China has opened one of the world’s most unusual sites to foreign visitors: a vast underground complex of caves and tunnels originally meant to manufacture plutonium, stockpile weapons and provide secure shelter.
In the end, it was never used for any of those purposes. Chinese visitors have been able to tour the 816 Nuclear Military Plant since 2010, but only with guides because it’s easy to get lost there: 130 roads and tunnels covering 12 miles, 17 man-made caves including the world’s largest and more.
The project started in 1966, when relations between China and the Soviet Union hit rock-bottom, and China began preparing for a solo future. The plan was to produce plutonium-239 there for nuclear weapons. Fortunately for tourism, that didn’t happen by the time the project was called off in 1984, just before completion.
The complex was built by more than 60,000 Chinese soldiers, and is built to survive magnitude earthquakes or thousands of tons of explosives.
