Radio From A Nuke Bomb Shelter

The current fire tragedy near Los Alamos reminds me of the days of the 2000 fire that burned across the National Lab. I was working for KBAC Radio Free Santa Fe at the time, but my first radio gig in New Mexico was with a station in Los Alamos not far from the front gate of Los Alamos National Lab. It was an amazing experience and the most unique station I ever worked. It was located beneath the ground in a bonafide nuclear bomb shelter - no kidding! Stored in the closets were rations for survival and I will never forget the big yellow handle on the wall, a device you could turn by hand and circulate the stale air in the bomb shelter with fresh, filtered air from above. I doubt the shelter-station studio could have survived an actual direct nuclear hit, but it did survive the Sierra Grande fire in 2000. The station was subsequently sold to Clear Channel, where I worked for sister station KBAC. But Los Alamos radio will forever go down in my book as the most unusual and freaky station I ever worked. But there were a few others...

By the way, I certainly had some interesting guests while working there, including brilliant and leading scientists and black-suited government agents ... not to mention the DOD investigator that paid me a strange visit. But that's a story for another time...