yeah, i know some of you will think im'e nuts but,


i thaught of this idea some time ago and thaught i would ask info from those whome might know..

i know they are all over the place, and anyone whose awnyone , knows whare they are (except for the general us population) but i think this may be a viable option for a survival retreat.

the atlas sites may be acceptable but i would be more interested in a titan complex, more area and storage capabilities.

this retreat would accomodate about 20 people in my inner circle.


what i need to know is how can i aquire one of these and about how much would it cost.

(i am sure that some are in private hands in the area, and that the owners either don't know what they have or don't really care.) i figure that i could aquire one under reasonal conditions.

anyway what do you think ? any info would be appreciated, thanks...


cant think of a more secure retreat, and the main infrastucture is already in place. i would only have to come up with a means of power generation, and do a lot of rehab.

There's a company called 20th Century Castles that sells them, both "raw" and converted into finished houses. I belive they have a Titan 1 silo for sale that is rather massive, over 1 mile worth of walk tubes if memory serves me corectly. The guy who started the company lives in a converted Atlas F "cofin" style silo.

[rail]

[url]http://www.missilebases.com[/url]



Aviator [img]www.dredgeearthfirst.com/aviator.gif[/img]

Hmm.  Good in theory, but we're talking mega $$$$.  They basically contain everything you'd find in a house (dorms, kitchen, showers, etc.) as well as a friggin' huge missile silo and control center.  I think I heard somewhere that the entrances are so locked down that it takes several hours for authorized personnel to enter or leave.  That's why they have week-long shifts or whatever.

I saw a Dateline or some show like it, that talked about how the government is selling off of many of their older missile silos and lands. They were very cheap, and were even cheaper depending on location. I think the hippie that bought the missile silo featured in the story bought it and the surrounding land for a total of $50,000. Not bad for an installation that cost several million to build. It was out in the boonies, but being a former nuke silo, it had all the self sufficiency stuff you would need to make it livable; generators, plumbing, etc. The layout was killer, the structure was fully intact sans the missile. It still had the giant launch tube, 2' thick blast doors and all the cool passages and tunnels you could want for closet space. It was like a giant treehouse for adults. If you ever wanted a house that could be easily defended to the bitter end, this would be it.

My only worry would be if the silo was still on some obscure cold war commie map. You would be at ground zero in a SHTF scenario. But if it really came down to that, who would want to survive in a radioactive world anyway.

with any retreat there is the issue of being locked down. this is inevitable, unless you plan an bocoming a nomad.

the idea here being, that this a very secure and more easily defended.

as far as being that locked down, there are usually two sets of mechanically connected doors. when one door is open, the other wont open untill the first is closed.

and i plan oncoverting the silos themselves into greenhouses, the origional ventilation ystem would be retrofitted to pipe air rom the "greenhouses" to all other parts of the retreat.

the implication being that if it becomes necesarry to, we could seal the retreat completely, and never have to worry about food or air.

Sodie, you wouldn't happen to know who i can contact for further information on this program would you?

thanks  

My guess is that the silos wouldn't withstand a prolonged ground attack.

I'll wager they were designed for limited ground attack, relying on the US Army to clear out the assault force before they could breech.

For example:  Air intakes - all the assaulters have to do is pollute (fire, gas,etc...) or close off your air intakes and wait.

We could always resurrect Zen and ask him.  He's reputed to beliving in a converted Minuteman silo somewhere in Nebraska, IIRC.  Him and several four legged beauties.

Norm

I've seen a silo on tv that was converted. I don't like the layout - too small and too much stair climbing.

I think you'd be better off building a monolithic dome and then burying it. Check out
[url]http://www.monolithicdome.com/articles/belowgrade/index.html[/url]

There's also an article on their site about a guy who build a below ground dome.

[url]http://triggur.org/silo/silo.html[/url]
This web site is cool, it is a "unauthorized guided tour" of an abandonded Titan I site. From what I understand most everything of value (generators, pumps, fans, heating and air cond/filtering) have been removed from these sites and that is the real cost, to replace them.
[img]http://triggur.org/silo/map.gif[/img]

Here is a web page for an Atlas F site for sale in Roswell New Mexico:
[url]http://www.siloworld.com/SITES%20FOR%20SALE/ForSale.htm[/url]

I found a webpage a while back that described the sealing procedures of a de-milled silo complex.
Disabeling the missile silo door mechinisims by welding them in place or removing them, welding the main doors shut or by pouring a large concrete pad over the doors. Just about anything to keep the doors from being opened. One website was about a guy who had bought a silo, he removed the concrete pad with a jack hammer, then he went to the door gears assembly and removed the rebar rod that had been welded across the locking mechinisim, hooked up an electric motor and opened the doors.

Here is a website for a guy who bought an Atlas E silo to build into a home. Pretty good info.
[url]http://www.zilker.net/~crossley/AtlasE/[/url]
Here is a picture that is pretty typical for the kind of clean-up that is ahead....
Gally picture:
[img]http://www.zilker.net/~crossley/AtlasE/PixSep96/e27.jpg[/img]

Some info on an Atlas F site:
[url]http://www.terraform.org/welcome01.htm[/url]
[img]http://www.terraform.org/undercut01.jpg[/img]

Great info on desert southwest silo sites:
[url]http://www.ruralnet.net/~scotto/[/url]

wow, you got a lot of the same info i got. thanks for the help, i would still like to know how to get ahold of one direct from the gov't.

50,000 for a silo sounds like a great deal, and i might get one in the general area.

most interested in between pennsylvania, to new hampsier, and anywhare in between.

Utter waste of money.  Even if you are an experienced contractor it would take hundreds of thousands to bring just small areas of these installations up to livable levels.  I've seen these facilities.  Most haven't been used for decades.  They leak, the wiring is shot from the moisture, the metal fixtures (and plumbing pipes) are rusted through, and NO they don't have all the generators and wiring that you think they do.  They are completely stripped empty concrete bunkers, most of them are flooded and have extensive water damage to the concrete too.  

For $50,000 you can buy a few hundred acres in the boonies and for $50-150,000 you can put a really nice LIVABLE cabin on it.  You get more usable land and a comfortable house out of it.  For you TEOTWAWKI nuts, build a reinforced concrete basement with concrete roof and then build the house on top.  For all of this it would still be much cheaper than purchasing and renovating a missile silo.

There's folks living in an old Nike surface-to-air missile base about 20 minutes from where I live.  The blockhouse has been in residential use for maybe twenty years and I think some of the individual missile silos (remember they are horizontal not vertical) have been lived-in.  Never been inside, but I pass it frequently and see signs of activity from the road.

If you are talking about the one off Bee Caves, It belongs to the University of Texas. They have some research stations there, as well as some cell phone towers, and their police academy. They also have a decent 25 yard range there. The buildings (except for the house you mentioned) are mostly uninhabitable and the bunkers are sealed and full of snakes. The house is the old base commander's residence, and a UT officer lives there. The old missile pads have been torn out and are used as parking lots for the police cadets. You will see them running down the nearby roads some afternoons as they do PT.