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I hope that bunker outside Inverness you showed us has been secured again ? I'm surprised you mentioned & showed where it is. It would be a tragedy for it to get vandalized by imbeciles 🙁
The large bunker in Inverness Is this the one where a guy brought a farm house and after signing for the property was informed he had a mini city under the farm house
I was a member of the ROC until its Stand Down in 1991. I wasn't a Post Observer, I was trained to work an No2 Group (Horsham) HQ as plotter. My job was to mark the big Perspex map with China graph pencils, I was trained to write the details of each bomb burst backwards for the 'heads of sheds' to view on the other side. I never envied the job of the person who had to go outside and change the GZI paper. A really good summary of the duties of an ROC volunteer. By the way, thanks for the heads up on Mark Dalton's book, purchased! I used to have all my loose leafed training manuals, probably chucked now 😔
@@CalumRaasay No2 Group was inside an above ground building which we used to train in every week, so it was accessible. I think there was a caretaker who kept it ticking over. Remember the kit had to maintained. Those glass maps like the ones in your video were cool; side lit so the china graph lit up and we had red (ground burst) and green (air bust) mushroom stickers for the attacks. We used templates for the fallout plume and a circular slide rule to calculate whether it was ground or air burst. This was dependant on bomb power (yes, that was the expression) and altitude. Funnily enough, years later (I subsequently joined the TA) I was a CBRN instructor and I found myself on a nuclear reporting course using the same templates and circular slide rule! Sorry if I've started to ramble, the Stand Down still leaves a bad taste in mouth even though I hadn't been in for very long.
Amazing. Those maps in the Dundee one are actually hand drawn ones done by the volunteers, they’re incredible! Worth visiting if you’re ever up this way. Great comment though, appreciate it! The whole stand down thing really did sully it for a lot of members from what I’ve seen. A real shame to have ended it that way.
Started at 16 in a post in north Devon 10 group ended up in sector command 21 group Preston C/obs, ROC all volunteers and a great bunch all ages when I started my C/Obs had been a wartime bomber pilot learnt so much from that crew. Great memories.
I heard a lecture from a retired ROC member on these bunkers, and the thing I remember most strikingly was that they needed to know if their phone line was ever broken, so there was a speaker that beeped every few seconds. If the beeping ever stopped, it meant that a bomb had cut the line. He played a recording of the beeps for a few minutes, and you could see everyone in the room getting agitated and thinking that nothing less than the threat of nuclear war would persuade them sit in a room with that noise for hours.
@@Daniel-S1 Yes. The position in a bunker of the Receiver Carrier WB400A is shown just above the folding table in the diagram at 10:10 At 15:17 there is a grey WB1401 model nestled between two more grey boxes on the wall.
You may be surprised to know that the same system was fitted in the substantial basement bunker of the standard pattern fire stations built in the early 60's, and in a surface room called the "Post office telecom room in later more modern fire stations. My first post as a new recruit fireman in the late 70's (as we were called at that time) was one such station, and once every 6 months at a set time and date 1 person was posted to sit by the receiver and listen out for a test signal. Once received, the information was written on a brown postcard and sent to HQ for processing to, I suppose, a central government office. There was also an air raid siren positioned at the top of every station drill tower and not far from my house there used to be a metal tower with an air raid warning siren that was infrequently but routinely tested, and now removed as were the sirens from the fire stations following the end of the Soviet Union. I do wonder if any such plans even exist now or has it been decided that should a nuclear attack occur today it would be pointless to bother being prepared and purely academic as the potential destruction would be almost absolute and the casualty numbers being so high, the ruminants of society would eventually die of radiation poisoning. What now then, since the resurgent threat from Putins Russia? I see no signs of any preparation of warning the public other than the faulty mobile phone alert tested recently that failed to reach many across the country, and no efforts to prepare personnel for any kind of recovery or management of survivors.
@@geoffcampbell7846 However. Revised December 2022, the Swedish government has sent a booklet or brochure out to every household in Sweden entitled: If Crisis or War Comes. The English version can be down loaded free and gives advice on how to prepare etc. The Swedes have also embarked on recommissioning all the shelters that people had to have built into their homes by law but have been neglected since the fall of the Soviet Union.
My mother was a member of the ROC back in the day and spent many hours inside one of them up here in Orkney. Apparently after being locked in there for a full 24 hours as part of an exercise, there wasn't enough oxygen left in the air to sustain a match when one of the folk tried to light a cigarette at the end....
Back in the late 70’s , early 80’s used to watch a guy in Birmingham building a bunker in his garden as we passed by on the bus to school. Started with a massive hole, then concrete and then finally saw that he was lining it with metal (probably lead) before he started the block work. Think I just found it on Google maps!
Interesting how bunkers in movies always look more expensive than the real ones Room in a real bunker: Looks like a room Room in movie bunker: pipes everywhere, riveted walls, dramatic shadows, panels with blinking lights
The old 11 Group/Fighter Command bunker at Bentley Priory, before upgrade in the early 80's, was no doubt. not too dissimilar to when it was first built. I think anybody from WW2 walking in, would have found it much the same. Compared to the ROC bunkers shown here, it was the poor relation. Considering BP was HQ ROC, there wasn't much there for them in the bunker. No doubt decamping to elsewhere if the shit hit the fan. The old WW2 Bomber Command bunker at High Wycombe, if I recall, didn't have much room allocated to them either. In 1971 ish, a thermal lance was used to cut through a reinforced internal bunker wall to provide an entrance to a new room for them. E & O E.
Great video, excellent research. My father-in-law was one of those volunteers and went down to RAF Waddington to attend the parade to be stood down by HRH.
Very interesting video Calum, I was in the RAF during part of the cold war and I remember the government some years earlier sending by post an information package called 'protect and survive' to every household about what to do after the nuclear attack, then joining up, carrying out nuclear training and discovering how useless that information was. Thank god it never happened.
America was fed the same "you can survive the bomb" propaganda too. Ours were mostly in short film form and volunteer training. Several years ago I found a DVD compilation of those old films e.g. Bert the Turtle, Duck and Cover etc... and to be honest, there were more than a few that contradicted each other... "it's treason to evacuate (NYC) in the event of a forthcoming attack, but vital to evacuate Portland Oregon..." Many of the films (which originally came on TV or at the movies before the main feature were funny as can be. Especially if you are blessed with a peculiar sense of humor. My late Father used to forbade us kids from watching that rubbish. He was adamant and always said that the living would envy the dead. I believe him.
Excellent video and a fascinating topic. I like that you added that ‘bleak’ ending as I was watching this I thought of ‘Threads’ and how it’s not the war, it’s the aftermath. ‘Threads’ haunted my nightmares and I didn’t sleep for two days after first seeing it in the 80s. Watching the town council hole up in a bunker and then being pretty much useless after the attack and finally dying underground kept coming to mind watching about these posts and bunkers. “The only winning move is not to play.”
My family is having a very crap time at the moment (sickness, hospice and all that stuff). It's been a very terrible time for the last week or so. So, when I saw a new Calum video come up I made sure to take some time off this evening to just sit and watch and learn about something interesting that I'd never heard of before. Thanks man. I really needed this. :)
Gosh, we had LAN parties in Kelvedon Hatch in the early 2000 when lugging around a beige box and a CRT still seemed like a good idea. The H&S upgrades to make the space OK are hilarious.
No idea if that was the original name but that's what the place is called now. It's a (much larger) bunker which housed a phone exchange among other things and is open to the public.
I love it. So cool. You should watch out though. If they're sealed and have steel in there corroding, the corrosion process will consume all the oxygen. Lots of people have had their lives cut short because they enter vessels and tanks and then just drop due to lack of oxygen. You should really have a gas meter when you enter places like that.
@@teacupalice But the CO2 is more dense than air so will lie inside like an invisible pool of water. There needs to be active ventilation (fans) if the chamber is below ground.
