Connections

Connections was Originally Posted on August 28, 2009 by lavarock

I often write about connections – how certain items or events are connected to each other.

Recent events with Michael jackson have touched on his use or a “safe room” and hidden passages. The use of this type of conveyeance goes way back and stories of hidden rooms and secret passages is well known. While reading tonigth I was reminded of many links I have to secret passageways and hidden rooms.

Church officials and castle owners used scret passages to avoid persecution and death. During prohibition, they were used to hide liquor and allow guests to avoid the police during raids.

In Jenkins Kentucky, I used to work in a radio station in what used to be the old Consolidated Coal Company. In our studio was a large walkin bank safe which we used for record storage. I often would let people lock me in so I could show them how easy it was to break out. Hint: it is very easy because safes are meant to keep people out, not in.

Safe rooms are used by celebrities and the rich to protect themselves in case of breakins or criminal attempts at kidnapping or personal harm.

Many of us have played Clue where a couple of secret passages allow players to slip between rooms.

Here in Hawaii, lava tubes (similar to caves) would allow people to descend, travel up to a mile or more and ascend elsewhere. I have a few lava tubes on the property but they are short and lead nowhere. Just near the house are two tubes which are perhaps 10 or 20 feet square and underground. They might make a nice wine cellar or I could actually use them as a safe house if need be. One of them no one would find easily at all but I would ahve to slip through an opening about the size of a cinder block. I have decided I’d rahter be caught then to find out what is underground here!

In Kentucky I went in a couple of caves and almost spent my last hours in one, when the flashlights we had with us started giving us problems. I still can’t believe we went underground with few preparations.

Then again, I have visited real caves in Virginia and Alabama, ones with guided tours and lights and so on.

I lived in Maryland and I used to be a Ham radio volunteer with Civil Defense. I manager communications in a bunker below the County Office Building, where a giant foot-thick door would close in a nuclear attack. The county 911 service was underground there and I remember toilets in the facility were flexible radiator hose and the actual toilets were in springs. The outside antennas would drop into the ground and re-emerge after the shockwave. The local maps of the Alexandria Drafting Company had mileage rigs spreading out from the Capitol, showing how many miles you were from the zero mileage marker downtown. We called them mileage markets to Ground Zero!

Near my house (and near the Montgomery County Airpark) was another underground bomb center with beds and more springy toilets. They also tested the air raid sirens from that location.

Just beyond the back yard fence of that house I lived in, was an abandoned government military base. It used to house Nike missles…

When I lived in Mount Airy Maryland, I could watch the President take off from the White House and minutes later the 3 helicopters would come right over my house on their way to Camp David, which did not appear on the maps.

Out in Virginia in the 70’s a plane crashed and the report surfaced that Mount weather was an underground city used for politian relocation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Weather_Emergency_Operations_Center

Larger still was the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, large enough to hols all of Congress. You might enjoy reading this very long newspaper report which when published, meant the end of the facitily. The article leaves little to the imagination. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/july/25/brier1.htm

Although not a secret passageway, I used to work in a 21 story building in Atlanta. We had a giant computer room in the basement with limited access and it was difficult if not impossible to find and get to, if you did not know where it was. More hidden was the slightly smaller computer room in the sub-basement

Sometimes it is possible to hide in plain sight. On my farm, before clearing the trees off, I could walk a very short distance from the driveway and be hidden from view and feel lost because if turned at a slight angle, it coyuld take 4 or 5 times the distance to get back t othe driveway.

So there you have it, secret passageways, tunnels, hidden rooms and even underground cities.