I started posting pics in the NORAD thread, but decided to start a new one about this.

Last Thursday, a friend and I drove to what was probably one of the most fascinating tours of my life, a Minuteman II nuclear missile silo and control center. In South Dakota, a few miles down and on the same road as the Badlands National Park entrance (East entrance), is another National Park Service office just behind a gas station. It looks completely mundane as you drive by. In reality, it is the meeting point for one of the most unique attractions the NPS has to offer. Everyone meets there and convoys a few miles away to the control center. It is an above ground building with a barbed wire fence. You can see it plainly from the highway, but it really doesn't draw your attention.

Park ranger closing the fence after we drive through:



You go in a group of 12, which is split up into two groups of 6 (at most). One tours the top, one goes into the control bunker, which is directly underneath the building.

Armored vehicle they started using in the 80s, apparantly just because the auto company was in rough times and wanted a govt. contract. They supposedly sucked, had bad AC, and only went 40 mph. The pickups they had in years prior had governors that only allowed them to go to 60 mph. Since the missile silos in one field could be upwards of 20 miles away, you can see how this impacted the response time of any one security team. In the background, you can also see a grill/bingo tumbler looking thing. That's the "thing" they burned the codes in on a daily basis.



The standard radio commo antenna. You'll notice that there's 4 other circles on the concrete pad. This is so that, in the event of nuclear war, the first one could get blown away, and another pop up in it's place. That could be done up to 4 times.



I have seen these before in pictures and always wondered about them. Often mistaken for the tip of a missile. In fact, this is a UHF (I think) radio antenna that can be controlled by the Looking Glass (Now USN [thanks KA3B], back then USAF [thanks GLCM_Guy] plane that can fly around and launch nukes from the sky). There is one at the control center, and one at every individual silo as well.



Now we go inside. The entire place is a museum, kept just like it was when it closed down in 1993 (started operation in 1963).

Here's the NCOIC's (non-commisioned officer in charge) quarters. Everyone up top was enlisted, with two officers in the bunker down below. There were (IIRC) about 10 people there at any given time: 4 lower enlisted security personnel, 2 NCO security guys, the cook, the two officers, and the NCOIC.



Enlisted quarters. The far two are for the lower enlisted guys who shared bunks, the closer two were for the two NCOs. The personnel up top worked three days on, and three days off (the off days were spent at Ellsworth Air Force base, about 45 minutes down the road).



Down the hallway.



The latrine. Yes, I took a picture of the bathroom. This is the male, and they had to install a seperate, smaller female latrine accross the hallway when the USAF started letting females work at missile sites.



Here's the dining room/lounge area. Actually quite nice. There is a personal phone, and the TV had satellite after a certain year but the channel could only be changed by the NCOIC due to fights breaking out.



They even have magazines laying around from the years when this place was in use. The mural (and other scenic pictures throughout) were placed to add an atmosphere of serenity in a job where death was an absolute certainty should nuclear war break out.



The kitchen. They had these kinda plain-looking TV dinner things that supposedly ranged from quite good to borderline edible. Sounds like MREs.



Original menu.



Here's the security office. You can see the main gate from the first pic in the window. This is where you had to go to get to the elevator to the bunker (elevator is through a doorway on the wall on the left side of the pic).



Here's the ladder going down, next to the elevator (it's deeper than this, what you see is just a landing on the way down).



Going down in the elevator.



Bottom of the shaft looking up.



Some cool Air Force graffitti.



Here's where the cool stuff begins. This is the blast door that leads into the control room itself. Someone had an awesome sense of humor. Note the yellow line (we'll get to that).



These things are ridiculously thick. Still, it is balanced enough that it can be opened/closed by hand.



Back of the blast door. This was officially to remained closed, with nobody going in or out, except for shift change. In reality, however, according to our tour guide, it would almost be a daily occurance for the cook to bring good food down to the control room. Even still, a missileer would meet him with his .38 in hand. On the darker side, in the event of nuclear attack, the missileers were specifically NOT allowed to let anyone from up top trying to save their lives in. The guys on top were, unfortunately, doomed, since there was no place to hide, and you couldn't drive fast enough to get far enough away in time.



Remember that yellow line? It's the border of the "no lone zone," meaning nobody can be alone beyond that line, or deadly force is authorized.



Going through the doorway. The bunker itself is not quite what I expected. The "hallway" you can see in this pic is actually the wall of a large, concrete "egg". The walls are about 8 feet thick with rebar about 3" thick inside. This egg is probably about 40 feet or so accross on the inside. The actual control room is actually much smaller, and is basically just a glorified conex trailer suspended in the middle of this huge egg. You can kind of see the ramp going into the suspended room itself. The egg and the room that is dangling in the center of it is the only protected area at the site. I was honestly expecting a larger bunker area.



