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00:00In Oklahoma, a place of learning created with a disturbing objective.
00:06They wanted to change the children, to take them from their culture and their language.
00:15A small Greek island caught in a chilling web of controversy.
00:21Suddenly, this facility was on the front pages of newspapers all across Europe,
00:26and it was an international scandal.
00:31And in Oregon, a military facility linked to a mysterious wartime mission.
00:38It was a 68-hour battle against an imaginary enemy.
00:56Six miles from Oregon's Pacific coast is a staggering remnant built during a time of national emergency.
01:08The first thing you see, and you can't miss it, is this vast structure.
01:14The thing that's just mind-blowing is just how big it is, how tall it is.
01:20Makes you wonder, what could you possibly store here that would demand this much space?
01:28Then you see something that gives you a clue.
01:30At the front is a large plane.
01:33So, was this an aircraft hangar?
01:37Yet the aircraft that reside here today are not the ones it was built to protect.
01:43The structure itself is the key to unlocking this mystery.
01:48On closer inspection, you can see something remarkable.
01:52The whole thing is built out of wood.
01:55They started construction in the fall of 1942.
01:59And the reason that they used wood versus steel is that all the metal was being used for the war
02:04effort.
02:06The Japanese had already launched an attack on America's mainland, and they could do it again.
02:12The airships that flew out of this building were crucial in defending the country.
02:18One of these warships of the sky became embroiled in one of the most bizarre military incidents of the Second
02:24World War.
02:26Personnel from here were sent to fight an unseen enemy.
02:29But, of course, everything is not as it would appear.
02:41Everyone knows about Japan's devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.
02:47But not many people remember that just a week after, a number of Japanese submarines made it all the way
02:53to the west coast of the United States.
02:56In June 1942, a long-range Japanese submarine successfully managed to shell Fort Stevens in Oregon.
03:04Japan also sank two ships.
03:08They fired on a couple of locations in California.
03:12It pretty quickly became clear that the U.S. didn't have sufficient infrastructure to defend their coastline.
03:24Christian Gerling is passionate about the history of American aviation and is an expert on this vast facility.
03:33So a total of 17 of these wooden hangars were built to act as a protective ring around the United
03:39States.
03:40But they weren't going to rely on conventional aeroplanes.
03:43They would turn to a very different technology to safeguard American lives.
03:49They were a secret weapon.
03:51They were airships.
03:56Airships were perfect.
03:57You could fly low enough and slow enough to be able to spot an enemy submarine.
04:03But given their enormous size, you need somewhere equally big to house them.
04:11This is Naval Air Station Tillamook.
04:14Construction began on the first of two hangars in October 1942.
04:21But building these behemoths was no easy task.
04:25Supplies of steel and aluminum were critically low because of the war effort.
04:30But there's one building material that the Northwest has in abundance, and that was wood.
04:36The race was on to get the hangars finished before Japan could once again threaten America's national security.
04:45A bitter winter hampered early efforts, and the hangar that survives today took nine months to build.
04:53The primary challenge that they faced in building the hangar was weather.
04:57And of course, in the Oregon coast, it rains considerably.
05:01But when completed, it was a record breaker.
05:05Hangar B at Tillamook is the largest freestanding, clear-span wooden structure in the world.
05:13The hangar itself is about 1,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and 200 feet tall.
05:18They used in excess of 3 million board feet of lumber, which is enough lumber to build 279 three-bedroom
05:25homes.
05:26The hangar is actually so long, you could literally lay the Chrysler building down inside of the hangar.
05:30In February 1943, the first of eight airships arrived after being constructed at Goodyear manufacturing plants in Ohio and California.
05:43On March 16th, the first patrol mission was launched.
05:48Fortunately, the crew was equipped with more than just binoculars.
05:54So the airships also used a very primitive form of radar called a magnetic anomaly detector,
05:59where they would look for magnetic anomalies in the Earth's surface to find these submarines.