@@monkeysausageclubideally you need valve radio communication all solid state devices will be damaged diodes so even in radio,s a valve diode must be used, the fact is we would be totally shafted as anything with electronic management will fail and be useless vintage cars with coil ignition will be ok probably, we. Would be returned back 200 years all the knowledge that passed generations knew has been lost I doubt if anyone reading this would even know how to build a radio transmitter or simple receiver, valves we don’t make anymore! Many things are built by Robots machines all gone where would we start?
Did anyone notice that when the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred that the cameras taking the very first pictures, the the cameras were bombarded with gama ray’s giving rise to sparkles on the pictures, if you can find some old footage you’ll see what I mean, i
Calum contacted me a few weeks ago to use some footage I had shot while serving in the ROC at stand down and I'm glad I did as this is an informative and entertaining piece of work. I was relatively young when I served in the ROC, 15 at entry and 28 at stand down. It was serious, in so much as those Soviet missiles could reach us very quickly and we did think carefully whether we would be taken out on first strike, survive the blast or perish with the radiation. The posts could not survive a close strike but would survive a distance strike and certainly radiation. Your location (and we knew all the targets) and whether the missiles were accurate were all factors in your survival chances. Many Observers didn't think too much about the grisly business we were in but rather enjoyed the friendship of the Corps and the social life. Often it was not the Russians who were our greatest enemy but CND and the cold! It was very uncool to be in the ROC if you were young but I enjoyed the secretive nature of it all and also the Dad's Army aspect of people of many ages and backgrounds all working together. We had a pensioner who had been in the ROC since World War Two and an officer who was an ex RAF Vulcan navigator plus a gravedigger and a guy who worked in a crematorium. They always joked on how they would dispose of us all after the bomb dropped!
I would have only been 4 when the ROC was stood down but it sounds like you had a great time doing your bit and met some very interesting characters. I bet they had some stories to share. Thanks for sharing and supporting the ROC.
I worked for the ROC in rural Aberdeenshire in the late 80's and worked in one of these bunkers, LOVED it. I remember it being damp and the sound of the generator thumping away above ground to charge the batteries. Always a bugger to start unlike a modern Honda engine, this was a Lister from memory
I couldn't help feeling a little chill creeping up my spine when the gentleman remarked and cautioned when leaving the bunker: "Whatever it is outside, it's not peace....".
I visited the 28 Group HQ in Dundee a number of years ago, and that was in my mind all through the opening sections of this wonderful video. I was on the edge of my seat when I realised you were about to feature it! A brilliant place, and well worth a trip. Keep up the great work, Calum!
14:03 Great informative video, Calum. During the early 1980s before I joined the RAF I was in the ROC (25 Group/Barrhead Post). During an exercise period our post had to man Skelmorlie Post for 12 hours due to personnel shortages. I didn't even get to see the sea due to the thick fog! Happy memories of a dedicated group of volunteers. Great to see Skelmorlie Post maintained.
There's a huge 2000sqm ex-soviet one in Līgatne, Latvia quite similar to the sector HQ you showed. It was hidden under a former Spa (now a rehab centre) and only declassified in the 2000s. It's in pristine condition as it was only actually used once during a wargame, you can visit it and take a tour, of the rooms, and they even let you press all the buttons etc, and on weekends you can even enjoy some traditional soviet cuisine in it's functioning period correct canteen.
This video has really bought back memories. I was a member of the ROC in the 70s 80s. I did a 24 hour training exercise and my goodness, it really felt like I was in the middle of what was an attack on the UK. You had to go up and change the pin hole camera sheets. We called it the bread bin as is was painted white and we didn't have a bpi in the bunker. There was an instrument on the top of the bunker that you took a reading from when changing the paper in the camera. You also had a speaker on the table that gave an annoying loud beep every second. You coukdnt turn it of and trying to sleep was almost impossible. Thank you for the video. It has bought back memories of a different time.
I enjoy historical videos about the Cold War preparations and bunkers. I'm an American and over here we didn't have anything like your ROC mini bunkers. Our Civil Defense Corps had observers detailed to rooftops. What America did have was a myriad of Command Bunkers of varying sizes and capabilites throughout the U.S. The one I'm most familiar with was right in the area of New Orleans where I was born, and I saw the outside of it every day. One day long after we'd moved, we were back in the old neighborhood and being a member of the Civil Defense in my current County, I stopped in and was given the full ten penny tour. To begin with, the New Orleans Civil Defense bunker was staffed 24/7/365 from the late 1950s until the early 1990s when it was closed. It was staffed by a representative of the Police, Fire, Civil Defense, Mayors Office, Air National Guard, and the Army National Guard. It began 3 stories down, and went down for 2 more. It was completely circular in design. It's purpose was to be a command and control setting for city operations in the event of war/attack. It had a staff auditorium (or bull pen), a mini TV & radio station, mini emergency room, dental clinic, kitchen, sleeping quarters for 200 (men & women separately). A radioactive fallout decontamination station, an armory, and several "escape" tunnels. Its gone now... it was flooded during Hurricane Katrina. It was eventually filled in and pricey condominiums built over it. Unless you knew it was there, there's no trace. You can still find a few news articles and old black and white photos online. The New Orleans Civil Defense Bunker on West End - Pontchartrain Drive.
Always a treat to see one of your videos appearing, another excellent wonderfully researched edited and presented vid. Your efforts to capture these pieces of history are wonderful!
As teenagers, me & my mate broke into... Errr... I mean repurposed 😉 one of those near Balintore on the North East coast of Scotland in the mid 90's (it literally only took 2 bent nails to lift up the latch) 😉 There's also a WW2 aerodrome there & another near Tain.! There was still bunkbeds with matresses, a toilet, air filters, a telephone, a bench & a map on the wall with the locations & numbers of all the other observation posts marked on it. It was just the coolest thing ever.! We hooked up a 12 volt car battery to a portable stereo & light bulbs & it became our little den.. We used to go up there with our girlfriends, something to drink, something to smoke & have a grand old time. 😉 😉 It wasn't until years later that I understood the true role & significance of them.!
@@iSkateHartlepool It was mate. We were using it for months. Unfortunately we invited the wrong person, they blabbed & we went up one night to find it had been set fire to.! Bastards.!!! It wasn't fit for anything after that.!! Stay safe out there mate & the very best wishes from Scotland 🏴 🙏 ❤️
If you haven't already been; there's a bunker in fife called the "Secret Bunker" and it's a very good example of a cold war bunker. It's a bit out of the way to get there but it's massive. Just the ramp that takes you down to the bunkers level is quite impressive.
I live relatively near it ,been in it once, really interesting place, I was told that when it was being built the lorry drivers stopped at bottom of road and got out then a soldier would take the lorry in and empty it then return it to the driver
@@markdavidson9743 It's just called "The Secret Bunker" ... it's obviously not secret because it's a tourist attraction ... Google will soon find what you need ... or its Wikipedia page ... or Google maps ... (it's inland from Crail.)
@@patrickm.4754Brits are immune to black mould most homes in the South East have a perpetual black mould problem. Unless you're allergic to mould spore, have breathing issues or encounter an unnaturally dense patch of mould, black mould won't do much with short term exposure.
I remember as a child, when these were being decommissioned. We stumbled upon one near Minard, Argyll, scotland. We were kids at the time, and saw a policeman, and a few officials climbing in to one, then climbing back out a few minutes later ( we were hiding behind a knoll and heather/bracken. We didn't know what it was at the time, but when we summoned up the courage (a few months later) to return, it had been buried. I ALWAYS wanted to know what was down there, so thanks very much! I now know what it was and what was down there!
