Welcome to the Diefenbunker, Canada’s Cold War Museum. This audio tour will take you four stories below ground and lasts approximately 1 hour. Use this device to start, stop, skip, or go back. Listen for this chime [chime] to signal the end of a stop.
Nobody knew what kind of injuries people would come here with, but this Medical Centre was prepared to treat various injuries sustained from a nuclear explosion. Even if everyone entered the Bunker healthy, a month is a long time for 500 people to not need some kind of medical treatment.
Take a look around and you’ll see the operating room, with state-of-the-art equipment, an examination room, an office for record keeping, a fully stocked pharmacy, and a three-bed infirmary with an overflow room down the hall. There’s an additional single bed in a room off to the side for those who would need isolation—or for a female patient. Something else you might notice: the beds are chained to the floor, and so are many pieces of equipment. This was necessary because the shock waves from a 5-megaton blast would have rocked the building and sent loose pieces of equipment flying.
The Medical Centre rooms were kept at a lower or negative atmospheric pressure. This helps reduce the spread of airborne diseases.
The effects of a prolonged lockdown were unknown, especially if a nuclear war was in progress above. The Bunker tried to prepare for everything.