06:03Anti-submarine warfare is mostly hour after hour scanning the waters and not seeing anything.
06:12It was the same story day after day of nothing.
06:19On May 19th, 1943, Tillamook's communication building received an urgent dispatch.
06:28About 10 miles off the coast of Cape Lookout in Oregon,
06:32the USS PC-815, an anti-submarine vessel, started picking up irregular signals on its sonar device.
06:42The ship's commander quickly ordered his crew to fire on what he believed was a Japanese submarine.
06:49After six attempted attacks, the USS PC-815 runs out of ammunition.
06:56They were potentially a sitting duck.
06:59So the call went out to the two airships that were then operating out of the base,
07:04K-33 and K-39, to assist this Navy surface vessel.
07:08The blimps, in addition to submarine detection equipment,
07:12were also armed with depth charges and a machine gun.
07:16Their role was to defend the U.S. ships and help scout the water for any signs of enemy submarines.
07:26Eventually, four other surface ships were called in to assist as well.
07:30Soon, the ship's crew picks up another signal.
07:34Now they're convinced that there's a second Japanese sub in the vicinity.
07:38By 4.46 p.m., 13 hours after the pursuit began,
07:43the PC-815 was finally restocked with depth charges by a supporting vessel.
07:51The ship's commander desperately continued hunting down the Japanese submarines,
07:56launching attack after attack.
07:59The fear now is that it's staking out its target.
08:04The race was on, and American lives were at stake.
08:13On May 19th, 1943, two airships from the Tillamook Naval Air Station
08:19were dispatched to assist the PC-815 in its pursuit of two Japanese submarines.
08:27The fight continued on through the night and into the next day.
08:31But the enemy is nowhere to be seen.
08:35After 68 hours, the commander of the ship was ordered to call off the search.
08:43On return to base, the commander of PC-815 reported that he believed
08:49he destroyed one or both of the submarines, as neither launched a counterattack.
08:56Yet Navy officials immediately commenced an investigation.
09:00to establish what took place.
09:03The commander had used five ships, two blimps,
09:07deployed over 100 depth charges,
09:10and failed to supply any of the evidence required to confirm a kill.
09:15The final report contained some astonishing findings.
09:21No subs were ever found.
09:23No wreckage was ever found.
09:24The airmen on the blimps, for example,
09:27didn't think there was any sign of submarines in the area.
09:30But the commander of this vessel was still convinced that he had destroyed two enemy vessels.
09:39So who was this mystery commander?
09:43His name was L. Ron Hubbard.
09:46After the war, he would become a very successful science fiction writer,
09:50and then go on to found the Church of Scientology.
09:55Now, L. Ron Hubbard was known to, let's say, stretch the truth at times.
10:04Even in his after-action report, you can see that Hubbard has a certain literary flair.
10:13But there was one piece of evidence from the Navy investigation
10:17that no amount of creative language could disguise.
10:22It turns out that the area where Hubbard and his crew first picked up these strange signals
10:27is well known for having natural magnetic deposits.
10:32So, it seems Hubbard may well have been fighting an imaginary enemy.
10:39For the next two years, airships from Tillamook continued to patrol the Oregon coast.
10:46Only one vessel under the protection of an airship was ever sunk,
10:50an oil tanker named the Persephone.
10:53That's a pretty impressive service record.
10:57The war in the Pacific dragged on until September 2nd, 1945.
11:02And at that point, of course, the Tillamook base was no longer needed.
11:12In 1948, Tillamook Naval Air Station was decommissioned.
11:18Today, Hangar B is home to the Tillamook Air Museum.
11:23We call it history, housing history.
11:25You have this amazing structure from World War II, an engineering marvel.
11:31These hangars show what we can accomplish when we're under threat.
11:41On the Greek island of Leros stands a commanding structure with a shameful secret.
11:53Following along the coast, we find this amazing, vast, and powerful building.
12:01It looks like security was really tight here, but who was being kept inside?
12:08It looks as if people were living here.
