My Journey Inside a Privately Owned Massive Underground Storage Complex

My journey inside a privately owned underground storage facility.

This is also my first post.

Its common here on ats that most speculate of deep underground bases.
Well the truth is they do exist. They are privately owned, and ive been inside of one. More than once.




Under the town of Boyers PA lies one of the biggest limestone deposits in the country.
Its about 18 miles north of Butler PA on rt 308, and about 5 miles north of west sunburry pa.
Locals refer to it as "The Mines".
It started as an underground limestone mine run by US Steel then was converted into a underground secure storage facility by National Underground storage.
Iron Mountian Inc. then bought the mountian complex in 1998 for $39 million
At the begining it was used primarilly for backup of pittsburghs financial institutions.

Iron Mountian is highly secure. Tt has natural protection from all of the elements and is %100 geographicly stable. Its naturally climate controlled at a costant temperature year round.
It can also survive multiple direct nuclear attacks.
The facility has its own restaurants, fire trucks, water treatment plant, 5 acre natural spring water resivior. and its own power infrastructure. all underground.
In all of the videos ive seen about the place, the tour guide says the mine stretches 3 or so miles in every direction but ive heard rumers
of the tunnels stretching the whole way to East Brady PA (about 15-20 miles :O!)
Its carved from solid limestone. the walls are bare rough carved stone painted white.

Iron mountian complex is filled with many offices ranging from banking institutions to government branches to big fortune 500 companies.
The ammount of valuble information in this place is absolutly staggering.
Every major bank backs up all of their info to the site along with every govt branch.
Bill gates entire corbus photo collection is housed there
The flight 93 flight recorder is locked away down there
Every single origional audio master ever recorded is down there along with every single origional film reel from any movie ever produced.
When they say "its stored or backed up in the cloud" its not floating around in the airwaves or scattered over the internet in its own little realm. its stored at iron mountian.
So much digital data flows into the place daily its hard to comprehend.

Other than a storage facility, the complex doubles as a back up headquarters for nearly every major company and every govt branch including the armed forces.
Top fortune 500 companies banking institutions government offices and millitary all have secondary HQ's inside the mountian.
Ihe offices are lined side by side each with their own front wall section and door
I like to call them "storefronts" because they all resemble an underground "mainstreet" with its own little "storefronts"




Well heres my story on how i got to go inside of this giant underground facility.
and it doesnt take a super secret ultra high security clearance to do so

I manage 2 pizza shops and im currently switching between the two. We have a store in Butler and a store in West Sunburry (boyers area)
Both of our stores have a pretty wide delivery range, actually boyers is the max distance we will go north from west sunburry.
A company called US Investigations Services would order food from us about once a week and we were always happy with it because it was always at least a $100+ order.
they are hq'd in the mountian. When our drivers got to take orders to the mines i always thought the people ordering would just meet outside to pick up their food so i never really thought anything of it
I never wanted to take the deliveries to the minees because its pretty far from our shop

One day after covering a shift for one of my drivers i got an order for USIS.
Thinking to myself wow i have to drive way out in the middle of nowhere now...great
Well when i get to the place i call the lady who placed the order and told her i was outside. she said oh okay ill meet you in the visitor area just pull up to the guard station
Then my mood went from .... to !!! wow i get to see the inside of this place.
Now i always pick to take the orders to the mines when they order.

Upon aproaching the first entrance i was stopped by a guard.
He asked why i was there.
I replied food order for USIS and showed him the order slip and food.
He said ok do you have any weapons guns or explosives.
I said no
He said can you please open your trunk so i can make sure.
I said sure
So i popped my hatch and let him look at my stripped bare empty trunk.
He then told me to proceed to the next gate.
So i drove down the sloped hill to the big-gaping-rock-hole-in-the-side-of-the-earth that is the main entrance to the facility.
As i pulled up to the main gate i was greeted by 8 security guards armed with ar-15s
I was then asked to step out of my car and hand over my cell phone and then was asked if i had any cameras i was told my phone would be returned to me when i exited.
Aparently they arent picture people in Iron mountian
I was then instructed to drive about 100 feet farther inside and park in a designated visitors area marked by yellow stripes on the ground and on the walls it said "No visitors passed this point"
The spot was big enough for my car (a vw gti) and one other small car. that was the only area i was premitted to go besides exiting.
The lady came to where i was parked and payed me and took her food.
She tipped me bad.
The main entrance/tunnelway is a single lane one way road. the outer walls are where the "storefront" offices are.
The exitway runs parallel with the main tunnelway seperated by about 25 feet of solid rock
there are cutouts about every 1000feet giver or take. so you can U turn left to the other side of the main tunnelway.
So to exit the complex you have to continue down the main tunnelway to a cut out point in the rock
that lets you get into the other direction lane.
I "accidently" missed the 1st two u-turn lanes so i could take some more peeks at the place.


