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Comment by fasouto | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit random, but when I was an intern at CERN I spent a summer living in an old civil defense bunker near Geneva.

Short-term accommodation was notoriously expensive for students back then (probably even worse now), and I didn't hesitate when they offered me this unconventional housing opportunity.

The bunker had a decontamination zone, air filtering system, massive concrete doors, a large communal kitchen, and numerous small bunk beds. It was adequate for short-term use, but we encountered two main issues:

- It's remarkably easy to lose track of time without natural light cues

- Even with the air filering system wet clothes wouldn't dry properly inside

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> - It's remarkably easy to lose track of time without natural light cues

What was wild to me moving to the US from France was how many office buildings have many rooms without windows: you could be in your office or in meeting rooms and there are just zero natural light. Same in doctor's offices where you're always seen in a windowless window. Would drive me crazy if I had to work there all day.

Windowless office spaces are so miserable to me. Often under-ventilated and overlit with unpleasant artificial light as well.

On this topic, something window-related that’s common in France but rare in the US is functional shutters—it’s so nice to be able to completely close a shutter outside your bedroom window and have pitch blackness, regardless of the light outside. The best you get in a typical American house is "blackout" curtains or shades that leak tons of light around the edges.

That seems to be a Mediterranean thing. Pitch black shutters are common also in Italy and (AFAIK) Spain. No idea about the eastern and southern Mediterranean.

Rolling shutters are the norm in Italy. Old houses or country houses have traditional shutters, in the latter case mostly because of aesthetics. They come in two varieties: they open like the doors of wardrobe or they slide on a rail on the outside of the wall. All of them used to be made of wood, they are PVC or aluminum now. Windows with only heavy dark curtains inside basically are not a thing.

No idea about the reason. Some random ideas. 1) no need to protect against excessive cold and wind (curtains are very useful for that) and it's ok to open a window and open or close shutters. 2) hail can break glass windows and shutters protect them. Are hail storms historically common also in northern Europe? Maybe not.

They are also common in France and Germany:

These shutters serve as insulation in locations prone to harsh weather conditions, safeguarding windows from hail damage and designed to endure strong winds.

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_shutter

Insulation. When the day is hot and night cool, and humidity relatively low, use thick walls to moderate the temperature swings. Close the windows by mid-morning to block out the sun and keep the inside cool. Open them in the evening to cool off.

I strongly prefer windowless offices for work. The outside looks distracting (enticing), people walk by, the light is bright, etc. My ideal work environment would be a small room with a door that closes and excellent sound isolation and ambient lighting control. But I am definitely not typical.

More modern buildings are nothing but transparent glass. It feels like working in a fishbowl.

I'm in civil protection service in Switzerland and occasionally spend a few days at a time in one of these doing basically office work or running refresher courses etc., definitely agree on the losing track of time thing --- can't count the number of times I've come up at 4--5pm and been extremely surprised by how light or dark, sunny or rainy it was

Of course there's a technical solution:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43497394

Everyone seems to go for LEDs to simulate outdoor lighting for this kind of purpose, when there is another way that seems much more elegant to me: fiber-optic solar lighting.

https://www.shieldenchannel.com/blogs/solar-panels/fiber-opt...

Indeed more elegant, but also more pricey. The LED solution was $1000, which could still be affordable for a student living in a bunker. It's also easier to install, especially if you don't own the place and cannot run thick fiber bundles through the walls.

Yeah, it's something best planned with construction, and a bit pricey, but worth keeping in mind for anyone who intends to build a bunker. :)

Also not bad for high efficiency net zero type homes to supplement natural light without too many windows compromising the thermal envelope. I personally like the variability of natural light for how it keeps you connected to the outdoors. You know when a cloud is overhead or the sun is rising or setting. I've simulated sunset and sunrise with LEDs through color temp and timing but I've always wanted to experience the solar fiber type.

I’d prefer not relying on electricity

Presumably you also need a system to produce light indoors at night. You might as well have a single solution for both day- and night-time that uses renewable energy.

