[HN Gopher] Construction of the AT&T Long Lines "Cheshire" under...
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Construction of the AT&T Long Lines "Cheshire" underground site
Author : walrus01
Score : 155 points
Date : 2024-07-31 03:47 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (coldwar-ct.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (coldwar-ct.com)
| metadat wrote:
| > Clothing was available for contaminated workers including
| dozens of boxes of brand new Converse sneakers, c. 1968!
|
| Why would the workers be contaminated?
|
| Struggling to understand the purpose of this station, at the top
| it says coax but why all the fancy cooling and contamination
| protection?
| space_fountain wrote:
| These facilities were designed to be hardened so as to survive
| a nuclear war. The air intakes were presumably needed to
| provide cooling for the communication equipment inside and
| decontamination was for any workers who needed to visit after
| the outside has all been contaminated with nuclear fallout
| BoorishBears wrote:
| First lines:
|
| > The Cheshire ATT facility is an underground complex
| originally built in 1966. It was an underground terminal and
| repeater station for the hardened analog L4 carrier cable
| (coax) that went from Miami to New England carrying general
| toll circuits _and critical military communication circuits_
|
| Critical military communication circuits implies it was meant
| to survive a nuclear attack.
| diggernet wrote:
| The site was built to survive a nearby nuclear attack.
| nrr wrote:
| This facility is what's called a tandem office in the old long
| distance telephone network here in the US. The idea was that it
| formed a link in a routing chain between two end offices when a
| long-distance call was placed.
|
| Cheshire, CT, also happened to be an AUTOVON site, which
| carried with it military and national security significance.
| This is why it was hardened against nuclear attack, including
| the air handling augmentations, decontamination shower, gamma
| ray detection equipment, and so on.
| bregma wrote:
| You mean "couldn't they just reboot the server remotely using
| the terminal on their Mac after the crazed fools in the White
| House and the Kremlin annihilated civilization through nuclear
| holocaust in 1968?"
|
| Well, all I can say is thank goodness we're not in that
| situation today so that people don't understand the "why"s.
|
| Aren't we?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| That background though... (
| https://img1.wsimg.com/isteam/ip/da3386ad-a465-4e41-834e-354... )
| pixelesque wrote:
| MIRV re-entry test...
| msisk6 wrote:
| Those MIRVs come in kinda fast:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZM3y5qpMgY
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| In fully glory:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...
| Animats wrote:
| That's an AUTOVON switching center.[1] There were at least 38 of
| those centers in the US. They were located in places some
| distance from major cities and military targets. They were
| hardened telephone central offices, but with many more redundant
| links between switches than the commercial system. So this system
| really was intended to survive a nuclear war.
|
| The technology was Western Electric's 1ESS (#1 Electronic
| Switching System), and all 4-wire out to the handsets, so that
| conference calls would work clearly without feedback. 1ESS was a
| very bulky system. It was basically a pair of large mainframe
| computers running a big dumb switch fabric. The switch fabric is
| analog and electromechanical, using reed switches with a ferrite
| element so they stay in the last state to which they were set.
| That's why these were such big installations, even though they
| didn't have a huge number of lines.
|
| [1] http://autovon.org
| metadat wrote:
| How deep did they bury the wires?
|
| Were they run full depth from point to point?
| walrus01 wrote:
| Google "L4 transcontinental cable", but the majority of the
| long lines network was the famously known horn antennas on
| towers for FDD microwave point to point links in the 6GHz
| band.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| It would vary by terrain and land use (e.g. agricultural),
| but generally just 2-3 feet deep by vibratory plow. Deeper
| emplacement and directional drilling were used as required to
| handle obstacles. For most L-carrier the entire en-route
| infrastructure was below ground, but it was more extensive
| than just the cable, with active repeaters in manholes
| required at 2-mile intervals for L-4. L-4 also required an
| "equalizing repeater" about every 50 miles, which was
| installed in a manhole but had a shed on top to facilitate
| technicians adjusting the equalization. Main stations, such
| as this one, were required every 150 miles.
| fmajid wrote:
| I'm surprised they didn't use crossbar electromechanical
| switches for EMP resistance.
| Aloha wrote:
| They did - it wasn't all ESS
|
| http://autovon.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/BELL-LAB-
| RECOR...
