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Missile Base for Sale
- LegitShady 5y agoAnything that lists Winkler Manitoba as an attraction is an obvious scam.
- Igelau 5y agoThe "city" seal has a shopping cart on it! https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/577912501276278784/f8oMYnrJ_400x400.jpeg https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/577912501276278784/f8oM...
- ThePadawan 5y agoI think you would have been right by putting "shopping cart" in quotes as well. Blimey.
- toast0 5y agoAnd the settings icon. And pasta? Maybe I can shop, get my car fixed and get something to eat? Sounds attractive.
- Igelau 5y ago> pasta I think it's supposed to be a sheaf of grain. Same idea!
- whoisthemachine 5y agoLangdon is a nice little town, I wouldn't call it an attraction however, but to each their own...
- varelse 5y agoThe cool kids all bought New Zealand citizenship so this is your once in a lifetime opportunity to invest in their hand-me-downs oops I mean tax write offs...
- beaner 5y agoWhat
- NateEag 5y agoI think it's a reference to the fact that NZ looks like a great place to ride out a nuclear exchange. Most of the nuclear powers are in the northern hemisphere, so you want to be southern. Obviously you want to be somewhere that's not going to be a target, and as a small island nation without nukes (and in fact one that forbids nuclear-powered vehicles from entering its airspace: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_nuclear-free_zone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_nuclear-free_zon...), NZ is very unlikely to be targeted by any nuclear combatants. It's just big enough that it's got some chance of sustaining basic industry in event of the major powers collapsing back into the stone age. Despite that, as a remote island, no one's likely to invade it for its resources or infrastructure after a nuclear war. It's just too hard to get there without modern navies and air forces. So, all that to say I think the OP is (sarcastically?) suggesting that someone rich has acquired a place in NZ and is looking to dump this bunker they no longer have a use for.
- alangibson 5y agoMy personal favorite missile. Add some Sprint replicas and this would make a cool, if entirely impractical, manspace.
- nix23 5y agoSorry for being downvoted for the "Manspace"-word. SJW in full swing here at HN. BTW: Fill the Rockets with different brands of beer, and have your retractable Beer-Fridge-Rockets, spot on practical.
- coding123 5y agoWho has a favorite "missile". seriously?
- dylan604 5y agoMine's the sidewinder.
- cronix 5y agoMine is the Minuteman II ICBM from the late 60's. My father launched one, as a test, but he didn't know it was a test at the time. They got orders, they launched. I have a beautiful large color photo of the one he launched coming out of the ground, and the key he turned mounted on a USAF plaque. The teeth were filed off though. He said the beginning of the movie War Games (missile silo scene) was the most accurate depiction of his job that he'd seen.
- cma 5y agoThese feel like some of the most likely places to get nuked if an old system accidentally goes off.
- alangibson 5y agoI wonder if there are equivalents of missilebaseforsale.com for the former Soviet Union
- dogma1138 5y agoIm sure there is the difference is that they probably sell the missiles too…
- bequanna 5y agoPossibly, but you’re likely buying it “as-is”. I believe Elon tried to purchase a rocket from Russia many years ago and even travelled there to meet with people who claimed to be able to broker a sale.
- bserge 5y agoYou got me wondering and I could not find anything with a quick Google search. Apparently personal bunkers weren't popular even during the Cold War. https://vc.ru/story/139377-mesto-gde-mozhno-spryatatsya-skolko-stoyat-bunkery-i-zashchitnye-komnaty-v-rossii-i-kto-ih-stroit https://vc.ru/story/139377-mesto-gde-mozhno-spryatatsya-skol... It may be that people just didn't have the money for this kind of stuff and oligarchs would rather build castles that no one knows about than buy old bunkers (which would be in way worse shape in ex USSR I imagine).
