I found this interesting so I will toss it here in the everything else forum…
I am in my mid 30’s and never heard of this until today, a co-worker (he is in his late 50’s) said he was golfing in West Chester PA near the old NIKE site. I was like what? Its pretty crazy to hear that these were all over the place like 60 years ago.
Nike-X, a late part of Project Nike which never entered full service, brought us the Sprint missile, one of the fastest-accelerating things ever built by humans. Coming out of the silo, it had about 100g of acceleration.
I didn’t know that some of these old sites were still around.
I wonder if the Vietnamese have old SA-2 sites like this.
On the Soviet side was Dead Hand, or Perimeter, their automatic doomsday system. I think the most fascinating part was this:
[quote]
The Soviets had taken game theory one step further than Kubrick, Szilard, and everyone else: They built a system to deter themselves.
By guaranteeing that Moscow could hit back, Perimeter was actually designed to keep an overeager Soviet military or civilian leader from launching prematurely during a crisis. The point, Zheleznyakov says, was “to cool down all these hotheads and extremists. No matter what was going to happen, there still would be revenge. Those who attack us will be punished.”
And Perimeter bought the Soviets time. After the US installed deadly accurate Pershing II missiles on German bases in December 1983, Kremlin military planners assumed they would have only 10 to 15 minutes from the moment radar picked up an attack until impact. Given the paranoia of the era, it is not unimaginable that a malfunctioning radar, a flock of geese that looked like an incoming warhead, or a misinterpreted American war exercise could have triggered a catastrophe. Indeed, all these events actually occurred at some point. If they had happened at the same time, Armageddon might have ensued.
Perimeter solved that problem. If Soviet radar picked up an ominous but ambiguous signal, the leaders could turn on Perimeter and wait. If it turned out to be geese, they could relax and Perimeter would stand down. Confirming actual detonations on Soviet soil is far easier than confirming distant launches. “That is why we have the system,” Yarynich says. "To avoid a tragic mistake. "[/quote]
Holy crap! Mach 10 in 5 seconds is pretty insane on so many different levels. The amount of thrust, building hardware that could withstand it, controlling it effectively, etc.
At least some of them are parks now. Coyote Hills near Fremont, CA, for example.
They’re all over the Bay Area. Treasure Island and Fort Funston (just south of the SF city limits) were Nike sites.
In Vermont we even have Atlas F missile sites, some of the only ICBMs ever deployed in the Eastern US. Weird.
Must protect the maple syrup reserves at all costs.
Y’know, it’s heresy around here, but I really don’t like maple syrup all that much. I mean, it’s ok, but not worth basing an ICBM here. Maybe a NIKE site, though.
We have one in LA where I used to ride my bike. Frankly, it doesn’t look like much. It’s just a weird platform.
-Tom
Oh now. I’m sure you have a perfectly lovely bike, Tom.
I’m thinking it’s actually a skateboard.
Thule AB, Greenland has a Nike site nearby. It’s partially flooded now, but all frozen solid. It’s underground except for some guard towers, you get in through a couple of hatches that are still open. I was stupid enough to go down the ladder without having gloves on and killed all the skin on my hands since it was so cold.
What is neat about it, like all the abondoned sites around Thule, is that they didn’t take everything with them when they shut down. So the offices still have desks with memos on them, olld phones, etc. Neat little time capsule. There isn’t a whole to see though, just a big open bay now.
I have some pictures somewhere, but they are pretty boring.
Not for us, I think.
Seconded.
Unfortunately, it looks like I didn’t take any pictures of the old offices. Or I lost them somehow…I remember them, but can’t find any. Anyway, this is the old Nike site. As I said I have a ton of pictures of everything else, but they aren’t very interesting.
The whole area is covered in a foot of ice (or more in some places), so any closed doors can’t be open.
This is the ladder up out of the bay. There are chain hoists all over the place for moving around the missiles, with a few large doors where I guess the missiles were stored.
Topside. One of the guard posts, but there isn’t much on the top, just various vents as seen here.
On the contrary, cool stuff.]
Supposedly, when the site was still active a guy died here. You get these huge storms at Thule where the winds reach over 100 mph and it blows chunks of ice around. When a storm comes through the base shuts downs and you don’t leave your building. Well story has it, one of the guys at the Nike site went out for a cigarette and got hit by some ice/blown away. At least that is the story they told us to scare us into staying inside during a storm. I kind of don’t believe it because they used to smoke inside then. Heck in the 80’s people were smoking inside the Minuteman sites.
