Torgovyy Dom Moskovskogo Kupecheskogo Obshchestva, Moskva, Russia

Torgovyy Dom Moskovskogo Kupecheskogo Obshchestva, Moskva, Russia 

Designed and built after the first series of nuclear tests by the Soviet Union, these tests revealed that the optimum depth for the bunker’s silo must be no higher than 165 feet beneath ground in order to survive nuclear fallout intact. The task for the builders was enormous: construct a gigantic structure beneath the city streets without damaging Moscow’s existing infrastructure of streets and communication pathways. To do so would alert the public and innumerable unknown spies to the existence of the bunker, thereby rendering the entire (read: top-secret) thing useless.

Strategically located inside a hill in the Tagansky district due to its proximity to the Kremlin, allowing quick access to the bunker for Stalin and the premier tier of government officials within the USSR, Bunker-42 wasn’t completed until 1956 and was thankfully never put into use in its full capacity. Rather, it spent the subsequent three decades as an airstrike command base, communicating with aircraft transporting strategic bombers carrying nuclear weapons until the political climate began to shift in 1986.

Epic Russia Culture & Adventure Route © Monika Newbound