12:11The question is, why?
12:14Upstairs, there's a lot of beds.
12:16There's colorful decorations on the wall, but also medical equipment.
12:20Could this have been a hospital?
12:23This was once a showpiece designed to demonstrate the might of a conquering nation.
12:29Its days as a glorious symbol of power did not last long.
12:33As time passed, it became a den of depravity and the subject of a controversial expose.
12:40It created an international scandal that humiliated the Greek government.
12:47Because of this complex, Leros became known as the island of the damned.
12:57I first came in 1966.
13:00It was October 5th.
13:02It was so beautiful that it left me with the best impression.
13:08Petros Akoglánis was 22 years old when he started working as a nurse in this building.
13:16For me, this place is very sacred, because this is where I lived my best years.
13:22There are some other feelings now.
13:24I am saddened by this space.
13:29The story of this now derelict shell began long before Petros arrived,
13:35during an era of European occupation.
13:38Since 1923, this was under the influence of Mussolini's fascist Italy.
13:45It was built as accommodation for troops using the nearby seaplane port.
13:50Italy and then their Nazi allies controlled the island until the end of the Second World War.
13:57But eventually, these structures and the island were handed back to a united Greece.
14:05Life on Leros eventually returned to normal.
14:09But by the 1950s, a crisis was brewing on mainland Greece.
14:14This structure would be part of the solution.
14:19After the war, Greece was in the midst of profound change.
14:24The population was increasing and urbanizing.
14:27And all of this impacted the way that people with mental illness and physical disabilities were cared for.
14:36The hospitals in Athens and in other major cities were filling up and were reaching breaking point.
14:46They had to decongest the other mental hospitals because they were overcrowded.
14:51And they found a suitable place and brought them here.
15:01In 1958, this facility admitted its first patients, more than 300.
15:10It was officially called the Colony for Psychopaths.
15:14And later became known as the Leros Asylum.
15:19And it was very important for the island.
15:21There were no other ways of working in those years.
15:25From the first moment, I loved this place.
15:28The patients, we would pick them up from the boat, bring them here, have their food ready.
15:34But within just a few years, there were around 2,500 patients at this facility.
15:40It was designed to care for about 600.
15:44Some of this meant that there was poor sanitation.
15:48A few toilets, hundreds, would have to use.
15:51It was even said that there was only one qualified psychiatrist for 1,000 patients.
15:58Of course there were problems.
15:59There were cases of patients attacking staff, attacking their fellow patients.
16:04We, the staff, dealt with these incidents as much as possible.
16:10The outside world had no idea just how bad the situation inside the Leros Asylum had become.
16:19In 1989, the devastating truth of what was really going on in this facility was revealed.
16:30In the late 1950s, a new psychiatric hospital opened on the Greek island of Leros to help care for people
16:39with mental health conditions.
16:41By 1989, it had become so dangerously overcrowded, a team of journalists exposed its appalling story.
16:51Reporters from the British newspaper, The Observer, recorded the squalid and terrible conditions that patients were suffering in.
17:01You had patients living naked and even tied down to their beds, bearing the marks of this really inhumane treatment.
17:09The shocking photos that accompanied the article revealed the brutal reality of life within these walls.
17:19Look, we didn't react negatively.
17:21We accepted the publication.
17:24Up to a certain point.
17:27When the story was published, they called this Europe's guilty secret.
17:37We did not rise up and say that because these things are happening, it should be closed.
17:46We never accepted that.
17:50Slowly, things started to improve and a different climate started to prevail.
17:55We tried to bring better working conditions for the staff, but especially for the patients.
18:05The reforms that were enacted went far beyond the Leros Asylum.
18:10All over Greece, mental health institutions were thrust into the spotlight and found wanting.
18:18Across the board, wholesale changes were required to overhaul the broken system.
18:23Those improvements would usher in the end of this site.
18:29The admissions of patients began to decrease because the general hospitals began to establish psychiatric hospitals.