- lumost 5y agoBunkers aren’t that great for long term survival. You’re effectively betting that you can survive in a small isolated prison for N years to emerge without resources or the ability to feed yourself. You are also betting that the underground structure isn’t going to need maintenance in those N years, and that you won’t simply be viewed as a resource cache by whoever is still on the surface. Now if we start talking about remote bunkers far away from cities - you start also asking the question of why you would need a bunker! If you build an off grid house in Whistler BC you are highly unlikely to be targeted by a nuke, or be in the fallout zone of any nukes. Rural east coast and southeastern US are also great options. You can even set up a plan for a permanent farming installation in the event of a disaster.
- pjmorris 5y agoCould this be set up as the level from Goldeneye, maybe turn the place into a theme park?
- dharmab 5y agoRent it out for milsim events
- Rebelgecko 5y agoAfter seeing how the listing makes a big deal about how it's a mere 2 hours from the bustling metropolis of Grand Forks, I think the location might be a bit of an issue
- mjreacher 5y agoHere's a 6 minute video explaining the sprint missile for those unaware and interested (rather fascinating technology for the 70s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dl9Ovwmnxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dl9Ovwmnxw
- adriand 5y agoVery fascinating and some truly stunning footage. What I can’t help thinking about viewing this marvel of technology is what humanity might have achieved if the prodigious efforts and staggering sums that went into the Cold War arms race went into making the world a better place…really, as amazing as this is, it was ultimately a tremendous waste.
- avalys 5y agoThey did make the world a better place, winning the Cold War dealt a huge blow to totalitarian communist ideology everywhere and many free societies replaced the old Soviet States.
- eschaton 5y agoJust look at what the fall of the USSR did for life expectancies there!
- baybal2 5y agoIt actually went, as it was found that union's demographic statistics was all forged perpetually since Stalin
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoForged statistics or not, at least there are not millions being starved to death, sent to gulags, or relocated against their will.
- madengr 5y ago
- coldcode 5y agoWithout the missile I am not moved by the price decrease.
- clircle 5y agoWhat a steal!
- yeldarb 5y agoI recently watched this YouTube about visiting a bunker community in South Dakota that was pretty interesting: https://youtu.be/QW6DIchOpnc https://youtu.be/QW6DIchOpnc Looks like it’s only 1/10 of the price to buy one of those instead!
- dylan604 5y agoAsking $1,500,000.00 January 14, 2021: Reduced to $550,000 Terms: Cash or $500,000 down and owner carry remainder They'll carry the remaining $50k after your $500k down payment. Sounds like they're okay with $500k flat to me. Edit: I'm not seeing an address for the site. I need to know what school district it is in, and how close to downtown and other activity centers. Maybe that helps explain the $50k wiggle room?
- khuey 5y agoI suspect they didn't change the terms when they marked it down by nearly 2/3rds.
- sandworm101 5y ago>> now what school district it is in, and how close to downtown and other activity centers. It is a missile silo. They didn't put those things close to city hall. According to GoogleMaps it appears to be about a kilometre from Nekoma, a town of 50 that may or may not have a school. The next town is Langdon, ~2000 people 30km away. Your choice of schools and/or coffee shops might be limited. Lol. The nearest Tesla supercharger is in 85km away ... in Canada. The nearest US charger is in Fargo, 200km away. Nearest starbucks is 100km. But given that the roads all go north-south or east-west, I would add about 50% to those numbers for driving distance. If there is a nowhere, this is the middle.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoNike facilities were built close to residential areas in the northeast. Sprint is not an ICBM either. It's an ABM and not such a massive rocket that it would need a large safety zone around the launch site.
- sandworm101 5y agoThe safety zone isn't to protect against the missile exploding. It is to keep the facility far enough away from the likely targets of incoming warheads that they could differentiate warheads from decoys. (As warheads enter the atmosphere the lighter decoys fall away. You want to be at 90* to the warhead flight path to best see this.) Some site were indeed near residential areas in other parts of the country but those were not protecting suburbs. They were protecting more distant targets: population centres and military facilities.
