In North Dakota there is a museum called the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Museum comprising two sites. One is the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility and the other is the November 33 Launch Facility. These structures are remnants of a series of missile launch sites that were active during the cold war.
In the Oscar-Zero site you can visit the living quarters of the men that would work 24 hour shifts every 3 days in a steel-reinforced concrete facility 50 feet below the ground (Launch Control Center) surrounded by the equipment necessary to launch nuclear missiles.
Launch Consoles In the underground facility two men would be in charge of ten nuclear missiles. If the need to launch these missiles arose, these men would be responsible for the monitoring, targeting, and launch of the missiles. This involved both men sitting at two consoles and performing a series of tasks in a simultaneous fashion. During their 24 hour shift, the men would live secluded in the underground facility. Several crews of men rotated though the facility and remained on alert 365 days a year to uphold the nuclear deterrence of the United States. The underground facility possessed its own environmental controls and power source in order to be self-sufficient during a nuclear attack.
The November 33 site is a decommissioned missile silo. It’s most noteworthy structures are a sensor tower that would relay information to the main launch control site in case anyone trespassed at the missile site, and a concrete blast door that originally covered the missile and would be moved along rails in case its launch was necessary.
Left, rails for moving concrete blast door, Right, missile site with sensor tower.
Two views of blast door.
As a result of the nuclear weapon-reduction treaties of the 1990s and the end of the cold war, many missile sites were closed across North Dakota, including this one. However, in other areas of North Dakota, missiles sites just like these remain operational. They are all easily recognizable because they also have a sensor tower and a blast door, but these sites are the real thing. Below those blast doors are the devices that can wipe out millions of human beings on the other side of the planet. You can see many of these sites while driving down North Dakota roads. They are a few dozen feet away from the edge of the road and are often surrounded by crop fields.
The Address of the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Museum is 555 113th 1/2 Ave NE, Cooperstown, ND 58425
The photographs belong to the author and can only be used with permission.
RSS Feed