Here is a pic after walking through the door, accross the ramp, and turning around at the door of the control room. Basically, you're looking at the interior wall of the egg, right above the blast doorway.



Here's the actual suspension system that connects the control room to the bunker walls. You're looking at a piston like thing which is connected to the control pod at the bottom, and by huge chains to the ceiling of the bunker at the top. These are in place to help the occupants deal with the massive shock wave of a nearby nuke strike (even something this secure will not withstand a direct hit).





The control room itself. The USAF took out the sensitive items (really not much at all, apparently...) in '93, which is what the bare spots on the wall of electronic stuff are. Commander sits in the far chair, deputy commander in the near one. The seats have seatbelts for the aforementioned shockwave of a near hit. The curtained mattress on the left is the "desk," since a bed wasn't officially allowed. But, since these two could NOT leave until relief came, no matter what, they had to be realistic (apparently the longest delay that took place at this site was three full days of sitting in this room, due to a snow storm). Tour guide said they were armed with two snub-nosed .38 revolvers, like in the movie War Games (though there was apparently no provisions in place for them to be used on the other missile controller in order to make him launch, like in the movie).



Toilet on the right hand side as soon as you enter. Yes, I took a pic of the bathroom again.



Deputy cmdr's station. The row of maroon toggle switches were from the sixties and were used to prep the missiles. After a certain year, the missiles prepared themselves during the launch sequence, so they were obsolete after that point.



Box where they kept the verification codes. Each missile controller had his own lock and combo. I think he said they "break" open much like in the beginning of the movie WarGames. When they got the codes over the speaker, they had sheets with a fixed number of slots they were supposed to write the incoming codes in. If the code they got was one more or one less than the number of spaces on the paper, they knew it was training. If it was the same number of characters, they would've known it was the real deal.



The green windowed box thing is actually a TV. It was connected directly to the line they used upstairs in the lounge. Unfortunately, this meant the guys in the bunker had no control over what was on. Apparently, it was common for the enlisted guys up top to make sure they left the soap operas on for the officers down stairs.



Commander's station. The rectangles all over the center are the missile status indicators. See the three triangles just below the blue hat? The one on the left with the keyhole in it is one of the two launch key receptacles, each 12 feet apart.



Better view of the launch switch.



Here's the other lauch keyhole, by the other station. Once these two keys were turned simultaneously, there was a two hour timer before the missiles took off, IF this is the only control room trying to launch the missiles as a safeguard against disgruntled missileers. As soon as any other control center launched it's missiles, however, there was no time delay at all. The missiles went up, and to this day there is no way to abort them.



This is the escape hatch at the back of the room. In the event of nuclear war, and their survival of the strikes, the way we came in would be filled with debris and earth. The Air Force provided a shovel to dig their way out through the escape hatch, but testing done later on found that it would take about two weeks of continuous diggin to get out. They also had geiger counters, but no radiation suits, and about two weeks of food and water. They also had a device with a hand crank that could turn the carbon dioxide into air, but the physical exertion it took to operate it used up more air than it created. So, even if you got out before your air and water disappeared, there was nowhere to go, and that "nowhere" would be quite radioactive. You were essentially dead in the event of nuclear war, even if you "survived".



Looking from the back twoards where we came in.



Back up top now. Here's a diagram hanging in a hallway that might make the layout a bit clearer.





We left the control site after we got back up top, and drove to the missile silo that's been preserved for the NPS (it was about 11 miles away). The silos were connected by very thick (and very long...) copper cables to the control center, but have been since replaced by fiber optics.

Here's the missile silo. They were actually unguarded, save for the chain link fence (with barbed wire on top, and the fence went 5 feet under ground) and motion sensors. If the sensors went out, they had to station guards in two man shifts until they were fixed. Not exactly an exciting place to work for 12 hour shifts. The concrete pad on the left is the underground generator. The missile silo would have power for up to two days after the power lines were knocked out. The white cone on the right is another one of those high frequency antennae.



Closer view of the silo. The white "rocket" looking thing is actually the motion sensor, and if activated (apparently rather common, picking up animals and such) it would show up on that bank of missile status indicators we saw earlier. There were also sensors on the hatch to get in the silo, which would raise more attention if tripped, and could warrant a helicopter from Ellsworth (each silo had a small helipad, and we already touched on the usually slow response time). The glass, obviously, is there only for NPS purposes and not original.



