The Missile Next Door

The Missile Next Door PDF Author: Gretchen Heefner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In the 1960s the Air Force buried 1,000 ICBMs in pastures across the Great Plains to keep U.S. nuclear strategy out of view. As rural civilians of all political stripes found themselves living in the Soviet crosshairs, a proud Plains individualism gave way to an economic dependence on the military-industrial complex that still persists today.

The Missile Next Door

The Missile Next Door PDF Author: Gretchen Heefner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In the 1960s the Air Force buried 1,000 ICBMs in pastures across the Great Plains to keep U.S. nuclear strategy out of view. As rural civilians of all political stripes found themselves living in the Soviet crosshairs, a proud Plains individualism gave way to an economic dependence on the military-industrial complex that still persists today.

The Missile Next Door

The Missile Next Door PDF Author: Gretchen Heefner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674070887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Between 1961 and 1967 the United States Air Force buried 1,000 Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles in pastures across the Great Plains. The Missile Next Door tells the story of how rural Americans of all political stripes were drafted to fight the Cold War by living with nuclear missiles in their backyards—and what that story tells us about enduring political divides and the persistence of defense spending. By scattering the missiles in out-of-the-way places, the Defense Department kept the chilling calculus of Cold War nuclear strategy out of view. This subterfuge was necessary, Gretchen Heefner argues, in order for Americans to accept a costly nuclear buildup and the resulting threat of Armageddon. As for the ranchers, farmers, and other civilians in the Plains states who were first seduced by the economics of war and then forced to live in the Soviet crosshairs, their sense of citizenship was forever changed. Some were stirred to dissent. Others consented but found their proud Plains individualism giving way to a growing dependence on the military-industrial complex. Even today, some communities express reluctance to let the Minutemen go, though the Air Force no longer wants them buried in the heartland. Complicating a red state/blue state reading of American politics, Heefner’s account helps to explain the deep distrust of government found in many western regions, and also an addiction to defense spending which, for many local economies, seems inescapable.

Cold War Kansas

Cold War Kansas PDF Author: Landry Brewer
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1467146633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Kansas played an outsized role in the Cold War, when civilization's survival hung in the balance. Forbes Air Force Base operated nine Atlas E intercontinental ballistic missile launch sites. Schilling Air Force Base was the hub for twelve Atlas F ICBMs. McConnell Air Force Base operated eighteen Titan II ICBMs. A Kansas State University engineering professor converted a discarded Union Pacific Railroad water tank into his family's backyard fallout shelter. A United States president from Kansas faced several nuclear war scares as the Cold War moved into the thermonuclear age. Landry Brewer tells the fascinating story of highest-level national strategy and how everyday Kansans lived with threats to their way of life.

Minuteman Missile Sites

Minuteman Missile Sites PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cold War
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description


Nuclear Heartland Revised Edition

Nuclear Heartland Revised Edition PDF Author: John LaForge
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780942046038
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A visitor's guide to the death-dealing missiles that lurk under concrete slabs on the Great Plains, 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles with deadly thermonuclear payloads.

How the End Begins

How the End Begins PDF Author: Ron Rosenbaum
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416594221
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
An alarming, deeply reported analysis of how close--and how often--the world has come to nuclear annihilation, and why we are once again on the brink.

Rehearsing for Doomsday

Rehearsing for Doomsday PDF Author: Scott Cook
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476644934
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
In 1988, Scott Cook was a boarding school PE teacher responsible for the proper inflation of dodge balls. A year later, he was operating an underground strategic missile control center with 10 intercontinental nuclear weapons capable of obliterating an entire country. This unexpected journey took him from the serene hills of Virginia through months of intensive training on the California coast to the front lines of the Cold War, beneath the frozen plains of North Dakota. His frank, entertaining memoir describes the insular and secretive military subculture of men and women who lived with the sobering burden of potentially unleashing global devastation, and how an easy-going gym coach ended up in an organization whose unofficial motto was "To err is human; to forgive is not Strategic Air Command policy."

Great Plains

Great Plains PDF Author: Ian Frazier
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466828889
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
National Bestseller Most travelers only fly over the Great Plains--but Ian Frazier, ever the intrepid and wide-eyed wanderer, is not your average traveler. A hilarious and fascinating look at the great middle of our nation. With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.

Restricted Data

Restricted Data PDF Author: Alex Wellerstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022602038X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
"Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--

The Columbia Guide to the Cold War

The Columbia Guide to the Cold War PDF Author: Michael Kort
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231528396
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The Cold War was the longest conflict in American history, and the defining event of the second half of the twentieth century. Since its recent and abrupt cessation, we have only begun to measure the effects of the Cold War on American, Soviet, post-Soviet, and international military strategy, economics, domestic policy, and popular culture. The Columbia Guide to the Cold War is the first in a series of guides to American history and culture that will offer a wealth of interpretive information in different formats to students, scholars, and general readers alike. This reference contains narrative essays on key events and issues, and also features an A-to-Z encyclopedia, a concise chronology, and an annotated resource section listing books, articles, films, novels, web sites, and CD-ROMs on Cold War themes.