Yesterday , I move back in fourth dimension to the Cold War : Along with 20 science fable writers here in Denver for WorldCon , I got a exceptional duty tour ofNORAD , the fabled military statement nub located in a vast cavern dynamite into the base of Colorado ’s Cheyenne Mountain . The top - secret alkali , protected under 2000 feet of solid granite mickle , was built to be an pinch program line centre in the effect of nuclear onrush . feature in motion picture from WarGames to Stargate , the underground base has become the stuff of historical myth and scientific discipline fable caption . That ’s why I felt gripped by the surreal as I walked into its rough - walled cave entry , then through a gleaming blast door , to the full three feet heavyset and packed with huge , hydraulic pins that slid into place when the door close . I was inside NORAD , with only my newsperson ’s notebook , a bevvy of SF writer , and two spell guide : Lt . Ryan Lally , and Lt . Col “ Bear ” Lihani ( Ret ) .
NORAD stands for North American Aerospace Defense Command , and its primary task during the 1960s , LXX , and 80s was to find any airborne ( or spaceborne ) threat over the U.S. or Canada . A joint operation between the two country , NORAD ’s walls are pelt with images of the US and Canadian flags flying side - by - side . NORAD ’s most striking and fabulous feature is that the 5 - acre adeptness is actually a tiny city , staring with enough food for thought , urine , and fuel to protect substantive personnel after atomic plan of attack . When the site is “ button up , ” its bang threshold closed and locked , it becomes one of the most hardened command centers in the world .
Or so we thought . That was the first myth to be burst when we arrive at NORAD and Lt . Lally gave us an prefatorial presentation about the facility . It turns out that it only ever had enough “ button up ” supply to domiciliate essential personnel for 30 days ( chastening : Maj . Thomas Veale has written to say that 30 days is the minimum , but the maximal amount of clip is “ relegate ” ) . So there went all our epitome of a City of Ember vogue situation , with a generational metropolis exist for hundreds of years underground while the Earth slowly decontaminate and the nuclear mutants belt down each other for tin of junk e-mail .
Plus , NORAD is no longer really all that hardened . Smart nukes mean that any hits on the U.S. would be precise and unmediated . “ A verbatim collision would change by reversal this into Cheyenne Valley , ” joke Lally . This is one of the many reasons why most of NORAD ’s substantive functions have been relocated toPeterson Air Force Basein Colorado Springs to the north . Today NORAD is like the Battlestar Galactica , a once - great military facility build to withstand threats of the past and tardily morphing into a museum . Still , like the Galactica , NORAD still has plenty of brawn .
Beyond the blast room access , we entered a high - ceilinged cavern , its wall dotted with rusting bolts driven deep into the careen to maintain morphologic unity . Water seeping through thousands of layer of the Cheyenne Mountain ooze down the walls . At the cavern ’s far end , a livid brand box with an unassuming threshold grade the entrance to NORAD metropolis proper . Once swarming with personnel , the place is now a kind of touch town . Only a few hundred people work here at any fall in sentence .
Immediately , we saw the eldritch part of NORAD : The entire city is build up on springs . Housed in a series of boxy steel building , some three news report high , the facility has to withstand the shaking of bomb flak . A huge creep space beneath the metropolis is pack with jumbo 1000 - lbf. bound that organise the fundament for the total quickness . It was the first place all of us recall we ’d want to obliterate if we were sneaking in . There are crawl blank space between each construction , too , and a slick intruder could snake underneath the town , squirm around those springs , and inch up the side of the cementum - encapsualted command gist at its heart to gain approach .
The city ’s interior had been designed by the Navy , and you could distinguish . It felt like being on a large submarine , with cramp metal corridors , exposed organ pipe , and a muss hall that smelled of fry donuts . As we approached the legendary command centre in building 2 , we were meet with a admonisher that NORAD is still active and kicking . ostensibly a full general had called for a classified meeting in the command center , and so all we ’d be countenance to do was gaze hungrily at its boxy torso through some windows in the third floor .
The command center , where generals would organise with the president to deal with a space or air attack , is domiciliate in a 60 - groundwork capsule of smoothened concrete . From inside it , you’re able to see the domed ceiling though windows in the top . From where we stand outdoors , we could see just the edges of that attic stretch over the direct - adjoin roof of the plaza , streaked with the water that continuously seeps out of every wall in the NORAD adroitness .
Instead of of the program line center of attention , we meet the collation shop and bought deoxythymidine monophosphate - shirt . Lally tell apart us the act of people the adeptness could support was still classify , though he did permit mistake that you had to have a “ mission all important ” badge to be on the safe side of the blast doors . “ They wo n’t let any mouth - breathers who are n’t productive stay inside , ” he joked .