| Aloha wrote:
| They also had Number 5 Crossbar switches as well, the switching
| fabric wasn't huge in size, like I've seen what the frames look
| like, ESS was still much smaller than the crossbar that
| preceded it, and not that much physically larger than a
| comparable 5ESS
| kev009 wrote:
| The underground sites were primarily for Long Lines equipment,
| i.e. L-carrier Coaxial repower, regen, cross-connect and HVAC
| and power continuity for these. You can see in the illustration
| that switching at its least efficient was maybe 1/4 of the
| facility (lowest level), L (and TD MW) would be a bit more
| dense but similar floor space on first level. These multistory
| sites had a lot of extra room for training rooms, service
| bureau, and some nod toward continuity in terms of sheltering a
| number of people with some token supplies although if you look
| at enough pictures over time it doesn't appear like it was ever
| taken very seriously... ultimately I think these just turned
| out to be a way AT&T and the DoD came up with to get the US
| Government to more heavily subsidize Long Lines network
| construction.
|
| Switching of copper end lines would often happen closer to the
| user, i.e. on base although some sites did have switching due
| to favorable proximity (i.e. Soccoro, N.M) or presumably
| function like a tandem (maybe this site?). You can see a little
| of a 1A ESS in this video (https://www.facebook.com/CheshireVol
| FireDept/videos/a-brief-...) and maybe some 5ESS in the
| background as well although it is too brief for me to tell.
|
| Some undergrounds were dual purposed for Microwave pathing and
| cross connect (like this linked one), but most microwave was
| instead in above ground hardened facilities elsewhere for path
| diversity.
|
| Some undergrounds had Echo Fox transceivers and switching
| http://www.coldwar-c4i.net/Echo-Fox/index.html.
|
| Project Offices are an interesting related rabbit hole to
| pursue http://www.coldwar-c4i.net/ATT_Project/index.html.
|
| Source: I own an L-3 regen bunker and have done a lot of
| research on them.
| leoh wrote:
| Why was there a gamma ray detector?
| nrr wrote:
| Gamma rays are an early danger from the fallout from a nuclear
| blast.
| Lammy wrote:
| This other page goes into a little more detail on the detection
| system: https://coldwar-ct.com/Blast_Detectors.html
|
| "Most sites included Gamma detectors that were designed to
| detect the radiation wave as well. They were redundant systems,
| any detection, overpressure or Gamma would button-up the site
| at which point signals were sent to all Continental U.S. sites
| that a blast was detected, where it was, the size of the blast
| and wind speed and direction. Sites within 250 miles of any
| detection would go to Auto-Lock down."
| jeffbee wrote:
| I wonder how sensitive they were/are. Can you goof on them
| with a portable medical gamma ray source?
| phone8675309 wrote:
| That sounds like a fantastic way to have a SWAT team kick
| down your door
| jeffbee wrote:
| I guess. I am just trying to think of the funniest thing
| a KGB operative could do in his free time.
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| Likely having something to do with this being a bunker meant to
| effectively endure a nuclear attack
| baliex wrote:
| As a Brit that map at the bottom is very confusing. A Bristol not
| to far from a Glastonbury, ok yeah, that makes sense but the map
| mustn't be north-oriented. Oh, and what's Manchester doing so
| close to Glastonbury, and that's not where Durham would be, or
| Norwich, or New Haven. Hmm.. and I didn't think we had a _New_
| London.
|
| https://img1.wsimg.com/isteam/ip/da3386ad-a465-4e41-834e-354...
|
| Also, Cheshire is a county in the north of England so the whole
| article was very confusing from the get go as to where this
| station was located. Here it is on Google Maps:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEWT2L6QYqntYDDz5
|
| Bolton, Kensington, Oxford, Coventry, and--slightly left field--
| Berlin are also nearby.
| Retric wrote:
| The 42 degrees north goes through the northern US and northern
| Spain, but is well south of England.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42nd_parallel_north The New is
| also a hint aka New York, New Jersey, etc.
|
| It's a map of Connecticut, USA.
| willwade wrote:
| I'm with you. I started reading and was like "wait.. this is
| not the Cheshire I know of - where has this been hiding".. Then
| on the map: Lebanon and Brooklyn.
|
| Also Wallingford. I bet thats nothing like the Wallingford I
| know of (Oxfordshire Town)
| qingcharles wrote:
| So many places in the USA have matching British names I had
| to check to see if Brooklyn was one of them, but looks like
| it's named for a Dutch town, which makes sense.
| worstspotgain wrote:
| That's why it's called New England. Here out west, most of the
| anglo town names are the names of settlers (with exceptions
| like Richmond nee upon Thames.)
