Rocky Mountain Refuge

The Final Stronghold of America since February 6, 1967!™

Jeremiah: Thunder Mountain. That was NORAD's name for this place.
Kurdy: NORAD?
Jeremiah: North American aerospace defense. They built it deep inside the mountain. In the event of a nuclear attack, it'd be safe. My dad said if the end of the world ever came, this place would survive.
Kurdy Well, I guess he was wrong. (Cue the doors suddenly opening)

—'Jeremiah, "The Long Road"

A cataclysmic event strikes - nuclear war, catastrophic climate change, EMP blackout, asteroid impact, alien invasion, zombie apocalypse, take your pick. The United States federal government, unable to cope with the spreading disaster, implodes and fractures. American society as we know it disintegrates overnight, giving way to chaos and lawlessness. However, somewhere in the Rocky Mountains region deep within the center of the country, a lone remnant of America stubbornly holds out, shielded from the worst of the chaos around it by the mountains, clinging on for dear life. Whether it's a surviving military outpost, or a ragtag group of civilians brought together by fate and happenstance, it is through these individuals that some small vestige of Eagleland will live on, if only in spirit.

In Real Life, the Rocky Mountains are a large mountain range that forms the "spine" of the North American continent, spanning the U.S. states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Washington, as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Several other mountain ranges in North America, such as the Cascades (located in northern California, Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia), and the Alaska Range (located in, you guessed it, Alaska), are sometimes incorrectly referred to as being part of the Rockies (though all of them are part of the same geological region, the North American Cordillera). Of the 100 highest peaks in the U.S., just over half are located in the Rockies.

As to why the Rockies are a popular setting for many post-apocalyptic works, there are a number of possible explanations. The region is located (relatively) near to the geographic center of the Continental U.S., so it can (very roughly) be said to represent the "Middle of America", albeit with the advantage of being more visually distinctive than the Midwest - offering stunning peaks, picturesque valleys, and verdant forests in place of the flat and featureless plains typically associated with Flyover Country. After all, it was the natural beauty of the Rockies that inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write the iconic patriotic song America the Beautiful. The mountains themselves provide a natural barrier: a bulwark against invasion, a shelter for remote communities to hide out in isolation, and even a gigantic blast shield from a nuclear detonation.

Another major source of inspiration for this trope is the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, a massive underground military base located just outside of the city of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Tunneled under 2,000 feet of solid granite and protected by gigantic blast doors designed to deflect a 30 megaton strike, the complex was built to serve as the headquarters of NORAD^note North American Aerospace Defense Command during the Cold War. It is also one of 3 facilities (that we know of) where top government officials, up to and including the President, would take shelter in the event of a nuclear attack. ^note The other 2 are Raven Rock in Pennsylvania, and Mount Weather in Virginia. As such, quite a few post-apocalyptic works will feature either Cheyenne Mountain itself or an Expy of it as the headquarters for whatever government or military survives.

A sub-trope of Fallen States of America and Refuge in the West. Compare and contrast Divided States of America, where the Rocky Mountain States might be just one of many other remnants of the U.S.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• In the comic series Post Americana, it's shown that at some point the NORAD complex was expanded into the Bubble, a fully functional Underground City where the government and wealthy elites could take sanctuary in case of nuclear war. The only problem is that when this does actually occur, no one from the government ever shows up, leaving the rich people who do to quickly establish a caste system with themselves living in comfort while the workers who keep the Bubble running are basically indentured serfs, all while the rest of the country is allowed to devolve into post-apocalyptic anarchy. This lasts a few generations, until a Visionary Villain emerges from among the Bubble's elites, declares himself President, and sets out to reunite America by force, kicking off the plot.

