On the Media: American Emergency

[plane crashing] On December first, nineteen seventy-four, heavy rain and fog rerouted a passenger plane over northern Virginia, some fifty miles from Washington, DC.

On its descent, the aircraft dropped into the forest below, shearing off the treetops and crashing into the side of Mount Weather.

The two pilots were killed first, lanced by trees that burst through the cockpit.

The rest of the aircraft crumbled into pieces, a mangle of shrapnel and the body parts of the 92 passengers and crew members.

There were no survivors.

One woman, whose parents were on the flight, said it seemed like the mountain had jumped up and bit the plane.

News coverage of the day quickly turned to the blame game and the miscommunication from air traffic control amidst a violent storm.

But our focus is something that was buried in the reports.

When TV crews arrived at the crash site, they discovered, rather ominously, that Mount Weather had already been sealed off on the orders of federal security agents.

The quick action was taken because the big jet had landed almost a mile away from a super secret government installation, an underground complex of emergency offices set up for federal officials in the event of nuclear war.

The crash had inadvertently uncovered a tightly guarded Cold War secret.

Inside Mount Weather was a massive covert facility, and somehow that undersells it.

Through a tunnel that burrows into the mountain and behind a 34-ton blast door lies a subterranean, Strange Lovian lair.

A freestanding city with a hospital, a crematorium, an emergency power plant, and even a broadcasting studio.

Everything that the White House and thousands of federal workers would need to run the country underground while millions melted on the surface.

"I expect your people to save our government." That's what President Dwight Eisenhower told the first director of Mount Weather after it was built in 1955.

It's still operated by FEMA today.

It's actually being renovated as I speak.

But back in the 1950s, Mount Weather was run by FEMA's predecessor, the Federal Civil Defense Administration, the FCDA, which poured billions into making America nuke proof, or at least lulling people into the belief that with enough preparation, they might survive atomic hellfire.

Dum, dum.

Dee, dum, dum, dum.

The FCDA was behind this delightful, if slightly morbid, PSA instructing school children to hide under their desks during bomb drills.

There was a turtle by the name of Bert.

And Bert the turtle was very alert.

When danger threatened him, he never got hurt.