail. The size of fuel tanks, the kilowattage of emergency generators, the thickness of blast-resistant doors, and the presence of front companies whose real job was to maintain certain facilities may occasionally distract the reader’s focus from the bigger picture.

The chapter on North American radars is particularly interesting. The ill-fated Texas Towers, located 100 miles offshore, illustrate a wider point about the often adverse climate that many facilities had to endure, compounded frequently by relatively inaccessible and remote locations. The possibility of technical malfunctions, including one time when a simulated attack nearly triggered a real-world response at the Combat Operations Center of the North American Air Defense Command, also reminds the reader of the challenges (and perils) of the readiness for split-second responses—the “wargasm,” in Herman Kahn’s memorable phrase describing nuclear strategy in the 1950s. Even thought the development of sophisticated warning systems to defend the Western world absorbed considerable resources, many of the systems, once in situ, were very quickly moribund.

McCamley ties together the transatlantic aspects of the book nicely by using the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System and the Distant Early Warning lines as a way of introducing the reader to the important roles that Canada and the United Kingdom played in early warning for the United States and, by implication, in U.S. plans for the continuity of government. Canadian readers may be a little disappointed that cold war bunkers in Canada are addressed in only a single chapter, whereas different facets of the United Kingdom’s civil defense are covered in exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting...