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Nuclear Missile Site

4/30/2019

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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.
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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.
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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.
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Left, rails for moving concrete blast door, Right, missile site with sensor tower.
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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.
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The Ruins of Clopper Mill

4/24/2019

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The ruins of Clopper Mill in Germantown, Maryland, have an interesting history, and you can read the full version by clicking this link. In a nutshell, the original Mill was built and improved in the late 1700s to harness the energy of the waters of nearby Seneca Creek. In the early 1800s the Mill was sold to a successful businessman and local Maryland personality, Francis Cassatt Clopper (hence the name Clopper Mill), who expanded it to a height of 3 stories. The mill remained active until the late 1800s when steam-powered milling made mills like Clopper Mill obsolete. The mill was destroyed by a fire in 1947. The land on which the mill sits was purchased by the State of Maryland in 1955 and is now part of Seneca Creek State Park.

The first interesting thing about Clopper Mill is its role in the story of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, when John Wilkes Booth killed President Lincoln, a member of Booth’s group, George Atzerodt, who had been tasked with killing the Vice President Andrew Johnson, failed in his deed and fled from Washington. On his way to a property owned by his family in Germantown, Atzerodt, who knew the miller working Clopper Mill, stayed for the night in this building. Atzerodt was later apprehended and hanged.

The second interesting thing about Clopper Mill concerns the road that runs right next to it, Clopper Road. Clopper Road was built roughly along an early Native American trading route, and back in the 1970s it still was a country road. While driving along Clopper Road in 1970, singer-songwriters Billy Danoff and Taffy Nivert had the inspiration to write a song about the countryside and its winding roads. Later on they teamed with country music star John Denver to finish the song. In doing so, they set the song in a different state, West Virginia, and now the song Take Me Home, Country Roads is one of the 4 official songs of West Virginia.
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Left, the guard rails of Clopper Road are visible behind the ruins of Clopper Mill
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Right, Clopper Mill from Clopper Road
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Left, the top floor of Clopper Mill was built with bricks. The lower floors were made out of stone.
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Left, old causeway for the stream that powered Clopper Mill, Right, Seneca Creek.

Clopper Mill lies roughly at the intersection of Clopper Road with Waring Station Road in Germantown, Maryland. The ruins of the mill are on the flood plain of Seneca Creek and have not been developed as part of the park. Unless you are willing to wade across Seneca Creek, the only access to the ruins is from Clopper Road, but it’s a bit treacherous because of the traffic and the absence of a sidewalk.
 
Old photograph of Clopper Mill belongs to the City of Gaithersburg. All other photographs belong to the author and can only be used with permission.
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Coral Castle

4/22/2019

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In the city of Miami in Florida, there is a unique sculpture garden named The Coral Castle Museum. The many sculptures in this site were chiseled out from over 1,000 tons of limestone (not coral) over a span of 28 years by a man of Latvian ancestry named Edward Leedskalnin. The bizarre environment of Coral Castle has been used as a set for movies and documentaries, and has been the object of much debate as to how this man single-handedly moved, sculpted, and erected rocks that weigh many tons.

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The Coral Castle Museum is on 28655 South Dixie Highway, Miami, FL 33033
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The photos belong to the author and can only be used with permission.
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A  New Beginning

4/21/2019

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A few years ago I started writing fiction under the pen name Phantomimic. I created a web site, and began publishing a writing blog. I self-published an e-book (The Sun Zebra), and planned to follow up with a string of new books, but then life happened. No, need to go into details, but this website and blog went dead for a few years. Eventually I regained my footing in the shores of normality, and I created another website and began writing a new blog related to my profession as a scientist. However, this website and blog remained, and I would visit it every now and then, read some past stuff that I wrote, and peer into the person I had been.

If you think that I am now going to say something to the effect that I will reactivate this web site and blog the way they used to be, that is not the case. I really don’t have the motivation to write about writing again or the energy to keep up two websites and update two blogs on a weekly basis. However, I have begun to do something in my life: travelling. I go to out of the way places, check them out, and take pictures and videos. All this stuff is accumulating in my hard drive where it serves no useful purpose, so I have decided to share it with you.

This will be an eclectic travel blog of sorts, but it won’t be regular. I may not post for weeks, and then all of sudden post several things over a couple of days. Also don’t expect a lot of words (I want to do this with the least effort) and don’t expect me to make a significant point (that’s what my other blog is for). In this blog I will just tell you about the places I visit, and I will alert my followers about what I have posted using my Twitter and Facebook accounts.

I am trying to get back to publishing the remainder of my fiction and write some more, but that is a work in progress. When I do get around to doing so, I will let you know.
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    I am a tinker, tailor,
    soldier, sailor,
    rich man, poor man,
    beggar-man, thief!

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