It's not just the scale of this which impresses me, but the speed at which it was constructed. Compare that to a trunk road interchange near me, where it's taken a bunch of contractors years to get to the stage where they are now years away from completing the installation of a glorified roundabout.
Heart of darkness: Inside the Osówka underground city
Lurking just outside the Polish village of Sierpnica is a relic of World War II Nazi ambition. The Osówka complex is the largest and most accessible remnant of the huge Project Riese (translation: “Giant”), an effort to create an underground city capable of housing 20,000 or more Nazi troops and workers. The scope of Project …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 11th January 2018 14:57 GMT Potemkine!
Re: "A clear mandate for destroying the British economy, then."
After all, the nazis were technically trying to unite Europe.
Not really, they didn't plan to apply the same rules for anyone anywhere. Fate of european countries would have been different according to their prejudice. Subduing does not necessarily mean unifying.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 16:41 GMT Alumoi
Re: "A clear mandate for destroying the British economy, then."
Not really, they didn't plan to apply the same rules for anyone anywhere. Fate of european countries would have been different according to their prejudice. Subduing does not necessarily mean unifying.
And how's that's different from the current EU?
Oh, wait, Germany IS rulling EU.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 17:29 GMT Shoot Them Later
Re: "A clear mandate for destroying the British economy, then."
I hereby announce the invention of the Farage Cage, a large metal structure that you can step inside to be shielded from all mentions of Brexit.
It works by applying 40,000 volts to its structure if anyone mentions Brexit. Very effective, and widely considered a preferable alternative to enduring another Brexit discussion.
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Friday 12th January 2018 09:40 GMT Joe 35
Re: "A clear mandate for destroying the British economy, then."
I suggest a slight amendment to your otherwise excellent plan
"It works by applying 40,000 volts to its structure if anyone mentions Brexit."
The 40,000 volts should be applied not to the structure, but to the dangly bits of anyone who mentions the B word.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 16:18 GMT Tikimon
Give 'em credit, the Krauts thought BIG
Have you seen the Flak Towers (Flakturm) that were built in Berlin, Hamburg, and Vienna? Ranging from 150-250 feet tall, they were built so tough that many still loom over their host cities, too strong to destroy. Some of those were built in as little as six months.
As mentioned, slave labor and such helped get that done. But consider another massive engineering feat of the same period, done without slave labor in record time: The Pentagon. One of the world's largest office buildings was competed in 16 months by free men.
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Friday 12th January 2018 07:13 GMT Joe Montana
Regulation...
Less regulation, less paperwork, less red tape, cheaper labour, more relaxed health+safety/labour laws, much easier to get things done...
Look at construction projects taking place in third world countries, they generally have inferior equipment and lower skilled labourers and still manage to get large projects completed.
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Friday 12th January 2018 10:13 GMT Muscleguy
i wish to refer my honourable friend to the brand new Queensferry Crossing now adding to the engineering marvels which span the Firth of Forth here in Scotland. An entirely Scottish project it came in slightly under budget, cost estimates fell from £4.3bn at the start to the £1.6bn it cost to build. It was within tolerance on the time front, especially since internationally bridges take on average 2 years longer to build than estimated. Bad weather set ours back a couple of months.
Then there's the new Borders rail line, on time and under budget. The A9 between Perth and Inverness is being dualled very efficiently too. They did the longest stretch of single lane recently, it is now open. When doing that drive, wait for the dualled bit, don't try and overtake.
Scotgov seems to have cracked the secret of public procurement of infrastructure programs. International bodies are noticing and delegations are arriving wanting to know how we are doing it. Don't expect the MSM to inform you of this. The rule is the SNP is Baaaad, m'Kay?
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Friday 12th January 2018 15:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
"An entirely Scottish project..."
Ah yes, the Queenferry Crossing, designed and built by well-known Scottish firms such as Ramboll, Sweco, Leonhardt Andra, Hochtief, Dragados, and American Bridge International, with steelwork sourced from the Scottish towns of Gdansk, Seville and Shanghai.
