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US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour

120 points by sklargh 2y ago

aamoyg 2y ago
The one in Arizona was better and even more better with the top to bottom tour before it flooded.
- jf 2y ago
  Did it flood recently? I was there only a few months ago. I also checked the site and it looks like they are still giving tours?
  - aamoyg 2y ago
    They used to give tours that went to all levels of the silo (there are like 20+ levels) but the bottoms of the silos flood unless you run diesel pumps a lot. They said it was unlikely they would offer them again. Also Patrick Stewart touched the missile with his bare hands and fucked it up in his arrogance despite being told multiple times not to, apparently (the oils in your hand are corrosive to the alloy used for it).
    - fblp 2y ago
      What's the story with Patrick Stewart touching the missile? Couldn't find anything about it on Google.
bragr 2y ago
I can help but think the missileers would be less depressed (it's a known problem) if some more attention was paid to aesthetics and comfort, given the amount of time they spent locked in there.
- iancmceachern 2y ago
  The chairs look comfy, better than standard government issue, and they're on tracks so you don't have to get up to check on the equipment.
  - jabits 2y ago
    Actually the chairs were pretty comfortable. They were locked down to survive (in theory) the shaking resulting from nudets. The deputy launch commander’s was on a long track so he could slide back and forth to gather the redundant messages and reset alarms. The commander sat facing the missile light board.
- arrakeenrevived 2y ago
  I'm not going to claim that it's much better these days, but it's worth noting that the launch center in the link is quite old. The launch center have had multiple upgrades since then; the link here [0] shows some videos from inside a newer configuration, which does look a little bit more comfortable, and even that video is from the early 2000s. I would have to guess that more upgrades have been made since then. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40289005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40289005
- chihuahua 2y ago
  I don't know if there's a worse peacetime job in the military than sitting in a missile silo every day. At least for me, it seems absolutely dreadful, sitting there all day every day.
  - jabits 2y ago
    Indeed it can be. There was a lot of action in the O club in one’s off days. We oftentimes thought however that these a-launch crews probably had it worse, except at least it would be more quiet without all the active comm systems. And since we were always “alert” we took part in many, many global military exercises…
ck2 2y ago
I sure hope they are testing the people better now. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/13/us-air-force-missile-fails-safety-test https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/13/us-air-force-m... https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Cheating_Scandal_at_Malmstrom_Air_Force_Base https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Cheating_Scand... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/high-marks-cooks-lifted-overall-rating-cheating-nuclear-missile-operators-minot https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/high-marks-cooks-lifted-... Also the missiles themselves are failing testing: https://www.airandspaceforces.com/icbm-test-failure-nuclear-modernization/ https://www.airandspaceforces.com/icbm-test-failure-nuclear-... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68355395 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68355395 Why again do we have thousands upon thousands of these things when less than 100 would do? We are going to accidentally nuke ourselves sooner or later.
- ucarion 2y ago
  The US has 400 land-based nuclear weapons, not thousands upon thousands. They're there to be a better thing for our enemies to aim at than our cities.
  - tylerflick 2y ago
    Exactly. If anyone is curious, look up the term Nuclear Sponge.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Nobody's going to be aiming at nuclear silos in the middle of nowhere that are not only designed to withstand a nuclear attack, but may well have also launched by the time your missile arrives. US early Cold War targets have been declassified. [1] We did make efforts to target airfields where nukes would have launched from (prior to the ICBM), but those were valuable and weakly defended targets, regardless of whether the enemy's ships were already airborne or not. But a large chunk of our missiles were directed towards agriculture, industry, medicine product, and a large number of targets were justified as simply "population." The Soviet targets likely would have been more or less identical. In nuclear war the goal will not be to eliminate the enemy's military - military's can be rebuilt. At the point of nuclear war absolutely all norms and rules of conflict will have been discarded. The goal is going to be to eliminate the enemy's entire country, such that he might never be a threat again. In such a situation I'd feel far safer standing near a nuclear bunker out in the middle of nowhere than I would in the middle of a high population, high economic value urban area. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nuclear-target-list-offers-chilling-insight.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nucl...
