In the 1950s, the United States military installed a series of missile silos throughout the Midwest. It was a key component of the West's defense against the perceived Soviet nuclear threat.
These silos were fully equipped with computer stations, living quarters, and military command terminals, as well as an anti-nuclear missile capable of taking down enemy nukes.
In the following years, a peace treaty mandated that all said missile bases be deemed useless by filling them with water and dirt.
However, outside one decommissioned Atlas missile base near Lyons, Kansas, the soft dirt testifies to the continued activity beneath the surface and around the large silo blast doors floating above the hidden military compound.
A small family of raccoons live here. The father collected pieces for their den from an old fallen tree near the blast doors. They made the den in an old, expanded prairie dog burrow, just across from the emergency escape ladder. And the mother collects acorns from the tree just off the main road. Living in uneasy proximity is a very active jackrabbit. It prefers munching on the grass by the Western security fence, because the food is tall and in the cool, early morning shade. The hemp plants prefer growing in the iron-rich soil around the old rusted exhaust vent poking up out of the earth. Lizards like the cold dank stairway leading down, down.
All of this in the rotting remains of a missile silo.
These silos were fully equipped with computer stations, living quarters, and military command terminals, as well as an anti-nuclear missile capable of taking down enemy nukes.
In the following years, a peace treaty mandated that all said missile bases be deemed useless by filling them with water and dirt.
However, outside one decommissioned Atlas missile base near Lyons, Kansas, the soft dirt testifies to the continued activity beneath the surface and around the large silo blast doors floating above the hidden military compound.
A small family of raccoons live here. The father collected pieces for their den from an old fallen tree near the blast doors. They made the den in an old, expanded prairie dog burrow, just across from the emergency escape ladder. And the mother collects acorns from the tree just off the main road. Living in uneasy proximity is a very active jackrabbit. It prefers munching on the grass by the Western security fence, because the food is tall and in the cool, early morning shade. The hemp plants prefer growing in the iron-rich soil around the old rusted exhaust vent poking up out of the earth. Lizards like the cold dank stairway leading down, down.
All of this in the rotting remains of a missile silo.
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