Presidential Emergency Facility

In his 1984 journalistic expose “The Day After World War III”, Edward Zuckerman states there were then nine Presidential Emergency Facilities within a 25-minute helicopter trip from Washington, D.C.

According to Zuckerman, sites known to him at that time were code-named Cartwheel (at Fort Reno Park), Corkscrew, Cowpuncher, and Cannonball (Cross Mountain, Pennsylvania), though all have since been decommissioned.

[6] Purpose-built Presidential Emergency Facilities are silo-like structures constructed from reinforced concrete that sit atop an underground warren of bunkers and chambers designed to withstand a nuclear explosion.

[3] One of the few descriptions of a Presidential Emergency Facility observed while still in operation was provided by U.S. Coast Guard Captain Alex R. Larzelere, a former White House military aide, who visited one such site in 1968.

[7] Bill Gulley, a former U.S. Marine assigned to the White House Military Office, reported in 1980 that PEFs were all "manned twenty-four hours a day".