This is the Pentagon, the world’s most important shape, and headquarters of the United States
Department of Defense.
Inside this single building is the head of the army, the head of the navy, the marines,
the air force, the national guard, the coast guard, most of our four-star generals, pretty
much all of our classified military secrets, an inexplicably-large archive of UFO videos,
and one Dunkin’ Donuts.
Now, if you’re the United States, it’s very much in your best interest for this building
to not explode, given that that would leave Arlington with only fifteen remaining Dunkin’
Donuts.
And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, given the stakes, the Pentagon is one of the
most secure buildings in the entire world.
But then again, it kind of just looks like a normal office building—so what, exactly,
does the Pentagon do to keep all five of its sides intact?
When the Pentagon was first constructed, security was not the top priority—it was built as
quickly as possible, so as to speed up the killing of Nazis, and was built as cheaply
as possible, because we needed high-quality steel to kill Nazis with.
At the time, FDR was like, it’s fine, surely no one will invent terrori0sm and blow up
the Pentagon.
Now, fast forward about five decades to 1990 and the US Department of Defense is under
attack—not by terrorists, but by asbestos.
This required tearing down this wedge of the Pentagon and rebuilding it from scratch, so
the DoD said, “hey, if we’re gonna rebuild this part of the Pentagon from scratch, let’s
build it with experimental world-class anti-terrorism measures, just for fun.”
And so they did, completing construction in 2001, just in time for al Qaeda to take it
for a test run.
Fortunately enough, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon just so happened to crash
into the special anti-terrorism wedge, which is the last wedge you want to crash into if
you’re trying to do terrorism.
The outer walls of Wedge One had been reinforced with steel beams, with a kevlar mesh stretched
between them that prevented the destroyed portions of the walls from becoming deadly
shrapnel.
Every window was made out of an inch and a half thick pane of explosive-resistant glass
that weighed 500 pounds, and none of them managed to shatter, even though they were
literally hit by an airplane.
The DoD looked at this and said, “huh, well, we should probably put that stuff in all the
other parts of the Pentagon,” and thus, Project Phoenix was born.
Apart from renovating the building itself, this massive effort to turn the Pentagon into
one of the world’s most secure buildings largely focused on the area surrounding the
Pentagon.
Two of the Pentagon’s biggest vulnerabilities, for example, were here and here.
For one, there was a metro station that fed directly into the area under the Pentagon,
so that entrance was closed to keep all access points to the Pentagon above ground.
The other problem was right here: Route 110.
At the time, this unrestricted highway passed directly next to the Pentagon, which meant
that vehicles carrying anything scary, like bombs or clowns, could get within meters of
the building without undergoing any kind of security screening.
To remedy this problem, the Department of Defense had the entire highway rerouted through
the Pentagon’s north parking lot, creating a sort of force-field around the building
where no bombs or clowns could enter without passing through a security checkpoint.
So that’s the underground and the above ground secure, but what about the above-above
ground?
Well that’s where everyone’s favorite integrated air defense system—the National
Capital Region Integrated Air Defense system—comes in.
Across the river here are a whole bunch of radars, cameras, and other sensors that watch
the airspace over DC and much of Virginia and Maryland.
If any aircraft enters that space that’s not supposed to be there, this airbase will
shine a laser at the cockpit that any trained pilot will recognize as “please turn around
before we replace this laser with something more explosive.”
Assuming they don’t turn around, the air defense system can then use what they refer
to as an “engagement asset,” which kind of sounds like a beautiful diamond ring, but
is actually one of the following missiles.
Now, all of these external security features aren’t worth much if you manage to get something
dangerous—like, let’s say, a small clown holding a bomb—inside the building.
And that doesn’t seem like it should be all that hard, given that you can just…
ship stuff there.
Like, here’s the mailing address for the Secretary of Defense, go crazy.
The Pentagon receives thousands of shipments a day—so how do they stop your mail-bound
bomb clown from planting his bomb in the Pentagon?
Well, when you ship something to the Pentagon, it doesn’t actually go to the Pentagon—it
goes here: the Pentagon’s Remote Delivery Facility.
This was one of the most major renovations of Project Phoenix; one of the Pentagon’s
parking lots was torn out and replaced with a dedicated mail-sorting facility with 38
loading docks that’s nearly as big as the Pentagon itself.
After arriving at the RDF, each truck is searched with mirrors, and then examined by canine
teams to check for explosives.
The drivers themselves then go through a metal detector before they’re allowed to open
the truck, and finally everything inside the truck is thoroughly x-rayed.
Once the team has removed the bomb from your clown, then the neutralized clown can be sent
through a tunnel to the Pentagon itself, to do whatever it needs to do at the Pentagon
without hurting anyone.
So, there you go: successfully infiltrating the Pentagon in the modern age is all but
impossible.
That is, unless, you’re this bunny, which somehow, in February of 2022, managed to bypass
every single security feature that I just described without being detected and possibly
proved that this whole thing doesn’t matter and was just a giant waste of money.
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