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FOIA'd Documents Give Tour of Minuteman Missile National Historic Site (muckrock.com)
v3rgEz writes: In the 1990s, during our nuclear disarmament initiative, the Congress preserved two intercontinental ballistic missile silos as historic sites. The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site is one of them, and MuckRock used FOIA to take a tour of what's publicly on display, including a Domino's Themed Blast Door and probing questions guides are told to ask visitors, including, 'Could you turn they key?'
Hang on, before you start the 10% debating and and 90% trolling about whether you would kill millions to save hundreds of millions let me get my popcorn first
how could you save hundreds of millions? any nuclear salvo would be met by a return salvo. you could kill hundreds of millions and have your hundreds of millions die anyway. winning?
ONE MAN COULD turn both keys in the activation sequence - which was NOT supposed to be do-able. During periodic testing of the control room -to- silo control links, a single man was left to activate the keys to test the wiring systems. The 2 consoles were 8 - 10 (or so) feet apart, and designed to REQUIRE 2 men to activate the firing sequence at the same time. Using 2 nails and a length of sting, the ingenious control house tech put one nail above the second key control, the second nail through the head of the key, tied the string to the second nail (key-head nail) and ran the string across the top nail and over to the second key station. BINGO! He could turn BOTH keys simultaneously - one by hand, the other by pulling on the string. When observed (caught) doing this testing, he was told to never discuss it, and the repercussions went like a silent tidal wave all the way to the top. I still don't know how this was resolved - but I imagine the key consoles were outfitted with additional locks that required pushing an actuator button or something, requiring 2 hands to activate.
redneck geek