neilv 2y ago
Easter egg hunt: MIL-STD pink slippers, for wearing around the doomsday activation room.
neilv 2y ago
It made for a great movie opening ("Wargames", 1983): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls (Don't worry; that guy went on to be White House Chief of Staff.)
- rtkwe 2y ago
  TURN YOUR KEY CAPTAIN! Love Wargames for all it's goofy hacker nonsense.
- dylan604 2y ago
  And the other guy went to cut off someone's ear.
- imglorp 2y ago
  After a goose chase to confirm, it was John Spencer playing in The West Wing. Not an actual CoS...
DrNosferatu 2y ago
Where are the giant floppy disks?
- Animats 2y ago
  There are no computers in that 1960s launch control center. It's all hard-wired.
jf 2y ago
If you ever happen to be in Arizona, I highly recommend that you visit the Titan Missile Museum: https://titanmissilemuseum.org/ https://titanmissilemuseum.org/ The site has been carefully maintained and the tour brings you up close to places that only a select few were able to see when they were in operation.
- neverartful 2y ago
  Agreed! I just visited just over a week ago for the first time. It's very interesting to see it firsthand and hear about how it all worked. At the same time, it was very sobering and frightening to think about what would happen if these things were used in anger.
- mjmsmith 2y ago
  Yes! Really interesting, and the guides are excellent. (Think they missed an opportunity to call it MoMAD though.)
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
The pink bunny slipper in the military satchel does it for me.
captainkrtek 2y ago
This video shows a bit more in action step by step: https://youtu.be/HWZXinRwCaE?feature=shared https://youtu.be/HWZXinRwCaE?feature=shared
- neilv 2y ago
  That looks like a much later system. I'm surprised that "pop-up menu" was a part of this particular interaction scenario. But much of the rest of the UI looks more like what I would've guessed.
  - arrakeenrevived 2y ago
    Yes, that video looks to be the "REACT" [0] upgrade that was done in the 1990s. It specifically says it changed it to make the operators sit side-by-side. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Execution_and_Combat_Targeting_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Execution_and_Combat_Tar...
- tshtf 2y ago
  I watched this one recently, and was going to share it here. I'm not in the field, but this looks like a nice demo of the current launch systems UX, unlike the tens that are dated to the early 80s.
themagician 2y ago
Whenever I see things like this I think it's so cool, but it's always followed by this weird feeling that lasts a few hours where all I can think about is, "What have we done?" Why does destruction come to easy to us? Why has it always been a prioirty?
- jrockway 2y ago
  Being able to destroy everyone else is what prevents them from destroying us. Something I think about and feel bad about is the "nuclear sponge". Why do we have a bunch of ICBMs in the midwest? So that if someone wants to nuke NYC, they have to nuke the Great Plains first, or face total destruction. Makes nuclear war that much more expensive. Of course, it's kind of an outdated assumption that that alone would be enough; we still have bombers and submarine-launched missiles. I have mixed feelings about mutually assured destruction; it would be nice if the human race couldn't destroy the entire planet. But, it does make sense on some level. Why don't you go up to lions in the zoo and pet them? I bet they're soft! The reason you don't is because you know it will bite your arm off. We hope the same logic applies to nuclear first strikes. (I also feel a little bad knowing that my country is the only one that ever used nuclear weapons. The world didn't end, but that's little consolation for the 200,000 civilians we vaporized in an instant.)
  - redmajor12 2y ago
