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60 feet under the Montana prairie, there is a steel room hanging from shock absorbers.
Inside the 60-foot-deep Minuteman III launch capsule: how missileers eat, sleep, follow procedures, and stay alert during 24-hour nuclear alerts.
Key Takeaways
- Nuclear deterrence depends on strict procedure, two-person rules, and cramped, isolated working conditions.
- Life underground is monotonous and fatigue-prone, which the Air Force addresses through selection and procedural discipline.
- Aging infrastructure and past personnel scandals have raised concerns about the reliability and readiness of the ICBM force.
What the video covers
- The capsule sits 60 to 70 feet underground, suspended on shock absorbers behind a blast door about 4.5 feet thick, built to survive a nearby nuclear detonation.
- Each two-person crew controls up to 10 Minuteman III missiles in silos across the prairie; if other capsules are disabled, one crew can take command of up to 50.
- Missileers serve 24-hour alerts, with the full duty running about 36 hours including travel from base to the alert facility.
- Living conditions are spartan: one bed behind a curtain, a refrigerator and microwave, and consoles 12 feet apart so both officers must participate in any launch.
- Shifts mean one officer must always be awake at the consoles, so sleeping happens in turns while printers and alarms continue.
- Work is governed by roughly 50 daily checklists, and the launch process requires a matching authentication from a second command center.
- The system relied on 1970s IBM computers and 8-inch floppy disks until June 2019.
- The transcript cites a 2014 Malmstrom cheating scandal in which officers texted proficiency test answers, leading to nine commanders being removed and the resignation of the 341st Missile Wing commander.
- The transcript also describes a 1980s Titan II incident where a dropped socket pierced a missile and the warhead was found about 100 feet from the entry gate.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: The Underground Capsule
- 00:23Blast Doors and Capsule Design
- 01:18The Minuteman III Missile
- 04:00Daily Life: Food, Sleep, and Shifts
- 05:30Procedures, Checklists, and Changeover
- 08:00Two-Man Rule and Launch Authentication
- 09:00Malmstrom Cheating Scandal and Safety Incidents
- 11:00Conclusion
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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For the next 24 hours, two Air Force officers are locked inside it with the keys to 10 nuclear missiles.
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For the next 24 hours, two Air Force officers are locked inside it with the keys to 10 nuclear missiles.
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At the bottom waits a blast door 4 and 1/2 ft thick, and behind it a capsule about the size of an RV trailer, suspended so it can ride out a nuclear detonation directly overhead.
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One bed, two switches 12 feet apart, and a microwave. The elevator ride down takes about a minute.
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This is how missileers eat, sleep, and survive a day locked underground with the deadliest machines ever built.
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At the bottom waits a blast door 4 and a half feet thick, and behind it a capsule about the size of an RV trailer, suspended so it can ride out a nuclear detonation directly overhead.
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Start with what the capsule controls. Each two-person crew sits on a flight of 10 Minuteman 3 missiles buried in silos scattered across the surrounding farmland.
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The temperature holds at 68 degrees. The door seals. Topside, the sun keeps moving. Down here, it does not exist.
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The missile itself entered service in June 1970. It accelerates to roughly 15,000 mph, about Mach 23, and reaches targets more than 6,000 miles away.
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This is how missileers eat, sleep, and survive a day locked underground with the deadliest machines ever built.
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And until June 2019, the system that carried their launch orders ran on IBM computers from the 1970s and stored its messages on 8-in floppy disks.
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And the first thing to know is that almost nothing about this room is what the officers were trained for.
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And each takes about nine full turns of a hand crank to swing open. The capsule behind them rides on four huge shock absorbers, one at each corner, built to let the room swing while the earth around it does not.
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Start with what the capsule controls. Each two-person crew sits on a flight of 10 Minuteman III missiles buried in silos scattered across the surrounding farmland.
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The most destructive weapons on earth behind hardware you could buy at a supply store.
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If other capsules are knocked out, a single crew can take command of up to 50.
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Getting here took most of a day before the alert even started. Missileers call it a 24-hour alert.
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The missile itself entered service in June 1970. It accelerates to roughly 15,000 miles per hour, about Mach 23, and reaches targets more than 6,000 miles away.
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Topside, a small team runs the building, security forces, a facility manager, and a chef, working stretches of days on and days off.
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Most of the officers turning its keys were not born when it went on alert.
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Only then does the elevator go down and the two officers who just surfaced blink at the daylight and start the long drive home.
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And until June 2019, the system that carried their launch orders ran on IBM computers from the 1970s and stored its messages on eight-inch floppy disks.
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Inside the capsule, the kitchen is a refrigerator and a microwave on the back wall behind the two command chairs.
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That age is the first thing that hits a visitor. At a Minot capsule 70 feet down, the way in passes through two blast doors, one of 11 tons and one of eight.
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There is no stove and no table because there is no room. The capsule is a cockpit that never takes off.
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And each takes about nine full turns of a hand crank to swing open. The capsule behind them rides on four huge shock absorbers, one at each corner, built to let the room swing while the earth around it does not.