I really didnt get to see anything crazy considering i barely made it through the entrance.
And the article posted says the security guards give out fire extinguishers to every car that goes in
I didnt get one. maybe because i was only aloud into the main entrance area and i wasnt going deep into my own private bunker.
But i do remember one of the "storefronts" finished in all really nice woodwork. it looked like oak.
There were no signs or names on the office. just a nice finished wood door that was blocked off with red velvet rope. and on the door was what apeard to be the the presidential seal.
Lots of people. trucks. big trucks. dump trucks. heavy equipment. 18 wheelers.

Now i know this place is not owned by the government, and its not military base, but iron mtn inc since being private can let whoever or whatever build whatever they want in there
Survival bunker for the companies elete or basic long term storage or whatever the heck you could ever want to build in a solid chunk of limestone.
The possibilites are endless because even Iron Mountian itself has no idea what the customers have there besides the stuff made public.
If the elete are actually out there building their own survival bunkers, then i believe this place has serious potential to be a prime spot.
They keep the customers information and contents absolutly private.
Keep in mind if they run out of room they just start digging new real estate. the place is absolutly massive and will keep growing and growing.
I didnt see any gigantic vault doors or nuclear hardened bunker blast doors but then again i only saw the main entrance and main inside section of the place.
Theres just so much hidden down there its really un believeable.
Could this be the place where the roswell crash is stored?
Is jimmy hoffa hanging out down there in his own private bunker?
I dont think we will ever know.



My friends who worry about 2012 or other end of the world senarios i tell them not to worry because right in our back yard is one of the most stable safest and secure locations in the country
and im sure in a disaster crisis situation they would just let us right in too haha.


If anyone has any questions feel free to ask me and i will be willing to answer with as much detail as possible.

I thought about making a little map of what i saw in ms paint and ill also try to illustrate how i saw the "storefront" offices
but i am in no means any kind of graphic designer. so the outcome of that might be pretty rough.





old article from 2003

www.computerworld.com...





pics from google.
im having trouble finding pictures of how i described the "storefronts" of all of the offices i saw.
its pretty neat how they have it set up down there.



news.cnet.com...

www.nppa.org...

www.xepadigital.com...

www.infiniteunknown.net...

cache.boston.com...

www.datacenterknowledge.com...

www.datacenterknowledge.com...




youtube vids.


www.youtube.com...


www.youtube.com...

reply to post by dirtycrickrat


Very old subject but still interesting..
Here's a thread from 2006..
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I have worked with Iron Mountain before. The main bread and butter is data storage - you may have heard of Sarbanes-Oxley type legislation in the USA, this is basically legislation that forces banks to keep all of their data records for a set period of time. Thus Iron Mountain steps in and provides storage for this mandatory data.

Fireproof Vaults, Inergen Gas and VESDA systems, humidity and temperature control....the whole works to keep data tapes at their optimal storage temperature for long life.


Although there are these massive commercial facilities, the smaller Private facilities are more widespread and easier to acquire
.
Underground Homes
Converted Missile Silo Home

i should have searched but i was anxious to get my first post up.
its the first thing iv actually sat down and wrote out in a long time.

I really enjoyed reading your story...It makes you think what do they know that we don't...What are they preparing for...Have you ever seen the movie Amber City? As I read your story it reminded me of that town underground...I have thought long and hard over this and I feel that it would be better to take your chances out here in the open then to go where your space is limited and so might be you resources...

You know when people start to get desperate you start looking like chicken.

is it possible that iron mountian could have links to the alleged d.u.m.b. s that people speculate of with the underground high speed trains?

Originally posted by dirtycrickrat
i should have searched but i was anxious to get my first post up.
its the first thing iv actually sat down and wrote out in a long time.

