[HN Gopher] US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour
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US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour
Author : sklargh
Score : 96 points
Date : 2024-05-06 19:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aerospaceutah.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aerospaceutah.org)
| aamoyg wrote:
| The one in Arizona was better and even more better with the top
| to bottom tour before it flooded.
| jf wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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).
| bragr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| chihuahua wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ucarion wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Exactly. If anyone is curious, look up the term Nuclear
| Sponge.
| somenameforme wrote:
| 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-
| nucl...
| saganus wrote:
| According to this [0] the number of warheads as of 2020 is
| 3750 which does kind of qualify as "thousands upon
| thousands".
|
| Edit: I don't think it matters if "only" 400 are land-based,
| does it? it's still "thousands".
|
| [0] https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Fact-
| Sheet_...
| knorker wrote:
| There's MIRV, so depends what you mean by "these things".
|
| But also some among these 3750 are in subs, and bombers.
|
| And as for "100 would do": Well, if they all hit their
| targets, maybe. But part of the reason for overkill is so
| that even a sneak attack that's 90% successful should
| trigger MAD. Well, I say "should", but more like that's the
| cold logical deterrence rationale.
| jp191919 wrote:
| Not a launch site, but the largest stockpile of deployed
| nukes in the world is in a heavily populated area near
| seattle.
|
| https://truthout.org/articles/puget-sound-is-home-to-the-
| big...
| neilv wrote:
| Easter egg hunt: MIL-STD pink slippers, for wearing around the
| doomsday activation room.
| neilv wrote:
| 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.)
| rtkwe wrote:
| TURN YOUR KEY CAPTAIN! Love Wargames for all it's goofy hacker
| nonsense.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And the other guy went to cut off someone's ear.
| imglorp wrote:
| After a goose chase to confirm, it was John Spencer playing in
| The West Wing. Not an actual CoS...
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Where are the giant floppy disks?
| Animats wrote:
| There are no computers in that 1960s launch control center.
| It's all hard-wired.
| jf wrote:
| 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.
| neverartful wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yes! Really interesting, and the guides are excellent. (Think
| they missed an opportunity to call it MoMAD though.)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The pink bunny slipper in the military satchel does it for me.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| This video shows a bit more in action step by step:
|
| https://youtu.be/HWZXinRwCaE?feature=shared
| neilv wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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_T
| ar...
| tshtf wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| redmajor12 wrote:
| Never mind. This is from 1978 with respect to the MX
| program (although this is quite late in ICBM deployment
| history and I think more of a specific problem for the MX-
| the "Peacekeeper" was supposed to be so accurate that it
| was reasoned that the Soviets would see it as a first
| strike weapon against their missile fields, making any
| potential US deployment necessitate an immediate soviet
| response. Hence crazy basing ideas like a network of
| underground trains carrying the missiles.)
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/07/24/
| f...
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I think I'd prefer to go instantly in a moment via nuke than
| say burn to death in one of the many firebombing raids the US
| did on Japan during WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombi
| ng_of_Tokyo_(10_March_194...
|
| > More than 90,000 and possibly over 100,000 Japanese people
| were killed, mostly civilians, and one million were left
| homeless, making it the most destructive single air attack in
| human history.
| ipdashc wrote:
| I know you didn't mean it literally, but it's still worth
| saying: They did not "go instantly in a moment". A few,
| sure. I'd assume most of them probably still burned to
| death, or were buried under rubble, or bled out after being
| cut by debris, or starved to death after being blinded.
|
| Firebombing is bad, but nukes are also really bad, there's
| no need to treat them as if they're merciful.