18:37And in order for a patient to get to a psychiatric facility, they had to first go through the general
18:43hospital.
18:46As a result, the number of patients being sent to Leros rapidly declined.
18:52Over the following years, patients were gradually moved into community care and the institution's buildings were eventually shut down.
19:03By the late 1990s, the Leros Asylum was completely abandoned.
19:08And this distressing period consigned to the past.
19:12But it's far from the end of its tragic story.
19:16In March 2011, Syria erupted into civil war, following a wave of pro-democracy protests that spread across North Africa
19:25and the Middle East, known as the Arab Spring.
19:28The repercussions would be felt on the small island of Leros.
19:35By 2015, more than a million refugees had arrived on European shores.
19:41Human traffickers would take these refugees, smuggle them to islands near Leros, and leave them to be rescued by the
19:49Greek Coast Guard.
19:50In March of 2016, the area in front of the hospital was opened up as a camp that was designated
19:58to be the initial meeting point of refugees entering the European Union.
20:05According to some estimates, there were up to 1,500 people arriving on Leros every day.
20:12For the next five years, the old Leros Asylum and the grounds that surround it served as a neglected home
20:20for desperate immigrants seeking a better life.
20:25A more humanitarian answer needed to be found.
20:29In 2021, the Greek government created a new reception center on the island for these people.
20:36And this camp in front of the hospital was finally abandoned.
20:45Today, there are no plans to restore or demolish the old asylum.
20:51But in the building's shadow, a growing tourism industry now thrives.
20:57I am proud of my island. Leros is here. It's beautiful. And everyone should visit.
21:09In southwest Oklahoma are the remains of a complex built during an era of disturbing change.
21:22The buildings are all solid and functional.
21:26They're constructed with the same type of bricks and flat roofs and minimal decoration.
21:30When you enter the site, it's clear that the buildings are all in really bad disrepair.
21:36And inside are identical rooms.
21:38It looks like a dormitory.
21:40But who's staying here?
21:43Discarded toys and small chairs suggest this was a space used by children.
21:50Over the years, hundreds of students would walk through these doors.
21:53For the most part, they came here forcibly and against their will.
21:57This site wasn't a one-off.
21:59It was part of a much larger program across the nation.
22:02This is the start of a dark chapter of American history.
22:09What happened inside these walls would shape the lives of children across Oklahoma for generations.
22:14The kids came from many different tribes.
22:17They all spoke in different languages.
22:20And they would get punished physically.
22:23I'm sure that it was a scary place.
22:30In Lawton, Oklahoma, is the ruin of a building with a troubling legacy that still runs deep.
22:37So this place is very significant to the Native American community.
22:44Don't think there's very many people that don't have a connection.
22:48It's incredible.
22:51Yolanda Ramos works closely with the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache.
22:56To maintain this site and to document its unsettling past.
23:01There were many students who came when they were about six years old.
23:06And in the early days, there were a lot of bad stories.
23:11And in the later years, there were better times.
23:16The origins of this place are tied to a number of government acts that try to limit Native Americans' rights.
23:23This included the notorious Indian Removal Act of 1830.
23:28Thousands are forced to give up their land and relocate west of the Mississippi River.
23:34This created a territorial divide between the United States and Native Americans.
23:39A series of violent conflicts between those two communities would result in an extraordinary meeting.
23:48In 1867, the representatives of multiple Native American nations met with representatives of the U.S. government.
23:57They came together to negotiate what became known as the Medicine Lodge Treaty.
24:03From the very start, the indigenous communities were at a disadvantage.
24:09The multiple languages spoken by the Native American nations required numerous interpreters,
24:15which created confusion and the opportunity for exploitation.
24:20In addition, pressure was applied to accept the terms of the deal by using the threat of military force and
24:28starvation.
24:29In signing the treaty, tribal leaders agreed to relinquish valuable lands and important hunting grounds.
24:36Part of that agreement was to educate the Native children, hence the boarding schools here being built.