The hatch to actually get in. You had to open a smaller, blue steel hatch just in front of it to enter in the code, which would open the hatch. Once open, you entered another code which lowered a huge concrete plug below. These were purposely timed so slow, that it took about a full two hours to get in, even for normal maintenance. That way, if someone broke in, there should've been no problem responding in time.



The hatch you have to open to enter the code to get in.



The blast door for the missile itself. IIRC, it weighs about 90 tons. Also, contrary to what I would've expected, it does not simply roll open...there are explosives that react against pistons on the door, which cause it to FLY off the silo in the event of a launch. When tested, it not only went flying through the fence and into the open countryside behind it, but took the ENTIRE perimiter fence with it. This posed a problem, since the far side could end up over the missile, so the side where the door would rocket through was made to be a break-away segment. Testing in deep snow also revealed that the door would only open about half-way, so some lucky AF zoomies got to shovel the snow behind the door when that white crap fell out of the sky. Also, on the more humorous side, at some point (in the 80's I want to say), a bunch of Catholic nuns who were protesting nukes came out and tried to break through the blast door with a jackhammer. It probably would've taken weeks to actually get through. Needless to say, they accomplished little, and got sentenced to 15 years in prison after.



The missile itself, a Minuteman II, solid fuel, 1.2 MT, single-warhead missile. Actually, this one was a "trainer" that never had a warhead or fuel, but apparently caused the Russians to ask what the @#(% was going on when it was installed upon the site becoming a museum.





Pic from another site showing Russian ICBM targets in SD. This place is about right in the middle of that lower right hand portion of the main strike area.





The site is becoming fairly popular, but unfortunately they can only take about 12 people a day, due to the size of the elevator. You have to call a few weeks in advance to reserve a slot. But it's free of charge, and let me tell you, I would've paid a fair chunk of change to see what they showed us. I've been to a few national parks, like the Badlands, Grand Canyon, Devil's Tower, etc., and those were the most beautiful, but this one was probably the most fascinating. It is a perfectly preserved piece of American history, and the guides really know their stuff. The narration was riveting the whole time. If you are planning a trip anywhere near the area, or live even remotely close, go see it. It's worth the trip alone (but you have the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills, Jewel Cave, and the Ellsworth AFB museum (where you can sit in a Delta Dart cockpit and walk under a B1-B) all within about a hour of this place, so it'll be worth it regardless). I should also note that, while this one is obviously no longer in use, 3 of the 6 original huge missile fields are still in use (I remember the map he had showed Montana, Missouri, and another state still had very large, active ICBM fields). The Minuteman is still the US ICBM of choice (even if it isn't the II any more). Finally, all the info in this thread was from what they said in the tour (I actually have a 5 minute video of the guide walking us through every step of the lanch sequence, I left a lot out here), so if there are any former or current missileers out there (I know of at least one or two on Arfcom), sorry if I got it wrong somewhere.

Official site

Hope you enjoyed, and hope you consider taking a visit. I will DEFINITELY be going back someday.


ETA: Post #4,000!

Nice!

BigDozer66

Wow that's very cool.

awesome pics and summary, thanks for sharing

I'm jealous. I was there a couple of years ago and they didn't let us go down to the underground control room. There were safety concerns about the elevator or ladder.

Cool.

I had a friend who got commissioned in the USAF as a missileer.


I used to call him on the phone and make jokes like, "How's that key turning robot you're making?"

He'd get all freaked out.

Thats really cool, thanks for sharing. How long was the whole tour?

neat stuff, that had to be one hell of a stressfull job

Thanks so much for the pictures and write up!

Very cool!

They have a Titan II missile site south of Tucson that is very similar.

Mega-cool!


Thanks for sharing.


- BG

Cool!

The carpeting, furniture, and cabinetry of the living spaces look like they came straight out of That '70s Show.

Cool, Glowworm History!

Quoted: Thats really cool, thanks for sharing. How long was the whole tour?

About 2 hours or so. It goes by QUICK.

Great Post!

Very Kewl!

That the site near Wall SD?

I used to go there a lot after it was shut down, and before the PS took it over.


It is right off the interstate.


Aviator

Thats really cool thanks

Awesome write up man!

Thanks for the time and effort.

 That was really good to see.  Great pix

 Thanks for posting.

Quoted: That the site near Wall SD? I used to go there a lot after it was shut down, and before the PS took it over. It is right off the interstate. Aviator

Yup, real close to Wall, only a couple hundred yards from I-90.

Great write up. Thanks for the free tour !

Thanks for posting that.  Very interesting

Thanks for the pictures.

Great post!   Thanks.

