Oscar-Zero
April 9, 2017 1:47 PM   Subscribe

At this very moment, as you are reading this article, 90 highly trained U.S. Air Force Officers are on alert across a network of Minuteman III Launch Control Centers. Working in pairs, the missileers, as the officers are called, are on 24-hour shifts, or Alerts, where they await orders not to “push the button,” as it’s commonly said, but instead to “turn the keys.”
Notes from a Nuclear Tourist, via.
posted by Rumple (21 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
I've been ruined by reading my own organization's reports for flaws before publication. So, "one decommissioned silo near Wichita has even been converted into luxury survival-condos"? Neat. Wichita is not marked on the map you just showed me. Explain pls.
posted by ctmf at 2:10 PM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Is it this?
posted by Rumple at 2:15 PM on April 9, 2017


Accomplished ultramarathon runner Jim Walmsley held this position for a few years. He says of it,

"Mentally mind-numbingly boring. Learning to deal with that is probably the only skill that passed over from the job directly. I pulled the 24-hour shifts underground in Montana with my crew partner, Julie. There’s a lot of pressure to do everything perfect, dealing with Nukes, but it’s really not a complicated job. There’s a T.O. for everything, you just follow it."
posted by paulcole at 2:27 PM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


The interesting thing to me is the tension between how ludicrously easy it seems in retrospect for an accidental launch to happen, and how impossible it seemed to me at the time. (SSBN crew, not land-based).

We got so close so many times. And yet - turning your key is a different thing altogether. On a submarine, so many people could prevent a launch. Even if all the official people would go through with it, little old me in the way back belly of the engine room could simply dump the hydraulic power plant. No missile hatches, no missile. The planesman could drive off depth. Electrical breakers. Manual main ballast tank blow. Local control of stern planes. And every one of us could do the calculation: If we're the only one to fail to launch, there are others. But if we're the only ones to launch and are wrong...

I'm convinced to this day that in spite of drills and exercises "proving" the contrary, no nuclear weapon could be launched from a submarine in real life.
posted by ctmf at 2:38 PM on April 9, 2017 [25 favorites]


What's the purpose of making the apocalypse monkeys work 24-hour shifts? That seems like a thing that would degrade performance. Why not 12?
posted by thelonius at 2:40 PM on April 9, 2017 [6 favorites]


24 hours of duty, alternating sleep/awake with someone else. 12-hour duty shifts suck, with the overhead of driving home, doing your business, trying to sleep, coming in/parking/etc, all in only 12 hours. Longer shifts means longer time between shifts.
posted by ctmf at 2:45 PM on April 9, 2017 [7 favorites]


One aspect not touched upon in the article is the morbid sense of humor, like this Dominos-themed vault door mural, or the fact that Death Wears Bunny Slippers.
posted by radwolf76 at 3:01 PM on April 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


A question I've had for a while if the sign in the Wargames silo was made up by the film crew or if it was based on an actual silo:

          ANY ONE
    URINATING
IN-THIS-AREA
        WILL-BE
    DISCHARGED
posted by autopilot at 3:14 PM on April 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


When I was a kid there was this welded shut hatch in the ground. Just knowing it was there drove me nuts so I got a friend to cut it open and we went down that long long ladder and holy crap it was some kind of missile facility! It was W-74 on this map.

There weren't any missiles down there but everything else was. Pretty cool find for a teenage boy so I did a lot of reading. This was just a Nike Ajax conventional anti-aircraft site but some of the sites on that map were Nike Hercules. Nike Hercules had nuclear warheads. Yes, nuclear warheads on a surface to air missile. Oops.

I really do think we are safer now.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 3:42 PM on April 9, 2017 [10 favorites]


24 hours of duty, alternating sleep/awake with someone else

OK, thanks - that's what I was thinking was sensible. I took it to mean, 24 hours straight awake.
posted by thelonius at 3:45 PM on April 9, 2017


My sister-in-law did this in Montana for several years. It really did sound mostly mind-numbingly boring. She read a ton of books and watched a ton of dvds (still no wifi in the silos).
posted by hydropsyche at 3:54 PM on April 9, 2017


Shotwell is not himself. He has made certain overtures. The burden of his message is not clear. It has something to do with the keys, with the locks.
posted by Westringia F. at 3:55 PM on April 9, 2017 [7 favorites]


For a very scary experience watch Frederick Wiseman's 2009 film "Missile". It's about the launch control Officer training program.
posted by shnarg at 4:11 PM on April 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


Missileer; since the Cold War that's where careers go to die. Explains why you keep hearing the stories of all the fuck-ups, cheating in tests, etc. Those officers are basically fucked, and in the middle of nowhere besides. No exotic ports of call for them.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:52 PM on April 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


Josh Ritter - The Temptation of Adam
posted by MrVisible at 7:30 PM on April 9, 2017


paulcole: "There’s a lot of pressure to do everything perfect, dealing with Nukes, but it’s really not a complicated job. There’s a T.O. for everything, you just follow it."

Sir, we are at launch, turn your key!
posted by Chrysostom at 10:05 PM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


That scene always bugged me.
What did he expect to happen if he shot him?
posted by fullerine at 8:11 AM on April 10, 2017


Eh, I think you could say that in a lot of "guns pointed" situations. Flip it around - what else is Madsen's character to do?
posted by Chrysostom at 10:16 AM on April 10, 2017


Oh, yes, lets romanticize those highly trained missile control officers. Leo got it right..

(Though, hey, there's a silo about 3 blocks from here based on the wiki from Mr Yuck, neat)
posted by k5.user at 12:14 PM on April 10, 2017


Missileer; since the Cold War that's where careers go to die. Explains why you keep hearing the stories of all the fuck-ups, cheating in tests, etc.

You mean like this ?
posted by Pembquist at 10:52 PM on April 10, 2017


One aspect not touched upon in the article is the morbid sense of humor, like this Dominos-themed vault door mural...

That's at Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, the former Delta-01 Launch Control Facility for the Minuteman II program. Under the START treaty, all 450 Minuteman II Launch Facilities (silos) and 45 associated Launch Control Facilities (command centers) were destroyed with the exception of Delta-01 and the missile silo at Delta-09, east of Rapid City, SD, which were preserved for "historical purposes." They were made a national historic site. The crews basically walked away and left them almost exactly as they are today.

Fun fact: In case the "big one" happened, the crew would be sealed into the LCF. They had an escape hatch, a tunnel that led up to the surface. It was filled with sand, so good luck if you were the person who had to open the hatch. Unfortunately the hypothetical remaining missileer was SOL too, as at some point they put a parking lot over the surface level hatch.

So that morbid sense of humor was pretty spot on.
posted by Preserver at 12:57 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


« Older Top Spiders-Crawling-All-Over-Your-Monitor...   |   “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments