How I (didn't really) learn to stop worrying and love the bomb (in a creepy, dark, fetish kind of way)

I was fascinated with atomic bombs as a child. Terrified and fascinated. When I was 8, I wanted to write a letter to the President to express my concerns. My mother convinced me to write a letter about some national scholars program, but I wasn't happy about it.

I watched movies about the bomb. I watched news footage from WWII about the bomb. I listened to audio documentaries about the bomb.

Did anyone else see the movie Nightbreaker? I LOVED IT. I wish it were available on DVD because I just can't bring myself to order VHS tapes that may or may not work. After I (repeatedly) watched that movie, I had a whole new fascination with nuclear testing and the conspiracies lies and abuses associated with it. I dreamed about nuclear testing--that I was hiding, running, whatever. These weren't nightmares. I wasn't scared, just fascinated. Eerily fascinated. I was kind of a strange girl anyway--I frequently had dreams of being in wars, war games, war simulations, etc.

I still can't look away from footage of bombs, even though it makes me queasy. All of that RAW POWER. We did that. Humans did that. It's amazing. Of course it's horrifying. Of course its an abomination. Of course its blasphemy against nature. But it's also unbelievable. We split nature in two. Wow.

My (step) Grandpa was a physicist back in the day and worked with nuclear stuff. I'm not sure exactly what he researched and if he was a part of all the testing that went on. I don't know if the things he knew were things he learned from being directly involved or things he learned from being a voracious reader. He once told me that pigs were used for nuclear tests because their organ structure was similar to ours and their skin, in particular, is remarkably similar. He told me about tests where they would put pigs in mailboxes and different types of shelters and set off bombs. For years, I thought maybe he was exaggerating or just plain crazy (you never could tell with him). Now, I can read about it on Wikipedia or elsewhere. I found this video online, which is fascinating, but not for the faint of heart. This quote is from a website about nuclear testing in Nevada:

"Experiments on mice, dogs, and other animals were conducted during atmospheric testing. The animals were subjected to the atomic blasts and then analyzed by biologists, veterinarians, and medical personnel. In 1957, for the Plumbbob series, pens were built near the Mercury highway to keep 1,200 swine that would be used for various experiments. They had been specially bred due to the similarities in pig and human physiology. For some experiments, pigs were outfitted in various types of clothing material, including military uniforms. For the thirty-seven-kiloton Priscilla test on June 24, 1957, more than seven hundred anesthetized pigs were placed in stations at various distances from ground zero to better understand the effects of atomic weapons on human beings."

I wish Grandpa were alive today so I could ask him more questions. At the time, I didn't know what else to ask. Today, I wouldn't know where to stop.


Because of this sordid fascination with evil, I was admittedly excited when I found out that I would be visiting a decommissioned missile alert facility as part of the new faculty bus tour this year. I mean, I was already stoked that my hubbie could come with me this year, but husband + nukes = uberexcitement.

Did you know that at the height of the Cold War, North Dakota was the 3rd largest nuclear power in the world? Or so the tour guide gold us. Russia and the United States (minus North Dakota) were #1 and #2 (though I'm not sure which was first and which was second) and then there was the state of North Dakota.

North Dakota had two missile fields with 150 missiles in each. If I remember correctly, each of the fields contained 15 missile alert facilities, so that each alert facility controlled 10 missiles. We toured the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility (now named the Ronald Reagan Minutemen Missile Site). It was part of the Grand Forks Missile Field. Do you remember the movie War Games? Grand Forks was one of the first targets in the game. Um, yeah. That's where I live now. Voted one of the best places to raise your kids. Minus the nukes of course. Why so many nukes in the Nodak? I have heard a few different reasons. First of all, the big target when these silos were built was Russia, and the shortest distance to many Russian cities was over the arctic circle. Second, since it's landlocked, it could be harder for weapons to be stolen, or accessed in the first place. Third, land was cheap and the population scarce, so there were less people to object to having nukes in their backyard. The fourth reason seems to be simple math. The current population of the entire state is 646,850. This means less collateral damage. If the missile fields were attacked, fewer people would be killed than if the fields were located elsewhere.

The facility was closed as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) of 1991, and then opened a few years later for tours. Touring the facility was simultaneously anti-climatic and overwhelming. It really looked like the props that would be used in a 70's sci-fi movie, but it was real. I actually have a picture of myself in that chair, but I got in trouble for it. Turns out, you're not supposed to sit there, and I wasn't listening when the tour guide told us that. I was too busy taking pictures and tripping out. She could have confiscated my camera, but instead made me promise not to post it online somewhere. I took a lot of pictures that I will upload another time.

The Minot AFB Minuteman Missile Field is still active. It is composed of 150 Minutemen III missiles. Each of these missile has three warheads, hence the III as part of the name. From Wikipedia, "The current Minuteman force consists of 450 Minuteman III missiles^[1] in missile silos around F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming; Malmstrom AFB, Montana; and Minot AFB, North Dakota." That means that there are 450 nuclear warheads in North Dakota, and 1350 warheads total among these three states. I don't know what else to say after that.