Saturday, March 22, 2008

 

Ground Zero

I grew up during the "Cold War." Worse, due to my father's job, I ended up living most of my life in places that were targets. Western South Dakota really isn't a place you would think of as having any strategic value, the Soviets weren't going to take out Mt. Rushmore because they didn't agree with what it represented.

But it was a target in the Cold War. Ellsworth AFB (my hometown, as much as a military installation can be somebody's hometown) was home of the 28th Strategic Bomb Wing, a double wing of B-52 G and H model strategic bombers. With a portion of this wing on permanent alert, it was hard to ignore the fact that though nobody was shooting at anybody, we were in a real war.

I would go to the theater on base and see that the rows at the back of the theater were reserved for bomber alert crews. Special traffic light adorned intersections, when flashing, you yielded to alert trucks. These would have been manned by technicians, the men who made the planes fly, who made the weapons do what they were supposed to do.

The air crews, of course, were confined to a facility about 90 seconds from their aircraft. The men who would fly the planes if "the balloon went up" weren't allowed to go to movies or drive alert trucks around the base. Their families could come to see them, but only for short periods of time.

The alert pad was only a few miles from my house, when we lived on base and when my family bought a home as my dad prepared for retirement. I lived a good portion of my life miles away from bombers armed with nuclear weapons, ready to take off in 90 seconds and deliver their payloads. That alert pad was a target. The flight line was a target as all of the aircraft on in could be fitted with nuclear weapons in short order. The nuclear weapons themselves, kept in a remote corner of the base, behind a truly intimidating level of security were targets.

Ellsworth AFB was also home to the 44th Strategic Missile Wing. Dad being in bombers, my knowledge of that portion of the base's mission are not as detailed. I do know that a large number of Minuteman II missiles were in silos all over Western South Dakota. I would see the silos and Launch Control Facilities on drives to go hunting or to enjoy other activities the region had to offer. Each of these silos, each of these LCF's were targets.

The base would preach Civil Defense, how to prepare ourselves in the event of a nuclear attack. I would read this stuff and believe it. I read about the things to try to do to avoid the nuclear fallout that would occur in the event of a nuclear attack.

Fallout was the radioactive particles created by a nuclear blast. Basically, a nuclear bomb would explode and the dirt in the area, now radioactive, would be thrown into the air. It would eventually settle back to earth. It would land on the ground and in water making food gathering pretty difficult. Keeping yourself free from radiation would be difficult but not impossible.

First, you'd need a place that could shield you from radiation. This was simple enough, large amounts of earth could shield a person from radiation. Then you'd need food and water in this place so it wasn't contaminated.

After my family moved off base, I had a bedroom in the basement. My plan, in the event of a nuclear attack, was to fill the window wells with dirt, place lot of clothes on my loft bed, put my mattress against the loft and have the family live under there until the radiation levels died down. My mother grew up on a farm, there were always large amounts of food stuffs in our house. Take the food to that location with us, collect some water, live under my bed. It wouldn't be easy, it would suck, but we'd survive. It seemed like a workable plan.

A one kiloton nuclear detonation would vaporize everything within a five mile radius. I lived less than five mile from the alert pad. While I don't have access to any Soviet nuclear attack plans, I'm pretty confident that at least one missile in the 1 kiloton range was targeted on that particular location. Considering the hundreds of nuclear weapons that would have been targeted on the rest of the base and Western South Dakota as a whole is somewhat beyond my comprehension.

I was 16 when I realized that if shit went down, I was dead. I was dead in seconds. I was dead before I had any idea of what was even going on.

The plus side was that I wouldn't suffer. I wouldn't have to look for food and water that had acceptable levels of nuclear contamination, I would be vapor. That would be it for me.

That's how I grew up, in the shadow of doom and death and utter destruction. It came pretty close a couple of times when I was in junior high and high school. I really don't like to think about how close.

I moved on, attended college in a "low threat" area. The Cold War ended. Apparently we won. And while the threat of global annihilation isn't the same as it was for me growing up, I have a pretty good feeling that I'll see a nuclear detonation, one out of anger, in my lifetime.

Hopefully I'll be really far away from that detonation.

Or at ground zero.

BOJ

Comments:
I'm with you, GZ or as far away as possible. Twice while I was growing up my dad had jobs related to nukes. We lived in Nevada for a year and he rode a bus 70 miles out into the desert every day where he worked for a company that designed and built the electronic components for the things. Before the ABM program was killed, he worked at the ABM site near Langdon, ND. There's this huge concrete and steel pyramid sticking up out of the flatness of the Red River Valley that was built to withstand a direct nuclear attack. It was meant to house war operations and be a waiting out the fallout safe shelter for just a handful of "strategically important" people. My dad was on that short list of people, but I doubt that his wife and four kids were. When I was ten I understood things like global wind currents and where the good spots on the planet were to wait out nuclear fallout and what kind of food was safe to eat because I heard my parents talking about it. Growing up in this atmosphere marks you whether you realize it or not.

t1g
 
And here are people like myself, who are fascinated by history and these type of weapons yet I've never felt I was in any immediate danger during the tail end of the cold war.

I felt in more danger living in Los Angeles, in a major earthquake zone, where the good people that control the power generation decided it was a good idea to build a few nuclear power plants on cheap land in areas not overly populated... they all happened to be right on one of the largest fault lines running through North America!

So though I've never felt that missiles were ever headed my way, I always wondered when the fault (which is LONG over due for 'the big one') would give way and we'd have radiation leaks that blow into the Metro on the Santa Ana winds and poison 20 million people, including myself.

Quinn
 
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