Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker (part two)

...after entering through the huge doors, designed to withstand... well... a nuclear blast, we enter the bunker proper.


The is a large room where the location of blasts can be plotted on maps - along with the effects presumably.  Chillingly there are reports written on blackboards of phantom nuclear blasts which have not in fact happened - you hope.


You don't feel deep underground because the entrance tunnel is very long and slopes down very gently - in fact you are deep down under an artificial hill which has been built above the bunker, and quite a way down again after that.
There is a feeling that one would be safe down here - but also that the safety might be worse in the long run.


In small rooms films play, like the famous 'Protect and Survive' public information film, and a few families sit around uneasily watching them.  It seems appropriate entertainment for the surroundings.  We go on through many more rooms and corridors and a large central staircase which shows the full three levels of the bunker.


There is a room filled with antiquated typewriter like devices - not exactly computers and nice chunky old telephones.  The whole place is a dream for the lover of analogue technology and radio signals.  There is a small BBC radio studio, little more than a cupboard, from which hopeless survival broadcasts could have been broadcast - Margaret Thatcher appears to sit behind the desk - a mannequin wearing a spitting image type mask.  An ironic touch.


Wandering round underground rooms and tunnels is rather exciting in itself, but the thought of being stranded down here, waiting and breathing and fearing whatever you might find when you lift the lid and emerge into the new age - it's atmospheric in the extreme.


One large room has governmental department signs around the walls - as if the civil service departments had been reduced to a desk and some folders - which under the circumstances would be pretty much the case...  Dummies wearing radiation suits and tattered clothes - bland faced, waxen victims - stand around among the mild accessories of government and the strip lights shed a yellow, flickery light on the scene.  


We proceed toward the hospital area and the cardboard coffins...