Denmark opens secret nuclear war bunker for public

Masked among tall trees in Denmark's Rold Skov Forest lies the Regan Vest bunker kept too secret for more than 50 years. Stream, 30 miles [30 km] south of the city of Aalboorg, was built during the peak of the Cold War.

The curator of Denmark's Museum of History of the Northern Region, Boddil Frandsen, has based her doctorate on the Regan Vest bunker already turned into a museum.

After the Hungarian revolution and the Suez Canal incidents, the fear of a war was very real. At the same time, nuclear bombs had evolved, and especially the test with the hydrogen bomb”, she says.

The bunker “Regan Vest” had no military purpose but was designed as a shelter for the government and the queen of Denmark in the event of the nuclear war outbreak. The loss of the bunker would also mark the end of Danish democracy.

The “Bunker was built on the basis of the idea that nuclear war would take place in three phases, and the first phase was the most serious one, thought to last 30 days”, says Mrs. Frandsen.

At the end of a 300 - foot - long [300 m] winding corridor and 60 feet [60 m] below the rock surface is a complex of bedrooms, a surgeon's clinic, an operational center, and meeting halls.

Works for the bunker began as the world was marking successive crises. The Soviet Union was conducting nuclear trials, building the Berlin Wall and secretly deploying missiles in Cuba. Varnke Egeskov is a curator in the “Reagan Vest” bunker.

The Danish government, leadership, some members of the press and telecommunications, as well as others who would deal with the functioning of things, such as ventilation or other machinery, would live in this nuclear bunker. The bunker would house 350 people”.

Denmark, a NATO member, completed the bunker construction in 1968. But the residents of the area were unaware of the bunker's existence until 2012, when it became declassified.

The facility, which still has the furniture of those years, can be visited by the public, says curator Ulla Varnke Egeskov.

It's like going to the Cold War time, amid fears and preparations for the war to come. It's like getting into a time capsule because everything here is from the '60s, '70s and '80s. He sees things you remember from then on. It stirs fear and memory”

The bunker entrance is veiled by a yellow house where engineering and his family once lived. Construction lasted five years (1963-1968) and the importance for its design grew even more during the Russian missile crisis in Cuba, when the world was very close to a nuclear conflict.

The museum's “Bunker offers a story about atomic bombs. But the essence concerns democracy”, says museum director Lars Christian Nörbach.

Kurds say the current tensions between Russia and the West make the history of the nuclear bunker even more important.

The fact that we have a war in Europe and are talking about the threat of a nuclear war, which makes the concept of the nuclear tunnel even more important”, says Mrs. Frandsen.

The mountain range where the bunker is located is about 250 miles [400 km] from the capital city of Copenhagen. Reagan Vest was released in 2003 and his existence was made public in 2012. / VOA