S3 E13: Historian Garrett Graff on Pennsylvania's Mysterious Mountain Bunker and Planning for Armageddon

The idea of the US government spending several decades preparing to ride out an apocalypse by building an entire city in a hollowed-out mountain is fascinating - and terrifying, all the same. This city is contained within a massive bunker carved out of an Appalachian mountain known as Raven Rock. Historian, author and journalist Garrett Graff wrote the definitive book about it. I spoke to Garrett via a Zoom connection from his home in Vermont about the analogies he's seeing between preparing for a nuclear holocaust and enduring a viral pandemic. We also talked about 9/11 and what similarities and differences he is seeing there. We talked about anticipating the craziest election in American history (Garrett worked on Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign). And yes, we talked a lot about the mountain, Raven Rock. Recorded on Zoom on May 26, 2020. In this podcast: I asked Garrett if writing a book about the US preparing for Armageddon helped him prepare for this ongoing pandemic (1:45), why it is so hard to anticipate "low probability, high consequence" events (2:40), Garrett describes Raven Rock and its two mountain counterparts in Colorado and Virginia (5:15), how Raven Rock has changed over many decades and what is happening there right now (7:25), why it is so hard for the US government to prepare for the End of Times (8:42), what the inside of Raven Rock would look like (10:42), what Garrett thinks should be our government's greatest fears: massive grid and power failures along with catastrophic earthquakes (13:45), what similarities and differences he's noticed by living through 9/11 and this current pandemic (21:30), what the pandemic will mean for our country in the near, middle and long term (23:45), thoughts on the upcoming 2020 presidential election (30:10), if the pandemic is hurting or helping Joe Biden politically (31:20), the chances either President Trump or the former vice president would not appear on the ballot in November (32:00), if he finds social media a useful tool or a hindrance when it comes to unexpected events (32:27), we riff on our home states Pennsylvania and Vermont (35:06).