Underground?!

September 22, 2007 12:55 AM

Secret tunnels under the U.S.?

I recently came across someone's blog about his exploration of the tunnels underneath UT. I found it rather exciting. I came across this person's reply:

It looks like you people stumbled on a Deep Underground Miltary Base known as D.U.M.S… There are 146 Bases throughout America and many subterrainian tunnels leading upto Universities. You aquired level 1 , this is where the transit and parking lots are and trains for the tube shuttles. Lucky you did not make it any farther. They have orders to shoot to kill people with no badges. That tunnel links up with the tunnel network and goes down 4 and one half miles . Over 20 levels. You made it to level one. Thanks for the pictures. I was hoping someone would have got a closeup picture of a Tube shuttle. Those fuckers can do Mach 2.7

I was wondering if this person was just making it all up or if there are some facts behind what he said. (Also, if any of you know of some interesting unused tunnels near the San Diego area, that would be nice. Google hasn't really helped me on this one. Thanks MeFites!)

posted by lain to law & government (25 comments total)

Well, either the guy is crazy, or he was referencing Closing Time, the sequel to Catch-22 in which tunnels under most of the US are used to protect leaders in the case of a nuclear holocaust, and entrances are hidden throughout, with super fast trains connecting them all.
posted by scodger at 1:01 AM on September 22, 2007

Anyway, the commenter is just fucking with peopple.

Most university campuses do have steam tunnel complexes, and there are all sorts of drain tunnels and things under cities.

Check out this and this AskMe, and this interview in BLDGBLOG, which has some other tunnel posts in the archives too, I think.

But um, yeah, there isn't a secret abandoned American underground military base network.
posted by blacklite at 1:09 AM on September 22, 2007

Argh. It would have made life more interesting.
posted by lain at 1:11 AM on September 22, 2007

I had an interview, in college, with an organization called US Investigations, which had just prior to my interview been privatized from what was previously the Office of Personnel Management, or something like that - a branch of the Fed that was privatized under the Clinton admin.

The interview was to take place outside of Beaver, PA, if I remember correctly (it was about half an hour's drive from the town of Grove City, where I went to school, I remember that much). I was told to bring a myriad of forms of identification, and I knew they were already conducting a background investigation on me (the job I was interviewing for was that of an investigations officer - investigating people trying to get jobs at nuclear facilities, etc.).

Anyway, the rainy day came, and I borrowed someone's car and drove out there. Middle of the steely hills of northwestern PA, not the place I was expecting to see a bunch of office buildings. Pretty soon I came upon what I figured had to be the parking lots, the hills on either side of the road were covered with lots full of parked cars. But there weren't any buildings anywhere.

Eventually I found parking, and then started following a walkway near a side road that didn't have any posted directions, but seemed to be about the only way to go besides back to the main road. It started winding down between two hills, out of site of the main road and parking lots, and after a sharp turn and descent, I was in a smallish canyon, still following the road down. Eventually it came to a cavernous entrance, big enough to drive a tractor-trailer through, but only one in either direction at a time. It was an entrance straight into the side of the hills we were now under, and the road was still sloping down as it passed out of view into the dark behind the massive steel gates.

I can't say much more about what happened after the gates, but I'd estimate there were about 1500 - 2000 cars in those parking lots that afternoon, so you do the math on the size of the facility I walked into.
posted by allkindsoftime at 1:32 AM on September 22, 2007 [4 favorites has favorites]

This is also relevant
posted by the number 17 at 1:32 AM on September 22, 2007

Yes, this person is making it all up
posted by A189Nut at 1:33 AM on September 22, 2007

The big clue is the underground shuttles doing "Mach 2.7" (2055 miles per hour).
posted by wackybrit at 1:50 AM on September 22, 2007

Here's your clue:

Deep Underground Miltary Base known as D.U.M.S

If you'll note, the correct acronym for this would be D.U.M.B.

I suspect this is not accidental.
posted by Malor at 3:11 AM on September 22, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Yeah, some friends and I explored tunnels under a big Unviersity in Ohio. There were metal doors in the ground all over campus and we discovered most, if not all of the buildings, and many various access points throughout the campus grounds were connected with these tunnels. Once inside them, you could pop up and out any of those doors. Which was super dangerous if a janitor saw you, or, say, a door was in a parking lot and a truck ran over it while you were climbing out.. very cool, but created for nothing more than access to water pipes, electrical lines, etc. And they didn't go anywhere but campus. For extra-super verification, my dad was an architect at the U and knew all about 'em.
posted by white light at 4:14 AM on September 22, 2007

I don't know about universities or military bases, but Walt Disney World has a huge system of tunnels running underneath it. It makes it so that cast members can go from place to place without walking through a part of a park that doesn't correspond with their costume (e.g., so that Future Land cast members don't have to walk through Adventure Land at Magic Kingdom). Those "cast members only" doors you see are often entrances.

Check out History Channel's Cities of the Underworld if you love this kind of thing.
posted by dondiego87 at 6:51 AM on September 22, 2007

There are some underground installations, like Chyeanne Mountain, setup for intelligence purposes or to run our nuclear defense. So there's a grain of truth in the story, but as far as I know there aren't any that run under the entirety of the US.
posted by craven_morhead at 8:13 AM on September 22, 2007

I was recently told about a project that was supposedly stalled in Minneapolis due to this kind of thing. One of the big telcos (I was told) wanted to run fiber optic cable under the downtown area, and was having trouble getting plans from the city to show what was already under the ground. Apparently there was just a big blank spot in the middle of the official drawings. After months of fruitlessly trying to find out what was in that blank spot, they were clued in by an official who told them to give up. The guy said there's a top secret underground bunker for the president in case he's in town when an attack occurs, and the government will never release the plans that show exactly where or how it's constructed.

