The Subterranean Secrets of Denton, Texas

Less than 40 miles or so north of Dallas-Fort Worth, the town of Denton, Texas is famous for all sorts of stuff: its universities, music, and arts scene have garnered it the nickname "Little Austin". Yet as Ben, Matt and Noel discover, the town of Denton is also home to one of the strangest artifacts of the Cold War -- a 1960s-era bunker built to withstand nuclear disaster, and continue the US government after the collapse of civilization. Tune in to learn how this happened, what became of the bunker today... and why so many locals are convinced it's only one part of a secret subterranean world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call be Ben.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Most importantly, you are here.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know,
So welcome back everybody. This is going to be a
fun one for us. A literal and metaphorical deep dive.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Guys.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
Remember a little while back. For a while now, we've
been exploring rumors about secret underground cities and networks.

Speaker 5 (00:58):
I'm doing a little urban lunking down the caves.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yes, yes, And earlier this year on listener mail, we
heard from somebody named Pure told us a little something
something about a place that we're gonna explore today.

Speaker 5 (01:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:13):
I can't not think about when I hear Denton, Texas.
There's this Mountain Goat song called the best ever death
metal band out of Denton, and it ends with a
a chorus of Hail Satan, Hail Satan, tonight's hail Satan.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
It's it's fells.

Speaker 5 (01:28):
Are we talking about Satan today? Is there there be Satan?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
We're always kind of talking about Satan.

Speaker 5 (01:34):
I suppose he's always hanging in the background over so
with shoulder, the right shoulder.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
I think. So we asked you, our fellow conspiracy realist,
to help us identify more of these alleged subterranean Heidi
holes and friends and neighbors.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
You delivered. We have been.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
Astonished by how much how much response we got, and
it seems that the United States at least is positively
riddled with little known underground secrets. So, thanks to the
inspiration from our pal Pure, we are diving into another
hidden underground complex. It might be new to a lot
of us in the crowd. There's a little town called Denton, Texas,

(02:16):
and it has a secret.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, just north of big old Dallas, Little Denton underneath
there there's some weird stuff going on.

Speaker 4 (02:28):
So we'll pause for a word from our sponsors, get
our shovels and dig in. Here are the facts, all right, Denton, Texas.
Like we said, it's north central Texas. If you pull
up a map, you're going to see Denton is the
main city of the epononymous Denton County. This is part

(02:51):
of the huge Dallas Fort Worth metro area metroplex, and
it's a little bit less than forty miles north of
that conurbation. As we're going to see, that's kind of
a Goldilock zone. And guys, weren't we in Dallas a
few years ago? Maybe it was podcast movement.

Speaker 5 (03:10):
We went to a conference or something there.

Speaker 6 (03:11):
And I actually had a layover at DFW last week,
so I didn't really get to experience the culture that
is Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, but I was there.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
I can only imagine that that place has a ton
of different areas with completely different cultures.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Also, that airport.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
You have to be careful at the Dallas Fort Worth
Airport because it is unforgiving if you go the wrong way.

Speaker 5 (03:35):
Oh yeah, yeah, little Labyrinthine. I'm glad.

Speaker 6 (03:37):
I just you know, sallied Forth, you know, unperturbed. If
I had known that it was scary, I might have
gotten lost.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
Now we didn't make it out to dent it that
last time we visited, but we're definitely gonna stop by
the next time we were in town. This is known
as Lil d or Lil Austin. Also, it bills itself
as the Halloween Capital of Texas, so I was sold.

Speaker 5 (04:04):
Yeah, well, at least they're not like really jumping the
shark and saying of the world.

Speaker 6 (04:07):
I'm always a little sessed on. Ever, you see people
giving themselves that kind.

Speaker 4 (04:11):
Of designated especially with the with the air quotes by it.
You know, I like, I like a humble road side stop,
save me from the biggest frying pan in the world.
I am gonna pull over if I see a sign
that says the fourth largest frying pan in the world,
and give.

Speaker 5 (04:28):
Give me the world's best cup of coffee, is what
I say.

Speaker 4 (04:32):
I would like the world's second best or the world's
fifteenth best. The specificity is just brilliant.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Well, the world's second best. Austin is a really interesting
concept here because one of the things we know about
Denton is that there's some money in Denton, just.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
Like right, oh yes, yeah, that's a great point. There's
a lot of there's a lot of weird history to
it as well. Similar to Austin, Texas, Denton, the city
and then the larger county Dent in the city is
like the county seat of the area. They're both named
after a militia captain, a pioneer, and a preacher, a

(05:08):
guy named John B.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Denton.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
He's very much a great candidate for ridiculous history. He's
locally famous for all sorts of things, including, to be honest,
being an absolute monster to Native American populations.

Speaker 6 (05:22):
I hate to say, but whenever I hear thought something
like militia captain, I'm always a little what does guy do?

Speaker 5 (05:28):
What horrific acts did this fellow get up to?

Speaker 4 (05:32):
Yeah, history has proven that maybe he was treated as
little bit more of a hero than we would ascribe
in the modern day. But I love that we're pointing
out the art seed nature here. This is also a
university town. It's home to the University of North Texas
as well as Texas Woman's University, and just like Austin,

(05:55):
it's known for this hip music and art scene. I
think the tourist board of Denton is not paying us
for this. In fact, they may be a little irritated
with us after this episode. But uh, I think we
should go. I think we will have a good time.

Speaker 5 (06:10):
I'm down. I'm always down for a road trip. Let's
do it.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
I want to explore the waterways that Pure told us about.
That just a full disclosure everybody. For this episode. We're
not going to talk about reservoirs or whatever, you know,
lines of water that were drilled beneath the city, which
is what Pure was telling us about. We're going to
talk about some other underground stuff, but I would like
to explore some of that just to just to see

(06:36):
if you think about Denton, a city like that, or
Dallas Fort Worth, right, which is just south of what
we're where we're exploring today, the amount of water cities
like that need is just astonishing. Oh yeah, and especially
if you know technology focused cities like Denton around the
world continue to build data centers, Gonna need some more water,

(07:00):
uh in power.

Speaker 5 (07:01):
I heard it.

Speaker 6 (07:01):
I think I mentioned last time we were talking about
data centers. This NPR piece I heard it was on
Marketplace where Kai Brisdohl was touring all of these various
data centers in Silicon Valley area and he pointed out
there is a giant pipe in the wall that is
like cold water intake. And the dude when he was
giving them the tour, who was faced with the question

(07:22):
of like, isn't this kind.

Speaker 5 (07:23):
Of bad for like water resources. The spin that boy
put on it. Ye, yeah, major head spin.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
What was his spin?

Speaker 6 (07:32):
Just just immediately pivoting to we try to be good
partners to the community.

Speaker 5 (07:36):
Oh tight, yeah, non answer type stuff.

Speaker 4 (07:40):
So a little bit of conversational parkour. You'll love to
see it.

Speaker 5 (07:44):
Oh we're seeing a lot of that these days.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
Oh gosh. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
We are across multiple languages and for multiple things. Off
are you guys? By the way, that reminds me I've
got to share with you a little bit of a
tail and we can figure out how we handle it.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
That's weird to look.