Awesome video Calum, we had one just beside our village in Aberdeenshire and when I saw your video thumbnail I recognised the entry hatch etc and knew that’s what it must have been! We would sledge on the hill beside it. Also remember it getting filled in unfortunately, I guess due to its close proximity to our village! Thanks for finally educating me on its history!👍🏻👌🏻
There's one in the wheat field opposite my Dad's house. The farmers painted it in "Calass green" so from a distance the superstructure looked like another pice of farm machinery.
@@CalumRaasayit also has a decent set of speakers :) I've been Lucky enough to stay at the 28 Group bunker for a weekend and can confirm the table cloth is awesome too :)
Great video about something I didn´t even know existed: a relic of the past but, sadly, also a stark reminder of the latent dangers of the present. Glad to see you had the rare chance of being a sort of cold war Howard Carter.
This is awesome, just spent the better part of 2 hours going down a rabbit hole on the Subterranea Britannica looking at all the posts in my local area. Seriously awesome stuff on there, a time capsule in its own right with the last update given on many bunkers in the late 90s!
Last year I visited the regional HQ for the ROC in York. The tour around their restored bunker was breathtaking and chilling. I’d highly recommend a visit and thanks for the video!
We have one of the Regional War Rooms just down the road from here in Nottingham, and i would love to see it restored. It is grade 2 listed, but the local developers would love nothing more than to see it removed as new housing has been built up to it.
I worked on the telephone lines to these ROC bunkers. There were many inconsistencies. The bunker had to have an underground feed so it didn’t get blown away. Lots had the underground feed only for it to go overhead once it was back at the road ! The distribution equipment was in a very robust steel box in the telephone exchange where the wires emerged from the box it was often in a wooden hut for rural exchanges ! Every few years we would be given a mountain of dry cells (Batteries) and have the job of replacing them at all the sites. They were the ultimate backup power in-case the exchange battery died in the blast. The national broadcast circuit used the speaking clock circuit which could be switched over to the WB400 network. In the bunker were two telecom items, a WB400 which was a broadcast receiver to get messages from the central government / police and a Teletalker for two way communication with the HQ / Other ROC posts (Master) ? The WB400 should always work but the Teletalker had to be switched / patched in the local exchange. We normally went in pairs to these ROC sites, only one went down the hole the other remained top side and could go for help if required. We never seemed to test for gas it was always assumed the ventilation was OK.
I may be a little younger than you but I used to install and maintain the WB1400 equipment that was the 2nd generation equipment used in the ROC posts. Case 200's were a daily build in our workshop. I seem to remember the last version was a metal 'sandwich toaster' affair but can't be sure of its designation. I've been in many posts around the Durham and Yorkshire areas including the old headquarters at The Sands in Durham. I passed one in Bala a month or two ago on a walk and was explaining to my walking companion, an old shool friend, what they were. I've sent him a link to this video to explain further.
Great video. The secrecy around theses was amazing, not many of the general public knew much if anything about them. I remember a friend telling me about the network before 1990 and I was surprised, I did not have a clue, he also said about the what he called the UK Civil defence force and a bit about the collapse of the funding. Apparently it still goes on but under a different name.
Awesome video Callum. Fun fact with these all being badged to Inverness. In the Inverness Central Telephone exchange there is a bunker in the basement. It’s empty now but the blast doors are still intact. When working in the building I often went down for an adventure to see what I could find. There is also a mega bunker in Cupar - It’s called “Scotlands Secret Bunker” and it is an amazing tour!
Good video and a subject well covered, we all love an ROC post, you might be surprise how many are in good condition with plenty of bits and bobs inside.
Commenting to applaud your refreshing use of the message on the wall to ask for engagement as a like rather than asking the same way everyone else does 👌
I've been in these bunkers when they were operational during the 1980s. I was a Chief Observer. Living conditions if we had gone to war wouldn't have been great. And personally I'm not convinced that we would have been at all effective.
the ROC was pretty much the way of the British trying to conceal the fact of "we're completely fucked" in a way only the british know how, the home guard during ww2 was a similar example. makes people feel good but otherwise pretty useless if the germans actually decided to turn up, they'd have lasted about 5 minutes against the fallschirmjagers..
The toilets you mention were commonly called Elsan toilets after the largest manufacturer. They were used all over the place where there was no water supply including some military aircraft, camping, caravan and building sites and temporary public gatherings like air displays. The outer housing contained an inner bucket, both steel with a conventional toilet seat and lid. A strong fragranced oily disinfectant fluid was placed in the bottom of the empty toilet which filled with solid and liquid waste and toilet paper up to the emptying level. Not a pretty sight but better than digging a hole in the ground! The modern porta potty system works in a similar way and is still in use today in touring caravans etc.
Coming from one of those kids who were taught to "duck and cover" in the early seventies, It's hard to believe that we're still under the threat of nuclear war.
The tech college I went to gave us all lectures on iodine pills and what the sirens meant from Plymouth Dockyard. When at Torpoint secondary we also got told if we had 3 siren blasts the teachers would tell us what to do and we were to be given the iodine pills.
I was with 9 group Yeovil Somerset I was there for 7years my job was then to help in the telephone exchange and radio backup I sometimes was on post comm's . we could have 50 or so people on an exercise at any one time.
Fascinating, as always! I'm reminded of all the decommissioned Nike missile bases scattered around the world. Built to a very consistent plan, many blend into fairly urban settings since they were often intended to defend cities against nuclear strikes. Neighbors have no idea that the live next to a former underground nuclear missile base (yes, the later Ajax missiles used nuclear warheads to defend against nuclear strikes, strange as that may seem). I have visited several, one abandoned and two repurposed as firefighting helicopter bases. There's plenty of material there for a video Calum, should you ever run short!
Here in Finland we have cold war bunkers all over the place. Every apartment building used to have one and the hospital I work for has one that they use as changing room for us workers. I know there were people who were taught how to use the doors and ventilation.
Seeing that film of the maroons going off brings back some memories!! When I left school in '86 my first job was at a company called P.W. Control Systems who had a contract from Pains Wessex to make those very maroon launching systems for the ROC.
@@BewilderedDuck-e5lIs this a serious question? If it is then you'll be amazed how many, there is a lot of countries that have, do and still currently creating bunkers specifically for civilians. It seems to be (at least in the northern hemisphere) the larger and especially western countries that don't care about it's civilians.
Thank you for researching and publishing this interesting and accurate account of the ROC and UKWMO. I was a Post Observer in No2 Group Horsham from 1988 to 1991. I well remember going up and down that ladder during exercises - you only needed to hit the hatch counter-weight once - after that you remembered it!
I'm from the US, our shelters were in the basements of large community buildings. The laughable(now) instructions were for students to hide under their desks. In the central states those same instructions were continued to be propagated for Tornado or even Earthquake drills. There was even booming sales of home fallout shelters you could bury in the yard...most houses didn't have basements. They were later repurposed for tornado use too.
These "laughable" instructions as you call them were based on carefully collected data gathered from the aftermath of the atomic strikes in Japan in WWII. Most lethal injuries outside of the immediate blast zone (where no one was expected to survive) were caused by flying glass. The "duck and cover" instructions were meant to save lives many MILES away from the blast, not those directly hit. It wasn't laughable at all and is greatly misunderstood these days.
Another fascinating video. I've visited the ROC bunker in York a few years ago which was a larger regional HQ. One thing I found shocking was that the guys going outside to remove the photo paper were not provided with proper NBC gear, only boiler suits.
@@CalumRaasay That sounds very likely, make use of the old surplus kit. To be honest you wouldn't want to use a WW2 respirator anyway as the filters contained asbestos but you would have thought that later the Avon respiratory and NBC clothing used by the armed forces could have been made available.
those photo papers would be changed within a couple of minutes of a blast being registered on the bomb pressure indicator, not enough time for fallout to reach you. also soviet weapons tended to be less accurate and thusly had considerably larger warheads so a hit close enough to cause a high radiation level a couple of minutes after the blast would have been close enough to eradicate all life topside!
