Matt BlazeTitan II ICBM, Launch Complex 571-7, Sahuarita, AZ, 2009.
Megatons of pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4181990048
Flickr
Captured with a DSLR and a Zeiss 21mm Distagon lens. Handheld (there was no room to set up a tripod).
in 2009, I was fortunate to join a "top to bottom" tour of former Air Force Titan ICBM site 571-7, now preserved as a museum. Titan II missiles carried a 9 megaton(!) "physics package" in the "reentry vehicle" (which they assured me had been removed, but I still wouldn't advise getting them angry with you).
More ICBM photos and discussion here: https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/titans/
For over 60 years now, the world has been rigged with an elaborate infrastructure that can effectively end civilization on a moment's notice, whether by deliberate command or mistake. It's never been used.
You might find that to be reassuring evidence of the fundamental rationality of world leaders and the robustness of nuclear command and control systems. Or you might worry that our unreasonably good luck will eventually run out.
“What does a civilization-destroying weapon actually look like up close” seems like a relatively unhelpful thing to know in the grand scheme of things, yet it somehow takes something impossibly, massively abstract and pulls it down to human scale.
Diogenes Pontifx@mattblaze When the Progressive magazine published Howard Morland’s article on the workings of the H-bomb back in 1979, they explained their rationale like this: “To know how is to ask why” https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blog/1179.pdf
Kris Hardy@mattblaze 100% agreed. I, at one point, was within arm's length of a (I believe) real W87 reentry vehicle and warhead, and realising that something that small, alone, could kill or injure 4M people if it struck NYC or Moscow will never leave me.
Nonya Bidniss 🥥🌴@mattblaze Have you read Command and Control by Eric Schlosser?
@Nonya_Bidniss Yes - excellent book! (Also the film)
NosirrahSec 🏴☠️ guillotine enthusiast@mattblaze This is nightmare fuel and I think collectively we as citizens, and even just generally humans, try to ignore the looming threat we know exists 100%.
std::polar@mattblaze Interesting read. Yes, history must be shared, no matter how ugly.
Also, I counted three different Chucks being mentioned. This might mean something :)