Speaker 4 (08:01):
Denton has a ton of tourism websites. If you find
yourself in the area, it's more than worth the trip.
Let us know if you're a local. Obviously the best
restaurants and the best kept secrets. But we are not
here to advertise just for the good vibes of Denton,
although those are very real vibes.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
And they seem very cool.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Instead, we're here because pure turned us on to the
fact that Denton has a secret. Beneath the bustle of
the universities, the clubs, the restaurants, the bars, the city parks,
there is another kind of Denton It's a secret place that,
once upon a time was built to be a final
bastion of American civilization, just in case the bombs flew

(08:45):
and the world collapsed. In fact, there's an old Nike
missile base nearby. So shout out to our previous episodes.

Speaker 5 (08:52):
What was we Nike, the shoe company makes me so.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
Cool?

Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah, it's hard getting back to the Greco Roman mythology.
But I swear I should have looked this up earlier.
I swear we talked in depth about Nike missile bases
when we explored that strange pyramid looking structure in the Midwest.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, I know, I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
Ben.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Should we just give a click understanding of what Nike
missiles are as well, just while we're here.

Speaker 6 (09:24):
Ye, last you be picturing an exclusive drop of a
missile with a swoosh.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, exactly, It's exactly what it is. Nike missiles are.
They're designed to be surfaced to air missiles. They're guided missiles.
When you think about America's nuclear arsenal, at least in
the Cold War days, in those early Cold War days,
that is what we would have all across the United States,

(09:51):
especially as we've talked about in the show before, kind
of in the central area where it's a little harder
to get a missile, you know, or something to that
area in the middle of you United States, and if
there was a missile incoming, you could send those surface
to air missiles out before you know, let's say the
silo gets struck.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, But these were developed way back in the nineteen fifties,
so they've been around for a long long time. And
for to my knowledge, guys, most of the Nike silos
and basses have been decommissioned, not all of them, because
we still have right that's part of our arsenal, but
there are a ton that we are aware of now
because they have been decommissioned.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (10:30):
And for anybody playing along at home, the episode that
we couldn't remember for a second is the Stanley R.
Mickelson Safeguard Complex. It's in North Dakota. Check it out.
It looks super weird. We talk at length about the
importance of Nike missile batteries. That was published September of

(10:51):
twenty twenty five. We're just finding more and more strange
Cold War relics.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Aren't we.

Speaker 6 (10:58):
I That one is not ringing a bell for me.
I need to go do my homework. I may have
been absent for that one.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
You know what, It's still there, and we can if
we can convince accounting. If we can convince Accounting to
let us go to North Dakota, then you promise we
will film.

Speaker 6 (11:15):
I thought you met the podcast episode was still there
in case I wanted to revisit it. But the structure,
the structure is also there, and podcasts are of course forever.

Speaker 5 (11:24):
So don't say anything, dumb guys. That's right.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
We will always be on Netflix.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Oh gosh, Now.

Speaker 4 (11:31):
Picturing the shining group photo at the very end of
the shot. Spoilers by the way, at the very end
of the shining I'm picturing the group photo from the
early nineteen hundreds, and it's just got all of our
faces there. Sorry, Dylan, you've come with us this far,
so thanks for being on the show.

Speaker 5 (11:50):
Dylan is the guy in the dog costume.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 5 (11:53):
I'm just kidd I'm just kidding.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
It's funny, folks, because we can see we can see
each other as we're recording, and I always pay attention
to the little microphone that shows me whether Dylan is
muted or unmuting, and we got a quick on mute
on that one.

Speaker 5 (12:11):
Yeah, I'm obviously scatman.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
There you go, dude.

Speaker 5 (12:16):
That that velvet painting of the buxom naked woman over
his bed in that one shot is fabulous. I really
want that from my house. Scotman.

Speaker 6 (12:26):
Oh in the Shining Scatman Cruthers who plays Dick Hallerin,
there's a shot where he's like watching the news and
he's in bed and there is just this incredibly ostentatious
velvet painting of a gorgeous naked woman with an afro,
and it's just the most seventies thing ever of all time.

Speaker 5 (12:43):
And I love it and I want it.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
I'm going to confess that even as a younger entity,
I paused that recording to look at the painting.

Speaker 5 (12:55):
Velvet painting.

Speaker 4 (12:56):
Yeah, we should have more of those. We should have
his stuff. They don't want you to know velvet painting.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Let's do it.

Speaker 4 (13:01):
I'm just keeping a list, keeping a list of weird
stuff to pitch to accounting guys. So, North Dakota, Denton
velvet paintings. You heard it here first. Also, the other scatman,
I didn't know this. I'm sure. I'm sure you guys
know this. Uh, he had an entire second career of
fame in Japan.

Speaker 5 (13:23):
Scatman is in that we eat adopted out.

Speaker 4 (13:26):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 (13:28):
I just remember that from Beavis and butt Head. They
they did some really in depth commentary on the Scatman.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, how could you not. Anyway, he's big in Japan.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
Maybe one day we will be as well, but we
are not going to be as big as the Hidden
Secret of Denton.

Speaker 5 (13:47):
Down the street for that one. And I'm here for.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
I am an enthusiast of conversation with It's good. So
let's filter off some buildings. I love it. They thank you,
I think. So let's do it.

Speaker 4 (14:02):
Let's journey back to the days of the Cold War
and we'll return after word from our sponsors.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Here's where it gets crazy, all right.

Speaker 4 (14:16):
Our story starts with a predecessor of today's FEMA, something
called the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization classic Cold
War stuff, formed in nineteen fifty eight. Maybe a way
to say it is that the OCDM is kind of
like how the OSS was to the CIA, A little

(14:39):
bit of a proto version.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, it's designed for literally emergency management.

Speaker 5 (14:46):
Right, it's descriptive. I will give it that.

Speaker 6 (14:48):
I kind of get what they're about, you know, emergency
deployment of civil services that are needed in the event
of emergency, able to be mobilized to help out.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yes, and also so our nukes on the way, and
what do we have to do right?

Speaker 4 (15:04):
Right, because we have five minutes? Thank goodness, we practiced.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
Just that's the idea.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
That's the minutemend thing that we've talked about before. Do
you look that up if you don't know more about that.
Just the concept that there were always people and there
still are always people on hand ready to deploy our
nukes if nukes are on the way, yes, yeah.

Speaker 4 (15:24):
And a lot of checks and balances. We've talked in
the past about Russia's alleged dead hand system. Just please
be aware of folks. At this point, pretty much every
nuclear power has something like that, and the US was
actively building these things during the Cold War. Not everybody

(15:46):
was super into the idea. FEMA, of course, didn't start
off as FEMA. It's been reorganized, shuffled, expanded as all
kinds of DLC, we could say at multiple points in history.
Another direct predecessor is Truman's Federal Civil Defense Administration. The
public did not initially like this. This was taxpayer money.

(16:11):
And there was a newspaper quote we found from the
time that said, the Federal Civil Defense Administration has no
authority to do anything specific or to make anyone else
do it.