Films — Live-Action

• Red Dawn (1984): After the Soviet Union and its allies launch a successful military invasion of the U.S., a group of high-schoolers from Calumet, Colorado form a resistance movement named "the Wolverines" after their school mascot. Striking out from hideouts deep in the Rocky Mountains, they fight a grueling guerilla campaign against the occupation inspired by the Afghan Mujahideen. ^note Interestingly, there is a real-life town in Colorado called Calumet, but it's been an abandoned ghost town since even long before The '80s; the film was originally meant to take place in Calumet, Michigan (as one of the producers was from that area), but it was changed to Colorado as the film-makers felt Michigan's Upper Peninsula was far too isolated from the rest of the country, and a more centrally-located state would demonstrate just how far the Soviet invasion had reached.
• Independence Day: Subverted. The very first thing that the U.S. government does once the aliens arrive on July 2 is to send the Vice President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Cheyenne Mountain to keep them safe (they also request President Whitmore to go, but he refuses). NORAD is then demolished by the aliens on July 3, effectively decapitating the government beside Whitmore. ^note In the novelization, the aliens achieved this with swarms of fighters alone rather than with the larger, Wave-Motion Gun-equipped City Destroyers, highlighting just how powerful their weaponry is. However, supplementary materials for the sequel suggest that a City Destroyer was used instead. This means that when Area 51 detects a City Destroyer moving towards it and Major Mitchell remarks that the base is partially embedded in a mountain, everybody knows that this is not going to make any difference.
• Interstellar: As the world crumbles from global dust bowls, crop blights, and food shortages, all that's seen remaining of the federal government is NASA, who have relocated to Cheyenne Mountain and are working on a plan to send explorers through a wormhole near Saturn in search of new habitable planets. The Coopers, meanwhile, appear to live in the plains of Eastern Colorado, since they're about a day's drive from Cheyenne Mountain and have Colorado license plates.

Literature

• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: As the federal government grows increasingly tyrannical and Orwellian, the mysterious and enigmatic figure known as John Galt convinces free-thinkers, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs from across the nation to run away to his domain of Galt's Gulch, a remote and isolated hideout in the Colorado Rockies founded and run along the lines of Rand's Objectivist philosophy. It is here where these individuals can safely hide and live their lives in peace and freedom and, once the government collapses from its massive corruption and incompetence, they will reemerge and restore liberty, prosperity, and dignity to the nation. Galt's Gulch is stated by Rand herself to have been based on the town of Ouray, a picturesque town on Colorado's Western Slope nicknamed "the Switzerland of America".
• Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard: After a thousand years of enslavement by the Psychlos, the Earth's human population has dwindled down to a few isolated tribes scattered around the planet. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler belongs to one such tribe, growing up in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. The Psychlos' main base of operations on Earth is also in that area, located in the ruins of Denver, Colorado, and it is there that Jonnie is captured and forced to work for the Psychlo Terl, but learns how to master the Psychlos' technology, and begins formulating a plan to liberate the Earth.
• Discussed in Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Schlosser uses the city of Colorado Springs to represent the U.S.A. as a whole while exploring the ins and outs of the fast-food industry. At one point, he muses about the Cheyenne Mountain Complex and what might be the last remains of American society and culture in the event of the end of the world as we know it:

Schlosser: And should Armageddon come, should a foreign enemy someday shower the United States with nuclear warheads, laying waste to the whole continent, entombed within Cheyenne Mountain, along with the high-tech marvels, the pale blue jumpsuits, comic books, and Bibles, future archaeologists may find other clues to the nature of our civilization: Big King wrappers, hardened crusts of Cheesy Bread, Barbeque Wing bones, and the red, white, and blue of a Domino's Pizza Box.

