November 17, 2014

The Air Force has bolted a large sign to the fence of the Alpha-01 Missile Alert Facility, clear white type announcing to any wayward traveler that this little patch of desolate Wyoming prairie belongs to the 319th Missile Squadron, 90th Missile Wing, Global Strike Command. A sergeant stands at attention behind the gate. An American flag is snapping violently at its mast, but the sergeant’s billed cap, high at the top of his head, is perfectly still. He takes my ID through the fence and disappears into what looks like a little house. When he returns, he hands it back. I have been told that he is going to ask “What is your status?,” which he does, and I have been told that I am to answer “I am all secure,” and that if I answer with any other phrase or make no answer at all, I will be thrown to the ground and handcuffed. (“Nothing to do but hold your ID above your head and wait for the pain,” one of the maintenance guys back on base had told me.) I tell the sergeant I am all secure. The gate opens skyward, we step in, and it closes again like a guillotine.

One hundred and fifty nuclear missiles live in the ground in the high plains outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, scattered across an unpopulated area the size of Houston. Alpha-01 controls ten of them. Buried directly beneath the Missile Alert Facility is the cramped capsule where pairs of officers, called missileers, keep watch over the weapons. It’s late morning, and I’m here to meet the crew that will soon be coming off duty.

Behind the gate, the sergeant, Greg Hutchinson, opens up like an innkeeper. “Welcome to Alpha!” he says, shaking my hand and bending into the wind. He is lanky and fit, with a neat mustache. He leads me to the facility, which is in fact a house, if not exactly a home, offering basic comforts to Hutchinson and the handful of airmen who protect the property and its silos. In the living room are couches, a couple of TVs, a pool table. Two of the Security Forces troops—everyone just calls them cops—are sitting at little café tables doing homework for their correspondence courses. There is a commercial kitchen where a lone cook prepares meals off a diner-style menu. (Currently out of stock, a whiteboard warns, are meatballs, taco shells, yogurt, oranges, Dr Pepper.) Everywhere there are framed renderings of bald eagles.

Read on at New York Magazine ➝