![]() ![]() The post-nuclear life of Oscar-Zero has been more civic-minded: it has been left intact, preserved to encourage broader public understanding of cold war military history and the narrative of averted calamity. Some have been reclaimed by a new breed of developer and taken on unexpected new uses one decommissioned silo near Wichita has even been converted into luxury survival-condos for the ultra-wealthy to deploy as a hedge against troubled times and future apocalypse. The majority of the decommissioned missile sites have been destroyed - imploded and filled with sand or rubble. ![]() With the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the early ’90s, and the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the 321st was among the facilities selected for inactivation. Operational from 1965 until 1997, Oscar-Zero was one of 15 Missile Alert Facilities run by the 321st Strategic Missile Wing, its crew responsible for ten of the 150 Minuteman missiles then housed at Grand Forks Air Force Base, about 80 miles to the northeast. Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility, Cooperstown, North Dakota, 2016. Minuteman Missile Fields the areas in red remain active, while those in black have been deactivated. I’ve been granted permission to use 3D photogrammetric techniques to document Oscar-Zero for a project that will recreate the space as a life-size virtual reality installation and in this way give new visibility to our subterranean nuclear landscape. I’ll be meeting with Mark Sundlov, a former missileer who is now Museum Division Director of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. It’s a frosty morning in November, a few days after the presidential election, and I have set out from Bismarck, North Dakota, for the long drive due east on Highway 94 to the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site, a decommissioned Launch Control Center consisting of the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility and the November-33 Launch Facility. We don’t want to go there.Īudio Listen to an audio version of this article here. The geography of nuclear warfare mirrors the darker corners of our souls. Out of sight, deep below the surface of the earth in some of the least populous parts of the country, these sites of atomic weaponry are mostly out of mind. 1 These officers, many of them in their twenties, are entrusted with the responsibility to launch devastating weapons within 30 minutes of receiving the coded orders. armed services continue to maintain a high state of readiness. Although the number of missiles has been considerably reduced since the height of the cold war, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed for military superiority, the U.S. The Minuteman III Launch Control Centers are located deep underground in remote areas of North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and Montana these facilities support the approximately 450 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that now comprise our land-based nuclear arsenal. Working in pairs, the missileers, as the officers are called, are on 24-hour shifts, or Alerts, where they await orders not to “push the button,” as it’s commonly said, but instead to “turn the keys.” Air Force Officers are on alert across a network of Minuteman III Launch Control Centers. ![]() Īt this very moment, as you are reading this article, 90 highly trained U.S. Mural at Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility. ![]()
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