Growing up on a hillside overlooking JPL and the adjacent flats approaching Devil's Gate Dam, surrounded by neighbors who worked there, we often heard stories of the lab's early (and not so early) days. Drums and drums of bad fuel and by-products driven out and dumped in the flats, then covered by graders with more dirt and sand.
My childhood home, in a truly halcyon postwar NJ suburb, was just 2.5 miles away from a | Nike Hercules Anti-Aircraft Missile site | armed with 20 -bygawd – kiloton Nuclear warheads.
Part of your Iron Circle defense of the New York Metro area against Russian Bear bombers. Decommissioned in the mid-70's the radar control & operations site is now an Artist's colony (yay), the barracks were demo'ed for a housing development and the battery is an empty lot that's probably still contaminated with PCB's TCE, asbestos and whatnot.
I don't remember much about the Cuban Missile Crisis (being quite young at the time) beyond everyone going around terrified, but those SAM's were out of the silos and primed. The Cold War is a thing about my youth that I don't miss and really do not want to see again.
The Nike missile program was one of the military's greatest pork distribution programs ever. Every big city, including even Honolulu, got a few launch sites, some barracks for the troops, and some amazingly complex (for their time) radar facilities to allow coordinating tracking and launching. We went to visit a site under construction on the north shore of Lake Michigan when I was a kid. Many years later I worked for a retired Army officer who'd been a battery commander, and that was when I learned about the nuclear warheads on the second-generation Nikes.
I later got involved with some of the sites that got turned over to the Army Reserve; some were have found to have been contaminated with plutonium, but surprisingly few when you consider the risk. Less risk, I guess, than if any of the nukes had been fired at Bear bombers coming over the pole.
NY City was the most heavily defended by these in the US – they weren't kidding about that "Iron Ring". Pay any cost, bear any burden to protect Wall Street from those Godless Communists.
That golf ball radome and all those other antennae on the hill were hard to miss. My dad took me up to the Command center as a kid for an informal tour – he knew the commander – and he talked about bouncing radar off the Moon for fun. Got to go up in the dome, too, but nowhere near the Nikes. They were several miles away, still safely underground thank goodness.
No one really knew there were atomic bombs onsite until way after they were decommissioned, I think, even though Gen 2 were specifically designed for them. Probably just as well.
| Toms River, N.J. |
(fixed linky)
The first chapter of this book will make you weep and want to tear your hair out, if you have any trace of humanity or empathy.
And now there's toxic levels of TCE in a school and a coupla trailer parks. Sad! <img src="http://jexh1kujdl2rjoqlfrvego6i.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/El-Cajon-Toxic-Plume.png" />
After the Revolution, Scott Pruitt and Grover Norquist can share a trailer there. One of those Katrina specials with extra formaldehyde gas.
Pre-existing condition.
Make America Gag Again!
Growing up on a hillside overlooking JPL and the adjacent flats approaching Devil's Gate Dam, surrounded by neighbors who worked there, we often heard stories of the lab's early (and not so early) days. Drums and drums of bad fuel and by-products driven out and dumped in the flats, then covered by graders with more dirt and sand.
I'm sure it's just fine, now.
My childhood home, in a truly halcyon postwar NJ suburb, was just 2.5 miles away from a | Nike Hercules Anti-Aircraft Missile site | armed with 20 -bygawd – kiloton Nuclear warheads.
Part of your Iron Circle defense of the New York Metro area against Russian Bear bombers. Decommissioned in the mid-70's the radar control & operations site is now an Artist's colony (yay), the barracks were demo'ed for a housing development and the battery is an empty lot that's probably still contaminated with PCB's TCE, asbestos and whatnot.
I don't remember much about the Cuban Missile Crisis (being quite young at the time) beyond everyone going around terrified, but those SAM's were out of the silos and primed. The Cold War is a thing about my youth that I don't miss and really do not want to see again.
The Nike missile program was one of the military's greatest pork distribution programs ever. Every big city, including even Honolulu, got a few launch sites, some barracks for the troops, and some amazingly complex (for their time) radar facilities to allow coordinating tracking and launching. We went to visit a site under construction on the north shore of Lake Michigan when I was a kid. Many years later I worked for a retired Army officer who'd been a battery commander, and that was when I learned about the nuclear warheads on the second-generation Nikes.
I later got involved with some of the sites that got turned over to the Army Reserve; some were have found to have been contaminated with plutonium, but surprisingly few when you consider the risk. Less risk, I guess, than if any of the nukes had been fired at Bear bombers coming over the pole.
NY City was the most heavily defended by these in the US – they weren't kidding about that "Iron Ring". Pay any cost, bear any burden to protect Wall Street from those Godless Communists.
That golf ball radome and all those other antennae on the hill were hard to miss. My dad took me up to the Command center as a kid for an informal tour – he knew the commander – and he talked about bouncing radar off the Moon for fun. Got to go up in the dome, too, but nowhere near the Nikes. They were several miles away, still safely underground thank goodness.
No one really knew there were atomic bombs onsite until way after they were decommissioned, I think, even though Gen 2 were specifically designed for them. Probably just as well.
Pining for the fjords?
Beautiful plumage!