![]() “I took out a loan against my truck to have a bracket built to be able to open the door,” said Townsley. ![]() It took a bunch of local volunteers and a rented crane, but he finally cracked it open. Townsley has managed to get one of these massive doors up and running. They cover the 185-foot hole in the ground where a missile armed with a nuclear warhead used to be. Buildings and parking lots have been removed and this escape hatch has been capped in thick concrete.īut not everything is out of order: In the background sit the two giant overhead silo doors. Most working parts have been decommissioned. military scrambled to build missile silos and stock them with nuclear weapons.Ībove ground, Bruce Townsley’s place bears little resemblance to the busy site it was in the early '60s. It wasn’t uncommon for motorists to pass these weapons of mass destruction on America’s interstates in the early 1960s, as the U.S. A missile heads down the ICBM highway in central Texas on it’s way to a silo. By 1999 he had moved in to the 2,200 sq ft. More than 30 years after it was deactivated, Townsley bought the property in 1997 for $99,000. Here, a missile was stored vertically in an underground silo and the attached living quarters for the missiliers were more modest. Instead, with Peden’s help, Townsley went with this Atlas F site. “Build a house inside a bunker? Too much room.” "I've never listed anything like this, it's unique to us," he added.“What the hell am I going to do?” asks Townsley. The realtor confirmed to Newsweek it recently went under contract for a figure "very close" to the asking price. In Kansas here we can be really cold in the winter and once you enter that stairwell and start going down it just warms up, that's because of the Earth's heat," he revealed.ĭautel said there's been a lot of interest in the silo, on sale since December 2021, which was listed for $380,000. "It's probably 68 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit, it's pretty even temperatures. Photos of what's left show an eerie structure which wouldn't look out of place in a horror movie, but Dautel confirmed conditions are quite pleasant inside. Linda Hannifin / Hirsch Real EstateĪfter it was decommissioned, Dautel claimed it sat for a number of years before useful parts were "scavenged" by steel companies, at the request of the government, including the metal frame which once held the missile. The site extends more than 150 feet underground, with concrete walls nine foot thick in places. "So we have a pump that keeps it at that level, so it depends what that person wanted to do, if you wanted to drain all that, keep that missile silo space part of your home you would have a you know basically 12 stories to work with."įormer missile silo in Kansas. "Structurally it's sound," Dautel continued, saying: "The silo itself the missile silo itself has about 100ft of water in it at the present time that's the level we're keeping it at, because there's ground water that comes into it through a pipe. The silo once housed Atlas F missiles, with the realtor explaining when it was operational the five-man crew would regularly "bring the rocket up" for inspections. The concrete at the base is 30 inches, which a lot of people don't know is at the very top where the missile would be launched from, it was over nine foot thick." Linda Hannifin / Hirsch Real Estateĭautel continued: "So the silo itself is roughly 170 feet but there's also 15 feet below that, so it's basically 185 feet of silo. ![]() The sprawling property once housed missiles during its years of operation in the 1960s. The main structure, where the missiles were housed, extends deep underground, and is accessed via a tunnel.įormer missile silo in Kansas. "There's 1,260 square feet, then right below it they go down to the command center which is where all the action took place," he said, with the total square footage of the LCC 2,520 square feet. The property features the two-story Launch Control Center (LCC), where the crew lived below ground, with the structure built to withstand a nuclear attack. ![]() It was decommissioned in 1964 so there was a five man crew that was below ground with the missile at all times." ![]() He told Newsweek: "So until 1964 it was an active missile site. Realtor John Dautel, from Hirsch Real Estate, who listed the nuclear-proof bunker, explained the silo was commissioned to go into operation in 1960 before being decommissioned a few years later.
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