Arizona continued
(Charles Platt is a guest blogger)
The Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, Arizona offers the only opportunity you’ll ever have to inspect a Titan II missile close-up. It’s an astonishing memorial to the paranoid insanity of the Cold War years. The control room and its systems are protected inside a giant concrete pod with walls three feet thick, located entirely underground and mounted on giant springs so that (in theory) the vintage electronics could survive shock waves of a first strike and would still be able to launch a retaliatory salvo.
My favorite souvenier from the installation is The Titan Missile Pantry Cook Book, containing recipes to make life more enjoyable underground during long waiting periods before, and perhaps after, armageddon.
Check the museum web site for tour dates—and take note of an exciting opportunity for younger visitors: “Complete the games and activities in the Junior Missileer Booklet, and when you’re done, you’ll receive a Junior Missileer Badge and a Certificate that certifies your qualification as a Junior Missileer. It’s fun, and you’ll learn a lot too.”
Even now, fifty years after the Cold War, something about nuclear weapons encourages text that reads like a parody of itself. This of course was Stanley Kubrick’s great discovery, when he realized that Dr. Strangelove should be written as a comedy.
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Seriously though, mutual assured destruction did work. It continues to work to keep India and Pakistan from annihilating each other too. It is also why others are so afraid of Iran getting the bomb, it would mean an end to Israel's genocide in Palestine.
"It’s an astonishing memorial to the paranoid insanity of the Cold War years. "
Unlike the sanity of the latest government raison d'etre, "the war on terror."
There's no better example of the statist power grab formula than this: work into a lather, rinse and repeat.
To hell with political correctness - that is really gorgeous engineering.
don't confuse MAD with luck.
Really? I mean, I know there were a couple of close calls. But the strategy does seem to make sense to me. Sure real diplomacy would work better but then how else would the defense industry get paid?
I guess it was probably a deliberate reference, but that photo *really* reminds me of the scene when we see the Phoenix in Star Trek: First Contact.
"Paranoid insanity"?
Paranoid: "systematized delusions...ascribed to the supposed hostility of others." (dictionary.reference.com)
We only supposed that Russia meant the US harm? And wouldn't insanity have fired off those missiles?
I went to Chico State (in N. CA) and explored the underground remains of a Titan missile base nearby. Amazing sights. I would love to visit this museum and probably will sometime in when my kids are older.
Maybe I should have added that the paranoid insanity was largely bilateral, although Kennedy seems to have been more of an extremist, to me, than Khruschev.
As I wrote in my piece about Sam Cohen (inventor of the neutron bomb) on BoingBoing several years ago, there was pretty much zero rationale for development of the hydrogen bomb (to take just one example). Vast sums of money were justified by fear.
The principal difference between the Cold War and the so-called War on Terror is that the Cold War threatened to involve destruction of the entire planet. Thus far, here in the United States, the War on Terror has involved destruction of a handful of buildings, three airplanes, and a relatively small number of very unfortunate civilians. I am not downplaying the seriousness of this, but the stakes appear to be far lower.
Paradoxically, the War on Terror has justified much more extreme social policy changes than the Cold War. Even if you accept that there's a risk of a "dirty bomb" smuggled into the country, this seems trivial compared with the threat that I grew up with, of the complete destruction of global civilization, followed by nuclear winter. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. We really didn't know if we would wake up the next day. A girl I used to know talked seriously about surrendering her virginity if we received a "four minute warning" of nuclear attack. A man I knew in the USA built his own fallout shelter.
Yes, I call that paranoid insanity.
To be fair, the balance of power did exert constraints on American foreign policy that are sadly lacking today.
The Titan Missile gets the fake tilt shift treatment.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62463008@N00/108481965/in/set-72157604055509136/
My father-in-law used to be a docent at this place. It's incredible to see the engineering that must have gone into one of these silos. And multiply that by the 150 or so other titan missile silos scattered throughout the country.