Speaker 5 (16:24):
Yikes, shots fired, haters.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
We're just here to help, just here to help. You
don't got to do things.

Speaker 6 (16:31):
What was the attitude, like sort of like an anti
big government attitude that made people skeptical of a thing
like this.

Speaker 4 (16:39):
Yeah, some of it was that, for sure. Another aspect
of it was why is this a thing?

Speaker 3 (16:46):
Right?

Speaker 4 (16:46):
What is this doing that other parts of the government
don't already?

Speaker 3 (16:50):
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah, it is one of those things though, because we
know that we guys fifteen years ago, count them fifteen
years of go on the How Stuff Works YouTube channel,
we put out our FEMA camps episode and seriously, and
this isn't to go on too much of a ramp,
but with all the stuff happening right now with detention

(17:13):
center centers or you know, other government agencies that are
popping up, people are going back and watching that video
and you should. You got to read the comments at
some point, if it takes some time, just about people
discussing how right the conspiratorial minded folks were back then.

Speaker 6 (17:32):
But we're getting a lot of vindication for some conspiratorial
minded folks. Have you seen all the pizza mentions in
the Epstein files, Not to derail even further, but just
saying we should get to that at another time.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
Stuff with that too, Yes, we absolutely should do.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
We're gonna have to do an Epstein.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Update, yeah, oh yeah, But just to finish that thought, guys,
the they weren't right about the specifics, they're right in
the general sense, right, the camps and camps that were
being built or could they could be repurposed for reasons,
which is exactly what we're seeing.

Speaker 6 (18:09):
It's setting up infrastructure, you know under a Guys. You know,
I completely agree with that asdect of it.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
I think one day, you know, again we've set it
to each other off air, but one day I just
want to be right about something good.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Well, well, there is some good in there too, because
that is not to say FEMA doesn't do an excellent
job at times, depending on the disaster they're responding to. Right,
We've seen that over and over again since those fifteen
years have passed where FEMA steps in, saves people, helps people.
We've also seen a lot of pretty intense criticism of
FEMA's response, right, depending on where you are and where

(18:46):
you're from, and guys, we're talking about that because we're
getting into FEMA. I don't know my ultimate point other
than this is an organization that I think there's been
a heavy amount of skepticism felt towards this organization from
the jump, as you said, Ben, but that continues.

Speaker 4 (19:03):
Today absolutely because it continues expanding and femas first and
foremost a coordinating entity, right. It brings in the military,
it brings in local resources. It's supposed to unify efforts
in the wake of things like forest fires and hurricanes,
and you know, nuclear tax's.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
It's also we have.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
To remember too, this is just some speculation, but we
have to remember how incredibly dangerous and tense things were
in the United States at this point, so much so
that if you are a federal level politician, you have
to publicly be seen as doing something. You can't just

(19:47):
shrug your shoulders and say yeah, I get it, it sucks,
we all might die. You have to say, yeah, I
get it, it sucks. We all might die, and so
we made a thing, you know, like we did something
with your tax dollars. It's the nuclear war threat. It's
impossible to overemphasize just how much it changed the chessboard.

(20:09):
The US has obviously been no stranger to domestic conflicts,
but now what would have once been a regionally contained
proxy war could trigger a domino effect of nuclear retaliation
in a very real way. Civilization could collapse at any time,
within a matter of hours.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (20:31):
I've been watching a lot of nuke apocalypse type of
fiction shows lately, the Fallout series, which describes exactly what
you're talking about, and I think is so good, whether
you're the games or not. And then the German time
travel Apocalypse showed Dark, which also has some hintsom of
this kind of stuff, only more on like the nuclear

(20:52):
power plants disaster side of things.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
But I haven't watched I haven't watched the last episode
of season two yet, you guys, But I'm very excited
to us.

Speaker 5 (21:02):
It's really good.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
We're talking about Fallout, Okay, Okay, yeah, I've got to
I've got to catch up with that one as well.

Speaker 6 (21:11):
The Claws look dope and they're like clearly a dude
in a suit like a puppet thing.

Speaker 5 (21:15):
It's really great.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
I love a practical effect.

Speaker 5 (21:17):
They're doing a great job.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
So everybody is super worried about this, and they're not.
Their paranoia is not invalid. This is a thing that
can happen. Denton, Texas is also not an exception to
this widespread public panic. Widespread panic not a bad band anyway.
Denton is exceptional because it is inland to the earlier

(21:42):
point that you made their Matt. It is also not
too far nor too close to a major urban area.
So this is a goldilock zone for federal disaster preparation.
I mean, think about it. It's got all the to
your point about infrastructure, right, it has all the infrastructure
advantages of Dallas Fort Worth. It's got proximity to air transport,

(22:04):
it's got the military on deck. It also, you know,
by this point, Denton is already home to tons of
pre existing private fallout shelters and bunkers, and these are
being built like mad because of all the paranoia surrounding
nuclear armageddon.

Speaker 5 (22:21):
Brought to you tech.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
It's cool because a couple of those private facilities are
still around today, and it is friends and neighbors a
shared dream of our show to go and buy a
house and learn that it has a fallout shelter.

Speaker 5 (22:38):
I mean, that was just such a feature, you know,
I would buy it for that very reason. Have y'all
ever been in a proper fallout shelter? I don't think
I ever actually have.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, I've toured one, Yes, got it?

Speaker 6 (22:50):
Jealous, But you also went to space camp with that Meca.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Space guy Max Powers.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, it's making me think. I'm sorry, guys. I just
was trying to remember the government organization that was created
by executive order for Japanese internment during World War Two
in the country, and it made me think, just you know,
continuing to talk about the skepticism and the people's wearing
of FEMA and organizations like that. The War Relocation Authority,

(23:21):
I think is the name of it. And I wonder
if those like emergency powers, anything that's meant that just
kind of pops up during an emergency by either an
executive order or a quick session in Congress, like we
needed another organization to run this specific thing. I wonder
if there's any kind of anxiety that gets raised in

(23:42):
those times. But I also don't know what it was like,
you know, to be in the fifties or in the
Cold War era, knowing that internment had happened not that
long ago, where it could be a lever that the
government pulls at some point to like decide that some
group of people needs to go away for a while.

Speaker 6 (23:58):
I learned something really interestingly when I was just in Vancouver.
I went to the art gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, and weirdly,
there is an exhibit there of photo journalist Tameo Wakayama,
and a big part of his work was photographing the
civil rights movement, many of the images being from right
here in Atlanta. Seeing like young John Lewis and all
that stuff was really trippy being that far away from home.

(24:19):
But he was a Canadian, a Japanese Canadian who was
went through the exact same thing there in Canada, where
Japanese Canadians were also relocated and stripped of property and
put in these sort of you know, siloed areas, these
ghettos kind of and I had no idea that that
was going on.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 5 (24:38):
Yeah, really really interesting. I brought his book.

Speaker 6 (24:40):
It's a book of his work which includes a lot
of images from from that time and also from the
civil right stuff called enemy alien.

Speaker 5 (24:46):
Highly recommend it, Tameo Wakayama, I'll put it on the list.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Thank you there.

