Admit it. You’ve always wanted one of these. Popular Mechanics says that in these uncertain times, the hardened shelter business is booming. And for those who want only the best, why not pick up this former missile silo, rated to withstand a near miss by a thermonuclear warhead?
Wired tells the story of a schoolteacher who began another career as the redeveloper of a former missile base. Mr. Peden has liberal political views and has transformed the former base into something more to his liking. “The highlight of this portion of the house is the spiritual room, formerly the missile control room. Three men manned the controls 24/7 between 1961 and 1965. Now, very deliberately, it’s filled with spiritual artifacts from all over the world.”
The Topeka base, opened in 1961, housed a gigantic Atlas E missile armed with a 4 megaton thermonuclear warhead — a weapon 200 times more powerful than the bomb that obliterated Nagasaki. By1965 it was declared outdated because it took too long to open the missile bay doors. Nearly 20 years later Peden bought the base — which had remained abandoned all that time — for $48,000.
Today, retired from teaching, Peden is one of the Midwest’s leading missile base brokers. So far, he’s sold 48 of these forsaken sites, often selling the same site more than once when new owners become overwhelmed with the commitment needed to overhaul and live in an enormous government facility. … Peden, who often gives tours of his missile base, likes to start them in the garage. Walking down the ramp to his garage door you can understand why: It’s huge.
The massive motorized bay door, which measures 18-by-20 feet and weighs more than 47 tons, gives you some idea of what lies behind it. Beautifully engineered and made from the finest steel, the door still works like a charm, even after spending years submerged under eight feet of water.
My guess is if there’s a moral in there somewhere, it’s that we expect things to work without asking why they work; and we expect to be safe in our spiritual rooms without asking where the peace comes from.
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Did it come with a remote garage door opener? Sorry, couldn’t help it.
I’d love to have a silo – I could use the room.
But, since I’m already on the DHS watch list (probably) why make matters worse?
Swords into plowshares, anyone?
j/k
The massive motorized bay door, which measures 18-by-20 feet and weighs more than 47 tons, gives you some idea of what lies behind it. Beautifully engineered and made from the finest steel, the door still works like a charm, even after spending years submerged under eight feet of water.
Reminds me of nothing so much as Dante’s version of the inscription above the entrance to Hell (H.F. Cary’s translation):
“Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.”
A room filled with spiritual artifacts? Depends on what you consider spiritual, I suppose. Hitler lined the walls of his portion of the Fuehrerbunker with his favorite paintings.
Repurposing on a smaller scale:
Forget the Trash Bag, Bring a Towel to the Dumpster Pools
On a rented lot that’s hidden from the street they have erected what they call a lo-fi urban country club: three connected pools housed in Dumpsters; a boccie court; some lounge chairs, grills and cabanas.
Viktor’s got a silo.
The holes that we crawl into can’t begin to answer why the darkness is needed. They can only tell you that there is an absence of light,that the dead should not have to dig their own graves.
Anyhow I suspect that many have had their last question be “Why?” before they descended into that spiritual room. I am beginning to favor ashes in the wind.(and garage door openers of any kind)
What would you want to salvage if you were furnishing a refuge from the Apocalypse?
For the purposes of this problem assume a space large enough to hold fuel to operate lights and appliances for 6 months and supplies for 4 people for that time and additional storage of 150 cubic feet. Would you count on electronic records being sufficient? Would they be useless after? Would you be determinedly utilitarian, filling the space with the Boy Scout Handbook and Army Field Manuals? Would you include sheet music from select composers and schematics for building your own piano?
The Britannica 11th would be assured a place in my ideal bunker. Spiritual texts? The Conservative Masoretic Jewish Bible, the King James and Book of Common Prayer, the Vedas and Buddhist Sutras. The Koran after the shaking stops I can do without.
If the retractable sun roof (ceiling) doesn’t work, all the negative energy can’t escape, no matter haw many shamans congregate and chant. Where ever is it going to go?
Missile crews were a specially selected bunch and the duty was incredibly dull, the precision expected incredibly high and the ability to fend off annoyance at the smells, quirks of personality and personal hygienic habits of the other guys there with you were off the chart. Fail safe, for operational integrity and capability against a solo silo launch.
Just beware the back up LF antenna.
What they were was the ultimate psyop, a defensive ploy or at worse a retaliatory by design policy tool.
