Civil Defense Doomsday Hideaway

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Much has changed since the planners of 1953 mapped out their scenarios. The nuclear weapons of the 1990s are far more accurate and more penetrating, and while satellite surveillance has been enhanced, warning times in case of attack have been reduced. The helicopter flight time from the White House to Mount Weather is about 20 minutes, but a missile fired at the U.S. by a submarine lying just off the coast could strike within 10 to 15 minutes after launch. And there are some nuclear-weapons experts who say, all planning and testing notwithstanding, a direct nuclear hit on Mount Weather would destroy it.

Mount Weather's greatest vulnerability, however, may lie not with nuclear weapons but with human nature. The government officials designated to be evacuated in case of an emergency are not permitted to take their families with them, and many former officials say they would find it unimaginable to abandon husbands, wives or children. The issue has dogged the doomsday planners from the beginning. "I never took it very seriously," says Alexis Johnson, who was Deputy Under Secretary of State during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. "It was an unrealistic thing, it seemed to me, that we'd all pick up at the ringing of a bell and run for the hills, leaving our families behind."

That raises another troubling question about Mount Weather's mission. Over the past 33 years, tens of millions of dollars have been spent on maintaining and upgrading the complex to protect several hundred designated officials in the event of nuclear attack. During the same period, the U.S. government has dramatically reduced its emphasis on war preparedness for ordinary citizens and currently spends less than 50 cents a head each year on civil defense. In a 1989 brochure titled Are You Prepared? FEMA offered the suggestion that citizens could use "furniture, books and other items commonly found around the house" to build makeshift fallout shelters. But who would be left to be governed after the fires had died down and the chosen few emerged from the mountain?