Speaker 4 (24:50):
And and also to your earlier point, the once the
infrastructure exists, it can be used for anything similar to
its original intended purpose. So at the time in the fifties,
you would be surprised, folks, at how close the US
government came to saying, well, why don't we just lock
up anybody that we think is a communist totally?

Speaker 3 (25:14):
It's just put them in the same dorms.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Feeling that hard, Hello, guys, that might be overboard. Why
don't we just spy on everybody and try to figure
it out?

Speaker 4 (25:25):
And then someone said that's exactly what a spy would say,
And they just stared at each other in the boardroom,
and someone was like, hey.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Guys, I'm gonna get a coffee. It's getting real tense.
Might anybody want a coffee.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
I'll get my own coffee.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
I'll get my own coffee.

Speaker 5 (25:41):
Maybe some pizza. Want some pizza? Was it grape soda? Sorry?
Back to Texas, Right.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Back to Texas with all this stuff. I love this conversation.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
So let's If you pull up the map of Dallas
Fort Worth and scrill up to Denton, you're going to
zoom in and around where Loop two eighty eight meets
US three eighty those are roads. Uh, the you're going
to see an odd complex. It is one of the
biggest nuclear bunkers in all of Cold War history.

Speaker 6 (26:16):
Yeah, that's saying something this has been to How is
like a lot of like official type folks, right, yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 4 (26:23):
Not the good members of Denton's population, good.

Speaker 5 (26:27):
People of Dent for themselves.

Speaker 6 (26:29):
This is only the top brass had a spot in
the executive bunker.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, you're saying that the gymnastics Academy isn't going to
have at least a couple places there.

Speaker 5 (26:38):
Come on.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah, but if you look at this place from that
satellite foot as you're talking about there Ben the map,
it doesn't look like it's much of anything amidst all
those other huge buildings that are around it.

Speaker 4 (26:53):
Yeah, because this one, the main part of it is underground.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
That part is true.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
In the late twentieth century, this was a nuclear civil
defense headquarters, and it was one of the first in
a proposed series of similar facilities. Not all of them
got built nowadays. The thing we're talking about on the
map here is a headquarters for FEMA, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, and boy, their representatives have a lot to

(27:24):
say about this, because there are all kinds of conspiracies
and all sorts of speculation about what's going on out
there in Denton. Maybe we go to Earl Armstrong. He
did a series of great interviews back in around like
twenty eighteen. He is a At the time, he was
a public information specialist for FEMA, which means, you know.

Speaker 5 (27:47):
Our guy.

Speaker 6 (27:48):
Yeah, spin doctor talks to the media, gives the company line,
the talking points, all that good stuff.

Speaker 5 (27:54):
And no shade to anybody that works in public relations.

Speaker 6 (27:57):
It's definitely a meaningful gig, but it can also be
a bit of a propaganda machine.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, just just don't do that thing. If you're you
find yourself in that position, don't do that thing where
everybody knows what happened and then you say like the
exact opposite of what everybody knows happened.

Speaker 6 (28:13):
It's not a good look, not gonna not gonna come
down on the right side of history with that one,
most most out, most of the time.

Speaker 4 (28:19):
Yeah, the party required you not to believe the evidence
of your eyes.

Speaker 5 (28:22):
And so that was their most meaningful Uh yeah, command.

Speaker 4 (28:27):
Yeah, so Earl Armstrong is confirming everything that we we
just introduced earlier. Right, this facility is built in Denton
because it's not too close, it's not too far from
the major metro area, and it is also kind of
close to a Nike missile battery. It was just like

(28:48):
at the time, the Nike missile site was just three
or four miles away from the Denton bunker.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (28:57):
Yeah, And you told ks at News out led this.
He said.

Speaker 6 (29:00):
The facility came about because in the nineteen fifties, the
Eisenhower administration realized that we needed a place for federal
employees to seek shelter from a nuclear attack. And this
was one of five facilities outside of the Washington, DC area.
It had to be a certain distance away to your point,
ben from a metro area, and it had to be
close to a Nike missile battery. And at the time
there was one just about three or four miles from here.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
And if you look at that map, zoom out a
little bit and just take a look at how far
away it is from that Dallas Fort Worth area. At
the time, Dallas. I mean that both both these cities
are huge.

Speaker 5 (29:34):
You get that.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
Airport in the center of them. If atomic bombs hit
either one of those major metropolitan areas, you may you know,
you of course have to look at the megatoneage or
you know, kill a tonage up those bombs. But in
all likelihood, unless there was one of the big boys
that hit, people in Denton who were attempting to respond
to attacks like that would probably be able to continue

(29:57):
to function. There may be some damage and all that
kind of stuff, but you're likely not going to have
the type of all out destruction that you'd find at
the center of where a nuclear bomb is going to go.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Off, right like the ground zero thing.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
Everybody check out our previous episode, by the way, on
surviving a nuclear attack.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
That was a bracing.

Speaker 5 (30:16):
One thing I learned.

Speaker 6 (30:17):
From Fallout, the TV show apparently, if you see the
mushroom cloud in the distance and it is larger than
your thumb, then you are going to die.

Speaker 5 (30:25):
It is too late for you.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
Yeah, unless you're right outside the shelter. If you were,
if you happen to have the good fortune after the
side opened in nineteen sixty four, if you happen to
have the good fortune to be just close, just close
enough to run to the fallout shelter, you probably would
have been Okay. This thing had state of the art
air scrubbers and ventilation. The blast doors were thirteen tons, yes, yeah,

(30:53):
And when you get in there are two different underground
stories for living space, dormitories, kitchens, you know, comms, coordination
of cog stuff ping pong.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
I hope, So, because what else are they gonna do?

Speaker 4 (31:10):
Yeah, you need like a contained a contained indoor recreation.

Speaker 5 (31:14):
From this room.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah, maybe a conversation pit.

Speaker 5 (31:18):
Maybe those are coming back, by the way, I love them.
That's a feature.

Speaker 4 (31:23):
So fallout shelter, conversation pit, a tower, and a pool
would be.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Nice dream house.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
So but really it had everything you could possibly need.
One of one of the most interesting things to me
is thinking about kitchens in places like this, and like
how you actually make food for we said like three
hundred people, right, And I always think about submarines and
the the extensive food production that you can have on

(31:54):
a submarine, which always baffled me, Right, how could you
possibly have that much supplies? Are that enough supplies to
feed all of the crew on that submarine for that
long and then just like cooking inside a submarine like that,
like how does that work? Where do you vent stuff?
And you know, just so many questions.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah, it's it's fascinating.

Speaker 4 (32:15):
It sounds like we've gone down some similar rabbit holes
just watching the documentaries about how food prep works on
maybe a carrier, but especially a submarine, and this is
very similar. That's a great comparison because if s hits
the f these folks are basically in an isolated environment.
It's very similar to a submarine. And also I got

(32:38):
to wonder this is for everybody who's ever served on
a submarine in the past, but I've got to wonder
if the fallout shelter had the same informal rules as
the submarines. Like everybody on a sub knows that when
you get really nice dinner or when you get you know,
the steak and the lobster or whatever, they're giving that

(33:00):
to you because it means you're going to be redeployed
or you're your bid is going to be unexpectedly longer.
So you might you might be eating sandwiches for a
month or what. It probably not, but you know, you
might be eating something pretty basic for a while, and
then all of a sudden, it's steak night and you
learn that you're sailing for the strait of horror moves.