    I dont think "nuclear sponge" is a real concept that dates to the Cold War. Can you provide a reference? In a quick search, I just found poorly written and recent articles that just link to each other. Rather, the silo fields were dispersed to get out of range of sub launched missiles or soviet ICBMs that would go over the N pole, which is why some of them are very close to the Mexican border in NM (like the Titan IIs around Roswell). Of course, potential modern Russian ICBMs that have the range to go over the South Pole negate this defense and also any midrange ABM interception possibilities. I also suspect that silo locations were an early example of Congressional pork. Or, just located next to exiting SAC bases for logistical reasons, like Beale AFB in northern California.
    - 2y ago
swozey 2y ago
What's inside of the locked down door? Is that just the main door in? I'm assuming that hallway is the museum. And what is on the map with the circles? Is that a geographical map or some sort of system map? And what shock do the Shock Isolators stop? Shock from a launch?
- jabits 2y ago
  The launch center you see is a square box about the size of an RV suspended by four large “shock absorbers” inside a hardened capsule with walls about six feet thick. The shock absorbers are so the launch center can sway in the event of a NuDet (nuclear detonation) near by. Unlike the older Titans, the Minuteman missiles were nowhere near the capsules, being a minimum of three miles away. Each capsule had direct command and control of 10 Minuteman missiles distributed in a spoke like fashion around the hub (capsule). The Titans crew was right with their massively larger missiles. I was a Launch Control Officer for five years in the mid-80s out of FE Warren AFB in Cheyenne WY. My squadron was the 320th Strategic Missile Squadron with all 5 capsules and 50 missiles were physically in western NE, with the furthest over 100 miles away in Sidney NE. I spent 335 days underground over the 5 year period.
  - swozey 2y ago
    Awesome info, thank you! 335 days underground.. Similar to Nukes in the Navy!
- jabits 2y ago
  In answer to your first question, in the field that would be the primary blast door, a penetration that went through the capsule to a chamber with another larger blast door out to the elevator. At the other end of this chamber is the passage to the generator room. We were obviously equipped to go quite some time “off-grid”. I am assuming the view is from one of the training simulators which are used exact, suspended control centers with a viewing window. We had no maps in the capsule. Any targeting we did was normal 3-d coordinates, technically we really did not have a “need to know” where the coordinates were located.
fred_is_fred 2y ago
If anyone is near Cheyenne Wyoming or passing through on I-25, I highly enjoyed visiting Quebec-01 State Park. Former silo left intact where you can tour. I think you need a reservation: https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/places-to-go/quebec-01 https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/places-to-go/quebec-01 Then go back and watch the first 15 minutes of Wargames. They did a great job.
graupel 2y ago
I live fairly close to the wonderful museum this is located at on Hill Air Force Base north of SLC. This new exhibit is really neat but not very big, all things considered, and not worth the trip on its own. What is worth the trip is the museum as a whole, with an F-117, the only SR-71C in existence, an F22, and all kinds of other planes and rockets - it's not Wright-Patterson, but it's one of the better USAF museums I've been to.
- dpifke 2y ago
  The museum at Edwards AFB in California is amazing[0], but is located on the base so you have to get prior permission to visit it as a civilian. When I was there a few years back, they were fundraising to move the museum to a more publicly accessible location. It looks like that was successful, and it will be re-opening soon: https://www.desertnews.com/news/article_c95e0a2c-edc4-11ed-91b8-e7c4871e050e.html https://www.desertnews.com/news/article_c95e0a2c-edc4-11ed-9... [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Flight_Test_Museum#Collection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Flight_Test_Museum#C...
jabits 2y ago
This is a remarkably real view of the Minuteman Launch Control Center in the early to mid-80s for sure. The accompanying audio is realistic as well except all six comm systems would be blaring at once and several printers would be clacking away… It was very intense, demanding job. I was a Launch Control Officer for five years in the mid-80s out of FE Warren AFB in Cheyenne WY. My squadron was the 320th Strategic Missile Squadron with all 5 capsules and 50 missiles were physically in western NE, with the furthest over 100 miles away in Sidney NE. I spent 335 days underground over the 5 year period.
- choeger 2y ago
  Considering that when the launch order came, MAD had probably already failed: Would you have obeyed the order and killed a few million people?
  - jabits 2y ago
