There is something deadly in the ground here in Montana. Not slithering or leggy things. Not lethal gases. I’m talking about missiles tipped with nuclear warheads, planted in silos deep in the ground.
At
present, the United States operates a land-based ICBM force made up of some 400
Minuteman III missiles. These missiles are deployed in hardened silos across
several states. About 150 of those deployed Minuteman III ICBMs are in the
ground in Montana, and a fair chunk of those are planted along the Front Range
of the Rockies, within an hour-or-so drive from my house. They have been there,
marked by fenced-in squares of sterilized ground, since I was a boy.
Most
days, I don’t consider them. Just over the mountains, where the Great Plains
take grasses from the foothills and carry them east as far as the eye can
travel, where the land feels wide and ordinary. It’s easy to forget what rests
beneath it. There, set cold and metallic deep into the earth, missiles tipped
with atomic warheads idle in a low electronic hum, waiting.
They
wait with a patience that outlasts generations, more enduring than memory
itself. They wait for a day no one wants to name. And if that day ever comes,
they will warm and brighten below the Montana plains and rise from the soil
like long, streaking swords. Somewhere far to the north, others may rise to
meet them, and the sky will briefly remember what the ground has been holding
all along.
—Mitchell
Hegman
There's one of those missiles within a mile of our place at Augusta. Someone once asked me if it bothered me. I told them no, if the Russians targeted it, I would be vaporized before I even knew what was going on.
ReplyDeleteThis is Large Dan
DeleteThat's the thing about the sites. They represent something almost impossible to worry about. You just can't wrap your head around it. Thanks for the comment, Dan!
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