the cold war revisited

The lone remaining (of 50-some) Titan Missile Silo site is near Green Valley, south of Tucson.  They offer a 30-minute tour during which you learn much about the political confrontations leading to the Cold War, then a walk into the silo to view the last Titan.

This lady is standing in the control room just in front of the desk where the commander would launch a missile if necessary.  Manned by only a half-dozen soldiers, they would not have known whether it was safe to emerge after a launch because there was no communication with the outside world, apparently.  We found that from the time the order was received to launch it took but 58 seconds to go through the checklist and get the missile out of the silo.  Here it is from above:

The color is influenced by the acrylic cap over the missile, the sun behind us, etc.  And not the place you want to be standing during a launch.  Here it is from the inside of the silo:

I'd forgotten or didn't realize how chilling the cold war was.  It was Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as coined by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, I believe, terminology that meant that neither side really wanted to start a war because it meant death to all.  During the early Reagan administration a pact with Russia led to all of our silos but this one being blown up and filled with concrete.  The remaining missiles were used for launching satellites, the Gemini program in particular.

Inside the silo the security includes "hardened" doors and barriers that cannot be blown up from the outside.  One of the doors we went through, a foot thick and probably 10' x 10' weighed 6,000 pounds, with 1/4" clearance on the floor that would be a problem if the door were sagging, but it never will.