Harnekop nuclear bunker

Lost places: Harnekop nuclear bunker [ - darkometer rating : 6 - ] UPDATE: sadly, this place has now closed down, since it passed into new hands. Its future is currently uncertain ... ---------------------------------- A large nuclear bunker complex, built between 1971 and 1976 as the command centre for the Ministry of National Defence of the then GDR (East Germany ), to be used as the military/government nerve centre in the event of all-out nuclear war, i.e. if the Third World War had broken out. It was planned that some 450 men (no women) would have held out in the bunker complex's 150 rooms on three levels for nearly a month, hermetically sealed off from the outside world (i.e. a presumably deadly, contaminated, apocalyptic wasteland). The bunker itself was designed to withstand a several megaton atomic bomb. Most floors were even set on shock-absorbing springs. All through the Cold War this was one of the most secret installations in the GDR, and it was kept operational right until the day before German reunification in October 1990. Since then it has become a redundant relic. Fortunately it has been preserved and can now be visited by tourists – a unique chance to see such a command post (of the highest level!) from the other side of the Iron Curtain in the former Eastern Bloc . Apart from the general claustrophobic atmosphere in this nearly a mile long maze of passages and rooms, many filled with almost comically archaic-looking 1970s computer and communications technology. The dining room is particularly creepy – precisely because it tries so hard not to be: there are flowers on the table and a large picture of pastoral Romanian mountain scenery desperately tries cheer up the room … and fails. Miserably.