24:44This one was called Fort Sill.
24:48It originally opened in 1871 and moved to this site in 1892.
24:55Its distressing goal would never be forgotten.
25:00One of the purposes of this residential boarding school is to separate these children from their families, their communities,
25:09thus making them vulnerable to indoctrination with a new culture.
25:13These schools were built to assimilate the children.
25:18I think their idea of assimilation was to make the kids good little Christian boys and girls,
25:27to assimilate them to the white man's way and to pull them from their old ways.
25:35The main focus of the studies for the boys and girls was agriculture and home economics and English, of course.
25:46The curriculum the school enforced was influenced by Captain Richard Henry Pratt,
25:53a veteran military man turned educator.
25:57In 1892 at a national conference, Pratt makes his famous statement that essentially says,
26:02kill the Indian in him and save the man.
26:05This motto became the core philosophy of over 500 Indian boarding schools across the country.
26:12The schools achieved assimilation by operating with a strict military-like regime.
26:18Culturally, we wear our hair long.
26:20When the kids came here, they cut the kids' hair completely off.
26:25And then they ultimately moved on to making them dress in military-style uniforms.
26:32Just like the military, when children stepped out of line, they were given harsh punishments.
26:38It was a part of them teaching the kids discipline and another part of teaching them to become more like
26:51them.
26:53At the Native American school in nearby Anadarko, which operated on similar principles as Fort Sill,
27:00a tragic story demonstrates the climate of fear the children lived under.
27:06After a young boy was severely whipped, he and two friends attempted to run away.
27:12They were later found frozen to death outside the school grounds.
27:16They were just too terrified to come back.
27:19There are a lot of negative stories.
27:22There is so much history here.
27:25I've got to take a second. Sorry.
27:30It makes me a little emotional.
27:34Essentially, it's ethnocide.
27:36And this practice of attempting to strip away people's culture continues well into the 20th century.
27:45It wasn't until the Great Depression struck in 1929 that indigenous communities' rights slowly started to progress.
27:55Native American families are hit really hard because of lack of financial opportunities, structural racism, and generations of land loss.
28:03In 1934, Franklin Roosevelt introduced the Indian Reorganization Act.
28:09The law ushered in long overdue and often gradual improvements.
28:14And this would become a catalyst for change at the school.
28:22In the 1930s, the harsh conditions at the Fort Sill Indian School slowly began to improve after the introduction of
28:30the Indian Reorganization Act.
28:32This new law protected and restored land to indigenous Americans and encouraged self-government.
28:39It also supported the preservation and revival of Native American practices and traditions.
28:46They started to work on building new buildings for the campus.
28:52In 1936, the gymnasium, and in 1939, they built the school building.
28:59So, Fort Sill Indian School ultimately became somewhat of a lifeline for the Native families.
29:08I have had a commission.
29:12A lot of people thought we were here for punishment, but it wasn't.
29:16I stayed here because my mother, she couldn't take care of me.
29:20Jimmy Ray Caddo enrolled at Fort Sill in 1938, when he was six years old.
29:28At first, I was scared.
29:31I stand over there at the corner of that building over there, looking down that road,
29:35every Saturday or Sunday, looking for my mother.
29:38I stayed here until I was 21 years old, and I never went home.
29:44The ethos of strict discipline still existed,
29:47but the policy of forced assimilation had ended.
29:51The education Jimmy received was now more focused on just teaching vocational skills.
29:59The goal of this school was to teach you to be farmers.
30:05We had about 35 cows.
30:07We had milk in the morning.
30:11School here, it taught me a lot.
30:14You know, I joined the Navy from here.
30:17I stayed until I was a chief petty officer.
30:20I learned from here how to get along with other people.
30:26That's why when I joined the Navy, it was right down my alley.
30:33So I did very good.
30:34I seen the world.
30:37In the years after Jimmy graduated in 1953,
30:42Fort Sill started to offer a more well-rounded education to its students.