    I’ve oftened wondered that over the years. Maybe that’s why the young ones are usually on the front lines. Another related possibly more difficult, is how many of us would have turned the key without prior world tensions occurring. Before each alert we received a pre-departure briefing on current world conditions. I think an out-of-the-blue order would have been very difficult… We periodically lost a crew member due to internal personal changes with respect to one’s willingness to follow through. One of my early Commanders pulled himself off and left the service to become a Greek Orthodox priest and is still at it today.
    - dmd 2y ago
      Did you not have drills where you weren’t told it was a drill?
      - jabits 2y ago
        No we did not. We were heavily trained and frequently evaluated but never believing it was real in that sense. Things happen in the world for which increased level of readiness occurred, but as the fixed pillar of the Strategic Triad, we were always in a higher state of readiness.
optimalsolver 2y ago
This kind of place was best captured by opening scene of Wargames: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls
EMM_386 2y ago
That's amazing. It's terrifying to take a step back from this and think about how much incredibly sophisticated technology had to go into ensuring that we could wipe out the human race in minutes. And then, of course, there's all the technology handling the safety guards. Because we obviously don't want to wipe out the human race in minutes, so we have all these protocols and failsafes to ensure that doesn't happen unless it's really supposed to happen. All for ... nothing. Nothing, in the sense that every time Russia built more ICBMs the US had to build more ICBMs. That tit-for-tat got to incredibly absurd levels. So all of this ludicrously complex technologies, from the missiles travelling to space, the lauching of multiple guided warheads, the safety guards and nuclear weapons, the trillions of dollars ... for nothing. All a game of "mine is bigger than yours" for strategic deterence. Hopefully it stays that way.
- office_drone 2y ago
  > ... had to go into ensuring that we could wipe out the human race in minutes. That was never ensured. Historical casualty projections expected that, in the event of large scale nuclear attacks, the majority of the involved countries' populations would survive not only the attack but the conditions afterward.
  - candiddevmike 2y ago
    For how much afterwards though?
    - jasomill 2y ago
      Indefinitely, even in the case of near-total destruction. While not exactly historical fiction, this scene from Dr. Strangelove comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y
      - morbicer 2y ago
        Have you seen Threads? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/ I think the irradiation of soil everywhere would mean a total collapse of agriculture. Maybe some tribes in Papua-Ginea would survive but I am pretty sure only ghouls could live in USA and Europe.
yencabulator 2y ago
To give you an idea of what kinds of grim circumstances this was built for, the seats have 4-point seatbelts!
- jabits 2y ago
  Yes, we were strapped in for quite a shaking…
robszumski 2y ago
I just finished reading Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen – it was great. The book walks through a minute by minute scenario from the second of launch through the satellite detection, alerting of forces, decision making challenges, evac and continuity of government during a nuclear exchange. Highly recommend.
- mtreis86 2y ago
  She was also recently on Hardcore History Addendum with Dan Carlin discussing the book.
  - ricksunny 2y ago
    What do you think of her also-very-nuclear-related "Area 51: an Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base" (2011)? (leaving aside the frequently-repudiated Mengele-Stalin slant of the excerpt at the end, a la https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/area-51-book-stretches-truth-ex-workers-say/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/area-51-... ' Barnes, the Roadrunners' president, said he believes the childlike aviator tale was fabricated to give the publisher something "juicy" and "sensational ') She frames a very unique angle on James Killian (of MIT 'Killian Court' fame) in context of Pacific thermonuclear nuclear tests, for example.
jdleesmiller 2y ago
Does anyone have any recommendations on books about nuclear deterrence? I found the Bret Devereaux article from 2022 [1] very interesting and wondered where one might learn more about this thing that keeps us all alive (so far). [1] https://acoup.blog/2022/03/11/collections-nuclear-deterrence-101/ https://acoup.blog/2022/03/11/collections-nuclear-deterrence...
rawgabbit 2y ago
So along with the beeps they verbally announce “claxon claxon claxon” before they start their message?