- cushychicken 5y agoBuyer beware: lots of ICBM fuel is toxic. Due to poor containment practices, many former missile sites are now borderline superfund sites due to fuel that's leaked into the ground.
- philipkglass 5y agoThe Sprint missile was solid fueled. It couldn't leak fuel.
- cushychicken 5y agoAh, OK. I'm thinking of Titan, which was liquid fueled by some truly nasty chemicals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-25C_Titan_II#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-25C_Titan_II#Development
- baybal2 5y agoHydrazine would've long decomposed since upon air exposure
- nitrogen 5y agoDepending on how much soaked into concrete and other materials, couldn't there still be outgassing?
- cushychicken 5y agoYeah IDK what the prior comment is talking about. Plenty of Titan sites are borderline superfund sites due to poor fuel containment. (Source: Titan Missile Museum in Tucson, AZ.) Hydrazine was just one of many nasty chemicals they had to store on site at Titan sites.
- pinewurst 5y agoTitle is wrong - Sprint was a solid fueled ABM that was activated for only a few months (at most) before decommissioning.
- ucarion 5y agoIt's an (old) ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile), not ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) silo. ABMs shoot down incoming ICBMs.
- HWR_14 5y agoSo if I live there, I'll be able to survive the upcoming (eventual) nuclear war due to my own ICBM defense system!
- ucarion 5y agoLiving in the middle of nowhere is probably a better survival strategy, FWIW. In the event that the US is attacked, ICBM silos act as a nuclear sponge -- things adversaries have to blow up, lest we fire back using them. ABMs are targets too, because they enhance the sponge. So living far from silos (and their command centers), and far from the large cities that the sponge protects, is a better survival strategy. :)
- Aeolun 5y agoImmediate survival strategy. You’d have to be more worried about what happens after the bombs fall.
- KallDrexx 5y agoI was really confused why a Telecom owned a missile site for way too long....
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoBell Labs did many, many more things than telecom.
- PaulHoule 5y agoIt's not just hardened against blast overpressure, it is hardened against the electromagnetic pulse created by the Sprint and Spartan ABM warhead... Or at least it used to be, EMP proofing takes maintenance. That kind of system risks blinding and discombobulating itself as soon as it takes its first shot.
- baybal2 5y ago> EMP proofing takes maintenance. ??????
- exhilaration 5y agoI'm assuming that the copper EMP shielding tends to corrode without regular maintenance. The listing mentions there was very high humidity in there, I bet it did a number on the copper.
- TMWNN 5y ago>It's not just hardened against blast overpressure, it is hardened against the electromagnetic pulse created by the Sprint and Spartan ABM warhead... Does this mean that cell phones won't work? (Aside from being underground.)
- artur_makly 5y agoThe marble kitchenette alone is worth the price.
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y agoErm, if you buy it, do you need to inform Russians and Chinese to delete that particular site as a target in case of the nuclear exchange? :)
- leetrout 5y agoLocated here: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8490754,-98.4321807,564m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8490754,-98.4321807,564m/dat...
- andrewmcwatters 5y agoI'm tired of looking for bunkers to purchase and the sellers not including any anti-ballistic missile technology along with the purchase. I mean when you buy a house with a pool are you expecting any of the pool hardware to be removed? No. It's so inconsiderate. How am I supposed to establish my own sovereignty over my neighbors without missile tech? Do you know how much of a hassle it is to source ballistics? You think to yourself, "Wow! What a steal on a bunker!" And then you realize the price drop is because they've moved out all of the military hardware. What shysters. First, my HOA says I can't land my Apache right next to my bunker, and that it needs to be in its own field. Then, they say I can only transport warheads in the evening. It's a national tragedy and it needs to stop.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Railsify 5y agoCheck out the Death Wears Bunny Slippers Youtube channel. This guy and his family buy a site like this a refit it into a vacation home: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd50A5qLv8FemVufSvDgkCQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd50A5qLv8FemVufSvDgkCQ
- dundercoder 5y agoFrom Wikipedia “ Sprint accelerated at 100 g, reaching a speed of Mach 10 in 5 seconds. Such a high velocity at relatively low altitudes created skin temperatures up to 6,200 °F (3,430 °C), requiring an ablative shield to dissipate the heat. The high temperature caused a plasma to form around the missile, requiring extremely powerful radio signals to reach it for guidance. The missile glowed bright white as it flew.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)?wprov=sfti1
- baybal2 5y agoI was very surprised to know that US ICBM sites in Dakotas are so poorly guarded. Russian ICBM sites are all in the middle of nowhere, and are tiny fortresses
- chipsa 5y agoThe idea isn't have a guard over each silo. Just make it hard to get into a silo and send guards over if you need to.