This is a nuclear bunker. Electricity might not be available or scarce.

By the time external electricity is not available (assuming it was ever brought in, in the first place), you probably want to lose track of time.

Oh yes, also natural light itself might be scarce.

I bet the air filtration system runs on electricity, they probably have a backup generator that lasts X number of days. After that you won't have clean air so light won't be an issue either.

The bigger cold war era civil defense bunkers around here (Czech Republic) usually have the following design for ventilation: * one or two filtration rooms, powered by electricity with optional manual backup * one or two diesel generators to provide electricity for the filtration system, lighting and other equipment * high pressure oxygen bottles for couple hours of total isolation - intended for the first few hours after a nuclear detonation when the regular filtration equpment could be overwhelmed by short halflife fallout and smoke/lack of oxygen due to the firestorm of the city arround burning

Examples of such shelters: - general purpose shleter Denis (capacity op to 2000 people): https://podzemibrno.cz/en/places-underground/cover-denis-und... - army headquarters shelter in the Vypustek cave (capacity 100+ people): https://vypustek.caves.cz/en - 10-Z shelter, Brno area civil defense headquarters (capacity 100+ people): https://10-z.cz/en/

Smaller shelters that could be found under many 50s era building were much more rudimentary, usually without idepedent source of electricity and just simple hand cranked filtration system.

Sounds to me it is closer to a student housing project that happens to be in a bunker.

You almost certainly need it for ventilation and probably water pumps anyway.

Any bunker worth its salt will have on-prem generators and a lllaaarrrrgggeee fuel supply.

In high school we were having growing pangs, and so several of my classes were held in temporary trailers that had been hauled onto campus for that purpose. They were serviceable and not particularly hostile, and arguably more modern than the existing classrooms we were using anyway.

Then I graduate and enroll in a cushy university (UCSD) and come to find out, they're also having growing pangs, and so in the middle of campus we found ourselves taking classes in Quonset huts. These Quonset huts were bona fide military surplus, though it was already 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quonset_hut

The Quonset huts were extraordinarily different from the classrooms and lab facilities we used on campus; they were, of course, comparatively set out in the wilderness, and very rough accommodations overall.

However, I was a commuting student, and nobody was living in Quonset huts, so after our hourlong class was dismissed, I was able to retreat to the relative comfort of home, or the Theodore Geisel library.

I worked at UCSD in one of the "temporary" classroom/offices next to the Eucalyptus Point dining hall. We had a family of raccoons under ours for several years, which I blamed on the questionable shoring and piers that supported those.

In addition, one of my co-workers was heavy enough such that he could deform the floor in one just by standing up and walking around, so much so that pens/markers would roll off nearby desks as he went past.

> In high school we were having growing pangs

weren't we all...

I wish. I never really had a "spurt" or "pangs".

It was already a pain in 2003 and the whole process looks like hunting for a job with interview process and everything.

For us it was a schock, versus the usual "you can pay it is yours", first come first served that we had back in Portugal.

However while not living in a bunker, we did have parties in some somehow converted into clubs.

>while not living in a bunker, we did have parties in some somehow converted into clubs.

Apparently in Bratislava, there is a club inside what was a fallout bunker underneath what was the king's palace but now serves as the residence of the... PM I think? Maybe president? My memory is hazy.

(Not due to the technobunker party sadly -- I was passing through on a weekday and it was sadly closed, so no uhn tiss tiss for me.)

Summer students at CERN lives in CERN Meyrin hostel nowadays. I heard that this make life much easier for them. But it is more affordable than anything in Geneva or Meyrin. And definitely would fit the low O(2) accepted students. At the expense of "gently" kicking everyone else.

Hopefully the students weren’t low O_2 when they lived in bunkers.

I realized now that I used this jargon and would have different meaning too :D

Just for reference, some people in particle physics would use this to refer to O(x) where x is the order of magnitude number. so O(2) would means hundreds. So “low O(2)” would mean low hundreds, say around 200–300.