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In shifts. The bed is a narrow bunk behind a green curtain a few feet from the consoles.
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Inside, past racks of communication gear and a diesel emergency generator, the launch keys wait in a small red steel box secured with ordinary padlocks.
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So, they sleep in turns. And the off-duty officer learns to stay under all printers chatter and alarms chirp through the curtain.
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The most destructive weapons on earth, behind hardware you could buy at a supply store.
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The crews have a motto for this life, and it is the least official slogan in the Air Force.
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The locks are beside the point. What guards these keys is procedure. And procedure is why nobody gets in or out of this room casually.
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By that same missileer's count, a work day underground opens with the first of some 50 daily checklists.
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Getting here took most of a day before the alert even started. Missileers call it a 24-hour alert.
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Between checklists, nothing happens. Then more nothing. In the 1970s and '80s, crews were allowed nothing electronic in the capsule.
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Door to door, the duty runs closer to 36 hours. Crews brief on base in the morning and drive out to a missile alert facility that can sit more than an hour away across open prairie.
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Any TV marathon you can stumble upon is good. Just that ability to zone out and lose time.
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Topside, a small team runs the building: security forces, a facility manager, and a chef, working stretches of days on and days off.
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The Air Force selects these officers for how they would perform in the worst hour imaginable.
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Then comes changeover. The outgoing crew hands over custody of the launch keys and the sealed authentication documents piece by piece, signature by signature.
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A launch order arrives as an emergency action message, a string of characters over the speakers.
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Only then does the elevator go down, and the two officers who just surfaced blink at the daylight and start the long drive home.
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Inside sit two launch keys and the sealed authenticators. Plastic cards carrying a code generated by machines at the National Security Agency and wrapped in metal foil so that no human being has ever seen the code inside.
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So, what do you eat down there? The good meals come from upstairs. The chef at the alert facility cooks to order, and a crew member buys a hot plate for $2.95 cash, sent down the elevator before the night goes quiet.
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If it matches, the order is real. Then the detail the whole system balances on.
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Inside the capsule, the kitchen is a refrigerator and a microwave on the back wall behind the two command chairs.
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One person cannot reach both. The two-man rule is not a guideline down here. It is welded into the furniture.
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That microwave carries the true cuisine of the nuclear deterrent: frozen burritos, leftovers from home, whatever survived the drive out.
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The launch needs a matching vote from a second launch control center elsewhere in the squadron or from an airborne command post.
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There is no stove and no table because there is no room. The capsule is a cockpit that never takes off.
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Every drill ends the same way. Two officers sitting in a quiet steel room, having just rehearsed the last thing they would ever do.
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And you eat the way pilots eat, in your seat facing the consoles. Now, where do two people sleep in a room with one bed?
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Investigators discovered that one Malmstrom launch officer had texted the answers to the force's proficiency test to 16 other officers.
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In shifts. The bed is a narrow bunk behind a green curtain a few feet from the consoles.
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Out of roughly 190 launch officers on the base, and the entire ICBM force was ordered to retake the exam by the 16th of January.
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One bed for two officers is not a budget decision. One member of the crew must be awake at the consoles every minute of the alert.
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Nine commanders were removed. Colonel Robert Stanley, commander of the 341st Missile Wing, resigned. And Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James stood at a podium on the 27th of March 2014 and read the numbers out herself.
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So they sleep in turns. And the off-duty officer learns to sleep through printer chatter and alarms chirping through the curtain.
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The missiles had two-man rules, dual votes, and sealed codes. The test had a phone.
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One Malmstrom missileer described his shifts as a Pavlovian experiment. Some buzzer going off, it seemed, every 15 minutes.
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During routine maintenance on a Titan II missile, an airman dropped a wrench socket. It fell about 80 ft down the silo and pierced the missile's first-stage fuel tank at around half past 6:00 in the evening. Fuel vapor built in the silo through the night, and
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The crews have a motto for this life, and it is the least official slogan in the Air Force.
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missile's nuclear warhead was found about a 100 ft from the entry gate. Its safety features held. Nothing radioactive escaped. Replacing the destroyed missile was priced at 225 million 322,670.
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Death wears bunny slippers. The motto exists because the real enemy down here is not the one on the targeting maps.
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That is the bargain still running under the prairie tonight. 400 Minute Man III missiles sit on alert in silos across Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado.
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By that same missileer's count, a work day underground opens with the first of some 50 daily checklists.
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81% over the estimate given just 4 years earlier. A breach so severe it legally required the Pentagon to justify the program's survival.
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And a single mistake on any of them can mean a write-up or suspension from duty.
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So are the crews, which means that somewhere below the grass right now, the curtain has just closed. The bunny slippers are on, and one officer sits awake at a console installed half a century before their career began.
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Between checklists, nothing happens. Then more nothing. In the 1970s and '80s, crews were allowed nothing electronic in the capsule.
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The shift guarding against it never ends. That is how nuclear missile crews eat, sleep, and survive 24 hours locked 60 ft underground.
Topics:Minuteman IIIICBMmissileersnuclear deterrencelaunch controlAir Forcemissile siloMalmstromtwo-man rulemilitary history