- Animats 5y agoThat was one of the four outlying defense bases to defend the Safeguard radars. The huge radar at the main base in the center is still working, and the main site is still a USAF installation. The US has some working missile defenses. Vandenberg is the main US launch site for them. They might be able to stop an attack from North Korea, or at least thin it out a bit. They only have 30 interceptors or so, which is nowhere near enough to do much against a superpower attack. That missile defense operation is run by the Army, not the USAF or Space Force. Some US Navy ships have anti-ICBM capability, but that's only useful if a ship happens to be in the right position at the right time.
- ortusdux 5y agoSounds like a high value target, and therefore a foolish place for a private individual to build a bunker.
- willvarfar 5y ago> Some US Navy ships have anti-ICBM capability, but that's only useful if a ship happens to be in the right position at the right time A lot of the interest in surface ships shooting down ballistic missiles is because China and Russia have been developing hyper-sonic anti-ship missiles.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoAnd the navy wants to pretend their surface fleet isn't sitting ducks against real state actors in an actual war with a real power. Allegedly the Navy has an actual usable point defense laser... but I strongly suspect all these high tech capital defenses are just the usual Navy boondoggles to enrich contractors and will be worthless against swarm drone attacks.
- Animats 5y agoNot yet. Laser defense systems keep getting better each year. Solid state 70KW lasers are in test. The consensus is that they start to get militarily useful above 100KW. Higher powered chemical lasers have been built, but were too bulky, fragile, and difficult to operate. The high point of this was MIRACL, a big fixed-installation megawatt chemical laser.[1] Israel tried a US-made chemical laser about a decade ago, and it worked against small rockets and artillery shells, but it took several semitrailers of support equipment. A newer one built in Israel is less bulky and solid state, and will probably go into service. These are all systems with ranges of tens of kilometers at maximum. ICBMs remain out of reach for now. The USAF is already testing lasers against drone swarms.[2] That's not as hard. 30KW can take out a drone, and the laser can be re-positioned fast. Truck-mounted versions of that will probably surround US air bases in hostile territory within a very few years. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRACL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRACL [2] https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a29727696/athena-laser-weapon/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a29727696...
- Phil987 5y agoAnybody know of a good website to that lists these sort of properties for sale? (Not just old missile bases, but other old government infrastructure)
- anm89 5y agohttps://circaoldhouses.com/churches-lighthouses-quirky-conversions-and-unconventional-houses-for-sale/ https://circaoldhouses.com/churches-lighthouses-quirky-conve... Circa has a site for quirky conversion listings
- Phil987 5y agoThank you, this is awesome. This made me realize that I was really just interested in these types of homes, not just old gov't stuff.
- anm89 5y agoYeah there's a whole world of these weird listings. If you like this kind of stuff send me a direct message and I'll show you a cool one which is my own property which I just signed a contract for sale, a big old church
- mrtweetyhack 5y agoadvertising
- czhu12 5y agoI wonder how something like this could be used in practice in the event of a societal collapse. Who will be the governing body to protect your rights to this site, even if you did own it?
- gpsx 5y agoWhat is the zoning? Can you use the land for anything other than a ABM site? /s