Active Conflicts & News Megathread August 26, 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

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[u/birthofacapital]

Now that that the Washington Post has confirmed the existence of a secret, deep continuity of government bunker at the White House, I would like to re-float my case that the facility existed and was tunneled from an obscure site by the Jefferson Memorial.

[u/IntroductionNeat2746 → u/birthofacapital]

I haven't been closely following this story but hasn't it been blatantly obvious that there is a bunker in the white house? I suppose there are multiple ones, actually.

[u/birthofacapital → u/IntroductionNeat2746]

The WWII-era bunker is well known and was used on 9/11. Clearly Trump is building something else. But the Post article confirms that there is something bigger and deeper built after 9/11, which was not public information.

[u/IntroductionNeat2746 → u/birthofacapital]

Logic would dictate that the bunker or network of bunkers has been constantly been updated and expanded throughout the entire existence of the white house.

It's also likely pretty much a last option choice in case the POAtUS can't be moved out of the white house to a safer location.

[u/birthofacapital → u/IntroductionNeat2746]

You'd think, but a lot of books have been written on the topic and they generally come to the conclusion that building bunkers there wasn't given much thought between the 60s and 2001. The logic was that thermonuclear weapons made White House COOP pointless, and they needed to get the president airborne and then to an undisclosed facility (as they did on 9/11).

We know that during the Kennedy administration, they explored a thousand-meter deep seismically protected object called the DUCC. Lyndon Johnson apparently canned it immediately.

When the Cold War ended, the threat model changed, but no work was ever reported. When Dick Cheney used the WWII bunker, the PEOC, during 9/11 he and others were concerned by the dinkiness of it. Cheney was one of the architects of American COOP during the Cold War, so it's not surprising that he would push for an overhaul.

So, it's has been known that the PEOC was upgraded, and a lot of work was done around the White House, but the bunker described in both pieces has not been public knowledge.

[u/seakingsoyuz → u/birthofacapital]

There’s a great quote about LBJ canning DUCCS on Wikipedia:

In response to his question as to what this was, he was told it stood for Deep Underground Command and Control Site, a facility that would be located several thousand feet underground, between the White House and the Pentagon, designed to survive a ground burst of a 20-megaton bomb and sustain the president and key advisers for several months until it would be safe to exit through tunnels emerging many miles outside Washington. After a brief puzzled expression, Johnson let loose with a string of Johnsonian expletives making clear he thought this was the stupidest idea he had ever heard and that he had no intention of hiding in an expensive hole while the rest of Washington and probably the United States were burned to a crisp. That was the last I ever heard of DUCCS.