First off, go to this website. This author/photographer managed to get some great pictures of a capsule and the crew, and put it together with some other information that's really useful.

So, you leave base and drive across the Montana (or Wyoming, or North Dakota) countryside. In our squadron, the closest site is 1.5 hours away, and our farthest is almost three hours from base. Our squadron is 5,000 square miles in area, and the wing is the size of the state of West Virginia (23K square miles). Between ops, cops and maintenance, we put over 2.8 million miles on our wing's vehicles every year. Time, and distance are significant considerations in EVERYTHING we do, and weather is equally important. The sites in our squadron are all in the 4000-4500 ft above sea level range, nestled near a bunch of mountains--weather, especially winter weather, is a constant issue for us.

After arriving on site and getting through security, you walk into the Missile Alert Facility (MAF, that's the entire site, but we generally use it to refer to the topside building). There, you'll see the other site personnel--the site Facility Manager (responsible for the building itself and the senior NCO on the site), the chef (usually a junior airman), and the security forces personnel in your flight area (should be somewhere between six and twelve cops). They all stay in rooms topside.

You go through even more security, and get cleared to go downstairs. You get in an elevator that will BARELY hold three people and their gear, close the door, and spend the next minute travelling about 60-80 feet below ground. During that ride, you'll notice an...interesting...smell, as sometimes the sewage lift station at the bottom of the elevator shaft will back up just a little bit.

Once downstairs, the elevator door opens, and you're faced with the blast door. It's usually somewhat humid, but not moldy, at the bottom of the elevator shaftway, and besides the occasional smell it's not unpleasant, especially on a hot summer day.

You walk into the capsule (being careful to duck--the entry way is only 5' tall, and it's got a steel lip all the way around it--guess who will win in a contest of skull vs doorframe) and when you come out of the 6' long entryway, you're standing on a very small platform of steel with a gap around it.

The interior of the capsule is like no other structure I've seen. All of the equipment is attached to a floor that's suspended from the ceiling by four huge bolts. The mounting points for the floor are actually four gigantic shock absorbers, and the floor has some clearance around the edges (rattle space). All the electrical, water, air etc. links for the equipment to the outside world are in cables that have lots of slack, so in the event of a near miss the entire floor can shake, rattle and roll, without damaging the equipment or ripping things out of the wall.

Built on the floor is a shelter (we call it the acoustical enclosure). All of the important stuff (the TV, the DVD, the bathroom, the bed, and, oh, yea, all the other missile equipment ) is located inside that enclosure. It smells funny, mainly because of 45 years of people (mainly men) living in an area equivalent to a medium-sized living room (which deserves another ). Usually it's not bad (unless the crew had the Mexican plate for dinner); it's a dry, musty smell of electronics and conditioned air, with just a hint of hobo feet. You get used to it pretty quickly.

Life in the capsule can be very, very good, or very very bad, depending on the day. If it's a slow day, then it fast approaches boring. There are daily tasks (inspections, communications checks, daily maintenance checks, etc.) that occupy some time, but the rest of the day is spent sort of like a police dispatcher; ready to respond to whatever happens but otherwise unoccupied. One of the two of you in the capsule can sleep, so the other one stays on the console, answers phones and responds to status. There's always some studying to do (remember my post about the three monthly tests), some cleaning to do, and there's a TV/DVD in the console you can watch. Every once in a while the chef upstairs sends down food, so you can eat your tater tots and watch the Tick in comfort. There's also a microwave and fridge downstairs, so you can bring your own food & (non-alcoholic) drink if you are so inclined.

When there's maintenance or security situations going on, it's busy. You're constantly on the phone, running checklists, sending commands to the missiles, cross-checking with the other capsules in the squadron, and directing the actions of the maintenance or security forces. Even worse, sometimes there's maintenance in the capsule itself, which means you're both up (that disrupts sleep shifts and sometimes they have to really tear apart the capsule to do their maintenance, so you wind up sitting on the filing cabinet while they're doing their thing).

The food tends to be really good, depending on the chef. There's some healthy stuff, but the menu is heavy on the starches and fried/grilled foods. We have dedicated chefs on site, and some of them get really creative (I just learned one of ours has a Chicken Bacon Ranch sandwich he designed.... mmmmm.......).

The capsules are pretty loud. There's a motor-generator under the floor that provides power to the racks, and an air conditioner to keep the racks cool, so it's basically like being in a passenger plane for 24 hours. You get so used to the noise it becomes a part of your sleep habits. One of the running jokes is "How can you tell if you've been on crew too long? You need to keep a fan running to go to sleep."

I've seen broom closets larger than our bathrooms downstairs. It's just barely large enough to do your business, and it's got a prison toilet in it (yes, the stainless steel ones with the sink above the toilet itself). Do NOT drop your toothbrush. Those toilets have been the, well, butt of many jokes about what missile life in the capsule is REALLY like.

So, that's a snapshot of life downstairs. Right now, as you read this, there are 90 men and women of the US Air Force sitting on the world I just described, providing the nation's premier nuclear deterrent and prompt global strike capability to the nation.

I couldn't be prouder to be a part of them, or more humbled to be associated with the caliber of young men and women who are the nation's ICBM force. Coneheads, subterranean trolls, knuckledraggers--whatever you want to call them, they are the nation's missileers. If you meet one, thank him or her, for doing a mostly unknown and definitely unappreciated job of sitting nuclear alert.