Speaker 5 (33:20):
Okay, jeez, you're talking about hot racking.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Oh that's another thing. Oh geez.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Or in this case, you know, hey, it's your turn
to go outside of the bunker and see what's going on.

Speaker 5 (33:34):
Yeah, you do a little recon Yeah, yeah, you drew
the bad straw.

Speaker 4 (33:38):
We hope the suit works don't stay out too long
and they say what happens if I stay out too long?

Speaker 3 (33:43):
And they say, just don't man, good luck God this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
In the case of food, if we can just talk
about that just for a moment, because it was fascinating
to know that, according to uh so we've read about this,
this facility could three meals a day for three hundred people,
like without a problem for thirty days.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
It's crazy, Yeah, fifteen hundred meals a day.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Yeah, and just thinking about the actual storage space for
those rations, right, and like the facilities that you need,
like I just I wish I could see the menu.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
The shelf stable stuff, oh yeah, yeah, slivet freeze dried stuff.
Also the walk in freezers, double as a.

Speaker 6 (34:26):
More and a pinch, you know, hopefully not at the
same time. No, I guess it would have to be.

Speaker 5 (34:31):
That's yeah. Maybe there was a little divider, you know,
or something.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (34:34):
Yeah, maybe you get the really awesome food one night
and you say, hey, why are we pulling out all
the stops on the menu? What's with all this fancy stuff?
And they say, we had to clear one of the
freezers because because Doug is dead.

Speaker 5 (34:46):
This tastes a little like Doug. This tastes a little Dougie.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Well, well, see Doug's Doug's gone because he kind of
poisoned most of us accidentally, accidentally classic Doug.

Speaker 4 (34:58):
Everybody rolls their eyes, and then we cueue the sitcom
for We cue the sitcom theme for Doug.

Speaker 5 (35:05):
Ye do Do Do Do Do Do?

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Just great?

Speaker 4 (35:11):
This shelter and we don't die in a shelter and
trying to survive.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
That's great.

Speaker 6 (35:19):
It feels like a missed opportunity. There hasn't been a
fallout shelter sitcom so many. I mean, it's like a
bottle show, you know. I think of all the kookie
hijinks that the the you know, residents.

Speaker 4 (35:30):
Of a of a good follout shelter, might I think.
I think that's a great idea. It also, uh gives
us a chance to follow up with the obsession I
have and I think we all share, which is a
sitcom that a sitcom theme that elaborately explains the weird
premise of the show.

Speaker 5 (35:48):
It's just so much better than the actual show. I
love that. We do love that.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Well, just really quickly, nol. It reminds you of that
show Avenue five. Did did y'all ever see that? It
was a kind of It's like, it's like being in
a bunker, but they're in a spaceship.

Speaker 5 (36:03):
It was a space show, right, I'm a family guy guy, right,
that was his deal?

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Oh that's the Orville, isn't it now?

Speaker 5 (36:10):
Yea, I'm thinking of the Orville.

Speaker 6 (36:11):
But Avenue five I think was huge. Laurie, yes, doctor
House himself.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
But it just reminded me of that again, Like we're
talking about with submarines, right, A spaceship, a submarine, a
fallout shelter. It's that isolation and anything outside of your
controlled area is either death or probably death.

Speaker 4 (36:32):
Yeah, this is this thing in dented. Seriously, this is
top notch stuff for the time. This can survive a
one megaton nuclear blast. It can also Yeah, it could
also function for a bit without outside help. We're talking
it's own drinking well, sanitation procedures for water as best

(36:54):
as they could at the time, laundry facilities, diesel generators,
all of which are great, but all of which have
a limited window of functionality. Right, the generators are no
good if you run out of diesel, and if the
water gets screwed up, then you don't really have an alternative.
They don't have what a freeze dried water, which is

(37:16):
a great idea.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, what do you add?

Speaker 5 (37:23):
Warm it up?

Speaker 3 (37:25):
Just we'll get a can you just add water?

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Proliferates?

Speaker 3 (37:29):
I'm writing it down velvet paintings, do you know what? Yeah? Really? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:40):
We also know that there were duplicates of a lot
of federal level vital records, because this is all about
COEG continuity of government, continuity of operations. So any of
these facilities, like Denton in theory, they would be used
by high ranking government and military leaders up to and

(38:01):
including the president if they happened to be like the
Dallas Fort Worth area when the bombs flew, And they
also they did have they had a clever way of
communicating with the outside world. They could tap into the
emergency broadcast system.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
We all know that when.

Speaker 5 (38:19):
It's on a test, it's fine. It's been a test.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yes, you guys, I didn't know that you could do this,
and maybe maybe that should be just because we've talked
we've talked about Faraday cages before, and technology like that skiffs,
things that are meant to keep communications out.

Speaker 6 (38:36):
Clear rooms even or like you know, static static free
all that stuff.

Speaker 5 (38:40):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
I didn't know that you could put copper, the metal
copper in walls, floors, ceilings, and you could create your
own form of Faraday cage basically to prevent stuff that
is in that room from being attacked by electromagnetic pulses
that you might associate with an atomic weapon, right, and

(39:02):
the other forms of it.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
I just did.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, but I didn't know its copper. I always thought,
you know, lead lined walls, or you know, some other
specific type of metal that you would need that that
one just escaped me.

Speaker 4 (39:13):
I guess that's why everybody steals copper man to make
their oh bunkers.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
That's why that's it.

Speaker 4 (39:20):
That's why it's not the meth Okay, it's partially the meth,
but it's also the bunker. So this is cool because right,
like you said, it's a hardened area. They're calm station,
and they've got this neat system of redundant antennas. So
if their normal antennas get blown away in a one
megaton nuclear blast, then they've got three telescoping backup on

(39:45):
antennas on the property. So in theory, right, your first
wave of antennas gets blown out of the water, you
let some time pass, and then you've got these this
other wave of neat antennas that launch up from the
gro right, and they're strong enough with their mechanism that
they can move all the junk that's piled over them.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
And that.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
There's a note from Armstrong. He says, once you got
those up, you can communicate with whoever might be left.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
Jeez. Ouch.

Speaker 4 (40:18):
Yeah, it's a dark, dark turn there, Armstrong. And they
had they had a lot of redundancy like this. They
also had shock mounts on, you know, their basic utilities,
so that a nuclear blast, just the vibration of it
wouldn't break all the pipes. So again, assuming you made

(40:38):
it to the site in time and convince them to
let you in to this suddenly very exclusive club. You
would survive a nuclear attack.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
That is so nuts. The thought of shock mounting your
vital systems. I don't think I ever would have thought
of that. I guess, I guess when you're trying to
solve the problem of the map any massive shockwave, right yeah,
And then they didn't have bunker busters back then, because
I don't know how you would even prevent that unless

(41:08):
you put it deep enough underground, right, right, But that
is so cool to me. It is weird to imagine
this is all created in you know, the early nineteen sixties,
like nineteen sixty one technology, right.

