South Dakota
How to “Duck & Cover” at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site

How to “Duck & Cover” at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site

The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site is located just outside the Badlands National Park but it has three different sites that you have to visit. The picture above is the Visitor Center.

In the center, you can relive the “duck and cover” era of the cold war with videos that were shown to teach people how. It has so many different items from the cold war and two short movies. The item that I like the most is a Dominos Pizza box that was redone to say 30 minutes or less for the missile to arrive.

But I did not stay long because it almost brought me to tears knowing how hateful man is to man, how many people died during the cold war, and how many people were afraid of the future. It made me very emotional.

The second site with is Delta 01 is a few mile down the way. It was the place that the military would have the boys who were launch control. Above ground it looks just like a house.

Except for the barbed wire fence and the interesting polls with things on them and a few things that look like a satellite tv dish, the place is anticlimactic on the surface but under the building, two men wanted for the command from the President to launch the nuclear missile at our enemies.

The third site, Delta-09 which is just down the way on Highway 90. It holds one Minuteman Missile which equals the power of 80 bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima. The site is surrounded by cattle but you are allow to walk up and look down on the missile. (I am sure that it is not active at this time.)

The whole site is has an energy that you can smell and feel the fear, anticipation, and even the boredom that those who once lived here had. The Delta-01 site has a tour of the place but you have to prearrange it but I could not have done it.

Read

Note: The links in this article for products are through the Amazon affiliate program. The Amazon affiliate program is no extra charge to you but if you buy something while going through the link, then you are helping me keep this site going.  Thank you in advance.

The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland is about the effect on rural Americans as the Defense Department scattered missiles across America. Wall Drug which is just down the way from the missile site and offered those working free coffee and other items while the site was active.

Hiroshima is one of the books that I read as a young adult. It is about the effects of the bomb on the city of Hiroshima as it happened. I am not sure if any book has ever touched me so much. It was not about the why’s and the how’s and the politics of dropping the bomb but of the city going down in flames. Those that were saved and those that wished that they were not saved. It is a picture in time of an event.

This book is not that long but the depths that it goes into and still being about 8th grade reading level is incredible. I remember different parts of it today and I read it over 20 years ago.