Missiles next door: Book tells the story behind the arming of America's farmland
The end of the world could have begun in Belt or Wall, S.D., or Minot, N.D., or Cheyenne, Wyo.
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“Widespread public acquiescence was needed to bury 1,000 ICBMs in the heartland.
Throughout the decades of the Cold War, public support for nuclear deterrence and
its instruments had to be continually cultivated and bolstered,” she wrote. “It took
work to make Minutemen acceptable and invisible across the plains.
“Yet there is no evidence that the United States needed so many missiles. More
damning is the fact that the United States, in deciding to pursue the Minuteman
program, accelerated the arms race,” she wrote. “Before the Minuteman, the United States
had missile superiority; after Minuteman deployment the United States had overkill.”
The Minutemen were supposed to be $1.1 million to $500,000 each, a savings over
Titan at $20 million a pop. Yet when the first missiles were built, they came in at
$35 million — not counting 50 years of maintenance.
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20121130/LIFESTYLE/311300001/Missiles-next-door-Book-tells-story-behind-arming-America-s-farmland
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The Minuteman installation required a cable trench across my parents farm.
It is one of my fondest memories of my father, chewing out the Colonel in charge and
the Colonel agreeing that the Air Force owed much compensation for the damage done.
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