Speaker 4 (41:24):
Yeah, it's such a rush too. They did a great
given that they were hurried at such a frenetic pace.
They did a great job thinking through contingencies, you know.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Oh yeah, but my mind is now already thinking about
all these cool pieces of tech they've got, right, and integrations.
I'm thinking about the tech that would even exist in
the nineties or you know, the mid two thousands and
now where we are, like the cool crazy stuff you
could you could create.

Speaker 5 (41:55):
When you hear.

Speaker 6 (41:55):
About stuff like this too, it also make sure you realize,
like how much of this tech was sort of held
back in a way or wasn't like available to the public.

Speaker 5 (42:03):
But they had, you know, stuff that.

Speaker 6 (42:05):
Yeah, in many cases hasn't been super improved upon, you
know since since those days in terms of like missile
technology and a lot of these like fair day cage
type situations.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
It's all alien technology.

Speaker 5 (42:17):
Yeah, fair, fair enough.

Speaker 6 (42:21):
But oh, I was gonna ask, like, are we talking
would they have had like things like mainframe computers. Was
there any sort of digital components, early early computational components
to this type of comms.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
Maybe something light, something that we would consider sort of
primitive today. But if so, they did not publicly disclose that,
got it. They just talked about telecoms and radio.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
Community casty stuff. Yeah, yeah, just so.

Speaker 4 (42:46):
And look, going back to our earlier point, right, at
some time after the honeymoon period of your fallout shelter
wears off, you start thinking about the outside world.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
So how do you get there?

Speaker 4 (43:00):
Turns out they were very worried about those ginormous heavy
doors not opening once they were closed, so they had
a series of escape patches and observation towers. This is
where Doug draws the short straw. This is where you
picked some unlucky JIBBRONI who has to go through a

(43:20):
whole process to open the escape patch, get to the
observation tower. Hope they don't die from fallout. They have
to climb up a ladder, get to open a door,
got to climb in there, got to close the door
so it's kind of air gapped, and then they have
to reach up, and then somebody else has to pull
a chain. It takes fifteen minutes for the hatch to open,

(43:43):
and then you get to see what you can see hopefully.

Speaker 5 (43:48):
I love a hatch.

Speaker 3 (43:49):
I love a hatch too.

Speaker 4 (43:50):
Okay, Yeah, I'm putting that on the dream house list too.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (43:54):
Conversation pit, escape patch, tower, pull fallout.

Speaker 6 (43:58):
Oh can we also add a tunnel, a secret escape tunnel,
just in case you knows swoop in.

Speaker 4 (44:05):
Let's do several tunnels.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
I'm maybe getting this wrong. My my reading of this
was an article from ksat dot com. Yeah, my understanding
is that you would it was in within the facility,
but almost just like a teeny little extension of the
facility with some of the observation places but not the
good ones. I think you're talking about ben where you
actually leave the facility, you know, take a little hike,

(44:31):
then go up to a tower where you can really
get a good look there. But they didn't. They have
ones that were more like peephole kind of things. Yeah, yeah,
there were also. Yeah, they're also really complicated, where you
go in a thing, open a thing, close a thing,
getting up there, and then you look out just a
little peak and then get back in.

Speaker 4 (44:47):
Like a little stalkery periscope in the gat.

Speaker 5 (44:50):
Yeah and this.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
Okay, so we've obviously fallen into a very weird version
of cribs right now, and we're talking about how this
stuff is and how badly we want to live in one,
even without nuclear catastrophe. But maybe it's time to talk turkey.
So what say we pause for a word from our
sponsors and then play a little real estate and see

(45:14):
how much this is actually going to cost us.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Sounds good, We've returned, Okay, bells, whistles, awesome.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
The only thing they're missing, of course, is velvet paintings and.

Speaker 5 (45:29):
Ping pong tables. Well, they may have had those.

Speaker 4 (45:32):
Yeah, you got to be the ping pong you wish
to see in the world. I'm sure someone would.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
Have improvised it. I mean oh for loos.

Speaker 4 (45:38):
So how much did this all cost?

Speaker 3 (45:41):
All in?

Speaker 4 (45:41):
Right, if we're shopping, if we're the Boffin's over in
Denton during the Cold War, how much are we going
to pay to have this cool compound?

Speaker 2 (45:51):
It's not bad, you guys, not bad at all. What
a little less than three million dollars.

Speaker 5 (45:57):
In what nineteen sixty something money.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Right, sixty one, nineteen sixty four, So today that'd be
a little closer to abound twenty eight mil.

Speaker 4 (46:07):
Yeah, which still seems just extraordinarily inexpensive, so much so
that I'd be a little worried.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
And if it was our bunker.

Speaker 6 (46:17):
Our perception of value and like how much things cost
are so skewed.

Speaker 5 (46:22):
How much of that ballroom is supposed to be again,
it's it's about four hundred there more of that, are
you serious?

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Four hundred yeah, four hundred million.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
And again I think I think it's more than a ballroom.

Speaker 5 (46:33):
You think it might be a bunker as well?

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yes, I think it could be a lot of things.

Speaker 5 (46:38):
I'm telling you.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
They're they're doing their mining crypto down there, I swear.

Speaker 4 (46:43):
I mean straight out the ground, fresh cryptos, straight of
the ground, undiluted, unfiltered, non pasteurized crypto.

Speaker 5 (46:52):
Take a bite of that bitcoin, make sure it's real.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Yea.

Speaker 4 (46:55):
So okay, the threat of the Cold War becomes less
of me to people right where now we're past things
like the Cuban missile crisis, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually
FEMA takes over the whole thing, the whole kitten kaboodle.
That's in nineteen seventy nine, the same year of the
Irotian Revolution. And then over time, a lot of the

(47:18):
cool bells and whistles we're talking about here pure they
fall into disuse, partially because there's a lack of funding
because people aren't so terrified of a nuclear disaster, but
then also because all this cool technology we're talking about
is dated at this point, they literally can't find replacement parts.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah, it makes sense. Oh and who's gonna, you know,
drop in a brand new, state of the art kitchen
with Viking appliances. Actually, well, I can imagine one one
president that might want Viking stuff and gold materials.

Speaker 4 (47:54):
Jimmy Carter, Yeah, Jimmy Carter, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
president named Jimmy.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
That's weird, man. I think it's we're.

Speaker 5 (48:07):
Biased to his friends and where his friends. He's from
our neck of the woods.

Speaker 6 (48:11):
Yeah, he is the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library right here
in Atlanta, which is a sleeper.

Speaker 4 (48:16):
Hit by the way, folks, not to derail us too much,
but if you were ever in our fair metropolis and
you want to surprise the romantic partner, if the weather's nice,
get thee to the Carter Center because they have a
cool kind of secret garden in the back, and it's
got one of the best views of the city.

Speaker 5 (48:34):
I have never upset foot at that in that place.
I need to do that.

