Jay Lake tours a Titan missile silo

Award-winning science-fiction writers Jay Lake visited an abandoned Titan 1 missile silo in Washington state and wrote a haunting trip-report, illustrated with photos and videos.

I was struck by one of the strangest sounds I've ever heard in my life as I approached the silo. It was if something large were weeping deep beneath the earth. It took me a few moments to sort out I was hearing a large number of pigeons cooing in their roosts down inside the flame duct and the silo itself, their noises magnified by the incredible echo chamber in which they lived. By the time I realized I could record this with my camera, I'd made too much racket and the pigeons had either fallen silent or flown away.

There's something profoundly poetic about that image – the birds which fill the very cities these missiles were meant to destroy were now nesting in the abandoned cradle of nuclear fire. The wind was capricious as well, whipping and whining around the silos like the ghosts of lost missilemen still carrying their twin launch keys, reaching out across the span of two arms wondering if this time it was not a drill.

Link