Budget was £1.45 - 1.6 billion when they started building, came out as £1.35 billion. So only a bit more expensive than the Edinburgh Tram line.
Due to be completed in December 2016, opened at the end of August 2017 and immediately closed again to finish it off (work which is still ongoing).
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Thursday 11th January 2018 10:50 GMT Ol'Peculier
Stump Hole Cavern
Am I the only one thinking of this sketch?
"We are of course part of a much wider network of caves that riddle the entire county, including the much larger Redscar Cavern located half a mile to the west. A trifle flashy for my taste I have to say, with their gift shop, granary style cafeteria, and one hundred percent safety record all over their promotional literature. But there you go. Now if we stay in single file we’ll make our way into the main cavern. I do think it’s worth noting that Redscar were served with a council notice, ordering them to replace 115 yards of faulty wiring. Put it this way – I wouldn’t like to get caught down there in a thunderstorm, and no amount of trilobites in Perspex or stegosaurus shaped pencil tops is going to change that.
"I myself am not fond of the darkness – I sleep with the lights on now. It’s in the darkness I see the boy’s face. Eyes protruding, tongue out…black.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 10:51 GMT Pen-y-gors
King Arthur's Labyrinth
While this is on a much larger scale, bits sound reminiscent of King Arthur's Labyrinth near Machynlleth. In the latter case the caverns were excavated as a slate mine, but still impressive - some of the main caverns are vast! Also complete with flooded tunnels (you enter by riding on a boat - with small outboard - through the flooded tunnels) and hard hats for the bits where the tunnel is about 4ft high. The aim of the tour is to view various bits of son-et-lumiere on the theme of the Welsh tales of King Arthur. Personally I'd pay just to explore the tunnels!
Well worth a visit if in the area. The adjoining Corris Craft Centre is home to Dyfi Distillery, makers of award-winning gin!
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Thursday 11th January 2018 13:40 GMT Humpty McNumpty
Re: King Arthur's Labyrinth
There are further tunnels without cheesy welsh folk tales that you can visit separately http://www.corrismineexplorers.co.uk/ and of course the slate mines of Blaenau Ffestiniog https://www.llechwedd-slate-caverns.co.uk have been open to the public as an attraction longer still. (Includes this insanity https://www.zipworld.co.uk/adventure/detail/bounce-below )
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Thursday 11th January 2018 20:43 GMT BlinkenLights
Re: King Arthur's Labyrinth
Llechwedd is very safe and tourist oriented. For more of an adventure you can spend a day exploring the nearby Cwmorthin slate mine - look up Go Below Extreme.
You enter the mine in the middle level (the upper levels are all collapsed) and make your way down to the lowest level that's not flooded and back up again. Aong the way you climb up and traverse vertical walls (via ferrata style), zip wire across the top of deep caverns, an abseil descent, ride down the deepest underground zip line, and finally jump of an underground cliff attached to a free fall descender.
There are no concessions to "tourists". The mine is exacly as left, except for the zip wires and safety wires. The only lighting is your helmet torch.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 10:55 GMT Pen-y-gors
Human cost
Reminds me of a holiday on Alderney some years ago, staying at the Landmark Trust's 'Fort Clonque' - a Napoleonic-War-era fortress on its own little island, which was re-fortified by the Germans during the WWII occupation, using slave labour from the concentration camp they built on the island.
My bedroom was in a WWII-era gun bunker, with double glazing in the gun-slit looking out to sea. Slight twinge about having a happy holiday in something built by Polish slaves, but at the same time they were at least being remembered.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 11:51 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Maybe one day we will also visit Cold War underground facilities
You used to be able to play paintball in the old Greenham Common airbase (or Cruise missile fame). Because they'll not be demolishing all those reinforced concrete hangars anytime soon.