I'm assuming there is a fairly large invite list from the 10 or so current ones i have found in our region that appear to be being actively maintained. Pretty sure I'm not invited either....haha
In the mid 1980's I worked with someone who was in the ROC, he was a real character and a nice bloke too, he had some great stories to tell. My mother worked in local government and took part in some 'exercises' that took place from time to time to try and simulate a nuclear attack, it was a very real threat at that time, but government 'cut backs' meant these operations were stopped.
I can not even imagine what a pointless waste of resources those were. Communication via copper telephone wires that would have been melted by any nearby blast. A huge case of pointlessness to make out that government could respond in any meaningful way after such devastation.
It’s a shame you found a flooded ROC Post, there’s actually a LOT of ROCs in decent condition! One of my favourites isn’t terribly far distance from my village, the one just outside of Tain. Decent condition, still has loads of original magazines, the hatch closes (but isn’t locked) so it’s stayed dry all these years. There’s even an old log book where the original ROC members signed it for the last time, and over the following pages is folk who’ve gone and explored it with the date and their name, including myself actually! Just really happy to see a video covering ROC Posts, they’re probably one of my ultimate favourite places to explore, something magical about them! Always really happy seeing ROC Posts get restored, thanks for showing us Skelmorlie!! Have yet to visit the Dundee HQ, it’s on my to-do list and I’m so jealous!!
13:15 getting the chemical toilet out my boat is hard enough, let alone climbing a ladder like that while holding onto it, I bet they used a rope or cable to lift and lower it.
Thanks Calum for your indepth review. We had one of these bunkers outside the villages of Augher and Clogher in the townland of Knockmanny County Tyrone, back in my younger day. Always strange to see cars in the middle of nowhere one evening per week, but I was told by my parents that it was ROC. Sadley all is gone, the whole area was excavated for building sand materials. Best wishes from Northern Ireland.
this is really cool! I learned about all of this back in secondary school as part of a local history project in my GCSE. I got to visit the HQ in York which is an english heritage site (very similar to the one you visited, they made them basically identical after all) and it's cool to see this topic being covered elsewhere because it's really hard to find anything out about all of this without doing your own research.
My husband served in the seventies at 20 Group HQ Acomb near York. The monitoring post crews were brilliant. I remember during an exercise the post crew at Middlesmore being trapped inside the post when light snow and plummeting temperatures froze the hatch closed. Off duty crew members from the post and nearby posts had to attend and free the on duty crew.
The Echo I / 16 post I can't believe you found one that isn't riddled with mould. You would usually expect to see mould in condenced places like that. Good find!
In the states we had Nike Missile Bases, all underground. They are all abandoned now. They were a lot of fun to explore in the 60's, when I was 15 years old. Reminds me of Howard Carter entering King Tut's tomb.
When I was a kid we had little books that we loved to study (books aimed at kids!) ... they gave details of the various nuclear missiles and we learned to identify the different types, their range etc! When we weren't looking at that we were comparing aircraft silhouettes so we could identify enemy aircraft. It seems amazing to me now.
Plenty of UKWMO films on TH-cam. It was a very well thought out organization. We had nothing so organized here in the US. I was a trained monitor in high school at the end of the Cold War in the 80s, but no monitoring shelters like in the UK
Being prepared and organised - what an interesting concept. Shame recent UK governments seem to have forgotten how to do that. Very informative video though, thank you.
Excellent video as always Calum. We have one just up the road from us in Pytchley, Northamptonshire. They do open days and it’s definitely worth a visit. If s amazing when your down there thinking about what they were built for. Sends shivers down your spine.
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10 points if you can identify the ominous music I used in the opening 30 seconds.
Yeah, alright. You can have a like. Got no idea what the music is though.
0:55 ... What an interesting door stop
I hope that bunker outside Inverness you showed us has been secured again ? I'm surprised you mentioned & showed where it is. It would be a tragedy for it to get vandalized by imbeciles 🙁
I wonder if there was a similar effort in Ireland.
Probably not.
We would have just piggy backed.
Like we mostly do today. Lol.
The large bunker in Inverness
Is this the one where a guy brought a farm house and after signing for the property was informed he had a mini city under the farm house
I was a member of the ROC until its Stand Down in 1991. I wasn't a Post Observer, I was trained to work an No2 Group (Horsham) HQ as plotter. My job was to mark the big Perspex map with China graph pencils, I was trained to write the details of each bomb burst backwards for the 'heads of sheds' to view on the other side. I never envied the job of the person who had to go outside and change the GZI paper. A really good summary of the duties of an ROC volunteer. By the way, thanks for the heads up on Mark Dalton's book, purchased! I used to have all my loose leafed training manuals, probably chucked now 😔
Wow, what an experience that must have been. Were the HQs shut down most of the time and just opened for training? Something I never asked at Dundee!
@@CalumRaasay No2 Group was inside an above ground building which we used to train in every week, so it was accessible. I think there was a caretaker who kept it ticking over. Remember the kit had to maintained. Those glass maps like the ones in your video were cool; side lit so the china graph lit up and we had red (ground burst) and green (air bust) mushroom stickers for the attacks. We used templates for the fallout plume and a circular slide rule to calculate whether it was ground or air burst. This was dependant on bomb power (yes, that was the expression) and altitude.
Funnily enough, years later (I subsequently joined the TA) I was a CBRN instructor and I found myself on a nuclear reporting course using the same templates and circular slide rule! Sorry if I've started to ramble, the Stand Down still leaves a bad taste in mouth even though I hadn't been in for very long.
Amazing. Those maps in the Dundee one are actually hand drawn ones done by the volunteers, they’re incredible! Worth visiting if you’re ever up this way.
Great comment though, appreciate it! The whole stand down thing really did sully it for a lot of members from what I’ve seen. A real shame to have ended it that way.
Started at 16 in a post in north Devon 10 group ended up in sector command 21 group Preston C/obs, ROC all volunteers and a great bunch all ages when I started my C/Obs had been a wartime bomber pilot learnt so much from that crew. Great memories.
Aw no, I would have loved scans of those old manuals! Thanks for sharing!
I heard a lecture from a retired ROC member on these bunkers, and the thing I remember most strikingly was that they needed to know if their phone line was ever broken, so there was a speaker that beeped every few seconds. If the beeping ever stopped, it meant that a bomb had cut the line. He played a recording of the beeps for a few minutes, and you could see everyone in the room getting agitated and thinking that nothing less than the threat of nuclear war would persuade them sit in a room with that noise for hours.
The Carrier Receiver.
@@Daniel-S1 Yes. The position in a bunker of the Receiver Carrier WB400A is shown just above the folding table in the diagram at 10:10
At 15:17 there is a grey WB1401 model nestled between two more grey boxes on the wall.
You may be surprised to know that the same system was fitted in the substantial basement bunker of the standard pattern fire stations built in the early 60's, and in a surface room called the "Post office telecom room in later more modern fire stations. My first post as a new recruit fireman in the late 70's (as we were called at that time) was one such station, and once every 6 months at a set time and date 1 person was posted to sit by the receiver and listen out for a test signal. Once received, the information was written on a brown postcard and sent to HQ for processing to, I suppose, a central government office.
There was also an air raid siren positioned at the top of every station drill tower and not far from my house there used to be a metal tower with an air raid warning siren that was infrequently but routinely tested, and now removed as were the sirens from the fire stations following the end of the Soviet Union.
I do wonder if any such plans even exist now or has it been decided that should a nuclear attack occur today it would be pointless to bother being prepared and purely academic as the potential destruction would be almost absolute and the casualty numbers being so high, the ruminants of society would eventually die of radiation poisoning.
