That the Swiss are selling off much of their NBC facilities suggests that they do not believe that there is any real threat. I’ve not heard anything about the really high tech centers you mention.

This subterranean building boom started well before the current economic crisis. This construction is independent of the megasites I’ve heard rumors about, which are supposedly very high technology installations. I heard the first rumor from an engineer who had previously worked at CERN. So, who knows what the sneaky devils are up to. In their day, both Los Alamos and the Titan I and II sites were incredible – the stuff of pulp science fiction novels. Both were reflections of fundamental technological advances in offensive weaponry. Both are onto half a century old. The timing is about right for the next big leap forward. I shudder to think what that might be. –Mike Darwin

I have not heard any rumors about this new underground complex. If true, its probably an underground governmental command post (you know, for “slate wiper” plagues or something like that) rather than any kind of weapons system. Maybe they’re afraid of all of the home brew DIY biology people.

I read about Titan II silos yesterday, including the museum. I didn’t realize until now that that wasn’t the same as the one you are posting photographs of. I understand there’s a hole in the side of the missile there to demonstrate that it is not armed. I also thought it was interesting that the common conception is these missiles were decommissioned due to a treaty signed by Reagan, but that the real reason was that they were being decommissioned to be replaced with more “modern” means of destruction.

I will quit paying to build this crap just as soon as they let me. I can think of lots better uses for the money.

The Titans co-existed with the Minuteman solid fuel missiles for quite some time, mostly due to the fact that they were a good design, the money had been spent, and the Minuteman missiles weren’t exactly cheap to deploy, either. As an interesting aside, if you go to http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/03/18/letter-to-aspiring-cryonicists/ and look at the photos of the Alcor van/perfusion room, circa 1975 (about halfway through the post), there are two unusual, desk-type electronics panel racks barely visible towards the far end of the perfusion room (adjacent to the driver’s compartment). In one of the photos Fred Chamberlain IV can be seen sitting in front of one of them. Those racks were used in a Minuteman silo that was decommissioned. So, death and life, the end to the species and the quest for its indefinite continuance, have been intertwined since at least 1973.

Finally, it’s also important to remember that these delivery systems were and remain only a small (and increasingly irrelevant) part of the thermonuclear arsenal. At the time of the Titans, there were B-52s and cruise missiles, as well as Jupiter missiles in Europe. Submarine launched Polaris missiles now constitute the most difficult to neutralize nuclear weapon system. In fact, the US and Russia are the only two nation-states that still have silo-based nuclear capability. I’ve heard rumors of massive subterranean construction, on the scale of 4-5 times that of the CERN accelerator in Geneva, which may represent a fundamentally new kind of weapon system. Who knows? We seem intent, if not doomed, to engineer ourselves towards the fate of the Krell. And what a pity it is that I will not likely live to wander through that iteration of our struggle for self annihilation, it it does indeed exist. — Mike Darwin