US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour
If you ever happen to be in Arizona, I highly recommend that you visit the Titan Missile Museum: 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.
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?
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
Then go back and watch the first 15 minutes of Wargames. They did a great job.
It made for a great movie opening ("Wargames", 1983): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls
(Don't worry; that guy went on to be White House Chief of Staff.)
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.
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.
This video shows a bit more in action step by step:
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.
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.
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?
Easter egg hunt: MIL-STD pink slippers, for wearing around the doomsday activation room.
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...
I sure hope they are testing the people better now.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/13/us-air-force-m...
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Cheating_Scand...
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-...
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.
To give you an idea of what kinds of grim circumstances this was built for, the seats have 4-point seatbelts!
The one in Arizona was better and even more better with the top to bottom tour before it flooded.
This kind of place was best captured by opening scene of Wargames:
So along with the beeps they verbally announce “claxon claxon claxon” before they start their message?
The pink bunny slipper in the military satchel does it for me.
Where are the giant floppy disks?
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.