I have no idea whether this was true, but it came from a well-connected and usually-trustworthy source. I'd love to know more.
posted by vytae at 8:41 AM on September 22, 2007

I an area near me, there was a story about a secret underground military complex built during WWII then later sealed and abandoned. There was nothing to substantiate it, just some old-timers who reckoned they remembered digging equipment in the area back in the 40's, and that what they were digging was military and secret.

Fast forward about 50 years, and a couple of journalists decided to investigate. Around about that time, related WWII stuff was being declassified, and so they were able to dig up enough info to find the tunnels - they did exist, and they had been untouched and forgotten since the 40's. At which point the city is like "Oh... we have stuff here we didn't know about!", and made them into a bit of a tourist thing.

For many reasons, I think the guy in this case is pulling your leg, but my point is that if you want to find secret tunnels, there are doubtless some out there to find. But it will take more investigation than reading comments on the internet.

An example of even lower-hanging fruit, recently on ebay, there was a plot of real estate that included an abandoned nuclear missile silo. From the ground, it was just desert with the odd old slab of concrete. But underground are (empty) nuke-hardened tunnels and silo system. Some of the tunnels had graffiti in them, so some of the locals had clearly found a way in and used it as their secret clubhouse :)
posted by -harlequin- at 9:27 AM on September 22, 2007

allkindsoftime and others talking about US govt military installations - check out the 5 College Book Depository in Amherst MA. It's dug into the side of a mountain and was formerly a nuclear command site, hardened to survive a Soviet first strike so the US could launch planes from nearby AFB. When the government sold it to the Five Colleges in the 1990s, they had stripped it and wouldn't say what the facility had been for. There is a historian at Amherst College who has done a project finding people who were involved in its construction or who worked there and he has found some pretty cool stuff.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:20 AM on September 22, 2007

This may be of interest to you. I know that William and Mary has tunnels leading from the Wren Building that have been closed off for years, but it seems that other colleges have some that are still open.
posted by Flamingo at 10:25 AM on September 22, 2007

the greenbrier resort in west virginia has a series of underground tunnels and bunkers for the president/congress in case of a nuclear attack. it's since been decommissioned (or so they say). you can see pictures here.
posted by kerning at 11:21 AM on September 22, 2007

See also.
posted by alms at 12:28 PM on September 22, 2007

Also, if any of you know of some interesting unused tunnels near the San Diego area, that would be nice.

I recall reading (at least 10 years ago) in the SD newspapers about some branch of the sewer/storm drain system downtown that had been "forgotten," in the sense of not being maintained or represented on any maps. It was built in the 20s or 30s and had rather ornate brickwork by modern standards. That's all I remember. (it had a photo)

There are some really cool subterranean things in Point Loma that were built during WWII, such as the bunkers and batteries, many of which still exist. My dad told me of one time he had to go in there for his job (non-military) and he saw gigantic rooms housing huge mainframes. This link can tell you more.

I'm not a geologist, but I would guess the coastal sandstone that makes up a large part of the SD metro area doesn't really lend itself to the kind of gigantic underground complexes you have in mind. I could be wrong.
posted by Brian James at 12:42 PM on September 22, 2007

Haha! The commenter was just messing with people. As other people have said, lots of campuses (college or otherwise) have these underground tunnel systems. My boarding school's sprawling campus had them, and the college I currently attend has them as well (and I've had the opportunity to explore them!).
posted by roomwithaview at 12:56 PM on September 22, 2007

There's a local legend that University of Tampa has a bunch of tunnels under it, carved by Teddy Roosevelt. When he and his Rough Riders camped out here on the way to Cuba, they stayed in the hotel which later became the UT main building, and -- or so the story goes -- they needed a quick escape should someone decide to hit Tampa.

I find this hard to believe, because the river is right next to the buildings, and the water table around here is much too high to allow for basements. That neighborhood is underwater after a good rain. Forget tunnels.

Still, it's a fun story to tease out-of-state students with. "Oh, you moved here to go to UT? Find the tunnels yet?"
posted by cmyk at 5:34 PM on September 22, 2007

Check out infiltration.org and browse the urban exploration forums if this is an interest of yours. They might have info on what you're talking about, or other things that tickle your fancy.
posted by loiseau at 8:05 PM on September 22, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Building something like this would be quite expensive and rather public; consider the debate over the MX missile system.
posted by eritain at 8:29 PM on September 22, 2007

http://www.westword.com/2007-08-30/news/dia-conspiracies-take-off/full

I want to believe.
posted by 4Lnqvv at 9:44 AM on September 23, 2007

I don't know if it's tunnels or what, but there's something underground in various parts of Northern Virginia that's monitored remotely by guys with black vans. I know this sounds nuts, but I know several people who had run ins with these folks in remote areas - once in Reston, one in Manassas.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 7:01 PM on September 23, 2007

There's an underground garden in Fresno--the Forestier garden. It sounds pretty unusual, but I've never actually been there (sad sad).

There's also a lot of stuff further north, for example a late 1800s/early 1900s city underneath Pendleton, Oregon.

You can find more here, just go through the flash navigation on the left until you get to the map section. And plus, Kirstin Miller actually being a proper published author, her descriptions are way better than mine.
posted by anaelith at 1:04 AM on October 1, 2007