Front Halves of Horses Sent to Washington DC for Assembly

That was one of the guesses about what was being manufactured at the super-secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee back in the 1940s. The closely guarded production turned out to be purified Uranium-235 for the first atomic bombs, but in a back-handed way the earlier guess has been quoted as a paradigm for thought processes in the nation's capital.
This was reinforced in my hometown of Kellogg, Idaho back around 1984, when the Cold War and atomic bomb threats were often in the news. Someone in the national bureaucracy, pondering how to save citizens' lives in case of atomic attack thought "Mine tunnels!" The Silver Valley in northern Idaho has more than 200 miles of tunnels underground, thought to be enough to accommodate most of the population of the city of Spokane (seventy miles away, it's true, but they had a super-highway.) Accordingly, 200 cots and a few initial supplies of food and medicine arrived for storage in our local hospital against the day of holocaust.
The bureaucrat's thinking was not entirely off the wall. An atomic bomb hitting Fairchild Air Force Base (ten miles the other side of Spokane) might conceivably give citizens an hour or two to take shelter from the radioactive dust that would be borne on our usual westerly winds. And after three weeks underground, people might (we were told) be able to survive in the diminishing radioactivity. When Mount St. Helens had blown up, four years earlier, the volcanic dust did indeed reach Kellogg and beyond. The local miners noticed that it only penetrated the mine tunnels about 300 feet before adhering to the moist tunnel walls, and it was reasonable to suppose that radioactive dust from a bomb might behave in the same way. Anyway, some of us had enough interest in the topic to spend some of our days off evaluating the suitability of mines as fall-out shelters.
After getting permission from the mine companies, four of us - a fireman, a public health worker, an instructor from the mine rescue training school, and myself (a doctor) - formed the core of a crew to map the mines, We pre-supposed that in any atomic attack electric power would be gone, and the mine hoists and ventilation fans would not be operating. So only entry level, horizontal tunnels would be accessible. (Try climbing twenty flights of stairs, the distance between one mine level and the next, and see how your legs feel.) There would be no light or food except for what could be brought in or stored ahead of time.
There is natural air circulation in many mines, and a warm enough temperature. Our public health man tested various underground water sources and found some of them drinkable. Some had drainage ditches that would provide sanitation. The tunnel floors are rocky and wet, and many of the mines had nothing but a vertical shaft access. We checked out ten or fifteen mines. It wasn't until we saw our mine rescue expert casting worried glances at some of the rotting mine timbers in a long-abandoned tunnel that we decided we had explored enough.
The mines of Shoshone County, Idaho, those with horizontal access, drinkable water and breathable air, had enough room to accommodate perhaps 1,200 people, if food, medicines, and electric batteries were stored ahead of time and people did not mind the dark, damp, sometimes dangerous surroundings.
But as is often the case, bureaucrats in the nation's far-away capital city had no clue about conditions in mines. Nor did they realize how much preplanning, and checking the facts of the local situation, was needed to provide genuine safety for the people on site. Our bureaucrats took no further action.
When I told some of my patients about our study, showing room in the mine tunnels for only about one-tenth the local population, let let alone 250,000 Spokanites, they were philosophic. One told me:
"Well, that's okay, Doc. If the bomb ever drops and we can't dynamite the river bridge in time to keep the city folks out, I'll just sit on my front steps with a six-pack of beer, and watch the fireworks."