120 points by sklargh 2y ago

aamoyg 2y ago

The one in Arizona was better and even more better with the top to bottom tour before it flooded.

jf 2y ago
Did it flood recently? I was there only a few months ago. I also checked the site and it looks like they are still giving tours?
- aamoyg 2y ago
  They used to give tours that went to all levels of the silo (there are like 20+ levels) but the bottoms of the silos flood unless you run diesel pumps a lot. They said it was unlikely they would offer them again. Also Patrick Stewart touched the missile with his bare hands and fucked it up in his arrogance despite being told multiple times not to, apparently (the oils in your hand are corrosive to the alloy used for it).
  - fblp 2y ago
    What's the story with Patrick Stewart touching the missile? Couldn't find anything about it on Google.

bragr 2y ago

I can help but think the missileers would be less depressed (it's a known problem) if some more attention was paid to aesthetics and comfort, given the amount of time they spent locked in there.

iancmceachern 2y ago
The chairs look comfy, better than standard government issue, and they're on tracks so you don't have to get up to check on the equipment.
- jabits 2y ago
  Actually the chairs were pretty comfortable. They were locked down to survive (in theory) the shaking resulting from nudets. The deputy launch commander’s was on a long track so he could slide back and forth to gather the redundant messages and reset alarms. The commander sat facing the missile light board.
arrakeenrevived 2y ago
I'm not going to claim that it's much better these days, but it's worth noting that the launch center in the link is quite old. The launch center have had multiple upgrades since then; the link here [0] shows some videos from inside a newer configuration, which does look a little bit more comfortable, and even that video is from the early 2000s. I would have to guess that more upgrades have been made since then. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40289005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40289005
chihuahua 2y ago
I don't know if there's a worse peacetime job in the military than sitting in a missile silo every day. At least for me, it seems absolutely dreadful, sitting there all day every day.
- jabits 2y ago
  Indeed it can be. There was a lot of action in the O club in one’s off days. We oftentimes thought however that these a-launch crews probably had it worse, except at least it would be more quiet without all the active comm systems. And since we were always “alert” we took part in many, many global military exercises…

ck2 2y ago

I sure hope they are testing the people better now. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/13/us-air-force-missile-fails-safety-test https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/13/us-air-force-m... https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Cheating_Scandal_at_Malmstrom_Air_Force_Base https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Cheating_Scand... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/high-marks-cooks-lifted-overall-rating-cheating-nuclear-missile-operators-minot https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/high-marks-cooks-lifted-... Also the missiles themselves are failing testing: https://www.airandspaceforces.com/icbm-test-failure-nuclear-modernization/ https://www.airandspaceforces.com/icbm-test-failure-nuclear-... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68355395 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68355395 Why again do we have thousands upon thousands of these things when less than 100 would do? We are going to accidentally nuke ourselves sooner or later.

ucarion 2y ago
The US has 400 land-based nuclear weapons, not thousands upon thousands. They're there to be a better thing for our enemies to aim at than our cities.
- tylerflick 2y ago
  Exactly. If anyone is curious, look up the term Nuclear Sponge.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Nobody's going to be aiming at nuclear silos in the middle of nowhere that are not only designed to withstand a nuclear attack, but may well have also launched by the time your missile arrives. US early Cold War targets have been declassified. [1] We did make efforts to target airfields where nukes would have launched from (prior to the ICBM), but those were valuable and weakly defended targets, regardless of whether the enemy's ships were already airborne or not. But a large chunk of our missiles were directed towards agriculture, industry, medicine product, and a large number of targets were justified as simply "population." The Soviet targets likely would have been more or less identical. In nuclear war the goal will not be to eliminate the enemy's military - military's can be rebuilt. At the point of nuclear war absolutely all norms and rules of conflict will have been discarded. The goal is going to be to eliminate the enemy's entire country, such that he might never be a threat again. In such a situation I'd feel far safer standing near a nuclear bunker out in the middle of nowhere than I would in the middle of a high population, high economic value urban area. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nuclear-target-list-offers-chilling-insight.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nucl...