Charles: ...fifty years after the Cold War...
Pardon me for quibbling the historical accuracy of your time-line, but the cold war did not end until the early 90's, not even 20 years gone. It did last about 50 years, if that's what you meant to say.
And just because one form of "paranoid insanity" was traded in for another doesn't mean we are safer. It could be argued that we are now more threatened from within than we ever were by the possibilities brinkmanship threatened.
Noen: I am surprised by your recent posts. Is something going on in your home life we should know about?
Just because we survived it doesn't mean it was a good and successful practice. Without the Cold War, we would not have had the military industrial complex come into power, which is still pulling the strings of world powers and may yet bring about apocalypse.
I'm gonna agree with Charles here, and call Asfinkter a snardpicker.
It was Paranoid Insanity, on both sides (and for the rest of us). The escalation led to completely unwarrranted posturing on both sides. The rest of the world cowered under the image of fingers hovering over Big Red Buttons, and feared hastily (or automatically) made decisions leading to global armageddon.
Paranoid Insanity is the least of it.
Could just be the arching rivets on the missile, but this thing reminds me of a cathedral.
Actually you can get pretty close to a Titan missile just off of I-95 SB in Georgia. It's on "Confederate Air Force Pad No. 1" and can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40992254@N00/2156812600/in/set-72157603606502315/
It's right next to a Krystal fast food restaurant. Mmmmm. Krystal...
Bear in mind that no one really knew whether those giant springs supporting the massive underground concrete bunker would really protect those vacuum tubes in the launch electronics, if a Soviet missile cratered nearby. It was all hypothetical, all posturing, all the product of Rand game theory, which in turn was based entirely on total mutual distrust. "We cannot trust the other side to be sane" was the underlying basis. But in reality of course even power-crazed world leaders of the period were quite sane enough to avoid nuclear war, because, naturally, they wanted to hold onto their power.
One could speculate that the statesmen really knew this. One could further speculate that they became more panicked by the idea of terrorist attacks because they weren't dealing with other statesmen anymore. People in DC were now targets *themselves,* menaced by religious extremists who had proved they were capable of just about anything.
Maybe that's the real reason Bush looked so worried when he was informed about WTC. "I could be next," he may have been thinking. With good reason.
Phikus: nty.
@ #1:
If Iran does get the bomb, would you mind if we strapped you to it?
After reading Arkizzle's post, which I totally agree with, I feel I should explain that my quotes on "paranoid insanity" were because I was quoting, and not because I disagree with the term or wanted to cast any ironic light upon it. I was just saying that it is still going on, albeit in a different form, so we shouldn't congratulate ourselves that it all worked out because we are all still around. Anybody remember "Duck and Cover"?
Btw, the pict reminds me of the end of Beneath The Planet of the Apes.
MDH: ?
"I guess it was probably a deliberate reference, but that photo *really* reminds me of the scene when we see the Phoenix in Star Trek: First Contact."
Same here, so I had to look it up. In the story line, the Phoenix was launched from a missile complex in Montana using a rocket they called a Titan V, but if you look at the launch in First Contact, it appears to be a Titan II. The similarities aren't all that surpsing now. :->
I looked up the Titan V, which was apparently never built.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_V
For all the Star Trek fans, or just as a point of general interest, the movie First Contact was filmed, in part, at the Titan Missile Museum. The missile on display there was used as the Phoenix rocket, and the launch control center was used as well. If you visit the museum, they have a small exhibit on the movie, including a page of the script associated with the scenes that were filmed at the museum.
They don't sell the cook book at the museum any more, but you can get another book which I thought was pretty cool. It's called the Atomic Cocktail Party and Trivia Book. The recipe for the Titantini is pretty good.
This image looks a lot like the space rocket from "Utopia" episode of Doctor Who. The one that Dr. Yana built to save humanity at the end of the universe. Photoref?