What now then, since the resurgent threat from Putins Russia? I see no signs of any preparation of warning the public other than the faulty mobile phone alert tested recently that failed to reach many across the country, and no efforts to prepare personnel for any kind of recovery or management of survivors.
@@geoffcampbell7846 However. Revised December 2022, the Swedish government has sent a booklet or brochure out to every household in Sweden entitled: If Crisis or War Comes. The English version can be down loaded free and gives advice on how to prepare etc.
The Swedes have also embarked on recommissioning all the shelters that people had to have built into their homes by law but have been neglected since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Three comms systems
My mother was a member of the ROC back in the day and spent many hours inside one of them up here in Orkney. Apparently after being locked in there for a full 24 hours as part of an exercise, there wasn't enough oxygen left in the air to sustain a match when one of the folk tried to light a cigarette at the end....
They'd probably start off with high levels of CO2 before they even used the bunker too, it's heavier than O2 and likes to sit in places like this.
@@laurencedavey3121 can you stuck a vacuum down the shaft and suck the CO2 out or how can someone poor release CO2 from enclosed places like this?
@@MuzzaHukkasimple ventilation should do it
@@blurtlingin a nuclear bunker 😂
@@YouSmokeChed hahaha
Back in the late 70’s , early 80’s used to watch a guy in Birmingham building a bunker in his garden as we passed by on the bus to school. Started with a massive hole, then concrete and then finally saw that he was lining it with metal (probably lead) before he started the block work. Think I just found it on Google maps!
Bunker can’t protect you from spam, but it was likely stocked with it during the Cold War 😂
Damn I wish I’d thought of that gag. Should have taken a run of spam down there!!
@@CalumRaasay 😊
spam, Minnesota's greatest gift to the world.
@@CalumRaasayWell... If you ever do a deep dive into spam with the same sponsor... There's a chance...
Lol😅
Interesting how bunkers in movies always look more expensive than the real ones
Room in a real bunker: Looks like a room
Room in movie bunker: pipes everywhere, riveted walls, dramatic shadows, panels with blinking lights
Every ‘big’ cold war bunker I have been in look like a 1970’s office building, only difference is the lack of windows.
The old 11 Group/Fighter Command bunker at Bentley Priory, before upgrade in the early 80's, was no doubt. not too dissimilar to when it was first built. I think anybody from WW2 walking in, would have found it much the same. Compared to the ROC bunkers shown here, it was the poor relation. Considering BP was HQ ROC, there wasn't much there for them in the bunker. No doubt decamping to elsewhere if the shit hit the fan. The old WW2 Bomber Command bunker at High Wycombe, if I recall, didn't have much room allocated to them either. In 1971 ish, a thermal lance was used to cut through a reinforced internal bunker wall to provide an entrance to a new room for them. E & O E.
A lot of these bunkers no longer exist .Birmingham.U,K.Is now an underground car park for councillors.
Yeah these aren’t really ‘bunkers’ they’re observation posts
I find it really interesting how old and abandoned, real bunkers look different from brand-new fake studio sets. Amazing who would have thought eh 😂
Great video, excellent research. My father-in-law was one of those volunteers and went down to RAF Waddington to attend the parade to be stood down by HRH.
Very interesting video Calum, I was in the RAF during part of the cold war and I remember the government some years earlier sending by post an information package called 'protect and survive' to every household about what to do after the nuclear attack, then joining up, carrying out nuclear training and discovering how useless that information was. Thank god it never happened.
America was fed the same "you can survive the bomb" propaganda too. Ours were mostly in short film form and volunteer training. Several years ago I found a DVD compilation of those old films e.g. Bert the Turtle, Duck and Cover etc... and to be honest, there were more than a few that contradicted each other... "it's treason to evacuate (NYC) in the event of a forthcoming attack, but vital to evacuate Portland Oregon..." Many of the films (which originally came on TV or at the movies before the main feature were funny as can be. Especially if you are blessed with a peculiar sense of humor. My late Father used to forbade us kids from watching that rubbish. He was adamant and always said that the living would envy the dead. I believe him.
If you buy...When The Wind Blows..blu ray, you get all the government nuclear war protect and survive tv programs.
@@glenndouglas8822
They are free on TH-cam
@@glenndouglas8822
Protect and survive
Videos are on TH-cam
are we closer now to nuclear war? i see other country's getting ready the uk dont seem bothered
Excellent video and a fascinating topic. I like that you added that ‘bleak’ ending as I was watching this I thought of ‘Threads’ and how it’s not the war, it’s the aftermath. ‘Threads’ haunted my nightmares and I didn’t sleep for two days after first seeing it in the 80s. Watching the town council hole up in a bunker and then being pretty much useless after the attack and finally dying underground kept coming to mind watching about these posts and bunkers. “The only winning move is not to play.”
My family is having a very crap time at the moment (sickness, hospice and all that stuff). It's been a very terrible time for the last week or so. So, when I saw a new Calum video come up I made sure to take some time off this evening to just sit and watch and learn about something interesting that I'd never heard of before.
Thanks man. I really needed this. :)
Hope things get better for you soon 😊
@@AdamB8791 Thank you. :)
I just prayed for you. Hope things get better. There is hope.
Great video. The "secret bunker" in Fife is well worth a visit. Must have been a command one built to keep people alive. Has a good cafe too!
Gosh, we had LAN parties in Kelvedon Hatch in the early 2000 when lugging around a beige box and a CRT still seemed like a good idea. The H&S upgrades to make the space OK are hilarious.
Hatch? Was that the name of one of the bunkers?
No idea if that was the original name but that's what the place is called now. It's a (much larger) bunker which housed a phone exchange among other things and is open to the public.
@@AckzaTV Kelvedon Hatch is the name of the village/parish.
I love it. So cool. You should watch out though. If they're sealed and have steel in there corroding, the corrosion process will consume all the oxygen. Lots of people have had their lives cut short because they enter vessels and tanks and then just drop due to lack of oxygen. You should really have a gas meter when you enter places like that.
The hatch was open so I doubt it was a air tight seal anymore
That was my thought too
Enclosed spaces without a gas detector is terrifying to me
@@teacupalice But the CO2 is more dense than air so will lie inside like an invisible pool of water. There needs to be active ventilation (fans) if the chamber is below ground.
@casey6556 if you carry a lighter it can work as a good makeshift Co2 detector
@@casey6556 I did have a gas detector
The thing with analogue, it can survive the EMP from a nuke.
Great work Calum, I'm 50+ and never knew these things existed.
From what I can gather, electro magnetic pulses can disable any equipment which rely on electricity unless they're disconnected beforehand.
@@sputumtube or is well shielded. There is also CME that can cause funky issues.
@@monkeysausageclubideally you need valve radio communication all solid state devices will be damaged diodes so even in radio,s a valve diode must be used, the fact is we would be totally shafted as anything with electronic management will fail and be useless vintage cars with coil ignition will be ok probably, we. Would be returned back 200 years all the knowledge that passed generations knew has been lost I doubt if anyone reading this would even know how to build a radio transmitter or simple receiver, valves we don’t make anymore! Many things are built by Robots machines all gone where would we start?
Did anyone notice that when the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred that the cameras taking the very first pictures, the the cameras were bombarded with gama ray’s giving rise to sparkles on the pictures, if you can find some old footage you’ll see what I mean, i
@@johnchild61 Definitely. The photographer was Ukrainian born Igor Kostin and he was using a Nikon F3 film camera.
