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Before the apocalypse a base was created to preserve and protect the highest members of society, including the president, Vice President, high ranking military officials, scientists, etc. The population of this base will be 6,500 citizens and 1,000 maintenance workers to keep it running.

My question is: where could the base be located so that it can fit these criteria?

  • They have to be able to collect water (they can filter salt water)

  • They have to be able to make their own power, it doesn’t matter what kind they use.

  • It has to be somewhere where common folks can’t access it.

  • The apocalypse was a nuclear war, so it has to be somewhere that an enemy wouldn’t want to target.

  • They remain there for 500 years (even though they could leave if the want)

-The population doesn’t Grow bigger than 7,500 because the kill everyone at age 30, and couples of two can only have two kids, after which they are sterilized,keeping the population the same. -Most Of The education, maintenance, and food growing is down by robots, so people don’t have to do much besides breeding. -The entire base is controlled by a supercomputer who was programmed to keep them locked in until it’s safe, but it malfunctioned, so they are locked in forever

Where could they put the base?

This takes place in North America, which means they are limited to areas in or around the continent. They have about 15 years to plan and build the base, and they have present day technology.

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    $\begingroup$ You know that nuclear fallout stops being dangerous after about 6 to 8 weeks right? $\endgroup$
    – TCAT117
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 2:56
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    $\begingroup$ If "no-one can reach it" then, by definition, your 6500 highest members of society and their 1000 peons... can't reach it. $\endgroup$
    – RonJohn
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 4:06
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    $\begingroup$ The average American eats about one ton of food annually and you need to have enough food for 7,500 people for 500 years. That's either 3.7 million tons of food stored up front or the ability to produce it underground as you go. Underground food production is usually iffy, so we're really talking about massive (massive) food storage. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 19:39
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    $\begingroup$ Your community will require police, judiciary, a town-level government (not a nation-level government, which is what you're protecting), medical, education, utilities (water, electricity, sewage, trash, etc.), manufacturing (a HUGE issue that I'll get to in a moment), food storage & production, pharmaceutical storage & production, entertainment, transportation, even janitors. I've skipped a TON of items on this list. Exactly how many people are we really trying to save? Because all 7,500 people are needed to operate your little community. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 19:42
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    $\begingroup$ Finally, people are unreasonable. You're going to have people clamoring to get out of their little sunless sanctuary within weeks. Not a lot, mostly teenagers, but with every passing day there will be more. Whatever reason you have for keeping people inside for 500 years won't, and can't, be reason enough because people are unreasonable. I'm not saying you can't base your story on it (irreversibly time lock the doors, hang the idiot who mistakenly set it for 500 years instead of 500 days), I'm saying that when it does open, it's going to explode like a tin can full of botulism. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 19:45

5 Answers 5

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Large shelters already exist in salt domes sited in various places across the United States. Because of the nature of the rock salt, the most common use is as archival storage areas for sensitive items like film, since the temperature is constant (due to being underground and away from surface fluctuations) and the air is at a constant, if low humidity, since the salt will absorb humidity.

Simply doing some gradual work to expand and "update" or "modernize" the facilities would probably not arouse too much attention, and bringing drilling equipment to sink deep boreholes below the salt dome to access water and geothermal energy should also be relatively unobtrusive.

enter image description here

Typical salt dome

Many salt domes are found in the southern US and Texas, so the only real sticking point is how would a large number of people (thousands in your account) suddenly be transported to the dome and disappear during a crisis (and especially when would their sudden disappearance not become the trigger for the crisis to become "hot").

enter image description here

Where you can find salt domes

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Your requirement that the enemy not want to target is a major problem--there's no way to hide such construction. When you combine it with the common guy can't get there you're talking about major construction in the middle of nowhere. That's going to draw a missile. Your problem is almost insolvable.

However, I see one option. Don't put it somewhere.

Rather, your base is a nuclear-powered, shallow-submerging submarine. It's in the ocean, it heads south and affixes itself under a major piece of floating antarctic ice.

Power: Nuclear. Check. Water: Desalination. Check. Isolation: You need a submarine, something the common man doesn't have. Check. Targeting: While the enemy certainly knows of it's existence they don't know where it is and thus can't target it. Check. 500 years: No. Whatever they are under will melt before then. By then, though, they don't need to hide like that. Simply go to shallow water somewhere near the equator (no hurricanes) and wait your 500 years.

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    $\begingroup$ "Targeting: While the enemy certainly knows of it's existence they don't know where it is and thus can't target it." The USSR/Russia have been developing ASW since the 1950s. They will know at all times where a submarine large enough to fit a small town is at. gentleseas.blogspot.ca/2012/08/… $\endgroup$
    – RonJohn
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 4:02
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    $\begingroup$ A submarine for 7500 people... that alone worth a novel or a movie! $\endgroup$
    – Alexander
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 6:26
  • $\begingroup$ A sub for 7500 people for 500 years + child births. A sub for 1.9 million people. It's a clever idea, but doesn't meet the OP's needs. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 19:48
  • $\begingroup$ @Alexander I think it is called "2012"? $\endgroup$
    – SK19
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 21:22
  • $\begingroup$ I disagree that they will always know where it is. They'll know it's somewhere under the antarctic ice but that's not good enough to target it. Once it's hidden in the ice the only detection that will see it is magnetic anomaly--and that's very short range. $\endgroup$
    – Loren Pechtel
    Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 5:32
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This is a deeper version of a similar underground system of bunkers beneath Washington, DC. Therefore, the simplest place for your proposed bunker would be a deeper and bigger version of the existing bunker for top-level government survivors, possibly, a mile deep and below the nation's capital.

To complete their inaccessibility a mechanism needs to be in place to prevent unwanted people gaining entry to the base. Explosive demolition of the entry paths and/or lift shafts (of course, you guys call them elevators) can do the trick.

The base is basically only a bigger and better version of an existing facility. Best to simply go deeper and bigger.

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There is no such place, even aside from the impossible food requirements. If they can get to some place to build the base, other people can get there later on, and 500 years would give them plenty of time to do so.

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It could be a massive warren of lead-encased tunnels and chambers deep inside the crust. Water could be fed via natural springs and geothermal vents could be used to generate power. The entrance to the base could be a narrow tunnel bored into the heart of a mountain and guarded by heavy ballistic steel missile resistant pneumatically-controlled doors. The doors would open into the mountain's heart, and would have to be reached by navigating a labyrinth of tunnels, with defenses, bored into the mountain. The labyrinth would only be accessible by a well disguised and inconspicuous entrance built into the mountainside, maybe even one of those sliding boulder ones. The mountain could have natural metallic deposits which would suppress any type of comm leak.

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