There's also a company that do a zombie apocalypse themed day. You start by going with a police SWAT team to fight some zombies, with paintball guns. Lots of pyrotechnics, as your movements are controlled by the police, and other actors playing zombies. Then after lunch all the actors dress up as zombies and try to eat you, while you fight them off. They've got two sites. One old 60s concrete shopping Centre in Reading and an old Cold War bunker in North London. Sadly my mate refused to do it for his stag do, and I haven't persuaded enough friends to join me and go. Seems like a well spent £100 to me - for a one-off experience.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 11:04 GMT chivo243
Outsourcing
(according to the guide, the Third Reich was not above a bit of outsourcing).
Too true. When I was a child, we had Greek neighbors, one of their uncles was trained as a welder by the Nazis. He was quite good too. He cut two Fiat X19s apart and welded the front end onto the other back end. It was a thing of beauty, it drove down the road straight as an arrow...
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Thursday 11th January 2018 11:55 GMT Primus Secundus Tertius
Wine manufacture
I have a theory that the various underground factories built during WW2 were later turned to manufacturing artificial wine. That is where all the German wine comes from, distributed through pipelines around Europe and beyond. Sometimes oil, sometimes wine, sometimes natural gas; there may be problems during the switch from one to another.
All the pictures of vineyards and happy peasants are just a sales puff by the wine industry.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 12:20 GMT Spoobistle
VLF transmitter?
Didn't this complex appear in that series of Jamie Theakston programmes, now rolling round on Yesterday or Quest?
It struck me that the site could well have been intended as a VLF transmitter for communication with submarines, a well known Nazi obsession. All the Allied powers were doing this after WW2 (Alpha, Omega etc) but there doesn't seem to be much information about whether the Germans were developing anything similar.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 15:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Phah. Poor effort.
You should see the real inside of the Rock of Gibraltar if you want to see impressive.
If you've got military colleagues or are military, you can get the -proper- tour, where you'll see a wall the length of a football pitch lined with toilets, hospitals still with equipment, offices, mess-halls, etc.
With tunnels you could drive two way traffic through, impenetrable access points and a side stairwell of over a thousand steep steps in near pitch black, it's an awe-inspiring sight.
True story: Whilst mapping out the interior, some of the British MOD training staff identified a draft in a tunnel where there should be no draft. Bit of exploratory hitting things with a sledgehammer revealed a false cave wall.
Inside it was a room lined in cork, with WW2 rations, what looked like rowing machines, and other assorted equipment.
There was a letterbox shaped hole which looked out over the Gibraltar strait.
When queried, Whitehall denied all knowledge. When sent pictures, they burst. During the war, if the Germans ever looked like they were going to seize the rock, a group of soldiers who had been psychologically tested and assessed were going to be bricked inside that room. With rations for several years, the rowing machines could be used to keep fit and intermittently power a radio from which they could send out updates on the German shipping in the strait, seen through the slit.
Wow.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 16:09 GMT Emjay111
Not forgetting Burlington
This is one underground "city" in the UK that I'd love to explore. It would make a great tourist attraction as well. Maintained until fairly recently I understand.
The place has over 60 miles of roads, deep under Corsham in Wiltshire:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/articles/2005/12/14/burlington_nuclear_bunker_feature.shtml
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Thursday 11th January 2018 17:06 GMT John Sturdy
Another opened bunker
Bunk'art, in Tirana, is a museum and art gallery built in the main Cold War bunker of the Albanian communists, and is fascinating to visit.
(And, although not a bunker, in the same city, the old secret surveillance centre The House of Leaves is also now open as a museum, with a lot of old wiretapping and other bugging equipment on display.)
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Friday 12th January 2018 03:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Compulsory link (considering the project name) Rammstein - Reise, Reise (Live at Hellfest 2016)
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Friday 12th January 2018 03:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Compulsory link (considering the project name) Rammstein - Reise, Reise (Live at Hellfest 2016)