Debert Diefenbunker more than a fallout shelter

Next time I'm up that way I'll have to check that out.

Don't worry about North Korea because most of the US Senators claim that a peaceful solution with continued dialog is key moving forward to end all of this. Peaceful solution alright, dialog? They have been trying this for over 20 years and the results are? Well the results are North Korea has now or will soon have the capability to strike the US. So why is there such a outcry for dialog? Who will they blame if the US gets hit by North Korea. This is a mess that should have been taken care of years ago, now we see tough talk by both sides but the only one who will move is North Korea, North Korea is being fed by both China and the Russians, the US is best to either wipe north Korea off the map or keep their mouth shut and leave them alone. The thing is were not talking about Iraq or Afghanistan, they actually have some competition with North Korea via mega missiles, and I don't buy the artillery pointed at south korea by the north as a way out of battle, the US claims to be the super power but cannot handle the north's artillery? In the meantime it's always interesting to hear what people are saying on this particular issue, just don't send any Canadians there because it may not meet the CIA criteria / requirements for the injured returning home.

The renovation of a Debert nuclear fallout shelter built during the cold war is hosting a variety of businesses, and is almost back to working
order as a functional fallout shelter. (Staff)

As Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un flung continue to fling threats at each other, and after a four-hour cellphone outage in Atlantic Canada on Aug 4., fear that the world will end amid fire, fury and nuclear fallout is wrinkling more than a few foreheads.

Here in Nova Scotia, the owner of the Debert Diefenbunker — an underground bomb shelter turned to office space and soon a tourism venue — says disaster worries are a routine part of his business day.

“We get a lot (of enquiries),” Jonathan Bahai, owner of the 64,000-square-foot, nuclear-hardened refuge said Thursday. “People are interested in the bunker and they’re happy that there is a place to go sometimes.

“Recently, in regards to anxiety, I haven’t noticed any specific increase (but) I’ve been so busy I might not have noticed it.”

Bahai is renovating the bunker, which was constructed as emergency government quarters during the 1960s when John Diefenbaker was prime minister and the Cold War between eastern European communist countries and America’s allies was at its height.

That decades-long tension evaporated and in 1998 the bunker and adjacent military complex were turned over to a local economic development authority, which sold it. After the fourth owner lost it in 2013 in a tax sale, Bahai gained control.

We’re about 90 per cent there,” Bahai said. “We are working on some systems but once that’s all in order, then we are actually making this place to be functional as a fallout shelter.”

About four dozen people work in the bunker, including an accounting firm, a couple of IT and tech businesses, and the crews who are repairing and upgrading the subterranean behemoth.

“The cafeteria, for example, will operate as a full commercial kitchen, so small businesses will be able to make food,” Bahai said. “And we also have a large space that we’re setting up to host workshops and conferences, trade shows and what not. We’re also taking care of fire code things and getting the place ready for tourism.

“We have so many things to do. It’s like trying to eat an elephant — that’s how we’re taking it here. But we hope that by next season we’ll have everything in place. Probably during the winter we’ll start hosting a few events.”

The bunker was designed to hold 350 people, but if nuclear hell strikes tomorrow you likely won’t get inside.

“We just don’t have that much food right now,” Bahai said, laughing. “I think it is one of the more interesting places people could go to, but we have so much work to do.”

http://m.thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1494426-debert-diefenbunker-more-than-a-fallout-shelter