30:47The quality of education did get better as time went on
30:51because they started to expand into more subjects.
30:55One student that I talked to said that she actually loved it
30:59because she was able to be around other students that looked like her.
31:03They were all Native American students
31:05and they all had a very strong sense of culture.
31:15Fort Sill continued to function through the 1960s and 70s,
31:19but its end was drawing near.
31:23In 1980, the Bureau of Indian Affairs closed the school
31:28due to a lack of federal funds to keep it going.
31:32Most of the kids at that point had been integrated into the public schools
31:36and so they didn't feel like there was a need
31:39to provide further funding to the school.
31:47To date, 526 Native American boarding schools
31:51have been identified in the United States.
31:54Their impact should always be remembered.
31:59Research is ongoing to uncover the long legacy of trauma
32:03for those who are confined there.
32:07There are plans to build a new school on the site
32:10which will be used by Indigenous and Native American children.
32:14It is going to be a huge project.
32:17I absolutely do feel a responsibility.
32:19I feel like that I have to do my part in protecting our land
32:25and protecting our culture
32:27and in ensuring that the language continues on
32:31and that's very important to me.
32:38In Scotland, on the outskirts of the capital, Edinburgh,
32:43is a clandestine site built at a time of widespread paranoia.
32:52Following a rough dirt track,
32:55you come to a clearing with small brick buildings.
32:58It doesn't look like much, frankly.
33:02A fence still runs around the outside of the property.
33:05Whatever it is, it's still an air of secrecy that surrounds it.
33:08As you get closer to the unremarkable structure,
33:13it's impossible to ignore the solid steel doors.
33:17Their presence suggests this is a place with something to hide.
33:23What were they guarding?
33:25The answer lies deep within.
33:28The first thing you see is a long sliding tunnel leading underground.
33:34At a time of war, this was a subterranean headquarters,
33:37key to Britain's survival.
33:40Few people knew about it and even fewer ever saw behind its walls.
33:45This was part of a much larger network
33:47that protected the whole country.
33:50Rumour was that the Queen herself would be hurried here
33:54if there was a doomsday scenario.
34:00I was conscripted into the RAF in September 1954,
34:05and after basic training,
34:08we were brought here and introduced to the place
34:12and was very impressive, actually.
34:14A super state-of-the-art building in those days.
34:19Alan Treloar was 18 years old
34:22when he was called up for national service.
34:24For 18 months, he was posted at this top-secret facility,
34:28which was built in 1953.
34:32You weren't allowed, really,
34:33to tell anybody anything of what you were doing.
34:36When I went home on leave or for a weekend,
34:40parents wanted to know what I was doing,
34:43and I told them the bare minimum
34:45of what I knew I was allowed to do.
34:48There was a very good reason
34:50the military personnel based here
34:52were forbidden from revealing their activities.
34:55Their mission was to safeguard the United Kingdom
34:58from total annihilation.
35:00In the early years of the Cold War,
35:03the main threat was long-range Soviet bombers
35:06carrying deadly nuclear weapons.
35:09To counter this danger,
35:11Britain's Air Ministry developed a new radar network,
35:15codenamed ROTAR.
35:17If an attack from the Soviet Union
35:19were to come over the North Sea,
35:21Scottish radar would be the first to detect it.
35:25The Royal Air Force needed somewhere secure
35:28to coordinate the ROTAR radar network in Scotland,
35:31where no one would ever see it.
35:35What they built was a subterranean fortress.
35:38Three stories deep,
35:40the complex covered an area
35:42of over 37,000 square feet.
35:45It was called Air Defense Notification Center North
35:50and formed part of the United Kingdom's
35:53first line of defense
35:55if World War III ever erupted.
35:58It was the largest nuclear bunker in Scotland,
36:01but barely anyone knew it existed.
36:03In time, that would change with dramatic effect.
36:09Exposed by a civilian espionage group,
36:11it became a target for protests and sabotage.
