Science Article

"Come with me, and we'll visit a place that was once among the most closely guarded secrets in the US, a missile base from the most tense years of the Cold War.

Someday this will be my home, and we'll talk about what needs to be done to make that possible."

Tony Crossley 
Research Scientist

What would it be like to live below ground? I'd always wondered, and when I found a former Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silo for sale (on the Internet, where else?), it was clearly a unique opportunity to answer that question. Historical preservation is a motive too: I grew up in England, and have wonderful memories of visiting Roman fortifications and medieval castles. These missile silos are the castles of the Cold War, and under the terms of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, all the current generation of silos must be destroyed when they are decommissioned. There are about 1000 current-generation silos in the US, but only 27 first-generation bases like this one.

These pages will tell you a little of the history of ICBM silos, take you on a tour of our site, explain what we are doing to convert it into a home while preserving the main structure, and give you a sense of how it feels to be in a place that was built to survive attack and fight back in a nuclear war