| PietdeVries wrote:
| I stared at Google Earth for a while, using the 41:30 and 73 as
| a guide, but wasn't able to pinpoint the location of the site.
| With these huge vents, it shouldn't be too hard to find where
| this site was located.
|
| Anyone an idea?
| worstspotgain wrote:
| Well we wouldn't want the Russians to find out too would we.
| jonotab wrote:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/SpeEBjSmiDFAeqr17
| wil421 wrote:
| There's a reason they call the area New England. New York was
| New Amsterdam before the Brits took it over.
| sdwr wrote:
| Old New York was once New Amsterdam...
| 1-6 wrote:
| Why they changed it I can't say
|
| People just liked it better that way
|
| ... Istanbul was Constantinople
|
| Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
|
| Been a long time gone, oh Constantinople
|
| Why did Constantinople get the works?
|
| That's nobody's business but the Turks
| Iulioh wrote:
| For these wondering, this is the song
|
| https://youtu.be/0XlO39kCQ-8?si=SPHrV99reR579yPn
|
| Very catchy, it was re popularized by a netflix series a
| few years ago, j don't remember the name lf the series
| tho
| shawn_w wrote:
| Umbrella Academy? And Tiny Toons many years earlier.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Byzantion!
| mindslight wrote:
| Zoom out a bit and you get a whole bunch of Manchesters, and
| none of them had a Factory Records.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Would guess you don't have a Mohawk either.
| rob wrote:
| Wait until you learn we here in Connecticut also have hundreds
| of miles of stone walls, just like England!
| mrguyorama wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/8o6xc5/r...
|
| This sign is just for the singular state of Maine. Notice the
| two distinct "Sweden"s, and that ignores "New Sweden" we have
| way up north.
|
| The colonists were not creative with names.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Wait until you find out how to correctly pronounce "Worcester."
| mike503 wrote:
| Anyone else in awe at all the infrastructure, systems, etc that
| were setup especially due to the Cold War? Things like Operation
| Looking Glass, keeping a staffed plane in the air, 24/7/365 for
| nearly 30 years, all these kind of hardening projects, it's crazy
| to me how much work and how many decades it spanned.
|
| And that's just the stuff we now can openly read about. I can't
| imagine all the systems and redundancies in place right now...
| but probably a lot more digital with analog backup only.
| fmajid wrote:
| See also:
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-town-that-kept-it...
| worstspotgain wrote:
| The thing that really drops my jaw is the handwaving conjecture
| that the doomsday risk level has decreased a lot since then.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| 2022, nay, 2014 should have been a wake-up call that World
| War III was underway.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| It's not handwaving conjecture, it is cold calculation.
|
| Russia has a nuclear triad the same as the US.
|
| 1. Russia's submarine forces have been gutted since the Cold
| War. Poor training and maintenance has led to a slew of
| launch failures in recent years and analysis of their
| deployment tempo seems to indicate only a minimum number of
| submarines are deployed at any given time.
|
| 2. The long range strategic bomber forces of the Russian
| Aerospace Force are so outdated and vulnerable to western air
| defense systems that they rarely if ever enter the airspace
| of Ukraine, with the Tu-160 supersonic bomber lobbing cruise
| missiles from well outside Ukraine's air defense zone, the
| Tu-95 doing the same, and the Tu-22 only targeting areas not
| protected by Patriot missiles.
|
| 3. Aging systems, poor maintenance, and a lack of adequate
| funding has severely hampered Russia's Strategic Rocket
| Forces. They lack the precision to ensure a favorable outcome
| in the event of a nuclear war because they were designed for
| scenarios where dozens if not hundreds of warhead were used
| on individual area targets in an age where there were tens of
| thousands of warheads available for use.
|
| All of Russia's "superhypersonic killer nuclear-powered
| unstoppable death machine weapons test" rhetoric is an
| attempt to fool the US into believing that they have
| something up their sleeve because they know that the US knows
| that each of the three spokes of their triad have been
| degraded so much. Russia also knows they can't afford to
| rebuild their forces, so wonderweapons it is.
|
| They can't even build enough radios to equip all of their
| ground forces in Ukraine with communications gear and their
| megaweapons programs are hollow vanity projects.
|
| Do not mistake any of this for hubris. Russia can still
| launch nuclear weapons and any such usage would be
| disastrous.
|
| The doomsday scenarios at the height of the Cold War where
| 40,000 Soviet warheads could be mustered for deployment by a
| variety of difficult to stop systems to be met with a
| response of 20,000 US warheads thus irradiating the entire
| northern hemisphere and dooming humanity to extinction is all
| but impossible.
