Threads 1984

Some of you may have seen this film but I’m sure nearly everyone I know from my home town will have. In fact most people in the UK will remember the Sheffield set nuclear holocaust film.To the point of the post we went to something I’ve wanted to see for years. The Minuteman site. You get to go down to the “bunker” and see the switches and buttons and get a great talk on how it all worked, minus some still secret stuff but mostly its all declassified. You can see a missile in the launch site. These are the ones you see on all the movies where the lids slide back. The “bunker” thing has all the non-descript building on the surface but that look just like the movies and you get to see it all. Jim, the guy that showed us round actually worked down there and did it for many years. He was a really interesting guy and had some good stories on things and not surprisingly knew all the answers to my silly questions mainly based on rumour and films. We knew a little about how it all worked after visiting the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH when we were staying with Sean. This on is real though unlike the one there.In the photos I’ve put an arrow on to show the keys….needed to be turned within 2 seconds of each other. Was it possible to do one and run to the other? I think so. No doubt there was some other mechanism to prevent that. They did actually have an escape tunnel in case they could not open the door but they thought if they could not open the door they’d be dead anyhow. The “bunker” was only 30 foot down and that not very far under a direct hit. I remember long lift journeys in the movies….not true for that part. There was a set of ladders down as well but to the wrong side of that massive door. To use the escape tunnel you needed to unbolt a big manhole and then dig yourself out though 30 feet of sand to the surface. They tested it once in all the years of the system….its not easy to do. If you are wondering the 1000 missiles is now 450 minuteman 3 not minuteman 1 like in this site. So there are still guys in the ground in the same type of place with more modern buttons and switches. They even have TV down there…..Other photos of the Corn Palace…..exciting….not really.The minuteman site is VERY busy in RV’ing months which is most of the year. Its damn annoying that the bloody massive RV crowd take over everything and book 12 months in advance for campsites. This is first come first served so that’s good. Its not signed on the highway for that reason. Its exit 131 on HW 90 in South Dakota. The strange photo at the end is of migrating geese. They’ve been keeping up with us.