A Guide to Buying a Missile Silo
Gearcrave wants you to live in the missile silo of your dreams, offering handy advice for turning that probably-not-radioactive dungeon into a comfortable place in which to store victims lured to a remote location via personal ads. Sure, it looks like a pleasant cottage when the rental car first crackles up the gravel path, but in the root cellar lies a portal to a dizzying cave of sexual torture and forced viewings of Red Dawn.
Is this the wrong place to mention how much I want to live in a missile silo? I would also take a hardened telecommunications bunker. No fatties.
How to Buy Your Own Missile Silo [Gearcrave.com via Danger Room]
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the boys at penny arcade weighed in on this very topic a little while back, illuminating a few very serious concerns that gearcrave.com seems to have omitted from its guide
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/10/10
Amazing how a company selling multi-million dollar realestate has a web site with an extremely Web 1.0 feel: http://www.missilebases.com/
And in keeping with their out-datedness, they are apparently still living in the century the properties were built. From the front page: "These historic defense structures are the castles of this 20th Century."
I've wanted one of these since middle school. I'm kind of wondering how the current real estate crash is affecting the purchase price of one of these bad boys. Might not be a bad time to jump in. Not a bad house for a guy fresh out of college....
I'd totally love living in a renovated missile silo ... for a few weeks.
I'm sure it would get old pretty quickly.
The biggest con is the remoteness. I've lived in the suburbs, the city, and the sticks. Out of all three I prefer the city or the suburbs. Living in the sticks was a pain in the ass.
Now ... if I could convince the city to issue permits for me to excavate something like a missile silo, then we'd be talking. I'd totally spend the money on something like that.
As the report says, artificial holes in the ground tend to fill up with water -- think about what that might have done to any rebar or other roof supports. DEFINITELY get expert evaluation from someone who really understands this kind of construction.
Also, if this sounds interesting, check your local geology -- there may not be silos in your area, but there may be inhabitable caves.
You should probably ignore mines, though -- they were generally not cut with the idea of lasting very long and they don't tend to be very stable. A natural cave which has lasted a few hundred (or thousand) years is much more likely to last another hundred.
And yes, I was tempted to buy a cave, some years ago... but came to the conclusion that while it was already closed off for use as secure storage, getting it plumbed and otherwise up to code requirements as a habitation was going to be much more work than I wanted to consider.
If you want to see what one looks like and ever find yourself near Rapid City, South Dakota (think Mount Rushmore), the National Park Service has turned one old silo into a national park.
http://www.nps.gov/mimi/
How much for just the awesome chair? It's bolted to the floor (or is it on rails?) and it has a harness. It's like an earthquake-ready barcalounger.
The website claims that these silos are in remote areas. Sorry to say that during the mid-Sixties I could stand in Aunt Jane's house, west side of Cleveland, Ohio, very residential area, one could see the radar dome of an active missile site. Ground zero less than 1,000 feet from the back yard!!
So what happens if you don’t turn the key?
Ashcan, all the silos that are privately owned are remote. Any silos retired recently have been destroyed as part of arms-reduction treaties, I believe.
That could make a very cool hotel/B&B.