|
| So unless the definition of "doomsday" has changed from "the
| extinction of all of humanity" to "a really shitty time where
| hundreds of thousands die in an instant" the doomsday risk
| level has indeed decreased.
| trhway wrote:
| The toilets are on springs to survive the shock wave. My
| acquaintance long time ago told me that in their deep (much
| deeper than in this article) underground USSR military
| communication center the whole floors were on some kind of
| springs and shock absorbers.
| fmajid wrote:
| NORAD headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain: they hollowed out a
| mountain, and installed an entire complex mounted on springs.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Complex
| Gud wrote:
| This was not just done for fancy bunkers like NORAD
| headquarters but was common practice for telecommunication
| stations in many countries.
| bregma wrote:
| There's a bunker outside of Ottawa Canada, intended to house a
| select core of the federal government during and after a
| nuclear horrocaust, that is (at least) 10 storeys of
| underground on a sprung foundation. It's now a museum to the
| cold war open to the public (and worth a visit if you're in the
| area) and you can actually see the massive foundation springs.
|
| Also, they run escape rooms where you're caught in the bunker
| during a nuclear event, which would be kind of cool.
| msisk6 wrote:
| Just in case anyone is wondering what kind of shock waves a
| nearby nuclear blast would generate, watch this video of a
| 1-megaton test in central Nevada. You can drive right up to
| this point today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ETHnsKnKiA
| qingcharles wrote:
| That music... o_O
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A lot of equipment in submarines is spring-mounted also, for
| better survivial of depth-charge shocks.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I bet the late Robert "Ozzie" Osband (Richard Cheshire, The
| Cheshire Catalyst) would have loved to hack into there.
|
| https://infocondb.org/presenter/richard-cheshire-the-cheshir...
|
| >*The Cheshire Catalyst (@Cheshire2600)* (Richard Cheshire) was
| the last editor of the notorious _TAP Newsletter_ of the 1970s
| and 1980s. ( _TAP_ was a predecessor of _2600 Magazine_.) In his
| "share the knowledge" spirit, he has volunteered at every HOPE
| conference since the first one in 1994. His PHonePHriendly.Com
| sets up web pages meant to be read on mobile phone web browsers,
| and allows him to delude himself that he's still into phones as a
| phreak.
| justin66 wrote:
| I never knew him, but Jason Scott did what seemed like a nice
| job of memorializing him after his recent death:
|
| https://textfiles.libsyn.com/the-cheshire-catalyst-episode
| TomMasz wrote:
| My dad would have been very interested in these photos. He worked
| for Western Electric and spent most of his time working on Long
| Lines installations in NYC.
| eddyg wrote:
| More info on the Long Lines system, for those interested:
|
| http://personal.garrettfuller.org/blog/2018/01/19/att-long-l...
| A_Duck wrote:
| All I can think as I read this is how much education and medical
| treatment this could have paid for
|
| Not that it wasn't sadly necessary... but it seems a waste of
| human endeavour
| clarionbell wrote:
| I'm afraid we may have to refurbish these ... quickly.
| krunck wrote:
| Why?
| HFguy wrote:
| Looks like a Fallout Vault
|
| These facilities were not cheap to design and build. Obsolete
| now.
| 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
| This is the kind of information I read hn for. Really fascinating
| stuff that I probably wouldn't know about otherwise.
| zoombippy wrote:
| Makes me depressed to think that I'll never again enjoy the
| crisp, clear communication of a landline phone call.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| This is fake nostalgia.
|
| There were a lot of places in the world (and still are many
| places in the world) where the copper phone lines are anything
| but crisp and clear - lots of noise and hums and clicks and
| static. That's the rule more than the exception in some places.
| Now these intrusions are typically not enough to disrupt a
| voice call, but they were a major issue using modems and DSL.
| rob wrote:
| Amazing. I live in the next town over and had absolutely no idea
| about this. Thanks for sharing!
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Bet those all stars would make bank on ebay.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Love seeing the old civil defense crystal dosimeters and the
| charger lower down. I have an old CDV-741 kicking around.
| Reason077 wrote:
| _"dozens of boxes of brand new Converse sneakers, c. 1968"_
|
| Wow! New-in-box 1968 Converse sneakers must be worth a fortune.
| AT&T (or whoever owns the site now days) is sitting on a gold
| mine here!
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(page generated 2024-07-31 23:00 UTC)