Often he stopped just to wonder about the runoff that seemed to bleach the color out of the grass and soil-dead spots spilling out from under the edges of a government-issued chainlink fence. During that time Jensen drove by that 2-acre plot of land in the middle of his ranch, stopping at times to think about the missile buried there. One of the missile silos was a few hundred yards from a school. On the contrary, they were told that living a half mile from a missile silo was no big deal, that their cattle could graze on pastures nearby, that they could get close to the fence. With a few exceptions, they were not asked to move or relocate. People living in the missile fields were to pretend that they did not notice the chainlink fences, the high-frequency antennas, or the lumbering Air Force trucks. Never before had the military permanently implanted its weapons amidst the population and expected life to go on as usual. This is how some Americans lived the Cold War. For three decades those missiles remained underground, cloistered on constant alert, capable of delivering their payload-a 1.2-megaton nuclear warhead-to target in less than 30 minutes. Air Force buried 1,000 Minuteman missiles across tens of thousands of square miles of the Great Plains. Actually they would have a lot coming to them. If the Soviets wanted to pick a fight (something this missile was supposed to ensure they did not 2 THE MISSILE NEXT DOOR do), they would have something coming to them. Inside the fence the land was barely distinguishable from the surrounding plains-a few antennas, level ground, and a concrete silo lid were the only markers of Armageddon. The small plot of land required for the missile-just 2 acres- was protected from the world with an 8-foot-tall chain-link fence. From 1963 to 1994 a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was implanted there, buried some three stories belowground in a silo, a concrete shell hardened to protect it from a potential nuclear attack. government in perpetuity, for national defense. More than thirty years earlier his father had signed that particular plot over to the U.S. The handful of men standing with Jensen cheered and applauded.1 Technically Jensen was not detonating anything on his land. A few hundred yards away a plume of concrete dust spread into the air with a poof and then fell back to earth. It was a clear, crisp morning when he pushed the button that set off a large underground explosion. He blew up a piece of his ranch land-the same land that his grandfather had homesteaded nearly 100 years earlier. UG1312.I2H43 2012 358.1'75482097309045-dc23 2012003666 For my parents and of course for Brian Contents Introduction: A Strange New Landscape 1 1 Ace in the Hole 15 2 Selling Deterrence 30 3 The Mapmakers 49 4 Cold War on the Range 77 5 Nuclear Heartland 111 6 The Radical Plains 137 7 Dismantling the Cold War 168 Conclusion: Missiles and Memory 200 Abbreviations 209 Notes 211 Acknowledgments 283 Index 287 Introduction A Strange New Landscape O n August 4, 1996, Paul Jensen did something he never thought he would do. Intercontinental ballistic missile bases-United States-History. Includes bibliographical references and index. The missile next door : the Minuteman in the American heartland / Gretchen Heefner. T HE MISSIL E N E X T D O OR THE Missile Next Door w The Minuteman in the American Heartland GR ETCHEN HEEFNER HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2012 Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heefner, Gretchen. Table of contents : Contents Introduction: A Strange New Landscape 1 Ace in the Hole 2 Selling Deterrence 3 The Mapmakers 4 Cold War on the Range 5 Nuclear Heartland 6 The Radical Plains 7 Dismantling the Cold War Conclusion: Missiles and Memory Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Index Citation preview
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