How do you deal with the mold problem?

Control moisture in the air?

If they controlled moisture in the air then the clothes would dry properly.

Excuse my lack of experience in that matter, but with modern inventions like the watch shouldn’t keeping track of time be something that is possible?

Time is a feeling too, it’s the sense of time that goes awry. Like casinos attempt to mimic.

I worked in a casino and I don't think the owners or the design are intentionally trying to fool you any more than a department store would. You are distracted playing games and lose all track of time since it's more engaging than shopping for socks.

Casino design employs various tactics to make players lose track of time, encouraging longer play and increased spending. These techniques include eliminating clocks and windows, using maze-like layouts, and manipulating sensory experiences like lighting, sound, and scent.

I know your point is they don’t do it more than department stores do, and you might very well be right. I think it is probably hard to prove either way.

https://www.e-architect.com/articles/the-psychology-behind-c...

I've been in plenty of department stores with windows though. And I don't think I've been to any that drew a false sky on the ceiling. Many stores and malls have skylights too, although when they're the translucent ones, they might be also uplit, so you might not notice it's dark outside.

I think there's at least a difference of degree, but I think it's more than that.

Department stores want you to be intrigued and maybe pick up extra stuff on the way to the thing you actually want to buy, but they don't necessarily want you to loiter. Idle loitering doesn't get you more purchases, at least not immediately.

This is different from a casino, where the most likely thing you'll do if loitering is to sit at a table or machine and gamble more.

Pretty much everything about a casino is intentionally designed to make you lose track of time.

Source: "Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas" by Schüll

https://www.amazon.com/Addiction-Design-Machine-Gambling-Veg...

Are there clocks in your casino so people can note how long they've been playing?

Why would a casino have clocks are there clocks in most businesses? Everyone and his dog has a watch or more likely these days everyone has a smartphone with a clock on it.

People used to think we pumped oxygen into the casino too. It would be a fire hazard, and expensive to buy oxygen and maintain such a system. The casino where I worked for 13 years was so cheap they took away the kleenex from the staff locker room, downgraded the toilet paper, cut out staff parties.

> Excuse my lack of experience in that matter, but with modern inventions like the watch shouldn’t keeping track of time be something that is possible?

No, just like the existence of books or the internet doesn't relieve you of needing to know stuff.

Everyone has internal sense of time that relies on external natural cues. A watch is a kludgy bolt-on that's not well integrated with one's awareness.

Your body will disagree with the watch at some point.

Imagine being stuck sick at home or in the hospital for an extended period of time - you will lose track of which weekday it is.

As someone who is semi-retired I definitely have to sometimes check to confirm what day it is.

What’s the day today?

The mind absent of daylight stimulation will develop a completely different sense of time

https://howandwhys.com/michel-siffre-time-experiment-body-sl...

26 years ago I was interviewing for a sysadmin job in an academic setting. And I was invited to my prospective coworker's office. He was a software developer, mostly, but jack-of-all-trades for the office systems. There was a lot of data processing involved.

His office featured a Sun workstation on his desktop, and a desk piled rather high with paperwork and whatnot. There was absolutely no wall clock anywhere to be found. His workstation's desktop also did not feature a clock. There was really no indication of the passage of time in that space.

I drank in the import of this, and I asked him if it was true, and he agreed readily. I was sort of amazed. But it was also quite humbling that he could construct such a space, where he could basically throw himself into his work and dedicate as much time as necessary, until his stomach or fatigue drew him back into the real world.

People did commonly wear watches as well. I'm somewhat bemused to recall that, around the time of the Apple Watch announcement, so many people scoffed that young people don't wear watches any longer. Of course, we see how that went and they have timepieces in their pocket in any case.

I'm actually not sure if, after a recent post-fire rebuild, if I will have a readily viewable clock in my kitchen or not.

I mean, we just have integrated pocket-watches.

Past, present and future is nothing but a stubborn illusion!

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