Road Trip 2018 #11 – Missiles and Nebraska

When you think of South Dakota, do you think of the Cold War and missiles?  No.  Me neither.  Mr Pict, however, does.  For that reason, on the day we bade farewell to our temporary log cabin house, we headed to the Minuteman National Historic Site.

Mr Pict and I obviously grew up in the final decades of the Cold War and can remember  pretty terrifying public information films about nuclear holocaust being shown at school.  Our sons, however, don’t have that context or understanding so first port of call was to the Visitors Center.  We handily arrived just as the video was starting.  The kids learned about the use of missiles as a deterrent, about false alarms and close calls, and about “duck and cover” training.  Ultimately the only thing our youngest son could recall about the video was that “Bert the Turtle says Duck and Cover”.  Better than nothing I suppose.  You already know that I am no expert in military history having only the most passing interest in it.  I am, therefore, probably atrociously simplifying things when I write that the Minuteman programme involved constructing silos across the sparsely populated Plains states and having each silo tube house a ballistic missile.  These could be activated by staff at the control facilities.  It must have been boring to man one of these facilities, having to always be on alert while ultimately not doing much each day.  We learned that staff often studied for educational courses or spent their time reading.

We drove from the Visitor Center to the site of the D-09 missile silo which has been preserved as part of the historic site.  We could look through the glass into the silo below and see the deactivated missile within.  It was weird to imagine thousands of these things dotted across South Dakota and the neighbouring states.  We did not stay long at the site as we were being devoured by vampiric flying insects.

I am a sucker for decay and rust so we took a detour to a small town called Okaton, near Murdo.  While the town still has a population of about 30 people, I had steered us there because it is in large part a ghost town.  Like so many American ghost towns, Okaton’s life and death was determined by the railroad.  The houses were built to accommodate railroad workers and, when the railroad work moved further west, so did the people.  The railroad ceased operating altogether in the 1980s which was really the death knell of the little hamlet.  I did not venture off into the long prairie grass in search of the railroad tracks (see – I’m learning) but I did poke around the decaying, collapsing buildings, and the rusting hulks of old vehicles and rotting agricultural equipment.  I did not risk stepping inside any of the buildings but I did poke my head and camera through doorways and interiors to get a better look.  The abandoned appliances, moth-eaten soft furnishings, and peeling wallpaper were both nostalgic and poignant.

It was mid-afternoon by the time we crossed the state line into Nebraska.  That was state number 37 for me!  Sadly our route was boring and flat.  There was not even any “roadside Americana” to divert me and cause a pit stop or detour.  Our hotel for the evening was in Valentine and, while the room was spacious, it felt weird and somewhat aggravating to be back in confined quarters again.  We could have headed out to see the nearby river or waterfall but the kids were just not feeling it.  Therefore, having not done anything kid-friendly all day, we opted for dinner and a movie.  We ate at the Peppermill restaurant where the food was good and the service excellent.  Nebraska is known for its beef so Mr Pict ordered a steak which he declared to be amazing.  We then went to the tiny, two screen Jewel cinema to see ‘The Incredibles 2’ and the kids then burned off some energy in the hotel pool.  I, therefore, get to claim Nebraska but don’t really feel like I accomplished anything Nebraskan while I was within the state’s boundaries.

Back to Blighty #9 – Scotland’s Secret Bunker

Tucked away in the middle of nowhere on a road not far from Anstruther in the East Neuk of Fife stands what would once have just looked like a totally unassuming, small farmhouse.  The house, however, is a tricksy little facade because deep beneath the building – over 100 feet underground – are two bunkers, one on top of the other, each the size of a football pitch.  It was a nuclear bunker* dating from the Cold War, designed to house a regional government in the event of some sort of nuclear catastrophe.  Mr Pict and I had been to the secret bunker in Essex but this was our first time visiting the one in Fife and it proved to be much more polished.

After entering the farmhouse, we travelled down the once-concealed, dimly lit 450 foot tunnel and passed through massively thick blast doors.  Immediately inside the bunker, the space opened up.  It was clear this space had been intended to house large numbers of personnel – military, political and civilian  – and had been a huge operation to construct and create.  It was quite a labyrinth and we – the Picts plus my Mum – wiled away quite some time exploring.  Had we not had the kids with us, we could have spent even longer there reading all of the information that was provided and watching two Cold War era films.

There were a number of command centres dotted throughout the bunker.  A few had those large perspex screens for writing and plotting on, just like you see in disaster movies, and map tables with pieces that could be moved around to symbolise the locations of various things, such as bombs or troops, as are depicted in many war movies.  In the event of a nuclear emergency, this is where the location and force of bombs would have been recorded and where decisions would have been taken regarding evacuations and counter attack.  Everything in these rooms was authentic, either original to this bunker – simply abandoned when it was decommissioned – or recreated using original items gleaned from other Cold War era sites.  Obviously I have no expertise with such things but it certainly looked authentic to my untrained eye.  It all had that well worn look complete with piles of unfiled papers and other office type detritus.  I also enjoyed seeing the communications rooms, essentially a broadcasting studio operated by the BBC.  This would enable transmissions to be made in the event of a nuclear crisis and contact made with other locations, other bunkers.

The dormitories were interesting too.  There were military camp style bunk beds in large rooms, each resident allocated a tiny bit of space in which to house their possessions.  Even the beds would not have been your own as a “hot bed” system operated.  One would sleep in the bed and then vacate it when going to work so that someone on a different shift could sleep in the same bed.  That skeeves me out.  I guess material possessions would not matter much in the event of nuclear fallout but the idea of not having my own personal space would be aggravating I think.  Worse, the idea of having to share a room with that number of people in such claustrophobic conditions would drive me batty.  That said, I am sure potential residents were screened to ensure they had the right temperament and tolerance levels required for the job.  I wouldn’t have been let through the blast doors.  Up to 300 people could be housed in this bunker.  Can you imagine having to live constantly side by side with the same 300 people for years?  I am way too anti-social and introverted for that lark.  I definitely would have been left to perish.  Of course, the head honchos had their own private spaces but I definitely would not have made the cut to be one of those.

We also saw a radar room filled with equipment that had actually detected some of the last interceptions by the Soviet Union into Britain’s airspace and a medical room complete with a white coated, stethoscope wearing skeleton which my boys particularly liked.  There was also a room filled with telephony equipment.  Back in the day, my Mum had been a telephone operator using the exact same equipment as was on display so it was a blast from the past for her.  She was also able to teach my boys how the whole thing worked so that was fun.  The boys also thoroughly enjoyed getting to try on bits of uniform and – perhaps the biggest highlight as far as they were concerned – meeting the resident cat who proved to be very friendly.  We also saw rooms filled with (deactivated I assume!) weaponry and ammunition from the era and spaces housing all the engineering equipment required to circulate air and extract air.  We learned that the air inside the bunker could be completely changed every fifteen minutes using this filtration system.  Pretty nifty stuff.  The exterior of the site housed an array of vehicles from the Cold War era, a pretty impressive collection.

The Secret Bunker has earned the epithet of being one of Scotland’s top tourist attractions and I think the praise is well-deserved.  My Mum, who had been before, noted that the recent refurbishments had made vast improvements on what was there previously.  It is a highly informative time capsule of that period of history (I hesitate to refer to it as history given it was operational within my lifetime) and manages to convey something of the anxiety surrounding nuclear weaponry, the tension between West and East and the chilling atmosphere that accompanies the possibility of nuclear apocalypse.  Off the beaten track as it is, I very much recommend a visit.

 

*I think this is what Americans would call a Fallout Shelter, though perhaps that only refers to smaller scale, domestic sized shelters.