neilv 2y ago

Easter egg hunt: MIL-STD pink slippers, for wearing around the doomsday activation room.

neilv 2y ago

It made for a great movie opening ("Wargames", 1983): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls (Don't worry; that guy went on to be White House Chief of Staff.)

rtkwe 2y ago
TURN YOUR KEY CAPTAIN! Love Wargames for all it's goofy hacker nonsense.
dylan604 2y ago
And the other guy went to cut off someone's ear.
imglorp 2y ago
After a goose chase to confirm, it was John Spencer playing in The West Wing. Not an actual CoS...

DrNosferatu 2y ago

Where are the giant floppy disks?

Animats 2y ago
There are no computers in that 1960s launch control center. It's all hard-wired.

jf 2y ago

If you ever happen to be in Arizona, I highly recommend that you visit the Titan Missile Museum: https://titanmissilemuseum.org/ https://titanmissilemuseum.org/ The site has been carefully maintained and the tour brings you up close to places that only a select few were able to see when they were in operation.

neverartful 2y ago
Agreed! I just visited just over a week ago for the first time. It's very interesting to see it firsthand and hear about how it all worked. At the same time, it was very sobering and frightening to think about what would happen if these things were used in anger.
mjmsmith 2y ago
Yes! Really interesting, and the guides are excellent. (Think they missed an opportunity to call it MoMAD though.)

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

The pink bunny slipper in the military satchel does it for me.

captainkrtek 2y ago

This video shows a bit more in action step by step: https://youtu.be/HWZXinRwCaE?feature=shared https://youtu.be/HWZXinRwCaE?feature=shared

neilv 2y ago
That looks like a much later system. I'm surprised that "pop-up menu" was a part of this particular interaction scenario. But much of the rest of the UI looks more like what I would've guessed.
- arrakeenrevived 2y ago
  Yes, that video looks to be the "REACT" [0] upgrade that was done in the 1990s. It specifically says it changed it to make the operators sit side-by-side. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Execution_and_Combat_Targeting_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Execution_and_Combat_Tar...
tshtf 2y ago
I watched this one recently, and was going to share it here. I'm not in the field, but this looks like a nice demo of the current launch systems UX, unlike the tens that are dated to the early 80s.

themagician 2y ago

Whenever I see things like this I think it's so cool, but it's always followed by this weird feeling that lasts a few hours where all I can think about is, "What have we done?" Why does destruction come to easy to us? Why has it always been a prioirty?

jrockway 2y ago
Being able to destroy everyone else is what prevents them from destroying us. Something I think about and feel bad about is the "nuclear sponge". Why do we have a bunch of ICBMs in the midwest? So that if someone wants to nuke NYC, they have to nuke the Great Plains first, or face total destruction. Makes nuclear war that much more expensive. Of course, it's kind of an outdated assumption that that alone would be enough; we still have bombers and submarine-launched missiles. I have mixed feelings about mutually assured destruction; it would be nice if the human race couldn't destroy the entire planet. But, it does make sense on some level. Why don't you go up to lions in the zoo and pet them? I bet they're soft! The reason you don't is because you know it will bite your arm off. We hope the same logic applies to nuclear first strikes. (I also feel a little bad knowing that my country is the only one that ever used nuclear weapons. The world didn't end, but that's little consolation for the 200,000 civilians we vaporized in an instant.)
- redmajor12 2y ago
  I dont think "nuclear sponge" is a real concept that dates to the Cold War. Can you provide a reference? In a quick search, I just found poorly written and recent articles that just link to each other. Rather, the silo fields were dispersed to get out of range of sub launched missiles or soviet ICBMs that would go over the N pole, which is why some of them are very close to the Mexican border in NM (like the Titan IIs around Roswell). Of course, potential modern Russian ICBMs that have the range to go over the South Pole negate this defense and also any midrange ABM interception possibilities. I also suspect that silo locations were an early example of Congressional pork. Or, just located next to exiting SAC bases for logistical reasons, like Beale AFB in northern California.
  - 2y ago

swozey 2y ago

What's inside of the locked down door? Is that just the main door in? I'm assuming that hallway is the museum. And what is on the map with the circles? Is that a geographical map or some sort of system map? And what shock do the Shock Isolators stop? Shock from a launch?