The bad spirits were probably some poor missile jockeys old socks. Just add water and let stand for twenty years. I can only imagine that made for a pretty potent cocktail.
often selling the same site more than once
Isn’t that what con-men do? If it was stocks, it’d be churning and what he’d be doing would be illegal.
Then again, who’s to fault him for taking advantage of an unlimited supply of marks?
There were a few of those silos for sale out in wheat country west of Spokane, some years back, not grain silos either.
One went begging on re-sale, I recall, the novelty had worn off.
You might fill it with water, and have a novel scuba experience.
What are the property taxes on a silo like that? Got to figure that in.
Will it protect you from a world destroying asteroid?
Out near Ritzville?
Sorta off topic but well worth the time:
From Sultan Knish – “If You Would Have War, Prepare for Peace”
Enterpreneurial possibilities:
Mushrooms, as has been done with some of the Maginot line bunkers
Primal Scream therapy / encounter group loci
Acoustic Reverberation chambers for picky audio recording specialists (great place for a some tube amps, like pre-CBS fender Bassman) Send the uncompressed audio signal over the internet in duplex.
Assuming low background flux of ionizing radiation, maybe a good place for bench testing prototype electronics.
Alternative destination for inmates of a certain tropical internment facility.
A mold for instant injection molded skyscraper models. Take a shitload of mold-release spray, and a really big crane to pull the model out and set it upright afterward.
Indoor rock-climbing practice
Themed Laser-tag park (NOT paintball)
(I’ll think of some more. Any Venture Capitalists out there?)
I feel so safe when underground
Though it’s taken me a while-o
To get used to the lack of sound
In my new homey silo
Except at night in deepest dark
I seem to hear some ticking
And distantly a watch dog bark
And Geiger counters clicking
Along ‘bout dawn, say three or four
I sometimes hear a rumble
Like opening a far off door
And distant voices mumble
And in my dreams I see the keys
Slide firmly in position
And turn in twain with practiced ease
And then the shout, “Ignition!”
It’s then I wake up in a sweat
And thank the guys who manned it
And turned away the dire threat
In times that did demand it
I’m glad that Atlas played its part
In keeping us from frying
Thanks to the crews who from the start
Kept freedom’s flags a-flying
Another good one while reading around the web tonight:
Via American Thinker – “Hating Sarah Palin – and Us” By Stuart Schwartz
Just “Crummy Bunch of Towns”, right?
I’m happy to see the Palin Derangement sufferers coming unglued. Let them demonstrate for all to see just what they’re made of. The more of it the better for Sarah.
walt/14; great stuff –never hurts to remind, lots and lots of cities got leveled in history, from the beginning of cities, actually, by barbarians –and non-barabarians –with torches all the way through four-engine bombers in thousand-plane raids in WWII. tho not a one since Nagasaki.
Out near Ritzville?
Yes, some west and north of there, I believe.
well, okay, there’s Hue and Grozny. exceptions proving the rule.
Buddy/18 –Have you seen North Philly? Or better yet, my old home town of Camden, NJ?
Or, ‘buy a house for a dollar’ Detroit? Well, if it’s any consolation, the lately-burgeoning renaissance of New Orleans provides hope. It fits as an example, since (as one might say) Katrina was hurried-up Democratic urban governance expressed as wind & water rather than greed & corruption. Rock-bottom real-estate prices, if combined with even the slightest relief from the government death spiral, will bring folks back in, sure ’nuff. In New Orleans’ case, this relief is called “Jindal” –and it’s working.
Well, I see that Buddy is again dsiplaying PCS. Palin Crush Syndrome. Sure is nice to have the Belmont Club, where a fellow can come right out of the closet and be an avowed hetrosexual.
It seems to me that there has not been this much hysteria over a possible Presidential candidate since Andrew Jackson. For much the same reasons, I might add.
If you have a moment to spare check out hillblogger3.blogspot.com. Got the start of a good discussion on nukes vs conventional .
If you wish to comment yourself, check google account, hit preview and follow instructions.
“ For much the same reasons, I might add. ”
—
Indeed, it was embarassing to observe Buddy being so openly demonstrative about his crush on Andrew.
At least it was Jackson, not Sullivan.
LOL
buddy larsen,
Gary Indiana.
