A code comes through the speaker of the Titan II control center in the desert 25 miles south of Tucson. That code signals that the U.S. has been attacked and a missile needs to be launched. Two crewmembers open a safe and take out a pack of cards to match the code with a sequence of letters and confirm the message’s authenticity. They enter the 16-letter sequence into the butterfly valve lock control, and then each puts a key into a separate lock. Each crewmember must then turn his key within two seconds.
The keys turn. Fifty-eight seconds after the message, the missile carrying a nuclear warhead launches. About 35 minutes later, an unknown target on the other side of the world is obliterated in an explosive firestorm.
From 1963 to 1982, crewmembers at the Titan II missile site in Sahuarita, Ariz.,, prepared for just this sort of situation. Instructions for every aspect of the site were written down in highly classified files.
Now, the site is a museum. Tourists receive an “I turned the launch key” card after they launch the missile. Instruction manuals and other artifacts have been cataloged and sit in boxes in a small storage room.
The Titan Missile Museum is the only site in the world that has preserved a complete nuclear weapons system from the Cold War. All that’s missing is the actual nuclear warhead. Two decades after the conflict ended, more than 50,000 tourists visit the missile site annually.
They get to see the 255,035-pound weapon that, if launched, would have signaled the start of nuclear war. But the purpose of the museum isn’t to show off the missile, said Chuck Penson, who has worked as the museum’s historian for 15 years. Penson said the museum was designed to show how deterrence worked.
“Each passing generation is further removed from the Cold War,” Penson said. “It’s become an abstraction.”
Identical Titan II missiles, which carried 650 times the explosive power of the bombs dropped on Japan during World War II, were once kept at 54 different sites, 18 throughout Arizona. The missiles weren’t made to start a nuclear war, Penson said — they were supposed to prevent one.
“We need to understand the concept of deterrence and the concept of nuclear weapons and its failures,” Penson said.
Visitors to the museum can tour the three-story control area, then go through a nine-level silo to view the actual missile. Once a visitor turns a key, the tour guide starts a simulated missile launch with red lights and sirens. When the site was actually in operation, crewmembers were warned that once they launched the missile they would need to stay underground. They had enough food, water and fuel for 30 days.
If they didn’t hear a message from the speaker within 30 days, said George Birch, a tour guide, that meant the world as they knew it had ended.
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