Prague Cold War era bomb shelter is a rare treat

It's St. Valentine's day, and while I think he was a great guy (most saints are) I don't really think a holiday made up by a greetings card company is something worth celebrating. Instead I will talk about a little Prague history.

Seventy-one years ago today, the United States Army Air Forces made a mistake. They flew roughly 120km (75 miles) too far and bombed the city of Prague. A massive bombardment of the city of Dresden was underway and a few groups became lost in the fog and overshot their target. It is easy to see the difference between Prague and Dresden when you're standing on the ground, but when you're miles overhead flying in fog and clouds and have never seen either city before, maybe. Both cities have a river, that was the factor that sealed the decision to deliver the deadly payload. Over 700 people died. You can read about it in this wiki there isn't much.

Now the U.S. Air Force makes precision strikes with smart bombs and missiles from aircraft that are separated from their pilots by thousands of miles. Innocent people are still killed, but far far fewer. It's no secret that I am not a fan of drone warfare or "less-than-lethal" weapons, but I'm not here to explain that.

I'm here to show you something very cool and completely obsolete I had the chance to explore. Essentially immediately after WWII the Czech's decided it would be a good idea to increase their protection from bombardments like the one on February 14, 1945. If a mere 40 B-17s could exact such damage by accident, what would happen if the next attack were not a mistake?

A few feet away from a jogging trail through a park where children play, a graffiti-covered brick edifice destroys a moderately-steep hillside. This brightly-colored portal to salvation has spent most of its life providing shelter for the homeless eager to take refuge in the lee of a small concrete wall, or as a toilet for those with needs to urgent to wait.


This door to this bunker has been closed for years. The district of Prague 2 decided to open the bunker for public viewing one day a month in 2016. Literature says the bunker was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A very comprehensive map of the bunker dated 1952 belies that literature.


Either way, this is a Cold War era bunker that existed behind the Iron Curtain standing at the ready to protect those inside from attack. This is not something you get to see every day. The entrance above also wasn't open, but it's the easiest one to recognize.

When I heard this bunker was going to be open, I jumped at the chance to see it. I'm not sorry. It wasn't crowded and I was basically allowed to wander around on my own. Of course the entire thing was not open. The dormitories and some storage and other rooms were closed off behind giant steel doors. It was cool to see a fair number of Czech men in their 60s eager to explore the bunker.

I image they spent a large part of their lives both wondering what was behind the mysterious doors in the park and hoping they never needed to go inside.


Most likely one of the first things you would see if you did need to enter this bunker would have been this. The signs basically say, "dressing room, showers, decontamination." So, you'd head in here and take off your clothes and wash the fallout off your body. While the bunker does look secure and pretty tough, I'm not confident it would survive an atomic explosion. Definitely not a direct one.


If you didn't want to take a shower, there was a nice bathtub for you to use. I doubt that it was really there as an optional kind of thing.


As promised, showers. Privacy wasn't really a concern and I expect that living in this bunker with somewhere close to 1200 of your closest friends would mean that you didn't have any privacy at all.


There were some simple luxuries to bunker life though. Like hot and cold running water.

As you can see there are water heaters bolted to the wall there by the door to the showers. This most likely helped keep energy consumption low. There was a small generator inside the bunker and I'll get to that later. First I'd love to show you that super luxurious vanity sink there on the left of the photo above.


No bathroom is complete without such opulent accoutrements. I think if you're living in a bunker this is probably pretty good. And honestly, the place was heated, so despite the fact that it was snowing outside, it was a comfortable 65 degrees inside, which really is pretty good.

So, we saw how private the showers were. The toilets weren't much better. Still, they are better than some military barracks I've seen. One of the partition walls even had an ashtray attached to it.


As you can see, this is very private. And it features my favorite kind of toilet, the shelf toilet. I would expect this in a German bunker. I do suppose that when it comes to building a bunker, you don't really need to buy brand-new toilets and sinks. I'm sure used will do just fine.


I'm not sure why, but all through the bunker there were sinks in the corridors. All of them were labeled as having drinkable water, so maybe that was part of it. It could have also been that people could wash when they needed too.


The domortiries weren't open, as far as I could see. So I didn't get to see what was in there. Maybe the designers decided that they would not put sinks in the dorms to improve the situation and allow the residents the luxury of not having to listen to people running water all the time.


It's also entirely possible that the corridors could have been used for overflow beds. I'm not too sure about that, because they are pretty narrow and the ceilings are low, so I think it would have been a desperate situation for that to happen.


I super-important element of the bunker was this generator. It's a Skoda diesel engine. I think a 4 cylinder. Many of the old times who showed up to view the bunker were also fascinated by this generator. As you can imagine, it's not the best idea in the world to run an engine in a closed bunker without some way to get rid of the exhaust.



The bunker builders planned for that and exhaust gases were routed outside. There was an access tunnel so that you could maintain the exhaust outlets if you needed to. At the same time, it's not a great idea to have the generator fighting for air with the residents.


So the generator had it's own air supply too with filters and everything. So while the generator was in the same place as the people, it used a completely different air supply. Great idea.


Here is a close up of those filters. As you can see, they are a touch "dated" I don't know if it is an exiration date on them or a manufacture date. Either way, by today's usually totally BS expiration-date rules I think these filers would need to be replaced for safety.


While it's a nice idea to provide clean, fresh air for your ginny, it's a better idea to provide the same for your residents. All 1200 or so of them. It's not an easy task. The photo above shows an air inlet for the bunker. There are at least two of these. I was previously told it was a pillbox and always wondered at the completely untactical placement. Sure the slits look a little like loopholes, but turns out this is just an air inlet.


Looking sort of similar to the system for feeding fresh air to the generator, but on a larger scale and with what I assume is a more intense level of filtration is the air filter system. I assume there were a few of these rooms. This room had two pump and filter systems in it.


Just in case the electricity cut out there was hand pump too. It looked like two people could work each pump. In the photo just before this one you can see a pump at the back on the room. This room had a hand pump to suppliment each of the two electric pumps.


Also if you look at the wide photo of the back of the filter room, you will see some boxes attached to the wall. They are devices for measuring the amount of air coming in. There was a scale on this one to show you how much air you need for a certain number of people. Fifty people should be getting 21 liters of air per minute.


I'm not quite so sure what this meter was for, but I'm going to guess that it was used to control the automated system. You would for sure prefer to have the automated system working.


The bunker also has lots of seepage-catching devices. Many of them were attached to the walls in strategic places. I'm going to guess the seepage water is not potable and I'm not entirely sure what they would do with it. There were also lots of places to store things.



The photo above has some of those filters for the generator and what I assume are barrels of water or diesel fuel.


This corridor kind of looks like it came out of an Indiana Jones film. It was a bit more what I expected to see everywhere. People did have to live there though and I'm sure cluttered storage stuff all over the place would have been a pain, and possible raided by people who didn't understand or care about rationing.


The photo above was some kind of hose in one of the air filter rooms. I took it because I wanted to make nice composition. I liked it and now you get to see it.


And there you have it. The sign above directs you to the exit, which means this entry is at its end.