36:17In Scotland are the remains of a subterranean bunker
36:22built in complete secrecy during the Cold War.
36:26Its mission was to help keep the United Kingdom safe
36:30against the threat of communism.
36:32It was a maze of corridors and rooms
36:36around a huge central atrium
36:39where a map plotting table
36:41allowed RAF officers
36:42to compile a full picture
36:45of any potential incoming attack
36:47from Soviet bombers.
36:50Most days, day-to-day work was reporting flights
36:57which were planned by RAF Bomber Command.
37:01And it was up to us to plot them
37:04and identify them using the radar
37:07and the other means that we had.
37:10On numerous occasions, the Soviets tested the UK's new defense system.
37:16And of course, sometimes there were Russian airplanes
37:20which shouldn't be there
37:22and we were able to scramble aircraft
37:25to go and intercept them
37:28and accompany them out of the area.
37:30But in 1958, just three years after this facility became operational,
37:37it was already obsolete.
37:40Missiles could be fired from thousands of miles away.
37:44The weaponry was now more advanced
37:47than the Britain's radar network.
37:51That didn't mean the bunker's use to the country was over.
37:56Although the bunker no longer functioned
37:58in its operational defense capacity,
38:01the engineering behind it was still immensely valuable.
38:05The British government believed that the bunker
38:08would have been able to withstand
38:09a three-megaton bomb
38:12dropped in the city center of Edinburgh.
38:16So the bunker's designation was switched
38:19from defense to survival.
38:22It was known as a regional seat of government
38:26or RSG for short.
38:29Dr. Sean Kinnear is a historian and expert
38:33on Scotland's Cold War history.
38:36Here at Barnton, there would be about 400 people
38:38specifically chosen.
38:40So after a nuclear attack,
38:43they would be the central nucleus
38:44to try and restore some form of government
38:47and society in the aftermath.
38:51And, although it's never been confirmed,
38:54it has been suggested
38:55that this would be the place of refuge for the Queen
38:58if there was a nuclear strike
39:00while she was in Scotland.
39:03Yet, as the government made preparations
39:05to survive a doomsday attack,
39:08some members of the public
39:10became increasingly worried
39:12about the spiraling nuclear arms race.
39:15While many protested peacefully,
39:17others resorted to more militant methods.
39:21The location and function of the bunker
39:25remained a secret until 1963,
39:28when an anti-nuclear group called the Spies for Peace
39:31managed to break into another government bunker
39:33in the south of England.
39:36There they found a load of classified documents.
39:39These outlined the locations of other RSGs
39:42around the country.
39:43And these directed them to a previously undiscovered base
39:46right outside of Edinburgh.
39:50They wanted to expose this network of bunkers
39:54that they were saying was for the privileged few,
39:57and the rest of the population
39:59were just going to have to take what was coming
40:01in terms of a nuclear attack.
40:03So when they exposed sites like this,
40:06it was to say,
40:07we have found your network.
40:08It's not as robust as you thought,
40:10and now everyone knows about it.
40:12The government was terrified.
40:15Fasten bunker became the target
40:17for regular anti-nuclear demonstrations
40:19for the next decade.
40:21They demanded the site to be shut down.
40:24But as the looming threat of the Cold War faded,
40:28the protests began to ease.
40:32In 1983, the bunker was officially closed.
40:37So at that point,
40:39the site became an attraction for local vandals
40:42who would break in
40:44and slowly, bit by bit, tear the place apart.
40:49Arsonists eventually found their way into the property.
40:52All the equipment and furnishings
40:54that hadn't already been stripped out were destroyed,
40:57and the bunker was left a blackened shell.
41:04In 1996,
41:06the derelict site was purchased by private owners.
41:09They are now in the process
41:11of restoring the Cold War relic.
41:14The intention is to bring it back
41:16to resemble what the structure would have looked like
41:19whilst it was in operation during the 1950s,
41:22and give back to the community,
41:24allow them in to see
41:26what they weren't allowed to see for so many years.
41:31F
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