While defensive bunkers were built for ordinary citizens, the party elite got something truly extraordinary dug out for them underground. Not just one, either. If things went south, the elite was supposed to evacuate to the nearest one and basically ride out the aftermath of an attack.

Some of them are open to visitors these days. The scale of bunk.art is mind-blowing. Rooms and corridors just keep going and going, but you won't get lost.

What strikes you is how pointless the whole thing was. So they lock themselves in there, stay for a month or two. Then what? There's nobody and nothing left up top. Who's going to keep them alive and how? You can't last long in a shelter like that.

They designed it all under serious secrecy. Engineers were constantly rotated so nobody had the full picture of how the whole thing worked. Clearly a quality improvement (:

In some places it turned out pretty funny: in communist Albania, regular particle board was considered fancier than wood. So the dictator's office was covered in it. While the simpler rooms got natural wood instead.

I'll wrap up the bunker topic here.