During the Cold War, the subway stations of Beijing doubled as fallout shelters to protect the city’s population from nuclear attack. Many of the stations featured heavy, blast-resistant doors designed to keep people in the underground safe. The doors were cleverly blended into the station walls, allowing capital city residents to go about their business largely unaware of government preparations for nuclear war.

An article on China’s Tencent microblogging service describes, with photos, the carefully hidden blast doors. The article includes a photograph taken inside the city’s Chongwenmen subway station (see above). In the picture, a stainless steel band approximately eighteen inches thick stretches from floor to ceiling. The band appears slightly incongruous, but would only really stand out if someone pointed it out. A similar band appears on the floor.

These bands are actually recessed blast doors. In the event of nuclear attack, station attendants would remove the band on the floor, exposing a track for the heavy concrete or steel door to follow. Once shut, the door would offer some protection from the heat, blast, and radiation of a nuclear attack.

In 2012, Chinese state media reported that the city’s subway system could protect citizens from major storms, nuclear attack, and even poison gas. Since 2007, Beijing subway stations have been built standard with two sets of emergency barriers: one above ground and one below. Underground, the stations are protected by seven-ton steel doors. Each station has a three-hour oxygen supply underground. The stations were built with the assistance of China’s Rocket Forces, the country’s equivalent of US Strategic Command.

Blast doors built into Beijing’s Lama Temple Station. Tencent

Although subway fallout shelters are a reassuring measure on the part of the government, they’re of dubious practical value. In the event of nuclear attack, people should avoid entering nuclear attack zones for at least two weeks, let alone three hours. The unfortunate truth is that anyone who rides out a nuclear attack on Beijing in the subway will die three hours and five minutes after the attack, after people in danger of suffocation force the doors open and everyone is subjected to lethal levels of radiation.

The nuclear blast doors in at Chongwenmen station appear to be blocked. In the upper hand corner, the path of the blast door is obstructed by what looks like recently laid electrical conduit. The conduit appears to be feeding surveillance cameras that are part of China’s nationwide public surveillance system. In protecting itself from the Chinese people, the Chinese Communist Party has unintentionally doomed Beijing’s citizens.

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