Located inside a mountain in what were once the caverns of a limestone mine, the Office of Personnel Management Retirement Operations Center (OPMROC) is a massive physical file cavern/empire that would leave even the most fervent conspiracy theorist agog. 

Located near Boyers, Pennsylvania the massive subterranean facility employs countless local employees to enter the rocky depths and process endless amount of paperwork related to the retirement benefits of Federal employees. The former mines have been in use as storage facilities since 1954 after the mining operations ceased. In fact a number of similar underground storage fortresses were leased and created during this time in response to the Cold War. The underground climate and natural protection from bombardment and EMP attacks made them ideal spaces to store delicate operations and files.

The workers in the OPMROC receive the applications and changes of status among retired workers and process them into a central database, make sure they are complete, with all the T’s crossed and I’s dotted, and then set about filing them away among the caverns full of almost fantastically massive rows of stacks. For some the secure and defined work flow is a blessing and they spend their entire careers in the job, while others have reported the windowless confines of the data caves to be torturous.  

Processing the seemingly endless rows of retiree forms may not seem like delicate work, but the OPMROC also keeps transcripts of high level security conversations among other government forms. The center is highly secured and visits are not generally allowed.