Calum contacted me a few weeks ago to use some footage I had shot while serving in the ROC at stand down and I'm glad I did as this is an informative and entertaining piece of work. I was relatively young when I served in the ROC, 15 at entry and 28 at stand down. It was serious, in so much as those Soviet missiles could reach us very quickly and we did think carefully whether we would be taken out on first strike, survive the blast or perish with the radiation. The posts could not survive a close strike but would survive a distance strike and certainly radiation. Your location (and we knew all the targets) and whether the missiles were accurate were all factors in your survival chances. Many Observers didn't think too much about the grisly business we were in but rather enjoyed the friendship of the Corps and the social life. Often it was not the Russians who were our greatest enemy but CND and the cold! It was very uncool to be in the ROC if you were young but I enjoyed the secretive nature of it all and also the Dad's Army aspect of people of many ages and backgrounds all working together. We had a pensioner who had been in the ROC since World War Two and an officer who was an ex RAF Vulcan navigator plus a gravedigger and a guy who worked in a crematorium. They always joked on how they would dispose of us all after the bomb dropped!
I would have only been 4 when the ROC was stood down but it sounds like you had a great time doing your bit and met some very interesting characters. I bet they had some stories to share.
Thanks for sharing and supporting the ROC.
Gotta love that gallows humor at the end there, nothing better to keep spirits up!
I worked for the ROC in rural Aberdeenshire in the late 80's and worked in one of these bunkers, LOVED it. I remember it being damp and the sound of the generator thumping away above ground to charge the batteries. Always a bugger to start unlike a modern Honda engine, this was a Lister from memory
Stunning episode Callum. Well done.
Thank you so much Jonathan! Was a satisfying project to bring together, especially managing to find posts in all types of condition!
I couldn't help feeling a little chill creeping up my spine when the gentleman remarked and cautioned when leaving the bunker: "Whatever it is outside, it's not peace....".
Exactly and sadly it remains true today more than ever!
I visited the 28 Group HQ in Dundee a number of years ago, and that was in my mind all through the opening sections of this wonderful video. I was on the edge of my seat when I realised you were about to feature it! A brilliant place, and well worth a trip. Keep up the great work, Calum!
14:03 Great informative video, Calum. During the early 1980s before I joined the RAF I was in the ROC (25 Group/Barrhead Post). During an exercise period our post had to man Skelmorlie Post for 12 hours due to personnel shortages. I didn't even get to see the sea due to the thick fog! Happy memories of a dedicated group of volunteers. Great to see Skelmorlie Post maintained.
There's a huge 2000sqm ex-soviet one in Līgatne, Latvia quite similar to the sector HQ you showed. It was hidden under a former Spa (now a rehab centre) and only declassified in the 2000s. It's in pristine condition as it was only actually used once during a wargame, you can visit it and take a tour, of the rooms, and they even let you press all the buttons etc, and on weekends you can even enjoy some traditional soviet cuisine in it's functioning period correct canteen.
This video has really bought back memories. I was a member of the ROC in the 70s 80s. I did a 24 hour training exercise and my goodness, it really felt like I was in the middle of what was an attack on the UK. You had to go up and change the pin hole camera sheets. We called it the bread bin as is was painted white and we didn't have a bpi in the bunker. There was an instrument on the top of the bunker that you took a reading from when changing the paper in the camera. You also had a speaker on the table that gave an annoying loud beep every second. You coukdnt turn it of and trying to sleep was almost impossible.
Thank you for the video. It has bought back memories of a different time.
I enjoy historical videos about the Cold War preparations and bunkers. I'm an American and over here we didn't have anything like your ROC mini bunkers. Our Civil Defense Corps had observers detailed to rooftops. What America did have was a myriad of Command Bunkers of varying sizes and capabilites throughout the U.S. The one I'm most familiar with was right in the area of New Orleans where I was born, and I saw the outside of it every day. One day long after we'd moved, we were back in the old neighborhood and being a member of the Civil Defense in my current County, I stopped in and was given the full ten penny tour. To begin with, the New Orleans Civil Defense bunker was staffed 24/7/365 from the late 1950s until the early 1990s when it was closed. It was staffed by a representative of the Police, Fire, Civil Defense, Mayors Office, Air National Guard, and the Army National Guard. It began 3 stories down, and went down for 2 more. It was completely circular in design. It's purpose was to be a command and control setting for city operations in the event of war/attack. It had a staff auditorium (or bull pen), a mini TV & radio station, mini emergency room, dental clinic, kitchen, sleeping quarters for 200 (men & women separately). A radioactive fallout decontamination station, an armory, and several "escape" tunnels. Its gone now... it was flooded during Hurricane Katrina. It was eventually filled in and pricey condominiums built over it. Unless you knew it was there, there's no trace. You can still find a few news articles and old black and white photos online. The New Orleans Civil Defense Bunker on West End - Pontchartrain Drive.
Always a treat to see one of your videos appearing, another excellent wonderfully researched edited and presented vid. Your efforts to capture these pieces of history are wonderful!
So crazy that you managed to see an old bunker basically untouched! Such a great video again!
As teenagers, me & my mate broke into... Errr... I mean repurposed 😉 one of those near Balintore on the North East coast of Scotland in the mid 90's (it literally only took 2 bent nails to lift up the latch) 😉
There's also a WW2 aerodrome there & another near Tain.!
There was still bunkbeds with matresses, a toilet, air filters, a telephone, a bench & a map on the wall with the locations & numbers of all the other observation posts marked on it.
It was just the coolest thing ever.!
We hooked up a 12 volt car battery to a portable stereo & light bulbs & it became our little den..
We used to go up there with our girlfriends, something to drink, something to smoke & have a grand old time. 😉 😉
It wasn't until years later that I understood the true role & significance of them.!
Lol taking ur girlfriend to a nuclear bunker
@@AckzaTV epic
@@AckzaTVwhere else can you scream as loud as you want without anyone hearing you? in a good way though...
that sounds fucking awesome
@@iSkateHartlepool It was mate.
We were using it for months.
Unfortunately we invited the wrong person, they blabbed & we went up one night to find it had been set fire to.!
Bastards.!!!
It wasn't fit for anything after that.!!
Stay safe out there mate & the very best wishes from Scotland 🏴 🙏 ❤️
Just discovered you today, already on my fourth video, subscribed, and I'm so happy I found you! Can't wait to keep watching more!❤
If you haven't already been; there's a bunker in fife called the "Secret Bunker" and it's a very good example of a cold war bunker. It's a bit out of the way to get there but it's massive. Just the ramp that takes you down to the bunkers level is quite impressive.
I live relatively near it ,been in it once, really interesting place, I was told that when it was being built the lorry drivers stopped at bottom of road and got out then a soldier would take the lorry in and empty it then return it to the driver
Whereabouts in Fife
@@markdavidson9743 It's just called "The Secret Bunker" ... it's obviously not secret because it's a tourist attraction ... Google will soon find what you need ... or its Wikipedia page ... or Google maps ... (it's inland from Crail.)
Another excellent video, the time and effort you put in really shows. Always a treat when a new one pops up. Thanks and keep up the great work!
Lovely video.
36:10 seeing that old school unearthed anglepoise next to a wash basin is giving me anxiety lol
Hahah Never noticed that. Lovely lamp!
Be careful of bad air
Yeah I would recommend people do this: stick to the nice restored ones!
Being round my dad in the morning I have the same concerns
And mould, especially black mould.
@@patrickm.4754Brits are immune to black mould most homes in the South East have a perpetual black mould problem. Unless you're allergic to mould spore, have breathing issues or encounter an unnaturally dense patch of mould, black mould won't do much with short term exposure.
and tocsin gases
- I'll get my overalls
I remember as a child, when these were being decommissioned. We stumbled upon one near Minard, Argyll, scotland. We were kids at the time, and saw a policeman, and a few officials climbing in to one, then climbing back out a few minutes later ( we were hiding behind a knoll and heather/bracken. We didn't know what it was at the time, but when we summoned up the courage (a few months later) to return, it had been buried. I ALWAYS wanted to know what was down there, so thanks very much! I now know what it was and what was down there!
Something horribly ironic about spamming the middle of your own video with a anti-spam spam.
😂
Spam spam eggs and spam?
