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I have quipped before about "underground datacenters," and how they never succeed. During the late decades of the Cold War and even into the '00s, the military and (to a lesser extent) the telecommunications industry parted ways with a great number of underground facilities. Missile silos, command bunkers, and hardened telephone exchanges were all sold to the highest bidder or---often in the case of missile silos---offered at a fixed price to the surrounding land owner. Many of them ended up sealed, the new owner only being interested in the surface property. But others...

There are numerous examples of ex-defense facilities with more ambitious owners. There ought to be some commercial interest in a hardened, underground facility, right? After all, the investment to build them was substantial. Perhaps a data center?

There are several ways this goes wrong. First, there are not actually that many data center clients who will pay extra to put their equipment underground. That's not really how modern disaster recovery plans work. Second, and probably more damning, these ventures often fail to anticipate the enormous cost of renovating an underground facility. Every type of construction is more expensive when you do it underground, and hardened facilities have thick, reinforced concrete walls that are difficult to penetrate. Modernizing a former hardened telecom site or, even worse, missile site for data center use will likely cost more than constructing a brand new one. Indeed, the military knows this: that's why they just sold them, often at rock-bottom prices.

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