Underground Bunkers and Complexes Options

[FlakJacket]

I've been reading this article in the paper about how the Chinese government has apparently built a massive bunker able to accomodate over two hundred thousand people for up to a fortnight under Shanghai on the quiet. It's also connected to the subway system and a number of residential and office buildings. That's one hell of a civil defence project.

Which got me thinking, how prevalent are underground locations in people's games? We already have the major canon places like the Ork Underground, the sub-levels of the Renraku Arcology or to a lesser extent Halferville down in San Francisco, but what else have people come up with? Secret underground corporate bases, old decommissioned US military complexes, modern day military facilities? And what other large underground places are there in the canon Shadowrun world that people can think of?

[Anythingforenoug...]

I have always thought that underground facilities would be very common in Shadowrun. As an after effect of the "Resource Rush" there would be literally tens of thousands of played-out mines around the world-extensive underground complexes ready made for Corps. and other groups to snap up and modify into secure facilities. And given how dangerous the world is, as well as the advantages to not only physical but also magical security that underground facilities provide, it would actually make since for underground facilities to multiply rather rapidly.

On the other hand, I don't know anything about mining, so anyone out there with a better handle on that end of things might be able to provide you with a more realistic appraisal of my view.

AFEN :nuyen:

[Grinder]

A complex built completly underground provides a very good defense against magic scouting, so I think they're very common.

[Slump]

Another advantage to underground facilities is that they also provide excellent physical security as well.

In an office building, every window is a potential entry point. In an underground facility, the entrance, and the ventilation tunnels are potential entry points. There is no practical way to monitor every potential entry point on a building, but it would be quite simple to have cameras on every underground access point be monitered 24 hours a day.

[stevebugge]

A lot of the left over cold war bunkers and command facilities would be in NAN Territory, though it would be hard to say what their status is now (in use, demolished, sealed up). Big corps would likely build secure labs and facilities at least partly underground, possibly using depleted mines, natural formations, or starting new.

A few things to keep in mind when locating one of these underground lairs. Soil composition. In Seattle for example the high sand content of the soil makes building anything underground difficult (hence no subway IRL). Water Table: Good luck building an underground complex in New Orleans, a couple feet down and you've hit the water table. Not to say these would be impossible, just more difficult and expensive.

[FlakJacket]

[Frag-o Delux]

Mount Cheyenne or NORAD?

[FlakJacket]

Cheyenne Mountain and NORAD now that you jog my memory. Was mentioned in the Denver boxed set.

[ Spoiler ]

Shadowtalk mentioned that when they blew the charges the seismic tremors recorded were much less than expected, opening the way for the GM to choose from three choices for what happened like they did for a lot of different situations in the book. A - they overestimated what they'd be and the place was fully collapsed, B - the charges partly misfired so it was only sealed off allowing the Pueblo I think it was to excavate it and move in, C - same as B only the bugs moved in and formed a secret hive instead of the NAN. Pistons who wrote the Ghostwalker/Denver update in YotC seemed to pick mostly B's and C's as canon from the different choices from what I recall.

[Frag-o Delux]

[FlakJacket]

Based out of the old USAF Academy in Colorado Springs I think.

[SL James]

Yep. The Air Force Academy.

Pueblo's great for this. There's all sorts of shit buried in the mountains.

[Adam Selene]

Fallout shelters are located in every single major U.S. city. They're not hardened against nuclear strikes but they stand up to almost anything else.

Here in Fort Worth the fallout shelter is located two levels underground, for instance. Not a bunker, but for a shadowrunner it'll do.

[Frag-o Delux]

When you say fallout shelter do you mean any public building ran by the municaplity that has the black and yellow radioactive signs?

Some buildings are also designated as fallout shelters like phones offices. But if America was invaded by an army comparable to ours I would not be hiding in a phone office, as they would probably be a prime target for bombing to cut communications, much like we do in other countries.

And howmany structures are hardened against nuclear strikes, I mean other then Greenbrier, Norad and our own nuclear silos? Does camp David have a hardened bunker?

[Lindt]

IIRC yes, as does that congressional bunker in the Allegheny Mountains. And Mount Weather, Berryville, Va. and Raven Rock Mountain in Pennsylvania. Former Ft Devens in Ma is rumerd to have on as well, though thats a little more sketchy, being ON a fort and all.

Fallout shelters are a dime a dozen, my hometown has 5 just in the rotery area. They are used to store stuff in now for the places that rent the entries.

[Gabriel (Argus #...]

Mister President!
We cannot ALLOW a mine-shaft gap!

[Frag-o Delux]

[Fix-it]

And then there's the Ork Underground in Seattle, which is an entire community underground.

[Grinder]

The questions was, which other underground complexes are there, besides the already known (=mentioned in canon) ones?

[nezumi]

Wasn't there something in some source book about underground moving walkways between busy office buildings? I've incorporated that into many of my office buildings, basically an underground sidewalk complex, to let people cross between buildings without worrying about rain or cars.

[stevebugge]

[Shrike30]

What with the light rail rebuild of the bus tunnel, you could arguably say that the Ork Underground now has it's own high-speed rail connection to Sea-Tac airport in your game, steve :P

[Butterblume]

Thinking about it, there are so many underground structures over here, so I probably can invent one every time I need to and get away with it :P.

Bomb shelters, underground factories and storage space, nazi bunkers from WW II.
Further west, old cavesystems from WW I.
Old Mineshafts from as far back as a few thousand years, to new ones.
Bunkers and underground storages from the time of the cold war, on both sides of the iron curtain.

(Just what I thought of right now).

Cellars from Monasteries or Breweries. Catacombs. Cisterns. Fuel tanks.

[Grinder]

[Butterblume]

It's a fact, a lot of them still exist, only the entrances are sealed, so nobody gets hurt.

The gold and the tech was looted, mainly by americans and russians. Reemerging cults could be a good campaign. Some magical threat would be viable, too. Some stuff might have been useless in the fourties, but after the awakening the same stuff might be dangerous... I feel a cheesy campaign coming up 8).

Probably starting with detective work in Munich (finally, an excuse to buy the -german- Munich Sourcebook ;)), ending with a big hack&slay somewhere in an old nazi bunker in the Alps.

[Grinder]

Did you buy Munich Noir?

Most of the nazi gold and tech may have been looted, but maybe not all. A good excuse for a little dungeoncrawl without the usual corp security stuff.