physics

Presidential Emergency Facility

Presidential Emergency Facility is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Presidential Emergency Facility rather than just read about it. In short: A Presidential Emergency Facility (PEF), also called Presidential Emergency Relocation Centers and VIP Evacuation and Support Facilities, is a fortified, working residence intended for use by the president of the United States should normal presidential residences, such as the White House or Camp David, be destroyed or overrun during war or other types of national emergencies. Some Presidential Emergency Facilities…

Key takeaways

Presidential Emergency Facility belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Presidential Emergency Facility to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Presidential Emergency Facility from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A Presidential Emergency Facility (PEF), also called Presidential Emergency Relocation Centers and VIP Evacuation and Support Facilities, is a fortified, working residence intended for use by the president of the United States should normal presidential residences, such as the White House or Camp David, be destroyed or overrun during war or other types of national emergencies. Some Presidential Emergency Facilities are specially designated sections of existing government and military installations, while others are dedicated sites that have been purpose-built. Various sources state there are, or were, between 9 and 75 such facilities.

Quantity and location

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 (at Lambs Knoll), Cowpuncher (in Martinsburg, West Virginia), and Cannonball (Cross Mountain, Pennsylvania), though all have since been decommissioned. The White House itself is known as Crown while the presidential compound at the High Point Special Facility is Crystal (sometimes referred to as Crystal Palace). Other known sites include Cactus (Camp David), and Creed (also known as the R site, Raven Rock Mountain Complex). In a 2004 report to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) concerning Corkscrew, which at the time had been decommissioned as a PEF site, historian David Rotenstein contended there were 75 PEFs “scattered throughout the United States”, a number also claimed by the Brookings Institution.

Design and staffing Construction on Presidential Emergency Facilities began in the 1960s from classified, black budget government appropriations. 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. 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.

… we drove out of Washington for three hours or more. When we turned off the main road we drove through heavily wooded and hilly terrain. [Commander John] Clearwater left the paved road and went up a dirt road. We finally came to a structure, painted forest green to blend in with the trees. The rustic appearance of the outside of the facility and the unimproved condition of the forested land attracted little attention. Most of the facility was below ground. Larzelere went on to describe the subterranean interior of the site, noting there were quarters for the president and his staff with beds kept ready for immediate use with fresh linens, communications facilities, and stores stocked with emergency rations, medicine, and other supplies to sustain several people for a prolonged period. 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".

Telecommunication network

A dedicated telecommunication network was needed for open lines of communications between the Presidential Emergency Facility sites. In the 1950s and 1960s, the widely used telecommunication technology for transmitting information was microwave radio relay. This is a point-to-point communication system that requires an unobstructed line-of-sight between the transmitter and the receiver. For this system to be able to transmit information in a long distance, stations with a microwave tower need to be set at fixed locations every 30 to 50 miles (48 to 80 km). At each station, the radio signal receiver and transmitter can relay the information to the next station. Tall microwave towers would be easily identified and could compromise the security of the sites. The planner designed such towers to have radio equipment installed at the top of tower structure which was enclosed in plexiglass to conceal them from the view. The towers themselves were disguised to have an appearance of other structures such as water towers. There was no explanation of what exactly was built there but there were signages to make the public believe that the functions of the towers were anything but the telecommunication equipment. At the Cartwheel site, the tower was built next to two other actual water towers. At the Cactus site, the staff ran water tanker trucks regularly to the site to make it more believable to the public that the tower was indeed a water tower. The stations were decommissioned due to outdated threats and technology. After decommissioning, Corkscrew and Cartwheel were transferred to Federal Aviation Administration and continued to be used as telecommunication towers.

See also Federal Relocation Arc Ground-Mobile Command Center White House Big Dig

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Presidential Emergency Facility

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Presidential Emergency Facility claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Presidential Emergency Facility before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Presidential Emergency Facility ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Presidential Emergency Facility

In research: Presidential Emergency Facility appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Presidential Emergency Facility in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Presidential Emergency Facility is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Continuity of government in the United States, Disaster preparedness in the United States, Nuclear warfare, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Presidential Emergency Facility outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Presidential Emergency Facility in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Presidential Emergency Facility means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Presidential Emergency Facility out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Presidential Emergency Facility in simple terms?

Why does Presidential Emergency Facility matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Presidential Emergency Facility?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Presidential Emergency Facility.