Speaker 6 (48:37):
It's one of those things that when you live in
a place, like if you're in New york Er, you
don't know the Statue of Liberty, but I got to
check out the Presidential Library or the Carter Center over there.
Pass by it all the time. But back to the bunker.
What's going on inside of this bunker as it starts
to kind of fall into disrepair?

Speaker 4 (48:54):
Oh yeah, yeah, Okay, so this becomes a little bit gentrified,
or it's reused the same way that another city might
take over an old warehouse, right and make it one
of those live, laugh, love, mixed use things. So the
doors are welded open the big thirteen ton doors just

(49:14):
so that they never accidentally closed. Right, the kitchen, the dorm,
the decontamination showers, they all get replaced with office space.
And you gotta think about it, right, it'd be kind
of cool if you're if you lived in Dent and
you worked for FEMA and you went into the office

(49:35):
that used to be a fallout shelter.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
That's kind of cool.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Uh yeah, I'm into it. I'll go anytime. Yeah, let's
go to work important caveat.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
It is no longer a fallout shelter.

Speaker 6 (49:47):
You can kind of fallout shelter. Ish, it's still got
some of the features. Surely it's still got those what
is it thirteen ton blast doors and the copper infused walls.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
Well, but there it's all welded open, right, I've heard things.

Speaker 6 (50:01):
Being welded shut. By the way, How does one weld
something open? I guess you just break the seal and
then put it by open.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
Put it by the wall and say no one touch it.
But you compile the furniture.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Guys, you can barricade the door.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
Sure you can, maybe, according to speculation, run to some
escape tunnels.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
I don't.

Speaker 4 (50:21):
We'll get into that right, So, okay, Armstrong says, and
he's probably he's one of our best sources on this.
He says, Look, it could have still functioned as a
legit fallout shelter all the way up to the mid
nineteen eighties. And he says, the reason that it's no
longer a fallout shelter is because after Hurricane Katrina, Congress said,

(50:44):
you got to hire more staff at FEMA, and so
they had to find office space. That's the official reason
that they got rid of the all the bells and whistles.

Speaker 3 (50:54):
As much of somewhat a cubicle.

Speaker 6 (50:55):
As much of a bummer as it is to work
in an office or a cubicle, and the best of situations,
it's like a window. Can you imagine having to report
to work in an underground like cubicle farm. It just
sounds like the most depressing thing.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
Yeah, they probably give you a poster all cat.

Speaker 6 (51:12):
Oh okay, yeah that too, maybe one of those anti
depression lights.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Where didn't we just see that recently somewhere where there
were pretty large displays that were meant to mimic the outside.
But it looks like there's a city or something.

Speaker 4 (51:29):
Stuff, Right, it happens to a lot of fallout shelters,
for sure. There's curious psychological research into how to minimize
the chances of people going mad.

Speaker 6 (51:39):
Maybe a nice video wall, you know, with like a
screensaver with like a nice tree.

Speaker 4 (51:44):
Something that looks like a mild, relaxing ocean wave, you know,
over by Wakiki or whatever.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yeah, and then plays ads like every I don't know
twenty minutes. It is.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
AD supported.

Speaker 4 (51:59):
You do have to tony up an additional subscriber fee.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
If you want the wave without the.

Speaker 5 (52:04):
Ass are got all? Existence is ADS supported at this point, y'all.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
I mean we're the worst people to ask about it.

Speaker 5 (52:11):
That's our existence in particular is AD supporting. No, that's
very true.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Thank you all for tuning in. So cheers, yeah, cheers everybody.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
So now, this site is home to FEMA's Region six headquarters.
They do a lot of important work. They coordinate disaster
response for everything from like the Space Shuttle explosion to
the Oklahoma City bombing and of course floods, hurricanes, the darker.

Speaker 3 (52:37):
Acts of God.

Speaker 4 (52:38):
This is where people, everybody meets up to have stability
during chaos. So something happens, something goes south, even like
some ice storms in the area. It's where all the
federal agencies get together. It's like a clubhouse. They figure
out who needs what, when where, how much they need,
and how quickly it can get to those people who

(52:59):
need help. M pretty good, pretty noble.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Oh yeah, it has been utilized right, quite a quite
a few times. Well, is it Harvey not Hurricane Harvey.
It was like Trump, there was some storm called Harvey.
I think that this place in particular was given a
lot of credit for the work that came out of it.

Speaker 4 (53:17):
Yeah, and we know some folks who have, at least
on the military side, coordinated with FEMA, and these regional
headquarters come up a lot. They play a pivotal role
in disaster response. And so maybe with that, guys, it's
more fair to say the compound has not so much

(53:37):
been a secret as not super publicized. After its construction,
locals know about it. A couple people work there for FEMA.
But given its strange history and the fact that it
is a nuclear bunker, it's not surprising that so many
people have speculated about this. And there's an interesting note.

(53:59):
There's an interesting note here where you can tell Armstrong
and other FEMA reps probably are a little bit frustrated
by answering the same questions over and over and over again,
and press conferences and interviews. Armstrong talks with k Sad
about how people would just rock up to the gates
of this FEMA headquarters and they would say, hey, can

(54:22):
we take a tour? We want to We're worried that
bombs are going to drop? Can we stay here? Is
the president here right now?

Speaker 5 (54:29):
And he has ai with the president?

Speaker 3 (54:33):
We should do that. Let's get let's get up there
and say.

Speaker 5 (54:35):
They can't refuse you. It's it's the law, it's in
the constitution.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
It's a party foul to refuse you. I love it
so Armstrong.

Speaker 5 (54:44):
How did you show up during office hours?

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Right?

Speaker 4 (54:48):
Armstrong is just saying that they've had all these people
rock up and he has to continually tell them or
other FEMA staff has to continually tell them, no, sorry, bro,
we don't hold anybody here. People don't live here. There
are two floors, just two. It's fifty thousand square feet,
it's fifty eight feet down. Also, no, just gonna get

(55:09):
in front of your next question. We don't have missiles here, wouldn't.

Speaker 6 (55:13):
Some of these folks demanding answers have been on the
conspiratorial side, like like like looking at it from the
perspective of you're holding prisoners here.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
But there's also that thing when we've seen the rumors
we've seen we've hinted at it a couple times in
this episode already, the concept of that if you take
the time, the effort money to build something like this
over this many years now, since nineteen sixty four when
it was completed, don't you think maybe you build something
else into it as a part of it, or connect

(55:45):
it up to another series of these things or other
underground facilities you might have, you know.

Speaker 4 (55:53):
What, Yeah, man, Because that's here's the thing, just thinking objectively,
it seems dumb not to do that. Just objectively, it
feels like something someone would have pitched, and it feels
like it would be a really great idea.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
It's no brainer. I mean, that's why. That's the other part, right, we're.

Speaker 4 (56:14):
Being conspiratorial, as is our remit on this show. If
there is some aspect of secret government or deep state
or after the Fall of civilization stuff going on, if
that was the case, why would anyone confirm it?

Speaker 3 (56:30):
You're not gonna tell people no.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
The worst thing you could do just be like, hey, Liz, let.

