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Between 1969 and 1988, the United States Federal Reserve stored billions of shrink-wrapped dollars in a facility lined with 12-inch thick concrete walls, reinforced by steel, and buried nearly 4 feet underground.
The stash was preserved as a precautionary measure, to rehabilitate the dollar supply east of the Mississippi River in the event that the East Coast was demolished by a nuclear bomb. Before it was purchased in 1997 with the consent of Congress by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, it was used as a "continuity of government" shelter, designed to house and feed 540 people for 30 days in case of a catastrophe.
The bunker now resides under the National Audio Visual Conservation Center. $150 million from the Packard Humanities Institute, $82.1 million from Congress and a seemingly endless supply of archives and audio visual technologies completed the Audio Visual Conservation Center in 2008. The center is 15,000 square feet, has over 90 miles of shelves for collectibles, 35 temperature controlled storage rooms for sound recording, safety film, and videotape, and 124 vaults for typically flammable nitrate film. The building serves as a space for film preservation and public education of audiovisual media.