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| Not to mention the further many, many people that died in
| excruciatingly awful ways from the radiation
| the_snooze wrote:
| MAD makes sense if you assume the participants are rational
| and have accurate information. That's probably true on
| average in the long-run. But what bothers me is that it only
| takes one accident or miscalculation or crazy president to
| bring about the end of the world. And we've certainly had our
| fair share of close calls with bad sensor readings or
| training tapes being put into a live operational setting.
| jrockway wrote:
| Yeah, I think MAD and "launch on warning" are distinct
| concepts. If we survive the first strike, we can rationally
| plan our second strike. So training tapes being played on
| the live system won't cause us to accidentally make a first
| strike; we can still assure destruction after taking a
| first strike. (That's why there's the nuclear triad.)
|
| I think that "launch on warning" was an official policy at
| some point. I am not sure if it is anymore. I don't think
| it's a good one and it's not necessary to deter a first
| strike. The missiles are underground and at unknown
| locations in the ocean for that reason.
|
| As for crazy presidents, yup, that is a legitimate concern.
| I am not sure why we put commanding the armed forces into
| the hands of one person. (The advantage is that one person
| can decisively retaliate after a surprise strike on
| Washington. The disadvantage is that a drunk Twitter war
| can escalate to ending the world. Sigh!)
|
| As for irrational actors, that's another big problem. What
| does North Korea lose if they nuke the US? Not much; they
| don't have a huge economy as it is. It's a nice "fuck you"
| if the reigning dictator sees that the end of their regime
| is inevitable. MAD doesn't help with that at all.
|
| It's all actually pretty scary. We like to think that the
| cold war is over, but really, not all the countries of the
| world are at peace right now, so everything could be over
| in the blink of the eye and you won't see it coming. I
| guess keep all that in mind as you plan your day!
| xanderlewis wrote:
| > that's little consolation for the 200,000 civilians we
| vaporized in an instant.
|
| And they're the lucky ones.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| My grandpa was there as a Marine as soon as the armistice
| was over (he went from the horror of burning out japanese
| from tunnels with flamethrowers to that). He didn't talk
| about it much, but he sure hated Reagan and Reagan's love
| for nukes. By the time I was around his hips had melted
| away and had to be replaced. I have the Rossarie he carried
| there. I'm not really religious, but I figure if it could
| get him through a post nuclear attacked city it can be my
| lucky talisman as well.
|
| People make fun of the fifties 'just make it look like
| everyone was happy' mindset, but can you blame these
| people? He was a young Iowa farm boy. He grew up riding his
| horse to school, no cars. Then off to be a Marine in the
| Pacific (because he and everyone from his town was too
| recent of German descent to be trusted to go to Europe,
| plus the town had a German language newspaper before the
| war, which of course, by the end, no trace of being German
| was left. Only red blooded American English speakers) who
| saw the effects of nuclear war. Dude just wanted to drink a
| beer and listen to polka music on Laurence Welk.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| The longer MAD works, the better I feel about it. We're at 77
| of nuclear peace thanks to MAD. That's a pretty good record.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| On the flip side, it's pretty hard for human systems to
| keep a nine nines success rate forever.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Coordination is hard?
| swozey wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| 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.
| graupel wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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-9...
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Flight_Test_Museum#C...
| jabits wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| Recommend any good non-fiction or even fiction books that talk
| about these experiences?
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| Wow, I was there at the same time as a 46350. The Northern Tier
| was a (unappreciated) masterpiece of the Cold War.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| This kind of place was best captured by opening scene of
| Wargames:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls
| EMM_386 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > ... 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 wrote:
| For how much afterwards though?
| stevenwoo wrote:
| John Von Neumann comes up in a lot of tech topics but he had
| some monstrous opinions particularly on this - he thought game
| theory proved that USSR and USA would go to war if both sides
| had nukes and recommended the USA strike first in order to
| _win_ in the early years of USA almost monopoly on nukes.
| yencabulator wrote:
| To give you an idea of what kinds of grim circumstances this was
| built for, the seats have 4-point seatbelts!
| jabits wrote:
| Yes, we were strapped in for quite a shaking...
| robszumski wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| She was also recently on Hardcore History Addendum with Dan
| Carlin discussing the book.
| ricksunny wrote:
| 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-... ' 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 wrote:
| 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...
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