Inside the Nuclear Bunkers, Mines, and Mountains Being Retrofitted as Data Centers

The article explores the growing trend of repurposing underground spaces—such as former nuclear bunkers, mines, and mountain caverns—into highly secure data centers to protect critical digital infrastructure. One example is a Cold War-era Royal Air Force nuclear bunker in southeast England, now operated by Cyberfort Group as a cloud computing facility. This site, along with others worldwide, including former bomb shelters in China, Soviet command centers in Kyiv, and abandoned U.S. Department of Defense bunkers, has been transformed to serve as “future-proof” data storage locations. These subterranean centers leverage their inherent physical security and environmental stability to safeguard valuable digital data, reflecting a modern continuation of humanity’s ancient practice of storing precious items underground. The article also highlights notable underground data centers such as Stockholm’s Pionen bunker, the Mount10 AG complex in the Swiss Alps, and Iron Mountain’s facilities in former mines in the U.S. Additionally, the National Library of Norway and the Arctic World Archive in a rep