If you are driving on Interstate 90 in South Dakota near Badlands National Park take a few minutes and see the Minuteman Missile site. There are three places to see which are the visitor center, Delta-09 and Delta-01. They are on three different exits off of the interstate and offer different points of view related to the nuclear missiles. Delta-01 requires a reservation for the tour as the elevator can handle only 6 people at a time and you may have to go up via a ladder in case the elevator stops working. I could not get a reservation on the day I needed so I did not go into the Delta-01 site.
Delta-09 site is just off highway 90 at exit 116 and is on the South side of the highway. The site does not look anything special and in fact I am sure that in the day many people drove by these sites and did not know that ICBM nuclear missiles were only mere yards away. Delta-09 has a parking area for visitors and you can take a tour via your cell phone that is kinda cool. There are 10 stops along the way on the tour and at each one the narrator will tell you about what the item is and how it was used etc. I suggest the listening tour when you stop here. The missile site is just under two acres of ground and does not like a missile silo but more like a well area for oil. There is a gravel pad for vehicles (maintenance, security and transport all had to access the site hence the gravel pad. All kinds of security were here like parameter monitoring remotely, at Delta-01, that is less than three miles away. If there was an intrusion detected the security force could be here within 15 minutes to take care of the alarm. Security was high for these facilities and if there was maintenance needed there was security and maintenance to get into the silo. Security had to open one door to get to the hydraulic button to lift the five ton man hole cover. Before you could go down into the man hole through the cover a second set of codes needed to be entered, hence the double security. When the maintenance men when into the silo there always had to be two men and both men had to be able to see each other the entire time.
The visitor center has a very nice movie to watch which talks about the Cold War, but more interesting it mentioned the 12 almost nuclear strikes. These 12 strikes (almost) were six for the US and six for the Russians and all of them had turned out to be false. One instance in the US was when a training module was accidentally entered in the live system and the live system was showing that Russia had launched nuclear missiles at the US. Within minutes it was discovered that the error had occurred and we did not launch. One of the Russian near misses is also discussed with the Lieutenant Colonel from Russia talks about how he did not follow orders due preventing the Russian actual launch but his career was over after that incident. It sucks that he did the right thing and still lost his job. If he followed the procedures then the world would be over, I guess we need to thank him.
It is well worth the few minutes taken to view history of the nuclear missile at all of the sites of the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site.