I visited the silo over the summer. It was absolutely astonishing. The aesthetics of the missile alone are gorgeous, but there was one specific part of the tour that really struck a chord with me - when they had two young boys "turn the key" that once would have launched us into the first atomic war. Haunting, even in make-believe.
The last time I went , they had a map of Tucson area silos. If only I had my camera...
The Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, has a Titan II SLV (the converted Titan missiles used to launch Gemini spacecraft) which you can get pretty close up to.
Still, it's horizontal on a stand not vertical in the silo or on a pad.
phikus - nevermind, nothing, misread.
#14/ansonk, re: "Confederate Air Force Pad No. 1" -- the Confederates had nukes??!!!!
You mean Terry Southern, who revised Kubrick's original screenplay, and was largely responsible (with K.'s help) for all the black-comedy gallows humor. There's a bit of debate about the exact credit for each and every little thing (Peter Sellers's improvisation makes this harder), but folks are generally agreed that most of the dark war-is-hell humor comes from that crazy bastard Southern.
#1 NN
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@ #1 posted by noen
"...it would mean an end to Israel's genocide in Palestine."
You forgot to add "...and the beginning of a nuclear holocaust in Israel."
#26/jahknow We were lucky to have beaten them at Appomattox before they could launch.
Actually, the president of the Rotary Club in Cordele, GA, lobbied to get a decommissioned Titan I installed in the city. It was installed in July 17, 1969, just before Apollo 11 made its more well known contribution to space history.
Also, a correction. I originally stated it was off of I-95 SB. It's off of I-75 SB in Georgia.
The first world war was a ghastly process of attrition - unthinkably atrocious when contemplated today. But nobody knew how to win a war any other way. Same thing with MAD.
There may be an alternative to MAD concerning nuclear weapons in the Middle East but if certain people had their wicked way with Neon I suspect he would die of boredom rather than anything else.
You know, we're really going to miss the good ole days of the Cold War, back when the capability to cause megadeaths was in the hands of (relatively) sane and predictable sane nation-state actors.
The 2001 anthrax attacks (apparently a PR stunt by a psychotic US bio-weapons researcher) are mere foreshadowing of the genocido-licious wonders that await us in the 21st century.
As we speak, a bright young boy who saw his family killed in Gaza/Chechnya/Baghdad/Pakistan is thinking about becoming a microbiologist ...
The Cold War is the perfect example of 'just because you can doesn't mean you should.'
It's not the military or moral aspects that I'm thinking of: it's the fact that the bomb was the most perfect form of control-by-fear that any politician could dream up.
MAD as it all was, expensive as it all was, the US had never seen a period of grey-suit conformity as complete as the 50s.
Both superpowers used fear to reward their cronies and oppress their enemies. In the US, a drunken McCarthy terrorized the left. In the USSR, polical clamp-down was so thorough that even a Nobel-prizewinning physicist was gagged. On both sides, inhuman experimentation and technology of death grew by leaps.
While they claimed to be sworn enemies, it seems doubtful that both sides didn't realize what they had and cooperated in extending it for as long as possible...
... while an entire generation waited for the signal to duck-and-cover. Until it wised up to what a cynical farce lurked inside that instruction.
I'm not entirely certain that the Cold War ever really ended. Sure, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin Wall fell, many of the former Soviet republics are now independent nations (Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) as are the puppet states the USSR once controlled (Poland, Latvia, East Germany, Estonia, Hungary, etc.). But Vladmir Putin and the KGB mindset are still a major force in Russian society, Cuba and North Korea cling precariously to the ideology of the Cold War, and now reports have surfaced that slave labor camps/gulags are thriving in China (where massive prisons serve double-duty as organ banks).