jabits 2y ago
The launch center you see is a square box about the size of an RV suspended by four large “shock absorbers” inside a hardened capsule with walls about six feet thick. The shock absorbers are so the launch center can sway in the event of a NuDet (nuclear detonation) near by. Unlike the older Titans, the Minuteman missiles were nowhere near the capsules, being a minimum of three miles away. Each capsule had direct command and control of 10 Minuteman missiles distributed in a spoke like fashion around the hub (capsule). The Titans crew was right with their massively larger missiles. I was a Launch Control Officer for five years in the mid-80s out of FE Warren AFB in Cheyenne WY. My squadron was the 320th Strategic Missile Squadron with all 5 capsules and 50 missiles were physically in western NE, with the furthest over 100 miles away in Sidney NE. I spent 335 days underground over the 5 year period.
- swozey 2y ago
  Awesome info, thank you! 335 days underground.. Similar to Nukes in the Navy!
jabits 2y ago
In answer to your first question, in the field that would be the primary blast door, a penetration that went through the capsule to a chamber with another larger blast door out to the elevator. At the other end of this chamber is the passage to the generator room. We were obviously equipped to go quite some time “off-grid”. I am assuming the view is from one of the training simulators which are used exact, suspended control centers with a viewing window. We had no maps in the capsule. Any targeting we did was normal 3-d coordinates, technically we really did not have a “need to know” where the coordinates were located.

fred_is_fred 2y ago

If anyone is near Cheyenne Wyoming or passing through on I-25, I highly enjoyed visiting Quebec-01 State Park. Former silo left intact where you can tour. I think you need a reservation: https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/places-to-go/quebec-01 https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/places-to-go/quebec-01 Then go back and watch the first 15 minutes of Wargames. They did a great job.

graupel 2y ago

I live fairly close to the wonderful museum this is located at on Hill Air Force Base north of SLC. This new exhibit is really neat but not very big, all things considered, and not worth the trip on its own. What is worth the trip is the museum as a whole, with an F-117, the only SR-71C in existence, an F22, and all kinds of other planes and rockets - it's not Wright-Patterson, but it's one of the better USAF museums I've been to.

dpifke 2y ago
The museum at Edwards AFB in California is amazing[0], but is located on the base so you have to get prior permission to visit it as a civilian. When I was there a few years back, they were fundraising to move the museum to a more publicly accessible location. It looks like that was successful, and it will be re-opening soon: https://www.desertnews.com/news/article_c95e0a2c-edc4-11ed-91b8-e7c4871e050e.html https://www.desertnews.com/news/article_c95e0a2c-edc4-11ed-9... [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Flight_Test_Museum#Collection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Flight_Test_Museum#C...

jabits 2y ago

This is a remarkably real view of the Minuteman Launch Control Center in the early to mid-80s for sure. The accompanying audio is realistic as well except all six comm systems would be blaring at once and several printers would be clacking away… It was very intense, demanding job. I was a Launch Control Officer for five years in the mid-80s out of FE Warren AFB in Cheyenne WY. My squadron was the 320th Strategic Missile Squadron with all 5 capsules and 50 missiles were physically in western NE, with the furthest over 100 miles away in Sidney NE. I spent 335 days underground over the 5 year period.

