> The people of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, helped keep the Greenbrier resort’s bunker—designed to hold the entirety of Congress—hidden from 1958 to 1992
Before anyone gets excited about this awesome demonstration of secret-keeping by the general public - do recall the "We are only X seconds from nuclear doomsday" vibe of that era. If you were born & raised in a kinda-insular little town, and knew that blabbering the town secret might result in you & all your family & your neighbors & etc. being vaporized when the Soviets saturated your hometown with nukes - just how tempted would you feel to blabber?
```One former government official says he was told that so many people in the White Sulphur Springs area knew about the facility that the government dispatched two men who had not been briefed on the project to mingle with the locals, posing as hunters, to learn just how much was known and what was being said. According to the official, the two returned to Washington a few days later with so many details about the facility that they had to be given top-secret clearance.```
It was a different era. I'm sure the town's people were discreet. Nonetheless word would have percolated. Hundreds of men would have come from out of town to build the thing and then returned. Did they keep stum? If they didn't who would have they told? There's no internet forums. You could tell a newspaper but they would either be patriotic or they would try to enquire further and get nowhere.
What matters is did the soviet's know? There is still much to be declassified.
And of course it's all a bit silly. In the event of an attack would any of this actually pan out and function as it should?
> The people of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, helped keep the Greenbrier resort’s bunker—designed to hold the entirety of Congress—hidden from 1958 to 1992
Before anyone gets excited about this awesome demonstration of secret-keeping by the general public - do recall the "We are only X seconds from nuclear doomsday" vibe of that era. If you were born & raised in a kinda-insular little town, and knew that blabbering the town secret might result in you & all your family & your neighbors & etc. being vaporized when the Soviets saturated your hometown with nukes - just how tempted would you feel to blabber?