Speaker 5 (56:34):
Me did check it out?

Speaker 4 (56:35):
Yeah on Instagram, coming to you live from the secret tunnel.
What's up, guys? You know we got Doug coming through.
All right, I'm gonna give up on the Doug jokes,
but he's a legend.

Speaker 5 (56:46):
Never forget Doug. He's with us in our hearts.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
So what do you guys think about the tunnels though?

Speaker 5 (56:52):
That's say we were promised tunnels, Ben, Yeah, well they're
promised tunnels.

Speaker 3 (56:56):
That's the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
That's why Pure Pure's statement to us about quietly drilling
underneath Denton, Texas and nobody on the surface knew that
they were drilling these huge like boring these huge holes
underneath Denton near the waterways and everything. How could you
do that? How could you do that? Nobody knows? Pure
assured us that it's possible. Is don't we think that

(57:17):
there are other large holes, either for waterways or for
some kind of transportation or, as we're talking about here,
secure movement of equipment and people.

Speaker 6 (57:29):
Can we also just say that it's come up multiple
times in recent discussions about phantom noises. I believe it
was another listener that wrote in concerning a crazy sound
that was happening, and I can't remember exactly where, maybe
it was Saint Louis, but how maybe that was the
sound of these types of activities going on. And then
it reminded me of the plot point in Better Call Saul,

(57:50):
where they're building the crazy underground meth lab and in
order to blow up the tunnels or do the demolition
they needed to do, they timed it so it had
it coincided with like a train passing, so that no
one would notice that it does my mind does immediately
go there in terms of ways that they could mask
this type of operation.

Speaker 4 (58:08):
Yeah, it's just it's plausible again, And folks, apologies if
we sound crazy, but just objectively, that would be a
good idea. That would be such a good idea that
it would be kind of weird not to do it.
To have passageways for barracks and missile silos there are

(58:28):
there's another thing. They are all these rumors amid the
good people of Denton that you can see oddly placed manholes, right,
you can see inexplicable doors or things that have been
walled up, and there are proven underground structures. In addition
to the Bunker, Texas Women's University has old underground tunnels

(58:49):
and they're used for utility maintenance.

Speaker 6 (58:51):
Do check out our episode on fake buildings. This immediately
makes me think of like a lot of these facades
that are secret access points to the subway. You know,
tunnels are various things like that, utilities. This is something
that could certainly be deployed.

Speaker 4 (59:07):
The very polite people at con Egg New York City.

Speaker 6 (59:11):
God Blessing the Department told us to get the hell
out of Dodge pretty diplomatically.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
I very diplomatic.

Speaker 5 (59:19):
I want to say that I probably shouldn't have been there,
To be honest.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
I still remember, Yeah, we probably shouldn't have. But I
still remember my dumb response talking to those folks where
I said something like, oh, we're just drinking coffee, which
was true.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
Guys. It's making me think of that movie.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Orry.

Speaker 5 (59:38):
Yeah, it was a total underground situation. Yeah, mild spoilers.

Speaker 6 (59:43):
I guess I think he's established from the jump that
there is there are these like tunnels.

Speaker 4 (59:47):
It's a fever dream. I love dream logic. I just
can't say enough about Jordan peele Man. He is awesome
and I can't wait to see what else he does.

Speaker 6 (59:55):
Yeah, I actually we watched Nope the other day. I
think that's my I think that's my favorite of his
think about it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
I don't know. I'm still on Get Out.

Speaker 5 (01:00:03):
Get Us phenomenon for sure. Nope.

Speaker 6 (01:00:04):
Something about it though, just really does it for me
and takes a lot of boxes for the type of
thing that we talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:00:09):
Yes, stretches behind the conspiratorial ears for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Man, it's all about the Tim Heidecker for me.

Speaker 6 (01:00:14):
Guys, I don't knowlers a mild spoiler.

Speaker 5 (01:00:18):
He does a really good death the man. He was
a good on screen death.

Speaker 4 (01:00:23):
Yeah, as his character the actual ten is five as
far as we know ed. He's got a podcast, so
check that out Office Hours. He's also makes really really
good records.

Speaker 6 (01:00:33):
He's just like a genuinely talented folk song writer, kind
of like rock folk dude, very very very talented.

Speaker 4 (01:00:40):
And so we hear that there are tunnels everywhere in Denton,
from the old TI Building to the courthouse silos to
barracks like we've talked about, and some of those stories
may indeed have a kernel of truth. There are multiple
local accounts of people encountering mysterious bricked up entries right
or doors that don't make sense and don't open. But again,

(01:01:05):
at this point, as we're recording Friday, February sixth, twenty
twenty six, no government agency has confirmed the existence of
any vast interconnected tunnel network. Those things don't exist, or
at least know what has been confirmed to have access them.
That's our story for now. Thanks again to you Pure
for the phenomenal suggestion, and Noel, as you said in

(01:01:27):
previous conversation, we've been astonished by how many people across
the country and indeed the planet have written in with
similar stories and allegations of conspiracies. Please stay tuned for
our upcoming episode on more underground structures.

Speaker 6 (01:01:42):
And can we also say two, I think we've all
been really happy to hear from some new folks that
are writing in after having discovered the show on Netflix,
which is really awesome. So welcome to all of all
of you new folks who are enjoying us here on Netflix.
And just a reminder, there is other on the podcast
audio only feed. We do strange news and listener mail

(01:02:05):
episodes every single week that don't make it here as videos,
so plenty of stuff to check out on the old podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:02:12):
Feed, and we'd also love to hear your take. Folks,
you're the best part of this show. Could the US
government really hide a massive underground tunnel network and avoid
discovery for decades? I think we've talked ourselves into a
soft yes on this one because stranger stuff has happened.

Speaker 5 (01:02:30):
The new album from Soft Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
Oh that's an old joke for our pal, Paul decade Man.

Speaker 4 (01:02:39):
Shout out to you, Paul Michigan Control. Also, if this
happened fueled by the panic of the Cold War, if
the FEDS really did build a network like this in Denton,
is almost certainly the stuff they don't want you to know.
Can't wait to hear your thoughts. Find us online, shoot
us a telephone call, or send us an email.

Speaker 6 (01:03:00):
If you want to find us on social media platforms.
Of note, you can find us at the handle Conspiracy
Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending.

Speaker 5 (01:03:08):
I think you can also give us a telephone call.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Oh, yes, we have a phone number. It is one
eight three three std WYTK. Turn those letters into numbers,
pick up your phone and then call us. It's a
voicemail system. You've got three minutes. Say whatever, you'd like
give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on one of
our listener mail episodes that you'll find in the audio

(01:03:30):
versions of this show. Wherever you get your favorite shows,
if you'd like to send us an email, we are.

Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
The entities the read each piece of correspondence we receive.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
Be well aware, yet out of fraide.

Speaker 4 (01:03:41):
Sometimes the void writes back, no editorial guidelines, no word limits.
Send us the pictures, send us the links, ask us
the questions. Get a random fact from us in return,
take us to the edge of the rabbit hole, and
we'll do the rest. For now, we'll see you in
the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.