choeger 2y ago
Considering that when the launch order came, MAD had probably already failed: Would you have obeyed the order and killed a few million people?
- jabits 2y ago
  I’ve oftened wondered that over the years. Maybe that’s why the young ones are usually on the front lines. Another related possibly more difficult, is how many of us would have turned the key without prior world tensions occurring. Before each alert we received a pre-departure briefing on current world conditions. I think an out-of-the-blue order would have been very difficult… We periodically lost a crew member due to internal personal changes with respect to one’s willingness to follow through. One of my early Commanders pulled himself off and left the service to become a Greek Orthodox priest and is still at it today.
  - dmd 2y ago
    Did you not have drills where you weren’t told it was a drill?
    - jabits 2y ago
      No we did not. We were heavily trained and frequently evaluated but never believing it was real in that sense. Things happen in the world for which increased level of readiness occurred, but as the fixed pillar of the Strategic Triad, we were always in a higher state of readiness.

optimalsolver 2y ago

This kind of place was best captured by opening scene of Wargames: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls

EMM_386 2y ago

That's amazing. It's terrifying to take a step back from this and think about how much incredibly sophisticated technology had to go into ensuring that we could wipe out the human race in minutes. And then, of course, there's all the technology handling the safety guards. Because we obviously don't want to wipe out the human race in minutes, so we have all these protocols and failsafes to ensure that doesn't happen unless it's really supposed to happen. All for ... nothing. Nothing, in the sense that every time Russia built more ICBMs the US had to build more ICBMs. That tit-for-tat got to incredibly absurd levels. So all of this ludicrously complex technologies, from the missiles travelling to space, the lauching of multiple guided warheads, the safety guards and nuclear weapons, the trillions of dollars ... for nothing. All a game of "mine is bigger than yours" for strategic deterence. Hopefully it stays that way.

office_drone 2y ago
> ... had to go into ensuring that we could wipe out the human race in minutes. That was never ensured. Historical casualty projections expected that, in the event of large scale nuclear attacks, the majority of the involved countries' populations would survive not only the attack but the conditions afterward.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  For how much afterwards though?
  - jasomill 2y ago
    Indefinitely, even in the case of near-total destruction. While not exactly historical fiction, this scene from Dr. Strangelove comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y
    - morbicer 2y ago
      Have you seen Threads? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/ I think the irradiation of soil everywhere would mean a total collapse of agriculture. Maybe some tribes in Papua-Ginea would survive but I am pretty sure only ghouls could live in USA and Europe.

yencabulator 2y ago

To give you an idea of what kinds of grim circumstances this was built for, the seats have 4-point seatbelts!

jabits 2y ago
Yes, we were strapped in for quite a shaking…

robszumski 2y ago

I just finished reading Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen – it was great. The book walks through a minute by minute scenario from the second of launch through the satellite detection, alerting of forces, decision making challenges, evac and continuity of government during a nuclear exchange. Highly recommend.

mtreis86 2y ago
She was also recently on Hardcore History Addendum with Dan Carlin discussing the book.
- ricksunny 2y ago
  What do you think of her also-very-nuclear-related "Area 51: an Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base" (2011)? (leaving aside the frequently-repudiated Mengele-Stalin slant of the excerpt at the end, a la https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/area-51-book-stretches-truth-ex-workers-say/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/area-51-... ' Barnes, the Roadrunners' president, said he believes the childlike aviator tale was fabricated to give the publisher something "juicy" and "sensational ') She frames a very unique angle on James Killian (of MIT 'Killian Court' fame) in context of Pacific thermonuclear nuclear tests, for example.

jdleesmiller 2y ago

Does anyone have any recommendations on books about nuclear deterrence? I found the Bret Devereaux article from 2022 [1] very interesting and wondered where one might learn more about this thing that keeps us all alive (so far). [1] https://acoup.blog/2022/03/11/collections-nuclear-deterrence-101/ https://acoup.blog/2022/03/11/collections-nuclear-deterrence...

rawgabbit 2y ago

So along with the beeps they verbally announce “claxon claxon claxon” before they start their message?