♪♪♪
BRETT WHITMORE: This is, you know, the Wild West, the last of the Old West out here.
♪ [Static] ♪
GRETCHEN HEEFNER: It’s vast, it’s huge, it’s expansive.
♪ [Static] ♪
LORI VAN PELT: Pasture land, a lot of cattle and ranchers.
BRETT WHITMORE: Just beautiful country as far as I’m concerned.
♪♪♪
♪ [Static and ominous music] ♪
GRETCHEN HEEFNER: In a sense, it was the perfect place to hide nuclear weapons.
K.T. MCFARLAND: The reason it was positioned in the middle of no place was because they were a target.
GRETCHEN HEEFNER: A thousand missiles, deployed underground, constantly on alert.
[Bomb blast]
♪ [Static] ♪
SERGEI KHRUSHCHEV: The United States and the Soviet Union competing for the domination of the world.
[Satellite beeping]
RADIO MOSCOW: This first satellite was today successfully launched in the USSR.
ANNOUNCER: The Russians have licked some of the toughest problems of rocket propulsion, the basis of the so-called ultimate weapon, the long-range ballistic missile.
K.T. MCFARLAND: An intercontinental ballistic missile could be launched from the Soviet Union
and it would reach the United States in 30 minutes.
ANNOUNCER: First you duck. Then you cover.
RICH HUSTEAD: I knew, even as a young child, the chances of survival probably weren't really good.
[Rocket launch]
♪ [Static] ♪
ALLEN MARTENS: The Minuteman is just a really, really efficient killing machine.
BRETT WHITMORE: The Minuteman missile with the solid rocket boosters, as soon as you turned the key,
it was enabled, and out the door it went.
♪ [Static] ♪
JOHN F. KENNEDY: It shall be the policy of this nation
to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba
against any nation in the western hemisphere
as an attack.
♪♪♪
ALLEN MARTENS: During the ‘60s and so on, we had one country that we were worried about: the Soviets.
Now we've got a lot of kooks all over the world.
BRUCE BLAIR: Our nuclear arsenal is pretty impotent in the face of 21st century threats.
♪
TIM PAVEK: What kind of force is really needed to protect us as we move forward?
♪♪♪
TIM PAVEK: It was a system for which there was no defense for a war no one could win.
♪♪♪