The Citadel Is On Full Alert
Ophelia Gurin
Due to Hurricane Idalia, The Citadel will operate classes remotely on Thursday, August 31. Cadets and students will attend their classes online at their regularly scheduled time and should continue monitoring both Canvas and email for specific guidance from their professors.
Classes on Wednesday, August 30 are being held online. Cadets and students will attend their classes remotely at the regularly scheduled time; they should also continue to check Canvas and their email for additional guidance from their professors.
The Citadel will move classes to an online, synchronous format on Wednesday, August 30. Cadets and students will attend their classes remotely at their regularly scheduled time; log onto Canvas for specific instructions. Additionally, extracurricular events scheduled for Wednesday are cancelled.
The Citadel is actively monitoring Tropical Storm Idalia and the potential impacts it may bring to the Charleston region, including the possibility of flooding and high winds as early as Tuesday evening.
Daily operations and classes remain as scheduled. In the event The Citadel cancels classes or holds classes online, faculty, staff, cadets and students will be notified as soon as a decision is made.
Changes to schedules or operations will be added to the top of this webpage, and will also be communicated via email, social media and Bulldog Alerts. To ensure you receive text notifications as well as push alert notifications, click here to download the app.
The Office of the President, emergency response leaders and the Department of Public Safety monitor weather effects to campus 24 hours a day. Citadel Public Safety routinely notifies campus when inclement weather may impact campus, to include flooding caused by heavy rains and/or high tides.
If classes or campus events must be canceled, campus closes or an evacuation is ordered, The Citadel Bulldog Alert system sends emergency messages via email, text message and push alerts to subscribers as each development occurs. All faculty, staff, cadets and students are strongly encouraged to subscribe to the Bulldog Alert system. For information on how to subscribe, click here. Families are also welcome to subscribe.
Citadel System Maintenance
Maintenance of Citadel systems is announced on the portal login page. If these pages are not available, please go to the BulldogAlert Page for more information.
To better protect against identity theft, Citadel requires members to provide a one-time verification code when calling member care to authenticate members. These codes will only be required when members call into Member Care and will only be sent to the phone number associated with the account.
As technology advances, you can be sure that identity thieves are not far behind. Citadel has a number of ways to report a scam or cybersecurity breach. If you suspect you are being scammed, call us immediately at 800-666-0191, video chat us through Video Connect, or stop into a branch and talk to an expert in person. Staying alert is your best line of defense!
The Citadel is a gigantic Combine megastructure located in the heart of City 17, which serves as the main base of operations and primary headquarters of the Overwatch, from which they govern the Earth. Easily the most striking symbol of the Combine's rule, the Citadel looms ominously above the city as a constant reminder of their presence, and serves as the personal residence of Earth's appointed Administrator, Dr. Wallace Breen.
The Citadel is located at the epicenter of City 17, and resembles an enormous metallic skyscraper thousands of feet tall. A true monolith, it is a fortress that rises both high into the sky and extends a great distance underground as well. It is a triangular structure when viewed from above, and is crowned by a Dark Fusion Reactor, with its associated portal acting as the primary means of communication with off-world Combine forces. The Citadel's massive interior level is capable of housing a massive army of Overwatch Soldiers, with the building itself being heavily mechanized, and entire sections of it can move to allow for mass deployment of airborne Combine units such as City Scanners, Hunter-Choppers and Combine Gunships.
The Citadel is completely surrounded by enormous Smart Barriers which protect the structure from would-be attackers attempting to breach the walls. Attached to the exterior walls of the Citadel, within a huge chasm surrounded by broken sewer pipes and destroyed vehicles, are large pieces of machinery that dig the ground, possibly expanding the underground area to allow for further construction. These machines are also theorized to function as giant Restrictors to repel Antlions, though such theory is unlikely as the vibrations could not cover the entire city. The game files also mention the machines as "Diggers" instead of thumpers.
