Who would go into a nuclear fallout shelter/bunker with the President?

I don't know whether it is online, but there are detailed plans for that situation: who goes where and when. Try searching. I don't know what they call such plans or who would administer them. I would guess that the plans are as fresh as the crackers in the shelters.

This is the government. They either have thousands of bunkers collecting dust with ancient plans, with a few still at the ready, or they have thousands at the ready.

Regardless, each will require about $50k a year to rewrite the plans and another $100k to restock.

Isn't there a thing that the President and the VP aren't supposed to be together?

It's popping up in my head, but that could be from a movie, not necessarily based on fact.

Yes, spend a while searching. There's plenty of material, and some of it is fairly fresh.

http://williamaarkin.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/arkins-contingency-plans-of-the-us-government.pdf
White House tunnels
http://whitehouse.gov1.info/tunnel/
Planning
http://hps.org/homeland/documents/P...to_a_Nuclear_Detonation-2nd_Edition_FINAL.pdf

mfarraday said:

It is designed to house about a thousand people, but due to the unexpected nature of the terrorist attack in my story, only a couple hundred people are initially there.

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If the attack is sudden enough that only a couple hundred people make it there, that should give you plenty of leeway between who is SUPPOSED to be there and who IS there.

But as the others have said, there is quite a bit of information out there about this. Look into the Cold War - they had plans and alternative plans and alternatives to the alternative plans for where the President should go in the event of nuclear war.

ap123 said:

Isn't there a thing that the President and the VP aren't supposed to be together?

It's popping up in my head, but that could be from a movie, not necessarily based on fact.

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On the occassions that the Pres and VP have to be together (for political conventions or major press conferences and such), there is MASSIVE security. The location is swept beforehand by the Secret Service, plenty of bodyguards, and there are even "fake" motorcades so you can't be sure which vehicle holds the president.

But you will NEVER see the Pres and VP traveling together. It would only take one plane crash or train derailment to throw the government into a mess - and that's before you even get to the possibility of a terrorist bomb.

The president would need a large staff to assist him. The point of keeping the president alive is so that he can continue to command the country, in particular the surviving elements of the strategic nuclear forces. He'll need people to operate communications relays with the outside world, interpret and analyze the incoming reports, present that information to him, turn his decisions into plans, and then communicate those plans to the outside world. So lots of colonels in the Air Force, CIA analysts, etc. etc.

I'm not sure if the various cabinet members would be there or not. My guess is the Secretaries of Defense and State might be, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of FEMA, but probably not the rest. I believe the different cabinet-level departments are all supposed to have their own bunkers, but except for the military they tended to not bother (they didn't want to spend the money). The JCS might have had a separate facility as well, I'm not sure.

This is tooting my own horn a bit, but this:

http://atomic-skies.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-nations-cockpit.html

Might be of use to you; it discusses a planned mega-shelter that was never built. Also, check out The Day After World War III, by a guy named Zuckermann; I forget his first name. That's an accessible non-fiction account, written in the 80s, of the various continuity-of-government plans, or at least what was known of them at the time.

Bombs coming in? I would.

caw

mfarraday said:

I am wondering how to find out who would go into a nuclear fallout shelter with the President of the United States. I'm thinking of a facility that is rather large. My fictional facility is situated in Virginia, under a mountain, accessed via a tunnel. It is designed to house about a thousand people, but due to the unexpected nature of the terrorist attack in my story, only a couple hundred people are initially there.

I have military people, generals and sergeants, the President and his wife/daughter. Medical personnel: doctors and nurses. People to keep the facility running: cooks and clean up crew, and technically savvy people to fix electrical outages and broken pipes etc. I also have a pilot, as I plan to have a helicopter on stand by to whisk the President away if he wants.

Who else would be there? The Vice President, his family, the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, ambassadors, and some congressmen? Bureacratic aides?

Thanks for any help,

M.

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No way the line of succession would be kept all in one place in that scenario.

Why would there be ambassadors there? I also doubt generals and sergeants in great number, because why. Also, they're in Colorado, I'd think.

You're missing CoS, for pretty sure. I also don't know that the president would be allowed to go if he so wanted.

Are the support staff people military who are stationed there as a matter of course or are they people you're thinking are being picked up and brought? That seems unwise and unlikely, though I don't know for sure.

Look into the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, WV. A massive shelter was built underneath it at the height of the Cold War for members of Congress and nobody else. These days you can take a tour of the place.

There's Site R for the president and anyone else who happens to make it to Camp David (it's in Pennsylvania, not Virginia). Look up Directive 51 for the (declassified) details about who goes where.

Not too sure about ambassadors. Wouldn't American ambassadors be stationed abroad and the ambassadors from foreign countries not welcomed in a bunker?

I'd certainly agree that there would be a difference between what was planned and what would actually happen. For once, Independence Day might actually be fairly realistic!

Russell Secord said:

There's Site R for the president and anyone else who happens to make it to Camp David (it's in Pennsylvania, not Virginia). Look up Directive 51 for the (declassified) details about who goes where.

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Site R (Or Raven Rock -- look it up in Google Maps) is in Pennsylvania.

Camp David (Naval Support Facility, Thurmont, MD) is in Maryland.

Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center (FEMA's emergency site) is in Bluemont, Virginia.

Each has specific actions during Continuity of Government (COG) and Continuity of Operations (COOP) scenarios.

I actually have lead a motorcycle ride past all three of these locations. Takes about half a day, and goes through some really spectacular scenery.

ap123 said:

Isn't there a thing that the President and the VP aren't supposed to be together?

It's popping up in my head, but that could be from a movie, not necessarily based on fact.

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Yup that's my understanding too. Further, there is always one person somewhere in the chain of command who stands down from various meetings/appearances and such so that they can provide continuity of government if all hell breaks loose.

Russell Secord said:

Look into the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, WV. A massive shelter was built underneath it at the height of the Cold War for members of Congress and nobody else. These days you can take a tour of the place.

There's Site R for the president and anyone else who happens to make it to Camp David (it's in Pennsylvania, not Virginia). Look up Directive 51 for the (declassified) details about who goes where.

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Rumor has it that there's a massive bunker beneath the Denver airport as well.