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Comment by staplung | Hacker News Reader

Apocalypse proof? We need something like an IPX scale. Maybe this is like AP5: able to withstand small-arms fire, molotov cocktails and, I dunno, zombie mandibles? But not cruise missiles, direct artillery fire, or giant transforming robots.

Making something "nuclear hardened" is evidently not as high a bar as one might suppose. Setting aside that I don't know of any actual standards it appears that what's required is an ability to withstand a certain overpressure and provide some amount of radiation shielding. A windowless, reinforced concrete building would do pretty nicely without even trying for extra credit. I guess the idea being that nuclear-proof is impossible for normal, baryonic matter: a near enough blast from a big enough bomb will vaporize anything.

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I have worked in a number of nuclear hardened facilities. Some more than others. There certainly are robust standards for this, as I recall quite a bit of fuss around even the small details. Typically what you see is everything is electrically isolated. On-site power, EMP hardened with shielding everywhere. All mechanical and electrical equipment suspended. Several feet of concrete on all sides. They told us it was intended to withstand near impact and I believed that it could. At least structurally. I’m not sure the people inside would fare the same.

I also spent some time inside Cheyenne mountain. That is next level hardening. I have no doubt you could hit it with 50 nukes and the people inside would hardly notice. Of course, other than it specifically being their job to know that we’re being nuked.

I wonder what the point is in nuclear hardened telecoms exchanges though.

Sure it and its equipment might survive but everything around it will be fried by the blast and its EMP. So who you're gonna call?

Remember these were the days of AUTOVON[0], so the answer to your question was probably “five star generals in other nuclear hardened bunkers”.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autovon

I know, we had something similar in the Netherlands (in fact we still do). An independent phone network for the government.

But my point is: You can protect the building. What about the trunk lines going all the way to those other bunkers? They're not immune to nuclear blasts and in the days it matters they were made of copper which can catch EMP directly.

These days they will be fibre which is EMP immune of course but the repeaters are not.

Long Lines had a vast network of nuclear-hardened microwave towers spanning the lower 48 that predominantly carried network traffic. From the article, the vents in the building in Manhattan also disguised microwave feed horns. There was some coax in the network where there wasn’t line of sight linking two nodes, but that was the exception and came later in the network’s existence, I believe.

I’m not sure what EMP protections could have been applied to microwave equipment on the towers, but my assumption is that it might have been easier to defend against than a massive piece of coax in the ground as a big EMP inductor.

Wow that is pretty severe, I would imagine cables would be much easier to EMP shield, by laying them in grounded metal pipes. Because this has to be done for the entire length this is still a huge problem of course. And not really feasible over long distances.

But a microwave antenna (especially one that size) is basically one giant EMP collector :) It's pretty impossible to protect that. I guess if they did that, they would have just let the receivers blow and replace them later with spare parts shielded inside the building. You can't practically shield them from EMP because then they won't work anymore, and overdimensioning them so they could cope with the EMP would be almost impossible considering the huge gain of those antennas.

Ghostbusters?

The Soviets had a SS-18 mod with a single large warhead (20 or 25Mt) that was presumably intended for targets like Cheyenne and Raven Rock mountains.

Maybe the Deep Underground Command Center if that had been built might have survived that kind of strike:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Underground_Command_Cente...

IIRC the PSAC II building, also in NYC, is designed so that someone can fly a plane into it without anyone inside really noticing.

Well the twin towers were also supposed to withstand an airplane collision.

Which in fact they did, but they didn't withstand the heat from the fire afterwards.

I kinda doubt this kind of statement since then.

That was still a really big deal. The terrorists expected the towers to collapse immediately on impact. Everyone who was in the towers that morning and didn't die was saved by the "airplane-proof" construction.

> The terrorists expected the towers to collapse immediately on impact.

Where do we know this from? We can't ask them about that.

I don't know if it was mentioned in the documents that were found. But either way, the "airplane-proof" design did save thousands of lives, even if it failed to save thousands more.

i'd bet on it for fission plant containment buildings

The WTC towers were constructed to withstand a 1970s jet (707, DC-8, etc) that was on approach to JFK/LGA, hence at low speed and not full of fuel. This was not the scenario on 9/11.

This thing probably has extensive underground levels as well.

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