And being directly followed (for me) by advert for a spammy mobile game that spams more ads when you play it.
Awesome video Calum, we had one just beside our village in Aberdeenshire and when I saw your video thumbnail I recognised the entry hatch etc and knew that’s what it must have been! We would sledge on the hill beside it. Also remember it getting filled in unfortunately, I guess due to its close proximity to our village! Thanks for finally educating me on its history!👍🏻👌🏻
I always enjoy your videos. Thank you for what you do. Cheers from Austria - keep up the great work.
The movie tracking shot at 33:04 is epic, and those guys look hard as nails! Brilliant.
There's one in the wheat field opposite my Dad's house. The farmers painted it in "Calass green" so from a distance the superstructure looked like another pice of farm machinery.
Turn it into a man cave!
Loved the little touch of the old school black and white scroll warning of an advert, great job on these mini docs.
Haha that is always my favourite part to edit in!
29:37 outstanding tablecloth
Amazing mess room in general. It even had an Xbox!
Got to keep the MOOd up somehow ;)
@@CalumRaasayit also has a decent set of speakers :) I've been Lucky enough to stay at the 28 Group bunker for a weekend and can confirm the table cloth is awesome too :)
Great video about something I didn´t even know existed: a relic of the past but, sadly, also a stark reminder of the latent dangers of the present.
Glad to see you had the rare chance of being a sort of cold war Howard Carter.
This is awesome, just spent the better part of 2 hours going down a rabbit hole on the Subterranea Britannica looking at all the posts in my local area. Seriously awesome stuff on there, a time capsule in its own right with the last update given on many bunkers in the late 90s!
Glad you enjoyed it! It’s easy to become obsessed 😅
I just watched a few videos about these bunkers and the ROC a couple days ago. You have a eerie habit of doing that!
Love the NEC APC computer just chilling on the desk at 31:35
Last year I visited the regional HQ for the ROC in York. The tour around their restored bunker was breathtaking and chilling. I’d highly recommend a visit and thanks for the video!
We have one of the Regional War Rooms just down the road from here in Nottingham, and i would love to see it restored. It is grade 2 listed, but the local developers would love nothing more than to see it removed as new housing has been built up to it.
Colney way
RSG
Regional Seat of Government
Thanks
I worked on the telephone lines to these ROC bunkers. There were many inconsistencies. The bunker had to have an underground feed so it didn’t get blown away. Lots had the underground feed only for it to go overhead once it was back at the road ! The distribution equipment was in a very robust steel box in the telephone exchange where the wires emerged from the box it was often in a wooden hut for rural exchanges ! Every few years we would be given a mountain of dry cells (Batteries) and have the job of replacing them at all the sites. They were the ultimate backup power in-case the exchange battery died in the blast.
The national broadcast circuit used the speaking clock circuit which could be switched over to the WB400 network.
In the bunker were two telecom items, a WB400 which was a broadcast receiver to get messages from the central government / police and a Teletalker for two way communication with the HQ / Other ROC posts (Master) ? The WB400 should always work but the Teletalker had to be switched / patched in the local exchange.
We normally went in pairs to these ROC sites, only one went down the hole the other remained top side and could go for help if required. We never seemed to test for gas it was always assumed the ventilation was OK.
I may be a little younger than you but I used to install and maintain the WB1400 equipment that was the 2nd generation equipment used in the ROC posts. Case 200's were a daily build in our workshop. I seem to remember the last version was a metal 'sandwich toaster' affair but can't be sure of its designation. I've been in many posts around the Durham and Yorkshire areas including the old headquarters at The Sands in Durham. I passed one in Bala a month or two ago on a walk and was explaining to my walking companion, an old shool friend, what they were. I've sent him a link to this video to explain further.
Great video.
The secrecy around theses was amazing, not many of the general public knew much if anything about them. I remember a friend telling me about the network before 1990 and I was surprised, I did not have a clue, he also said about the what he called the UK Civil defence force and a bit about the collapse of the funding. Apparently it still goes on but under a different name.
Wonderful. Always Quality and Interesting. 👍👍
Thank You Calum
Glad you enjoyed it!
Awesome video Callum. Fun fact with these all being badged to Inverness. In the Inverness Central Telephone exchange there is a bunker in the basement. It’s empty now but the blast doors are still intact. When working in the building I often went down for an adventure to see what I could find.
There is also a mega bunker in Cupar - It’s called “Scotlands Secret Bunker” and it is an amazing tour!
Good video and a subject well covered, we all love an ROC post, you might be surprise how many are in good condition with plenty of bits and bobs inside.
I bet more in England where it’s drier too! Flooding has done a lot in up here
Commenting to applaud your refreshing use of the message on the wall to ask for engagement as a like rather than asking the same way everyone else does 👌
I've been in these bunkers when they were operational during the 1980s. I was a Chief Observer.
Living conditions if we had gone to war wouldn't have been great. And personally I'm not convinced that we would have been at all effective.
the ROC was pretty much the way of the British trying to conceal the fact of "we're completely fucked" in a way only the british know how, the home guard during ww2 was a similar example. makes people feel good but otherwise pretty useless if the germans actually decided to turn up, they'd have lasted about 5 minutes against the fallschirmjagers..
The toilets you mention were commonly called Elsan toilets after the largest manufacturer. They were used all over the place where there was no water supply including some military aircraft, camping, caravan and building sites and temporary public gatherings like air displays. The outer housing contained an inner bucket, both steel with a conventional toilet seat and lid. A strong fragranced oily disinfectant fluid was placed in the bottom of the empty toilet which filled with solid and liquid waste and toilet paper up to the emptying level. Not a pretty sight but better than digging a hole in the ground! The modern porta potty system works in a similar way and is still in use today in touring caravans etc.
Coming from one of those kids who were taught to "duck and cover" in the early seventies, It's hard to believe that we're still under the threat of nuclear war.
The tech college I went to gave us all lectures on iodine pills and what the sirens meant from Plymouth Dockyard. When at Torpoint secondary we also got told if we had 3 siren blasts the teachers would tell us what to do and we were to be given the iodine pills.
@@GavinEarnshaw I vagally remember being told about the Iodine pills when I was young in the 1970s.
Great video! Very well written, produced and edited
Well done
I was with 9 group Yeovil Somerset I was there for 7years my job was then to help in the telephone exchange and radio backup I sometimes was on post comm's . we could have 50 or so people on an exercise at any one time.
Fascinating, as always! I'm reminded of all the decommissioned Nike missile bases scattered around the world. Built to a very consistent plan, many blend into fairly urban settings since they were often intended to defend cities against nuclear strikes. Neighbors have no idea that the live next to a former underground nuclear missile base (yes, the later Ajax missiles used nuclear warheads to defend against nuclear strikes, strange as that may seem). I have visited several, one abandoned and two repurposed as firefighting helicopter bases. There's plenty of material there for a video Calum, should you ever run short!
Here in Finland we have cold war bunkers all over the place. Every apartment building used to have one and the hospital I work for has one that they use as changing room for us workers. I know there were people who were taught how to use the doors and ventilation.
Yes but your bunkers were not for a war ….it was to put 90% of the Finnish population in as most of them where crazy bastards 😂😂😂
Another apsolutely incredible documentary. Thankyou Calum for your efforts and excellent Appendix at the end ❤
Honestly, if a nuclear war did break out, I wouldn’t want to be alive through all of that madness, I’d rather be dead.
Seeing that film of the maroons going off brings back some memories!! When I left school in '86 my first job was at a company called P.W. Control Systems who had a contract from Pains Wessex to make those very maroon launching systems for the ROC.
Visited one of these ROC posts today. So glad you released this brilliant video - doubles down on my exploration with all this context :)
Having a space like this to go and just relax without distraction sounds really nice, an office would be great for the focus
Nothing for civilians in the Uk. Proves what the government thinks of it's citizens
Pretty much! It was good luck and see you on the other side.