Nah, the personal story adds to the topic..
Good to refresh old topics and add anything new..

reply to post by zbeliever


thanks and i agree.
the main reason why i decided to make this post was just out of pure speculation of what could be down there.
i mean obviously its public and they hold data and yada yada but theres alot more to it than just that. anyone can put anything they want down there including the govt.

i used to deliver pizza in a heavily masonic town. Once i started talking about the masons, i started getting harrassed and followed around.

reply to post by truthermantwo



interesting as there is a masonic temple right on main street in my town. and alot of the old buildings in town were built by masons


files.butlerartists.webnode.com...

upload.wikimedia.org...

theres alot of historic old buildings where i live

Very interesting story! I would love to check out one of such bases

Really good write up on your experiences.
You have some talent for it.
Sorry bout them Steelers yesterday.
It was a close game.

My father-in-law (deceased) told me an interesting story once where somewhere around Laurelton PA he was going around with a member of his football team (he was a coach) selling fundraiser stuff. They got to a long driveway that reached up one of the mountains and which was usually barred shut with a locked fence but on this day it was open. He and the kid with him decided to go up the driveway because they were curious. He said they had gotten about 100 yards up when they were rushed by some goons in military outfits who promptly threw them out.

I was always fascinated with this story and could easily imagine central PA being home to many underground facilities.

reply to post by TXRabbit


interesting and i also believe there are alot of underground places in pa
theres another underground storage place in my county but its much smaller than iron mountain.
its basically a house built into a hillside that gets used for storage. not even close to the level of iron mountain .

Originally posted by Asktheanimals
Really good write up on your experiences.
You have some talent for it.
Sorry bout them Steelers yesterday.
It was a close game.

thanks your comment is really appreciated.
it makes me feel good because writing was always my weakness in school and i always avoided it.
i was never good at it and was more or less scared of it but lately ive been finding myself sitting at my computer typing away about the most random of things. mostly participating in other forums particularly automotive forums.

Originally posted by dirtycrickrat
reply to post by zbeliever

 

thanks and i agree.
the main reason why i decided to make this post was just out of pure speculation of what could be down there.
i mean obviously its public and they hold data and yada yada but theres alot more to it than just that. anyone can put anything they want down there including the govt.

I thought it was because she tipped poorly. I have a feeling they won't be ordering more pizza anytime soon. I also wonder why a place full of restaurants, even needs to order pizza in? As I read your story, I was a bit dissapointed that you never made it undeground and only passed on second hand info on what is there.

Reply to post by sligtlyskeptical

If you worked where there were only say three places to eat, you're telling me you wouldn't want to get something different every once in a while.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Originally posted by sligtlyskeptical

Originally posted by dirtycrickrat
reply to post by zbeliever

 

thanks and i agree.
the main reason why i decided to make this post was just out of pure speculation of what could be down there.
i mean obviously its public and they hold data and yada yada but theres alot more to it than just that. anyone can put anything they want down there including the govt.

I thought it was because she tipped poorly. I have a feeling they won't be ordering more pizza anytime soon. I also wonder why a place full of restaurants, even needs to order pizza in? As I read your story, I was a bit dissapointed that you never made it undeground and only passed on second hand info on what is there.

I did make it underground and into the place.
after leaving the visitors area you HAVE to drive deeper into the place to loop around back to the entrance.
how do you come to the conclusion that my story is second hand information. did you not read?
im pretty sure i was pretty clear in that i drove about 3000 feet into the complex...

and actiually usis still orders food quite often from our west sunburry location. were one of 2 pizza places within 15 miles that will go out that far. my guess is because they can?

why would people in a hospital order food out for delivery when they have a full service cafeteria on location?
because they can. and im sure it gets old eating the same food every day.

why would stores at a mall order food to be delivered with numerous food courts and restaurants in the mall?
because they can.

once i started scrolling down and just saw text with hardly any photos i was disappointed.. the linked photos could be anywhere, and i don't think a small underground data center can be thought of as the same as a "deep underground base"

reply to post by plexus


the linked pictures are without a doubt real photos of the place.

you say small storage place.
small?
how can you consider 3-4 miles spread in every direction small??

my phone was taken at the gate or else i would have snapped a bunch of pictures
my car was searched for cameras
im guessing thats why theres not many pictures to be found.

you should have watched the video of the news reporter going inside before speculating about the photos.
i assure you the pics i posted are of (the not small at all) iron mountain underground storage facility.

and since i have been there last they have expanded security outside adding a 2nd checkpoint and gate and a hefty concrete wall before going down the hill to the main entrance into the mtn.