Before the flood I dated a girl whose father was a retired Gary Cop. They were possibly the last white people left in town. The sign at the city line read “City On The Move.” Wags asked if the last one to move would please turn out the lights. A visitor from the British Social Democrats came to Chicago and I gave him a tour of Gary to show what intransigent union irrationality and racial politics can achieve. The place looked like Japan or Germany after WW-II with entire blocks in what was the downtown completely leveled.
Gary was ahead of its time. It was a sign decades ago of what could be in store for us.
“You’ve always wanted one of these.”
Only if they were fitted out appropriately.
http://www.hulu.com/search?query=Man+Caves
Well, what a timely item! I spent yesterday collecting data by hiking around some missile launch complexes at Cape Canaveral, most of which were closed and abandoned.
Actually the Atlas E (CGM-16E) was not launched from a silo but from a “coffin.” And in reality a large rectangular semi-underground box with doors overhead is more likely to be useful for civilian purposes than an underground silo.
The Atlas E coffin complexes and Atlas F silo sites were virtually underground villages, if not outright cities. In addition to the actual missile launch and control equipment there were tanks to store the LOX and the RP-1 fuel, tanks for pressurized nitrogen and helium, a power plant, and – believe it or not – a massive underground cistern to hold thousands and thousands of gallons of deluge water.
But running such a place is not cheap. It’s not a Quonset hut. Things have to be kept powered up and pumped out. The Atlas E’s and F’s were not decommissioned as ICBMs because the doors took too long to open but because it cost too much to maintain them. LOX and helium had to be replenished even if you did not launch, and then there was all the electric power required and the other maintenance.
I wonder if the guy mentioned in the article was the one I had to answer a letter from when I was at the Pentagon. He wrote his congressman and wanted to know location, condition, and price. It took me a day to formulate the reply and then another day to convince my management that my answer was correct. We had gotten rid of the sites some 25 years before and did not know any of that.
See, I see the difference between oriental leaning vs. this liberal.
‘Spiritual Artifacts’ collected from around the world?
For us from the Far East, you don’t need no stinking spiritual artifacts to achieve zen-like state of mind. It is all in your head.
Back in the 70′s I had an idea of putting the deterrent on the interstate system 24/7. If the balloon went up they’d park at the nearest interchange (located to a gnat’s eyelash) run the numbers and launch. I figured the Sov’s couldn’t keep track of 2-300 trailers that looked like all the rest of the trailers out there.
At least it gave me something to think about on a long trip. Would have made trips more interesting, figuring out what was a missile and what was beef.
cripes, it’s dangerous to hit the sack around here. i know for a fak that whatever one might accidentally muse about Miss Sarah in that instant before the ecclesiastical rap on the head comes down from on high, it don’t show up in print. There’s no way, the glyphs are always the same, even if you happen to be typing kinda vigorous like.
Lotm, before the flood, hoss, you is SEEN some histry, halleleujah! but jeez one really does wonder why on earth people can’t see the correalation between monopoly politics & their unions, and their monopolized manufacturing cities that look like the 8th AAF has been having at ‘em.
i guess it’s just the cost of doing business for the very few who control, profit, and dunno whut a long term civic interest is.
For ‘the people’, i guess it’s a matter of the chains being too light to bother shaking until they are too heavy to bother breaking.
Herb: Actually there was a plan to do something like that, but using railroads. There was a proposal to put Minuteman missiles on railcars and run them around the country. Aside from the horrendous security concerns and the fact that we did not have GPS to enable the launch location to be programmed into the guidance, there was the US RR industry’s propensity for misplacing much of its rolling stock. Scanning bar codes now used to price items in retail stores were originally invented to try to use in an automatic system to keep track of railcars.
And in the 70’s they came up with – and actually started to implement – the idea of putting Peacekeeper missiles on mobile launchers, which would go from one prepared site to the next, while Midgetman missiles would run on their own dedicated circular track railsystem.
“By 1965 it was declared outdated because it took too long to open the missile bay doors.”
Bull. It took a lot longer to fuel the missile.
I was told that there were three ways to open the launch doors. First, the normal hydraulic system. If that didn’t work, there were explosive charges to do it. If they failed also, then fire the missile – the gas buildup in the silo would blow the doors before the missile reached them.
One year in the early 60′s, I went to a Easter Sunrise service on the flight line at Dyess AFB (my dad was Air Force). You had to walk pass one of the Atlas warheads on display (with guards posted) to get in. Sure made you think.