Apocalypse Proof: 33 Thomas Street in New York City

[llsf]

Paris decided instead to go underground for the atomic bomb proof telecom hub. Well, unless they moved it in the past 25 years (i.e. last time I worked in there). It was equally dystopian, with offices with fake windows + artificial light + window treatments, a square with bistro tables to hang out. I remember being slightly warmer than a normal office building. I guess the AC was either not properly sized, or just running at the minimum as barely anyone was working there actively at the time. But the cool factor, was how we accessed it from the ground. There was a little structure that looked like the toilet structure for the adjacent park. You buzz, the door unlock, you enter, there is a guy behind a glass door, you show ID, and he unlock the elevator, and you go down to your subterranean floor. Felt like Jame Bond :)

[Faaak]

It is the same in Geneva as the telecom "room" is underground somewhere in the city where everybody goes but nobody notices. You also access it via a nondescript small "hut". Good memories indeed.

[motohagiography]

The history of this building in the 70s and 80s puts the official paranoia behind phreaking and hacking in more context. When you see that this building is as much a key symbol that represents power as it is a single fully functional and modular switching machine - and where it stands in the middle of the center of the world economy and american supremacy - to hack what this indestructable concrete obelisk represented was a real threat to the projection of power.

If The Phone Company was vulnerable to some rogue geniuses, everything else was up for grabs.

[euroderf]

TPC: The President's Analyst, 1967

[B1FF_PSUVM]

"In an eighteen-month period in 1971 and ’72, the FBI counted an astounding (and almost entirely forgotten) 2,500 domestic bombings: roughly five a day."

SF author John Brunner had a contemporaneous story, reflecting that, titled The Inception of the Epoch of Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid (https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?66700 ). The name seems to come from an 1863 English book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water-Babies,_A_Fairy_Tale... )

[didsomeonesay]

This building inspired the "Oldest House" in the game Control:

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/art/the-real-buildings-that-in...

[klipklop]

Control was a fantastic game. A must play.

[staplung]

Apocalypse proof? We need something like an IPX scale. Maybe this is like AP5: able to withstand small-arms fire, molotov cocktails and, I dunno, zombie mandibles? But not cruise missiles, direct artillery fire, or giant transforming robots.

Making something "nuclear hardened" is evidently not as high a bar as one might suppose. Setting aside that I don't know of any actual standards it appears that what's required is an ability to withstand a certain overpressure and provide some amount of radiation shielding. A windowless, reinforced concrete building would do pretty nicely without even trying for extra credit. I guess the idea being that nuclear-proof is impossible for normal, baryonic matter: a near enough blast from a big enough bomb will vaporize anything.

[appplication]

I have worked in a number of nuclear hardened facilities. Some more than others. There certainly are robust standards for this, as I recall quite a bit of fuss around even the small details. Typically what you see is everything is electrically isolated. On-site power, EMP hardened with shielding everywhere. All mechanical and electrical equipment suspended. Several feet of concrete on all sides. They told us it was intended to withstand near impact and I believed that it could. At least structurally. I’m not sure the people inside would fare the same.

I also spent some time inside Cheyenne mountain. That is next level hardening. I have no doubt you could hit it with 50 nukes and the people inside would hardly notice. Of course, other than it specifically being their job to know that we’re being nuked.

[Alex3917]

IIRC the PSAC II building, also in NYC, is designed so that someone can fly a plane into it without anyone inside really noticing.

[chrisco255]

This thing probably has extensive underground levels as well.

[kouru225]

I walk by this all the time. There’s a big glass entrance on one side with a doorman and everything so it’s not exactly one giant slab on concrete.

[WarOnPrivacy]

More inside/outside pics

https://atlasofplaces.com/architecture/long-lines-building/

[dkasper]

Reminds me of 611 Folsom in sf https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/611_Folsom_Street

[shrubble]

In the 1960s the riots in cities led to the requirement of 'no windows' and datacenters were not to share walls with the exterior walls, so that breaching a datacenter required going through 2 walls. These requirements no doubt play a large factor in the building's design.

[bombcar]

I feel this building would be a much better conspiracy target if they had done then normal thing of making it look like a building; one with fake windows that nobody ever goes in - or comes out.

[kmeisthax]

Conspiracy theorists don't think that way. They want things that validate their paranoia, so they look for symbols that are obvious to them, but discarded by others because they're too obvious and stupid. They want buildings that look like Hollywood evil lairs. They want barcodes and IC cards that spell out 666[0] if you squint at them funny. They see Linux error screens with the words "kill process or sacrifice child" in them and think their Fire Stick is extracting adrenochrome at the basement of Comet Ping-Pong[1].

They aren't entirely insane, they are onto something. But, ironically, they have been programmed by business interests to ignore their own malfeasance. So the story can't just be "the government suspended monopoly laws and let everyone buy everyone and that's why everything sucks now, join a union". After all, a lot of these people were born and raised to oppose regulation and unions. So they instead have to construct a new framework for opposing business to get rid of that cognitive dissonance, and it invariably becomes this over-dramatized nonsense.

[0] A codeword referring to Nero, a politically unpopular Roman emperor that has been dead for over a thousand years

[1] A pizza place that does not have a basement, but that hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists from shooting them up and holding them hostage anyway

[lr1970]

Intercept was the first to claim back in 2016 that this building has had a deep NSA connection [1]. Fascinating story...

[1] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-...

[baz00]

Definitely not apocalypse proof. Apocalypse resistant!

It's on my bucket list seeing that though.

[throwbadubadu]

Why not, not getting it? (e.g. bulletproof also doesn't mean can withstand any bullet?)

[smath]

Ha, I used to work inside this building in 2010.

[tiku]

Usually this is followed by some cool stories.....

[realo]

Surely you have a nice proof but it is too large to write in the margin ... :)

[cscheid]

Hey, same! (From ~2012 to 2014), but yeah.

[swader999]

He Mike! How are you doing?

[iworshipfaangs2]

Did you like working there?

[rvba]

How do those microwave transmitter lines work? Do they need to be empty from station to station? Does a bird flying break the connection? Would a drone block it?

I read the high frequency trading firms use own towers to transmit messages. Could a rogue competitor fly a drone/kite to "block the view" and break the connections?

[rsync]

In stark contrast, the beautiful Bell Central Office of Minneapolis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_Technologies_Building

[krapp]

Apocalypse proof? This building looks like it instigates the apocalypse. Like it sucks the souls out of people to feed some ancient eldritch horror bound in a Masonic pentagram underground. Like there's got to be a boss fight on top of it.

[danielvaughn]

I'm surprised there are more conspiracies about this than the facades you can find walking around Manhattan. I remember stumbling upon one without knowing what they were, and being rather confused (and suspicious).

[wkat4242]

What facades? Edit: Ah I found them online. Those are built not to be noticed though. I can imagine they don't attract so much attention.

This AT&T building is a pretty cool piece of mysterious brutalist architecture. It's noticable and leads to wonder about what's inside. And infamous because it was (is?) home to an NSA monitoring installation exposed in some leaks.

It was also featured in media like the Mr Robot series.

[Arcanum-XIII]

You have to be honest: that's the perfect architecture to create paranoia. As usual, it doesn't mean it's Evil. But it's perfect to create story since it's "mysterious"!

[tedunangst]

Do floods count as apocalypse? How well does the building work submerged?