• The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins: In the future, some combination of wars, natural disasters, and rising sea levels wipes out the entire population of the world except for Panem, a totalitarian empire formed out of the remains of the United States and consisting of The Capitol and its 13 (or 12 by the start of the books) subordinate districts. The Capitol, which enjoys relative peace, stability, and high living standards (albeit at the expense of exploiting and oppressing the districts), is implied to be located in what is currently Salt Lake City, Utah; the Rocky Mountains are visible surrounding the city, and there is a large lake to the west. District 2, located immediately to the southeast of the Capitol, features a gigantic underground military fortress nicknamed "the Nut" by the rebels (because it's a tough nut to crack) that serves as a command center for the Capitol's military forces and is based on the Cheyenne Mountain Complex.
• Lucifer's Hammer: Of the five claimants to being the restored federal government that the protagonists hear over short-wave radio announcements, the one they determine is the most legitimate is the one out of Colorado Springs. Partially this is because it's headed by the former Speaker of the House, but mostly because NORAD apparently survived and this faction has access to its bombers.
• Robert A. Heinlein:
  • Sixth Column The U.S. is conquered by the superior technology of the Pan Asians. While most of the U.S. population survives (albeit, under the harsh rule of the invaders), the only part left of the U.S. government is a small group of soldiers in a hidden high-tech laboratory in the mountains of Colorado.
  • Farnham's Freehold: The titular Farnham has a homemade fallout shelter under his house in the mountains outside Colorado Springs, Colorado that he, his family, and his daughter's friend Barbara hide out in when nuclear war breaks out between the US and the Soviet Union. At the end of the novel, Farnham and Barbara start their own commune there as a protected corner of humanity.
• The Stand by Stephen King: After a "super Flu" pandemic wipes out 99% of the world's population, survivors from across the nation are drawn by dreams and visions of Mother Abagail Freemantle to Boulder, Colorado. There, in the ruins of the abandoned city, they form the "Boulder Free Zone", a democratic and egalitarian society run by a ruling council headed by Mother Abagail, and at one point the survivors vote on reinstating the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They are opposed by a second group of survivors, who flock to Las Vegas, Nevada to rally around the mysterious figure Randall Flagg, who rules like a tyrannical despot and plots the destruction of the Free Zone.
• Mentioned in The Tripods by John Christopher. The main resistance group fighting back against the titular aliens is based in Europe, in the white mountains of Switzerland, but there's a mention of a second resistance group in America, based in the Rockies.
• In the short story Vilcabamba by Harry Turtledove, a rump state in the Rockies with its de facto capital in Grand Junction, Colorado is all that's left of America after the Earth is invaded by the Krolp.
• Invoked in World War Z by Max Brooks. The American government withdraws to the Rockies, which is, per the Redeker Plan, the safest place in the country. However, rather than bringing refugees over, they instead encouraged them to go north to the Canadian Arctic, to distract the zombies by drawing them there en masse.
• In Reidar Syvertsen and Jan Stacy's Cold War-era After the End series Doomsday Warrior, a fictional (but seemingly inspired by the Eisenhower-Johnson) freeway tunnel on Route 70 is sealed off by landslides when the bombs hit, and the underground metropolis of Century City is built up (or excavated out) around it by the survivors.

Live-Action Television

• Jeremiah: The titular character wanders the United States seeking a secret military base named "Thunder Mountain" (after being told to go there by his dying father, because it's allegedly the only place where adults were protected from the virus that killed them all in the backstory). From what little information we glean about it as the series goes on, it's heavily implied that this base is the Cheyenne Mountain Complex.
• Stargateverse: Implied in the "Alpha Site" protocol: in case of an alien invasion of Earth, select members of the chain of command (President, Joint Chiefs, et al) and other personnel would gather at Stargate Command (located at Cheyenne Mountain), from where they could be safely evacuated to another planet.

Tabletop Games

• Systems Failure: After the (literal) Millennium Bug invasion turns the world into an apocalyptic wasteland, the remaining forces of the U.S. military (and one of the setting's Big Good factions) are those of NORAD, based in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex.

