Air raid sirens are ringing to life in the distance. Fracturing the stillness of the night, and awakens you from a pleasant slumber. In your peripherals, the black sky is pierced by trails of fire. An unearthly orange glow reflects off the glass. Your weary eyes try adjusting to what lays just beyond your window, but you need to get up and move in for a better look. An immense explosion diverts your vision away as twilight has succumbed to the brightness of the sun for an instant.
Before you can regain your composure, the percussion and sound waves smash the glass and knock you back with great force. As you once again get on your feet, the eerie silence and confusion draw you back to the window frame. The distinctive outline of a mushroom cloud emerges in the foreground framed by the onslaught looming in the background. It’s time to hide…in the Diefenbunker.
Diefenbunker Cold War museum history
Once the most significant secret military facility of its kind, Diefenbunker’s purpose was to house Canada’s government in the event of a nuclear war. This four-story underground bunker contains 300 rooms totalling 100,000 square feet. It is built to withstand the force of a nuclear blast of 5 megatons from a distance of 1.1 miles away, at the height of the Cold War.
Commissioned by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, it underwent construction between 1959-1961 in Carp, Ontario, which is about 19 miles west of downtown Ottawa. Able to accommodate 565 people for up to one month, including storage for food, water, fuel and supplies. There’s also an emergency broadcast studio and vault on the lowest level which used to house the Bank of Canada’s gold reserves.
Serving as a station to the Canadian Forces until 1994, it opened as a museum in 1998 with an extensive collection of artefacts from the Cold War era. Then it became a movie location for the 2002 espionage thriller ‘The Sum of All Fears’ starring Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman.
If all of that doesn’t implore you to visit, I’m not sure what will. I have to say that as soon as I heard about this place, my heartbeat twice as fast, and I stumbled over my own words with excitement.
I have an intense fascination with secret government facilities, especially when they are from generations past. The great memorabilia of wartime propaganda, gas masks, radiation suits and radios tuned into secured channels ready to observe and report.
First impressions
The first steps inside the Diefenbunker Cold War Museum, I immediately got a fit of the giggles. It is starting with the creepy coolness of the long semi-circle entrance tunnel. Once I saw the biohazard symbol placed upon the glass of the decontamination rooms, I thought I was going to faint from joy overload. Not because I’m weird. It’s because this is real and not a movie set. It’s history right in front of me, and that’s a real thrill.
There is an aura of intensity that still hangs thick inside its walls. The smell of stale cigarettes permeates the air in many rooms and hallways. You feel like you are on a movie set and all the items are props from a cold war film. The scary fact is it’s all real. They were put here in case the inevitable happened, and we went to nuclear war.
Diefenbunker is just one of many facilities they would manufacture not only in Canada but also across the United States. I’m sure we won’t ever know the full extent of how many exist. Still, the fact we needed them in the first place makes you think about the direction of humanity itself.
There are four levels to explore until your heart’s content. It can be very maze-like at first as there are many doors to go through. Imagine having to carry around all the keys to unlock them.
It is quite a feat to have completed this massive structure with 32,000 tons of concrete and 5,000 tons of steel in only 18 months.
looks like home
I’ve said before when we visit places we like to put ourselves in that period and feel the energy from the past. Here, you get an overwhelming sense of fear and anxiety. It seems to have penetrated every facet of its existence. Even though every effort has been made for it to appear homely.
In the cafeteria, you can imagine having to spend Christmas morning in the cold, sterile environment. Unsure what is left of the outside world and everything you have ever known. Yet you are still having to force some sense of normalcy by keeping up a strict routine.
Your footsteps clank down the metal stairs to the machine room. Navigating the network of pipes and concrete the red warning light spins against, the various machinery and it begins to blur together. All of it has kept this place functioning from the date of its inception.
On the bottom level is the vault. That is where the gold reserves would have been stored. Narrow hallways with mirrors at each intersection surround the concrete box to make sure every angle is visible.
It is pretty ironic how a place commissioned through such an alarming circumstance, could be so appealing. Yet it is! All wrapped up in its mysterious ambience. I thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Diefenbunker Cold War Museum and would go again most definitely!
some the the things we saw – slideshow
short video from “canada’s History” about diefenbunker Cold War museum
Diefenbunker In A Nutshell
- Official Website: Click HERE
- Address: – 3929 Carp Rd, Carp, ON
- Opening Hours: Monday – Friday 10.30 am – 4.00 pm. Saturday – Sunday 10.00 am – 4.30 pm
- Admission: – $11.00 – $17.50
location map
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