Cold open linkedin plus#
Mostly these would be ministers and civil servants, part of a slimmed down administration tasked with running the nation's affairs during the darkest of times, plus a few medical staff, several journalists and a priest.Īs we navigated a bleak corridor, I was dumfounded by the sight of untouched offices still equipped with old-fashioned telephones and stationery, a communication room and small radio studio, all frozen in time. The resulting nuclear-proof bunker was a staggering 5,500sq m behemoth, shaped like two large, connected rings, each with an upper and lower floor, and more than 230 rooms that would house around 350 personnel. Construction of REGAN Vest began in 1963 and was completed five years later. It demanded a new way of thinking and planning."Ī NATO member since 1949, Denmark's location at the mouth of the Baltic Sea was (and still is) strategically important, but its proximity to the Iron Curtain also made it vulnerable, which is why the country prepared for the worst. "It was just way stronger and way more devastating. "You'd never seen a weapon like it," posited Frandsen. Once sealed off from the outside world, there would be sufficient electricity, recycled air and other supplies for 10 days, explained Frandsen, likening it to a submarine, "just on land". Our first stop was the engine room, where diesel generators would keep the facility running. What was only a few minutes' walk felt much longer as we tracked the curving, ribbed walls that were designed to slow down the pressure wave of a nuclear blast.Įventually we reached a pair of heavy, air-tight doors that marked the beginning of the actual bunker. My sense of anticipation only grew as we continued along the passageway that was carved into the chalk and limestone hillside. "Listen," said Nørbach, as the door thudded shut, sealing off the last rays of natural light and sending an echo reverberating down the 300m-long tunnel ahead of us. "This was part of keeping it secret," said Bodil Frandsen, museum curator and historian, as she welcomed me inside with her colleague, Lars Christian Nørbach, North Jutland Museums' director.Įntering the tunnel, I felt as though I was stepping into a secret parallel universe. The weathered concrete doorframe had turned green with moss and damp, and it was so ordinary looking that the expansive tunnel network it concealed was all the more astounding. Under towering woodland and a brilliant blue sky, I trampled along a short track to the bunker's entrance, a spot that would once have been guarded by policemen armed with pistols and hand grenades. Luckily, before long we chanced upon the road leading towards a cluster of dark metal and glass buildings partly obscured in the hillside that's home to the smart new visitor centre.
Cold open linkedin driver#
The local driver had never heard of the mysterious bunker, and with no phone signal, we ended up driving around in circles trying to find it. Stepping out of the train station in the small town of Skørping, I jumped straight into a taxi for the short ride to Rold Forest.
It's an eye-opening journey into the heart of a Cold War-era time capsule. Only 50,000 visitors are permitted annually, and access has been limited to small groups of 10 on 90-minute guided tours that explore 2km of the labyrinthine bunker system. After years of preparations, it opened to the public for the first time in February 2023 as a museum. The plan was to run the country from inside this shelter, 60m below ground, and its very existence was kept hushed for decades until it was finally revealed in 2012. Secretly built in the 1960s at the height of Cold War tensions, this is where the Danish government and even the queen would have been evacuated if nuclear war had broken out. Hidden in northern Jutland's Rold Forest, some 400km north-west of Copenhagen, is the sprawling bunker complex of Koldrigsmuseet REGAN Vest (The Cold War Museum REGAN West).
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