Perhaps the undecomposed part of our tour came next . We settle into the basement , to see the author and cooling facilities that keep the intact NORAD facility running . “ Without ability , it ’s just a cave , ” take a signaling stencil into a doorway in the dim cavern packed with pipe and mysterious , locked rooms . We walked through a maze of caves where in the raw rock outcrop of rock looked quick to crush the ubiquitous white blade boxful of control room and fat , naughty pipe . Because the deftness had been contrive by Navy , all the pipes were tick in the colors that would be used to discover air , water , and fuel organ pipe on a navy ship . A riot of blue , cerise , and immature pipe shoot from every rampart . Now the generators and other equipment are run by government contractors rather than military force .
The floor was pitted with holes where water from the ceiling had been leak out continuously for fifty eld , and after squeezing between two immense tanks we came upon a sight straight out of a Dune novel . It was a prospicient , hugger-mugger reservoir of pure lot water , altogether opprobrious beneath a low rock ceiling . Enough light touched its surface to crystallise a single duck’s egg drift on its surface . For an instant , that duck gave me my first sense of claustrophobia . What was it doing here , 2000 feet beneath a mountain , external respiration piped - in air and live in the deepest , most restrain part of the facility ?
Of of course , it was just a steerer , a antic of a marker put there to orient anyone who was doing study in the reservoir . It model perfectly still , staring at the sullen area where the cavern dip down to fill the body of water , reminding me that nothing but artificial life could hold out down here . Or living artificially preserve .
As we forget , we devolve through another flak door and into mile - long escape tunnels that plunged deeply into the mountain , lit only by a communication channel of brightness in the ceiling . Like the rest of the facility , they seemed ghostly without anyone in them . Even the smoke area , located weirdly across the tunnel from one of the principal aura vents , was wholly give up . We waited for a busbar to take us out from hugger-mugger , smell out diesel on the air and envisage the end of the globe .
So what did the other visitors think ?
Pyr publisherLou Anderswas excited by somewhat much everything . “ So this is what the Batcave would really be like ! ” he exclaimed when we walked beneath the high , damp ceilings into the reservoir area . “ It would be all sozzled and covered in turd . ” He also take down that the engine room looked like “ a Dr. Who rig . ” When we left , he mourned , “ I ’m sad that they ca n’t live in there forever , in that realistic Batcave . ”
Others thought it was insistent divine guidance for fiction . Jeff “ Plague War ” Carlson enthuse , “ It was completely phenomenal , and passably much made for action vista with Bruce Willis . specially the space underneath the buildings full of natural spring . Of course , you ’d need even deep cave underneath the unity we determine . A vast catacombs . ”
Robert “ Rollback ” Sawyer said , “ It was great fodder . I was disappoint that we did n’t get to the controller center , but that mean I ’ll always see it the way it was in WarGames . It was [ also ] astonishingly steampunky . ”
David “ Mirrored Heavens ” Williamscommented , “ I liked the bathymetry . If you ’re hold out to be monitor World War III , you also have to go to the toilet . I liked those escape tunnels too . ”
Paolo “ Pump Six ” Bacigalupi added , “ The world runs on springs . That ’s what I learned at NORAD . I would definitely want to be the individual with ‘ commission essential ’ badge , as defend to the back talk breather who gets kicked out . ”
“ Into the atomic wasteland , ” joked Sawyer .
Bacigalupi had done a piffling sociological research , too : “ I write down all the powder magazine they had for sale in their shop : Playboy , Field and Stream , Runner ’s World , Cosmo . ”
Erin Cashierdescribes the castle we visited after NORAD , where Blake “ Spellwright ” Charlton mull over :
The fiction was more of import than the function — when you interlace down , you only last for 30 days ! So it was all about wee it seem like we had this facility during the Cold War but it was n’t really that big of a deal .
Kevin J. Anderson , writer of several Star Wars and Dune novels , allege he was intrigued by NORAD as a symbol :
I ’m beguile by what it signifies about our mentality from fifty years ago . It was a time when you had to have large , powerful reply to a undivided monolithic enemy . So you could work up a big installation like that . We do n’t have those monolitic enemies any longer . NORAD was n’t designed to fight an opponent like a terrorist — it designed against a noetic villain .
David “ Counting Heads ” Marusek restfully noticed a lot of telling details . For example , the adeptness is largely run by government contractors now , and he figure out that the main contractor is an Alaskan company calledAleut , which he mull over ( based on its name ) is probably run by Natives . There ’s a sure irony in the idea of a Native - track down company take charge of operating one of the most iconic U.S. military installations . That in itself could form the basis of a short account or novel . Marusek also commented on the “ tremendous naval influence ” over NORAD ’s design . “ There was a literal ship feel to it . ”
NORAD , a ship city tardily tramp to sleep underground , is perhaps one of the most long-suffering legacies of the Cold War . Hewn out of the rock and roll in a craze of blank space years paranoia , it ’s a technical wonder whose note value was always more symbolic than strategic . But that ’s what make it such a pure product of the U.S. : Here , we have faith symbol can offer as much tactical reward in state of war as functioning technologies can . But symbols , like technologies , will obsolesce . And that ’s what ’s bump to NORAD , bit by bit .
Top image via US Navy ; epitome of our group in front of the blow doors via NORAD ; image ( below ) of NORAD being build in the late fifties via NORAD .
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