You are looking at the control room of the last Titan Missile site, south of Tucson, and obviouslynon-working. One of the things i have also been doing over the last few months is writing a novel, of which I have completed nearly 70,000 words. It’s been fun, a stretch, and involves a bit of interesting research. In thinking about how to end the book (futuristic, but I still want it believable), I decided to check out this museum for possible ideas.

What you are looking at on the left is our group in the main launch center of the site. Everything within the control room is designed so that no one person could actually launch a missile. It would require two keys, both placed far apart so that no one person could operate both at the same time…and all kinds of interesting trivia. This site has been preserved as a museum, and the curator is a former commander of the site. The movie before the tour talked about our foreign policy of prepared deterence, which I found ironic in the light of Bush junior’s policy of “with us or against us.”

Here are a couple of photo collages of other pics from that visit. Amazing construction for the day, and sites located in places I hadn’t even known about.

 Lower left – escape hatch to the surface, and middle right is the fresh air vent to the interior. Both will potentially figure prominently in the novel. Lower right the steel doors protecting the control room, and middle left the LONG corridor to get to the actual missile.

Now I need to make a trip to the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, plus a few other “border” areas. Now that the consulting work has eased up, I should be able to get two chapters a week done – 2/3 done and want to move along to finish so I can edit (which I seriously love!).