Video Games

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: While the U.S. is being invaded by Russia, one cutscene shows the schematics of a government bunker somewhere in Colorado, where General Sheperd and other commanders are implied to be working on strategies.
• Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel: The center of the entire Vault network is Vault 0, located in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex; it was one of the few Vaults not intended to be part of Vault-Tec's experiments carried out at the other Vaults, as that was where the most valuable scientists and advanced technology would be kept. Though subverted: things went horribly wrong anyway; one of the AIs stored there went rogue, took over the Vault and began manufacturing a robot army to wipe humanity out. However, once this AI is defeated, Cheyenne Mountain can also become the new base of operations of the titular Brotherhood of Steel, a militant and quasi-religious order descended from U.S. Army soldiers. ^note This game now is considered non-canon, though in Fallout: New Vegas, Caesar does mention encountering a branch of the Brotherhood of Steel in Colorado.
• In Far Cry 5, the cultists of Eden's Gate have built at least 3 bunkers to shelter them from an impending doom. The map itself, settled in Southwest Montana, is full of bunkers created by the doomsday preppers of Hope County, including one by the Whitetail Militia.
• Horizon Zero Dawn takes place After the End in what used to be Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Although there are more human communities elsewhere, the Rocky Mountains are particularly significant to the survival of humanity because they are where the Old Ones made their Last Stand during the Robot War. While nobody actually survived the apocalypse in the Rockies, humanity was reborn from the ELEUTHIA-9 bunker beneath Pikes Peak (and, presumably, at ELEUTHIA facilities elsewhere in the world). The Nora tribe lives in the valley near Pikes Peak and worships the bunker beneath it as "All-Mother", the reasons why lost to memory.
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: According to the game's manual, the American supercomputer that eventually became AM was based 5.6 miles beneath the Rocky Mountains. Following AM's descent into madness and the annihilation of (almost) all life on Earth, the surviving humans were imprisoned within AM's complex so they could be preserved and tortured forever, and the game revolves around their attempts to survive his psychodramas and hopefully defeat him. However, in the century that has passed by the time the game begins, AM has expanded his underground domain considerably, so it's unclear if the main characters are anywhere near the Rockies anymore.
• Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg: During the Second American Civil War, if the legitimate US government gets couped by Douglas MacArthur, then the Western states, led by California and often stretching to the Rocky Mountains (unless MacArthur himself decides to make his stand out west instead of in Washington, D.C.), band together as the Pacific States of America. They are one of only two factions in the war that is still a liberal democracy (and the other one, New England, only forms due to Canadian intervention in the war), and they see themselves as liberty's last redoubt against the radicalism to the east in the form of the Combined Syndicates of America, the American Union State, and MacArthur becoming The Generalissimo. Many games have a (usually, but not always, temporary) ceasefire in the Rockies between the PSA and whatever faction has won the east, and many After-Action Reports, as well as the spinoff Kalterkrieg: Shadow of the Weltkrieg, have the US in the Cold War divided between a liberal, democratic PSA in the west and an unfree east run by either syndicalists, reactionaries, or MacArthur's junta.
• Kaiserredux, a spinoff of Kaiserreich that incorporates many ideas that didn't make the cut in the original mod (especially the more "out-there" ones), heavily changes the Second American Civil War. One of those changes is a new faction, the Western Command Center, a military regime in the Rockies aligned with MacArthur's junta in Washington and serving as the representative of his power out west.
• Warzone 2100: Following the nuclear war that destroys most of human civilization, a group of American refugees flee Seattle and head for the Rocky Mountains based on a rumor that they're relatively rad-free. They find an abandoned military base and use it as their headquarters for their plan to rebuild America, dubbing themselves "The Project".
• Wasteland 3: Decades after a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the State of Colorado is one of the few areas left in the world with any semblance of functioning civilization, thanks to the peace and stability created under the reign of The Patriarch. Though deconstructed: the Patriarch is a ruthless and power-hungry tyrant who maintains order through brutal methods (and wound up creating one of the vilest factions in the wasteland, the Dorsey Clan, after his men violently suppressed an attempt to reintroduce American democracy). Then again, the other factions opposing him aren't much better.

Real Life

• When The Spanish Flu pandemic swept across the world in late 1918, the town of Gunnison, Colorado sealed itself off from the outside world. All roads into the town were barricaded, and mandatory 5-day quarantines were placed on anyone arriving by train, often enforced at gunpoint. The quarantine was initially successful, and no deaths occurred in Gunnison. However, it was unsustainable in the long term, as the townspeople became restless from the isolation. The quarantine was lifted several months later in early 1919, at which point the Flu finally came to Gunnison and caused 5 deaths - though compared to the roughly 50 to 100 million deaths that occurred around the rest of the world, it could be said that the quarantine helped Gunnison escape the worst of it.
• A political version of this trope is popular among a subset of right-wing activists in the US. The idea of the "American Redoubt" has roots dating back to The '90s, when militia groups, Christian fundamentalists, white nationalists, survivalists, and disgruntled California conservatives started moving to the inland Northwestern states of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming as well as the rural eastern parts of Washington state and Oregon. However, it was popularized in 2011 by the survivalist blogger James Wesley Rawles, whose essays in support for the idea led to a flurry of right-wing political migration. The logic is that this part of the country, being mostly rural, sparsely populated, rich in natural resources, geologically rugged but lacking in natural hazards, containing relaxed laws towards homesteading and gun ownership, and being politically conservative/libertarian, could not only survive on its own and and easily defend itself from outside attack using its natural barriers, but would be a bastion of down-home, traditional American values even as the rest of America fell apart.

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