Peer into a Missile Silo

Wall, South Dakota

From 1963 until 1991 the Delta-09 underground silo held a Minuteman missile armed with a 1.2 megaton nuclear warhead, 66 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It could reach a target up to 7,500 miles away in just over 30 minutes.

There were 149 identical silos, missiles, and warheads in western South Dakota alone -- the idea being that, if we had enough missiles, spread far enough apart, we could vaporize someone even after they had vaporized us. This concept was known as "deterrence."

For 28 years a team of two crewmen was always here, underground with the missile, ready to fire it at a moment's notice. It was, if nothing else, a steady job.

The silo, 12 feet across and 80 feet deep, now has a glass roof with a dummy Minuteman training missile inside. In 1999 the silo was made part of the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, and the dummy missile and glass roof were installed in 2001.

Today, visitors are free to hop off of the nearby interstate and peer down at a replica nuclear warhead pointed directly at them. Delta-09 is the world's only preserved Minuteman II missile silo.