Gadgetory

I am Edward Payton PE d en and we are here in the Kansas countryside underground in a nuclear missile base I was teaching current events courses at Topeka West High and I was hearing people talk about the missile site Ronald Reagan was president he was talking about the evil empire I heard a young father addressing a tremendous gathering in California I heard him saying I would rather see my little girls die now still believing in God than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God and I had two young daughters and I was feeling a bit nervous and so on my birthday in 1982 I travelled to discover this site and and so the Odyssey began there's two buildings the building here is the launch service building where the missile was housed and all of the equipment to facilitate the launch down there was the launch control building where the crew was housed and where all of the personnel were during a launch my uncle Forrest died in France in 1945 also another of my uncle's died in World War two but there was always a sadness in the family about war about the loss of life I mean my grandmother grieved long all the rest of her life for the loss of two of her sons these kind of feelings left our family with kind of a sadness about war and probably turned me into kind of a hippie peacenik yeah love is the only engine of survival the only hope and if we can't get that right we're in deep trouble there's a group of people across the country that are looking for bunkers looking for hardened structures and I think it's a symptom of the times and what's going on the changes that are happening in our culture 20th century castles has been in business for close to 16 years now mainly what they work with our decommissioned missile bases and a variety of communication bunkers we have closed 55 sales of missile bases over the last about 17 years it's a pretty interesting niche market that we've been able to jump into and it's fun getting to meet different people who who would live in a place like this this is a survival condo project we are in central Kansas it's a project is designed to house up to 70 people indefinitely off-grid yeah here's some of the demolition pictures you know we have over a year to get all the old missile debris out of here not the missile itself but the launch and the structure that was in there to support the missile structure took it 275 ton crane just to pull the old doors off it feels really good now to transition from destruction to construction this steel structure is now in place and they're starting to put the concrete on the floors now they built the steel from the bottom up and they pour the concrete from the top down when it's all said and done this is kind of like the structure what's it it's like a 14-story building that's underground there's two configurations you either buy a whole floor down here you can buy it half for a half floor is a million and a full-force two million now this facility was designed to withstand a direct nuclear strike and the General Accounting Office estimated in 2010 dollars to reproduce this concrete infrastructure would exceed 100 a million dollars I've got 300,000 the purchase price of this unit insights are pretty cool these are the air intake and exhaust valves for the LCC the smaller the two-story you don't want to bump your head on that Edie Peyton did it he had a concussion yeah you hit your head on that and it's serious Wow if there was just an energy crisis or a breakdown in transportation networks most cities are only supplied with just a very few days supplies in the grocery stores if the grocery stores were empty if the grid went down if the water was off or contaminated a lot of people in urban areas would have trouble surviving just a few weeks and cities could easily turn into jungles well I looked at ice core sample records and you go back and look at 13,000 years ago which is when we lost the mastodons in the saber-tooth Tiger that was when we crossed this classic plane and it's a it's a region of space that we go through and if you think of the Milky Way galaxy is a a pinwheel then if you get closer to the middle I mean it's like driving in the country out here versus driving in New York City I mean you come into a busier denser region and what logically would you expect more meteors more comments to be more cosmic radiation warmer temperatures global warming climate change do I think co2 has anything to do with our global climate change no I don't but do I think we're having global climate change absolutely I just disagree on what's causing I think it's a natural cycle we're going through we know the government's broke the government world governments are broke everywhere the Europeans are a terrible mess there are protests growing you know against wall street the political climate in this country seems to be at an all-time low they cannot seem to function together and so there's this instability we don't know what's going to happen the food prices are going higher everything is becoming more expensive the value of the dollar is in decline there's a lot of people with a lot of guns out there what would it take to get you to do something illegal possibly immoral or whatever to go do something to provide for your family I mean first I'm gonna want to go get my gun and go try to you know shoot some birds or something or live off the land you know I don't mind doing that I'm my first thought it's not going to be to go rob my neighbor you know my first thoughts going to be but you know what everyone else is going to be that same thing there's only so many birds and so many things and pretty soon pushes it and come to shove and resources and become increasingly scarce and your list of things you won't do is going to get shorter and shorter we've got lethal and non-lethal systems we've got our own remotely piloted vehicle we have a two-person holding cell you know we could respond and we don't have to shoot them we can we can send out a remotely piloted vehicle go then fly 5000 feet up and it can fly 100 miles so it can look around and it can see human size targets on the ground and it can we can see it in real time if somebody were more aggressive and trying to damage the facility and to break in you know we can put it into that too is so funny I had a Jewish woman that I was playing with her blood and she said well you know I'm old and you know my kids want me to do this and we're on here but I'm thinking and I'm just you know let's be honest here I'm not gonna say I'm two years into this and I you know what are you gonna do how are you gonna bury me I go well we have an incinerator working at Rich's now I'm Jewish you have to bury I have to be buried like a well that's easy we tell you we're going to bury you then we incinerate you if it's convenient we can have a nice ceremony under a tree outside will honor your wishes but if you're a health hazard you're starting to decompose down here and you're stinking up the joint or we're going to burn you to play a drum for very long creates entrainment of heart rates the heart rate will begin to entrain and we have you know we'll get 20 people drumming and have dancing in the in the center and have have fun we're interested in the human spirit and it's been defined in many many ways in many different times and in different places and cultures we're interested in all of it we we have redone this space in kind of an eclectic spiritual context we have a Hindu art Buddhists native-american pagan Christian and Islamic prayer rugs so I'm hopeful that somehow we'll find our way to a wiser path with our fellow man on the planet I'm not optimistic but I am hopeful it always irritates me when the traditional interviewers asked that cliche question is so do you think the world's going to end on December 21st 2012 it's the wrong question to ask I mean of course I don't believe that's going to happen the fact that we're standing here means that this you know this earth is billions of years old we've gone through this cycle before and that evidence is in the ice records it's in the soil records and stuff so it's the wrong question the question should be do you think life is going to get difficult with the cycle that we're approaching and that answer is a two thumbs up I do think it's going to get very difficult and I think it'd be you know prudent for people to be prepared what's it all about how big is it who are you why are you here on our journey to wholeness we meet darkness and fear questioning all the old answer denying what's too painful to see live in life of false illusion getting off track with destiny when the darkness falls around me I don't think I'll make it through when the darkness falls around me I'll need your light to see me through we've been about this for a long long time and it's bigger than we can see making peace with our darkness we reclaim our destiny you