The Citadel has two known "states" or configurations that the structure takes depending on specific situations. The first of these is the dormant configuration, which was most likely maintained throughout the majority of the Combine's rule, when no serious threats were posed. This configuration is characterised by a single set of rib-like structures exposed within the rightmost half of the Citadel, with an outer metal plating retracted slightly above an inner plating. However, shortly after Gordon Freeman is transported inside Breen's office in the Citadel during the malfunctioning of Dr. Kleiner's teleporter, Breen puts the Citadel on alert, causing the structure to change to its alerted state. Barney Calhoun notes that this is a rare occasion, stating that he's "never seen it lit up like that." The alert configuration involves the inner plating retracting upwards to reveal a total of four sets of "ribs", as seen at the start of Route Kanal whereupon the reconfiguration has fully completed.
During this transformation, a loud alarm is heard resonating throughout the city, possibly emanating from the Citadel itself, and Scanners are seen rapidly deploying from the structure's midsection to hunt for Freeman. The Citadel remains in this configuration for the remainder of the game, only changing again during Episode One after Freeman sabotages the reactor, with the plating descending once more to the "all clear" state, covering the ribs. It can be theorized that there are other configurations the Citadel may take in different situations, but these two are the only configurations depicted in the games.
The book Raising the Bar mentions that entire blocks from City 17 vanished into thin air as the Combine delivered the Citadel to Earth. However, this was likely changed during development as the game shows no signs of such an event. Half-Life: Alyx shows the Citadel under construction, confirming it was built by the Combine after the Seven Hour War. Based on a drawing in Alyx's apartment, only the Citadel's Core was teleported to Earth as single spire roughly the same height as the completed Citadel, with the rest of the architecture constructed around it.
The existence of more Citadels located around the world is mentioned in-game by Dr. Kleiner and is also mentioned by Eli in The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx. The number of Citadels on Earth still remains unknown, as do whether they all bear the same height and general appearance.
In the first few chapters of Half-Life 2: Episode One, the player is given a first-hand look at much of the lower levels of the Citadel, mostly looking very much the same as the rest of of the structure, with no war factories or synth manufacturing plants located in this area. During this point in the game, the Citadel is observed to be extremely unstable due to Freeman's sabotage, with an orange glow replacing the cool blue it used to be when fully functional. Fires have spread across the structure and various pieces of debris from what's left of the upper levels is seen falling down to the lower levels.
An emergency evacuation and transport chamber for Advisors is located in the lower levels of the Citadel. The room is significantly different from the rest of the Citadel, giving off an eerie red glow from hundreds of bright lights mounted on the walls, giving it a decidedly more sinister appearance. The Advisor Pods are located under the glass floor of the room and, when preparing to evacuate, they rise up and move through a tube before positioning themselves in a chute and moving upwards. It is likely that many more chambers are present throughout the Citadel.
Toward the very bottom of the Citadel is its highly radioactive Core, which is only accessible via a lift that descends for several dozen floors. The Core chamber is protected by large blast doors carrying an insignia appearing as a stylized version of the international symbol for radioactivity. A large control room is situated overlooking the Core chamber, similar in design to the control room overlooking the Dark Fusion reactor at the opposite end of the structure. Three rooms are located across the chamber which are specifically designed to help stabilize the Core in the event that its energy output becomes unstable. The machines in these rooms form a threefold containment system that ensures that the intensity of the dark energy reaction within the Core stays within safe limits. Connected to the Core chamber is a train station, where it is likely that Razor Train cargo is emptied. This area of the Citadel lies approximately one kilometre below the surface, and the connected train tunnel network extends throughout City 17 and beyond.
In the final chapters of Half-Life 2, the player is given an insight into the interior of the Citadel, which contrasts its featureless exterior. An abundance of Combine technology is found within the Citadel, ranging from countless generators and force fields, to matter disintegration fields, to elevators and platforms that defy gravity, to giant tubes resembling arteries that transport unknown fluids. The entire building is constructed from the same blackish blue metal material that all Combine structures are made from. No attempt is made at all to provide personnel with any form of warmth or comfort. Everything is sharp, cold, and soulless, mirroring that of the Combine's rule. No regard is placed at all to the covering of the piping and electronics. The metal is unfinished and oxidizing. The human features that are present however, such as walkways, stairs and ladders, seem to just be an afterthought, as if the usability for humans was not a priority. All invading "visitors" have any unregistered weapons stripped away and disintegrated using a Confiscation Field, presumably to avoid precisely the situation which occurs at the end of Half-Life 2 and recurs at the beginning of Episode One - ironically, because of the field.
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