TRAVEL: The Titan Missile Museum: Duck and Cover

"Duck and cover!" Baby boomers share this common experience of the Cold War:  survival drills to protect us in case of nuclear disaster,civilian defense sirens being "tested", and that yellow and black sign glaring at me from the comfortable buildings of my little town world.

 

At 12, I read the apocalypse novel On the Beach, and walked around in a daze for a week as the reality of "mutual assured destruction" completed my removal from childhood.

I sadly packed my favorite doll away, and never played with her again.  Quizzically I gazed at everyone living their daily lives, seemingly unconcerned that the world could end. How could they go on like nothing was wrong? After a week, I couldn't stand all the adults bugging me about missing homework, and went back in life participation mode.

The price of denial was very high.  I became a "selective forgetter", expert at pushing away newspaper headlines, and other "inconvenient truths".

Oh, well. It's a sort of Fifty First Dates life strategy,the movie in which the young woman has amnesia and every date with her boyfriend is like the first. 

We took a child with us on our visit to the Titan Guided Missile Museum, and my heart wished to shelter him. I pondered whether this reality would enter his, or the veil of childhood would save him for a bit longer. 

 The 60's-styled guide (long ponytail, aging hippie) described the way it all would work. Once the launch code was entered, no action on earth could stop the detonation that would occur too soon in some enemy city far far away.  

underground view-Titan missile silo

 The desert surface lay flat and burning,and beneath, harnessed and chthonic, mad ruin beyond biblical was waiting, the darkest guardians ever created.    

top view-missile in silo

By 1962, the United States had 54 missiles with nuclear warheads that could be launched and detonated within 35 minutes, each destroying 900 square miles upon impact. This was the Cold War, unreal and real. No existentialist could have redefined absurdity so accurately.  

 "Mutual assured destruction" (MAD) was a paradox of standoff and truce. Perchance, a witch's potion that dissolved power, retaliation, and revenge in meaningless complementary destruction and leave the whole earth for poisoned corpse.  

Ploughshares data from website, 2014 approximate count

 The glass-half-empty report on The End of the World has several options to choose from: earthquakes, environmental collapse, mud n'flood, accidental nuclear detonation.

Today, I live so joyfully in dailyness. As I walked through the museum, I thought how successful my denial has become, and how much I need it, and how well I've built my shelter.