Fifteen years ago I helped destroy the world.
In the summer of 1991 I hitched a ride with a group from the University of Wyoming’s high school program on their way to F.E. Warren Air Force Base. Some friends of mine were in the nuclear power “class.” Somehow I was put into the sports nutrition course, but my peeps knew that I would want to take this afternoon trip from Laramie to Cheyenne.
“Before we go in to the launch control center, I need anyone who brought a camera or recording device to surrender it for the duration of the tour.” The airman was trying in vain to open a display case with a scale ICBM inside of it. “F.E. Warren Air Force Base is the command and control center for twenty launch control facilities. Each facility has an underground launch control center that can launch ten missiles, each of which has ten warheads. The warheads on the Peacekeeper and Minuteman III missiles each have a yield of 300 – 350 kilotons.” 350 kilotons? That’s more than fifteen times the destructive power of the first atomic weapon used in war. “All right, let’s go into the control center.”
The launch control center was a drab concrete pill-shaped bubble buried under the Wyoming prairie. The computer consoles along each wall seemed oddly old-fashioned for something meant to destroy the world. Very solid state. Not very James Bond-like at all. Two extremely solid chairs sat on metal rails that ran the length of the console.
“A couple of you can take a seat. Go ahead. Strap yourselves in.” I desperately wanted to sit in one of those chairs, but it wasn’t my trip, so the guy next to me buckled in. “The rails allow you to move around while seated but keep you from flying all over the place if a MIRV explodes overhead.” It would be a few more years before I saw Slim Pickens ride a warhead out of the belly of a B-52 in Dr. Strangelove, but I imagined riding out a thermonuclear rodeo at ground zero shortly after the missileer did his or her final act.
The Cold War had theoretically ended a year before when G.H.W. Bush took Strategic Air Command off 24-hour readiness. But the missileers still took their jobs very seriously. “When the order to launch comes it will come through this device.” He pushed some buttons and with a whir a paper tape came out of the console in front of the person next to me. “One person will take the code book and read the day’s code to the person who sets the cypher.” He gave that day’s secret and the boy of sixteen next to me fiddled with something and with the airman’s help ran the tape through a different machine.
“Now the launch system is ready. Here take this key . . . and one for you. Okay on three, turn the key a quarter turn clockwise. Notice how the stations are at opposite ends of the facility? That’s so one person can’t turn both keys at the same time. One. Two. Three. Turn!”
There it is. J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” But right then I, I had become death. Destroying the world seemed so simple: an order, a paper tape, a short turn of the wrist, and an agonizing wait for assured destruction.
“Do you do this often?”
“We regularly run drills on the actual equipment to keep our skills sharp. When the time comes we want to be ready. Being a missileer is a very prestigious position.” Prestige in the destruction of humanity. It was unreal.
A short bus ride later and we were standing next to metal tracks and an enormous concrete slab, the source of all of this potential destruction. A short elevator ride later and we were standing inside the Minuteman III missile silo. The floor swayed gently with each step. “Both the missile next to you and the access gantry float. This makes it less likely that one will bump into the other accidentally in the event of earthquake or nuclear attack.” I reached out my hand and touched the unnaturally smooth metal next to me. This was unreal; the source of all my mortal fear as a child was against my fingertips. I was touching the devil’s trident. “There is no warhead on this Minuteman rocket now. We’re moving it.”
Topside, the airman pointed out a large semi trailer parked near the hatch. “That’s the kind of vehicle we use to install, remove, and transport warheads.” Though he didn’t come out and say it, I got the sense that there was actually a warhead in the trailer at that moment.
After our brief flirtation with power, we were regular high school students again. We visited the mall in Cheyenne — one of the three in the state — and on our way back to Laramie, we pointed out all of the nuclear facilities along the roadside as if finding them were a game.