The Western "Free" world has evolved into a totalitarian surveillance state that keeps close tabs on its "free" citizens, arrests and tortures prisoners without trials or due process, and all the while turning a blind eye to the similar crimes of the countries formerly hidden safely behind the Iron Curtain.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have any nostaglia for Duck and Cover drills, Missile Command videogames and paranoid end-of-the-world scenarios, but like Charles, I'm not at all sure we're safer than we were during those civil defense days. I welcome any moves toward nuclear disarmament, but question why the U.S. takes such a hostile stance toward developing countries that try to defend themselves against frighteningly plausible nuclear threats (e.g., Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India), while ignoring other countries (e.g., Israel, South Africa) who have had nuclear weapons for much longer and were/are under the command of the same kind of paranoid maniacs who may not hesitate to push that dreadful button if stressed by unforeseen circumstances.
hey who's up for a game of Three Nukes?
fwiw I took my wife and kids to the museum about 2 years ago. Of course I'm a tech geek and my wife was wary - but it was really cool to go on this tour and they all loved it.
The thing I remember the most was that the actual device that verified that the launch code was authentic was hardwired into the fuel feed line right at the rocket motor....that and of course if you're paying attention you'll notice that the big heavy door is welded in place half open so that compliance with SALT can be verified from space....
phikus
"Noen: I am surprised by your recent posts. Is something going on in your home life we should know about?"
Thanks for your concern. I'm unaware of anything that has changed, though I'm open to input. What has you alarmed?
I'm trying to be more honest, direct and clear with less bitchyness and trollish behavior. So in the Aurora Borealis thread I was very honest, I thought that came out well. Here also it's my honest opinion, or impression, that MAD did seem to work out ok. Same with the thing about Israel that some have reacted to. At first I thought "Well, that's a bit trollish." but then, it really is my opinion that's what we, the US and Israel together, are doing. We are conducting genocide on the Palestinian people.
It won't stop until the Palestinian people are exterminated, you know, like what we did to our native Americans. The only possibility for ending it is if Iran got the bomb. It is only when the bullies who rule over us are threatened by equally powerful bullies that we peons can enjoy a little peace. Or... so it would seem to me.
"The Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, Arizona offers the only opportunity you’ll ever have to inspect a Titan II missile close-up."
Er, no:
http://web.mac.com/jimgerard/AFGAS/pages/address/n-s/nnewyhos.html
Noen:
My concern is that I have seen your comments seem to take a turn in general toward speaking in absolutes recently. I find this alarming since in the past I have respected your opinions greatly and found myself agreeing with them 99% of the time. Perhaps cushioning your opinions with "I believe that..." or "In my experience..." would help get your points across without coming off so contentious. That's just my $.02 =D
I agree about what Israel and the US Govt. are up to, but I don't think the solution is nukes for Iran. I think the world needs less WMDs, not more. More means more possibilities that something can go wrong; which can mean that something eventually will, if you apply the "law of averages." Anything careless or unthinking with even one of them will cause not only irreparable harm to lots of human beings and animals, but also our fragile ecosystems, as evidenced in places where they have been detonated before. A balance of terror just means more terror for the world.
Imho, the US could change the situation in the Middle East drastically by simply halting our backing of Israel's continuing aggression against its neighbors. There are many better and far more lasting diplomatic options that could and should be put on the table. Iran has also acted like a bully to its neighbors, so, as much as I hate to agree with US foreign policy, I believe their getting the nuke would be disastrous for the world.
Fiddy@34: Nicely put.
Ok, thanks for that. I'll try to do that a bit more. I think what happens is that I get tired of all the "it is my perception that.." and similar language. Especially when I get stressed and I probably have been lately.
Regarding the US and the MidEast... I think you're right.
Noen: You rock!
JayReeder "As we speak, a bright young boy who saw his family killed in Gaza/Chechnya/Baghdad/Pakistan is thinking about becoming a microbiologist ..."
The White Plague is somewhat close. After reading it, you can recommend it to friends. If one says "The author also wrote Dune." be sure to reply "Never heard of it."
always thought The White Plague was a Screwfly Solution ripoff. Kinda.
> Screwfly Solution
Q.v.:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/sheldon/sheldon1.html