@CalumRaasay "And don't forget to whitewash your windows, fill those sandbags and hide under the stairs..."😐
Name one country that provides nuclear bunkers for even a small proportion of its population?
@@BewilderedDuck-e5l Switzerland?
@@BewilderedDuck-e5lIs this a serious question? If it is then you'll be amazed how many, there is a lot of countries that have, do and still currently creating bunkers specifically for civilians. It seems to be (at least in the northern hemisphere) the larger and especially western countries that don't care about it's civilians.
You just had me googling the history of fluorescent strip lights, genuinely surprised they were in use that early!
Love your work!
A very well done putting this together, the best so far on accuracy!
YES NEW CALUM VIDEO ABOUT OBSCURE AREAS
Thank you for researching and publishing this interesting and accurate account of the ROC and UKWMO. I was a Post Observer in No2 Group Horsham from 1988 to 1991. I well remember going up and down that ladder during exercises - you only needed to hit the hatch counter-weight once - after that you remembered it!
I'm from the US, our shelters were in the basements of large community buildings. The laughable(now) instructions were for students to hide under their desks. In the central states those same instructions were continued to be propagated for Tornado or even Earthquake drills. There was even booming sales of home fallout shelters you could bury in the yard...most houses didn't have basements. They were later repurposed for tornado use too.
These "laughable" instructions as you call them were based on carefully collected data gathered from the aftermath of the atomic strikes in Japan in WWII.
Most lethal injuries outside of the immediate blast zone (where no one was expected to survive) were caused by flying glass. The "duck and cover" instructions were meant to save lives many MILES away from the blast, not those directly hit. It wasn't laughable at all and is greatly misunderstood these days.
Another fascinating video.
I've visited the ROC bunker in York a few years ago which was a larger regional HQ.
One thing I found shocking was that the guys going outside to remove the photo paper were not provided with proper NBC gear, only boiler suits.
Yeah, no one got anything other than a basic uniform really! I think the early days the ROC mainly used old RAF kit.
@@CalumRaasay That sounds very likely, make use of the old surplus kit.
To be honest you wouldn't want to use a WW2 respirator anyway as the filters contained asbestos but you would have thought that later the Avon respiratory and NBC clothing used by the armed forces could have been made available.
@@markonmotoring In the 1960s the kids played with asbestos respirators ... I'm just waiting for my lungs to pack in!
those photo papers would be changed within a couple of minutes of a blast being registered on the bomb pressure indicator, not enough time for fallout to reach you. also soviet weapons tended to be less accurate and thusly had considerably larger warheads so a hit close enough to cause a high radiation level a couple of minutes after the blast would have been close enough to eradicate all life topside!
Hope there's no leaves on rail tracks and bus service is not on strike,Got my flask and few mars bars. Should be OK, as long as Phone has signal.
Loved the throw back to adds Incoming in the top right corner.
If the government wants to get into a nuclear slap fight with another country just remember you're not invited to the bunker.
I’ll climb into that water logged on!
I'm assuming there is a fairly large invite list from the 10 or so current ones i have found in our region that appear to be being actively maintained. Pretty sure I'm not invited either....haha
In the mid 1980's I worked with someone who was in the ROC, he was a real character and a nice bloke too, he had some great stories to tell. My mother worked in local government and took part in some 'exercises' that took place from time to time to try and simulate a nuclear attack, it was a very real threat at that time, but government 'cut backs' meant these operations were stopped.
I can not even imagine what a pointless waste of resources those were.
Communication via copper telephone wires that would have been melted by any nearby blast.
A huge case of pointlessness to make out that government could respond in any meaningful way after such devastation.
It’s a shame you found a flooded ROC Post, there’s actually a LOT of ROCs in decent condition! One of my favourites isn’t terribly far distance from my village, the one just outside of Tain. Decent condition, still has loads of original magazines, the hatch closes (but isn’t locked) so it’s stayed dry all these years. There’s even an old log book where the original ROC members signed it for the last time, and over the following pages is folk who’ve gone and explored it with the date and their name, including myself actually!
Just really happy to see a video covering ROC Posts, they’re probably one of my ultimate favourite places to explore, something magical about them! Always really happy seeing ROC Posts get restored, thanks for showing us Skelmorlie!! Have yet to visit the Dundee HQ, it’s on my to-do list and I’m so jealous!!
13:15 getting the chemical toilet out my boat is hard enough, let alone climbing a ladder like that while holding onto it, I bet they used a rope or cable to lift and lower it.
Oh god don’t let that rope slip 💩
One in a field near me in. North Yorkshire about 3 mile from catterick garrison, used to smoke bongs in it as a teenager !!!
Really watch out about oxygen levels in enclosed spaces, it's a killer!
Light your lighter, not going to be gas down there and the lighter lights there’s oxygen. Obviously don’t do that in caves lol
Thanks Calum for your indepth review. We had one of these bunkers outside the villages of Augher and Clogher in the townland of Knockmanny County Tyrone, back in my younger day. Always strange to see cars in the middle of nowhere one evening per week, but I was told by my parents that it was ROC. Sadley all is gone, the whole area was excavated for building sand materials. Best wishes from Northern Ireland.
Loved that footage of the restored ROC post ❤
Those could be very useful in the near future
Fascinating to watch. Brilliant stuff. Curious what the new versions are like. It would seem naive to think we stopped making them.
I've been to the Secret Bunker in Anstruther but I didn't realise there are more museums in Scotland you can visit. Thanks for this, this is great
I appreciate your storytelling and the research you put into it. Big thanks, and I'm waiting for the next one.
this is really cool! I learned about all of this back in secondary school as part of a local history project in my GCSE. I got to visit the HQ in York which is an english heritage site (very similar to the one you visited, they made them basically identical after all) and it's cool to see this topic being covered elsewhere because it's really hard to find anything out about all of this without doing your own research.
Calum, if you produce another video to further elaborate on this subject I will happily watch it. Great content, thank you.
My husband served in the seventies at 20 Group HQ Acomb near York. The monitoring post crews were brilliant. I remember during an exercise the post crew at Middlesmore being trapped inside the post when light snow and plummeting temperatures froze the hatch closed. Off duty crew members from the post and nearby posts had to attend and free the on duty crew.
The Echo I / 16 post I can't believe you found one that isn't riddled with mould.
You would usually expect to see mould in condenced places like that.
Good find!
There's one under Cefn Mably, (South East Wales.). I remember a friend of my Grans helped to build it.
In the states we had Nike Missile Bases, all underground. They are all abandoned now. They were a lot of fun to explore in the 60's, when I was 15 years old.
Reminds me of Howard Carter entering King Tut's tomb.
When I was a kid we had little books that we loved to study (books aimed at kids!) ... they gave details of the various nuclear missiles and we learned to identify the different types, their range etc! When we weren't looking at that we were comparing aircraft silhouettes so we could identify enemy aircraft. It seems amazing to me now.
Plenty of UKWMO films on TH-cam. It was a very well thought out organization. We had nothing so organized here in the US. I was a trained monitor in high school at the end of the Cold War in the 80s, but no monitoring shelters like in the UK
Being prepared and organised - what an interesting concept. Shame recent UK governments seem to have forgotten how to do that.
Very informative video though, thank you.
Hi Calum, well, another awe inspiring video with great attention to detail. Thank you. Roll on the next one.
What a superb video Calum, thanks for that.
Such a fan of your video's. Interesting subjects, quality content and such a nice voice to listen to. Keep it up!
Excellent video as always Calum. We have one just up the road from us in Pytchley, Northamptonshire. They do open days and it’s definitely worth a visit. If s amazing when your down there thinking about what they were built for. Sends shivers down your spine.
Do you have a google map reference for that? Thanks.