That is, literally, awesome.  To me, it definitely brings home how scary nuclear war is.  Imagine that - you're the guy who is going to launch nuclear weapons at another country should the need arise.  You're trusted with this huge burden of responsibility.  You understand that you're most certainly in the enemies sights.  You know you're going to die if it gets hit with a nuke.  That's the definition of scary, in my opinion.

group buy???

Do we still have active places like this or are they all closed?

WOW!  

They did a Damn GOOD job of replicating the set up in the old 80s "Wargames" movie:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReJ3RltihME

Very very accurate depiction for a movie!

ETA:

Holy shit!  I just realized its "Mr. Blonde" from Reservoir Dogs  and John Spenser from the libtard president TV show (West Wing) on there!

Wow, that's sick.

Thanks for the pictures.

Outstanding debrief.  

It really is a miracle that nobody on their side or ours ever launched one just for the hell of it.  Fascinating stuff.   So much work and brilliance and money spent on something that would truly cause TEOTWAWKI if ever actually used.

How close did they figure a strike would have to be to disable a control center?

Did they talk about how an entry team would try to breach it if a renegade missileer ever tried to launch unauthorized?



If I lived near there, I would mark it down as my own personal bug out location if TS ever HTF.

1985-1986 I was a security policeman stationed at Whiteman AFB, MO.  I spent many hours on the silos providing security when alarms were down due to lightning strikes or other problems.  I have been upstairs at the launch control centers but never downstairs.  Side note,  I was on a different silo when protesters and 60 Minutes TV got arrested breaking onto another silo.  Mike Wallace got  jacked up by a fire team with a peacekeeper armored truck pictured above with a M60 manned on top.

Fabulous thread.  Many thanks...  

Quoted: Do we still have active places like this or are they all closed?

We most certainly still have them.  CO, WY, SD border area.  

nice

AWESOME!

COOL!

My dad used to work in those in south dakota.  This was well over 30 years ago though.  Great pictures

ICBM: Because sometimes the only way to get any peace is to make sure everyone knows to leave you the fuck alone.

Quoted: 1985-1986 I was a security policeman stationed at Whiteman AFB, MO.  I spent many hours on the silos providing security when alarms were down due to lightning strikes or other problems.  I have been upstairs at the launch control centers but never downstairs.  Side note,  I was on a different silo when protesters and 60 Minutes TV got arrested breaking onto another silo.  Mike Wallace got  jacked up by a fire team with a peacekeeper armored truck pictured above with a M60 manned on top.

They said there once was a group of nuns that tried to get through a silo blast door with jackhammers, and only got a 15 year prison sentence (OP has since been edited to add this story). This wouldn't be the same incident, would it?

BTW, how did you like it? I've always thought it would be an awesome job, and would consider it if the AF guarenteed MOSes after my current enlistment is up. Thanks!

Very nice...

Sweet.

Quoted: WOW!   They did a Damn GOOD job of replicating the set up in the old 80s "Wargames" movie: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReJ3RltihME Very very accurate depiction for a movie! ETA: Holy shit!  I just realized its "Mr. Blonde" from Reservoir Dogs  and John Spenser from the libtard president TV show (West Wing) on there!

When they were doing Dr. Strangelove, the military wouldn't let the guys doing the movie examine a B-52 bomber because it was still classified.

They tracked down every single photo of a B-52 that had been published and assembled the set as closely as they could. It was so realistic, that the military got pissed and thought someone had broken OPSEC and let them onboard a B-52 to copy it.

And when they were filming Red Dawn, the guys transporting one of the T-72 tanks they'd assembled for the movie were spotted and followed by two CIA agents who demanded to know where they'd gotten a Soviet tank.

Quoted: Quoted: Do we still have active places like this or are they all closed? We most certainly still have them.  CO, WY, SD border area.

He showed us a map of which big fields were closed and which were still in operation (3 out of 6). Can't remember the states.

sweet!

Very cool!


I learned alot reading your post, thanks!

Quoted: How close did they figure a strike would have to be to disable a control center? Did they talk about how an entry team would try to breach it if a renegade missileer ever tried to launch unauthorized?

Thanks

I don't remember what he said specifically, but I got the impression it was around a mile or so (maybe a few), or you were toast. It seemed like we depended on Russian missiles not being accurate for lanch crew survival (again, didn't really matter, eventual death was certain regardless).

The didn't talk about breach teams (THAT would be interesting...), but they did say that, thanks to the 2 hour timer, their launch command could be overrided in the event of a rouge launch. After that, they're gonna either surrender after two weeks or starve/suffocate to death anyways.

HAwt.


Great post!

My grandfather used to build the missile silos.