A Look Inside The US Bunker Hidden In Cheyenne Mountain | Super Structures | Spark

[Applause] it was a time of terror an invincible force thundered on the face of the earth a superstructure was the only defense so strong it could survive a nuclear blast so powerful it's electronic eyes reach 23,000 miles into space [Music] a million and a half pounds of dynamite ripped 23,000 truckloads of solid granite from the heart of a rocky mountain to create an underground fortress of unprecedented size come inside this citadel hidden deep within the earth where high-tech sentinels guard America against annihilation this is the secret world of [Music] [Music] [Music] Cheyenne Mountain a rugged rocky mountain peak rising boldly from America's vast central plains just a few miles from the town of Colorado Springs deep within its 100 million year old granite heart lies one of mankind's most remarkable super structures a citadel of stone steel and microchips where it is always Twilight and no one ever sleeps instead dozens of eyes maintain a second-by-second vigil over the skies around the world looking for anything that could be the beginning of an attack on North America Rita picks up an unidentified object in the skies over central Russia if he is recording an Eastern Clerk alert from what that Russia it's traveling fast and heading toward the Pacific Ocean dan by four possible mentor vendor CD copies intel what is your analysis prompt response is vital to the defense of the nation highly trained teams scan intelligence reports to determine the correct action sir intelligence assist to be the scheduled launch of an ICBM some success with impact expected that becomes a peninsula [Music] and in Telus this is true training though it's a scenario that has played out hundreds of times the men and women undo tea here and know that a moment like this could be the one that puts them to the ultimate test NORAD US space complete recommend we terminate this conference this is the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command NORAD members of the United States Army Navy Air Force Marine Corps and the Canadian Armed Forces staff the NORAD operation centers they work under the cover of a superstructure whose design and construction are as incredible as its high-tech capabilities in a virtual world of computers remote sensors and speed of light telecommunications they stand watch over the North American continent perpetually devouring instantaneous data transmissions from a vast network of sensors on land at sea and in space NORAD's eyes can not only see the entire surface of the earth they also gaze twenty two and a half thousand miles up into the heavens where they intently probe 27 trillion cubic miles of aerospace from the smallest civilian airplane to the most sophisticated military satellite nothing escapes them NORAD personnel consider all airspace for 120 miles around the outer border of the United States and Canada critical to national security it's called the outer identification zone NORAD must know the purpose of every aircraft there as soon as an aircraft crosses the outer identification zone we start a two-minute clicker so we've got to figure out who that track is within two minutes and if we can't figure out who it is or there's no way to correlate that with an FAA flight plan we declare the track unknown and that's when we scramble interceptors and go out and figure out who that is by putting eyes on the target yes sir I just wanna let you know that we have an unknown over Canada right now on a given day we have anywhere from 6500 to 7,200 tracks we provide identification of every aircraft coming in to North America and that is a pretty sizable task given the fact that about 2.5 million tracks come in to North America every year we are very rarely ever surprised in Cheyenne Mountain we can't allow ourselves to be surprised read us space has east ESP indication Cheyenne Mountains labyrinth conceals NORAD's military wonders its existence has always been well known its trucking prowess is a matter of national pride its methods are top-secret how this superstructure came to be carved out of the inside of a mountain is one of the great feats of our century 15 ingeniously constructed steel plate buildings how's the command centers and the infrastructure that supports them through the endless hours of NORAD's vigilance stores of water food fuel and a sophisticated air cleaning system provide life-support for the complex it can completely seal itself off from the outside world for more than 30 days well the first time I got here I was lost I really didn't know where I was going when he wanted her around because it's a pretty complicated complex inside it's hard for people to imagine all the different levels of you know different floors and different buildings that are here and it's pretty overwhelming at first but there's just a real sense of law because the design is incredible you know that when you come into the large tunnel and into the through the blast doors and just realize what this was meant to survive you know any kind of attack during the Cold War and the engineering what behind it was just amazing to me so I guess my first impression when I walked into Cheyenne Mountain was just to say wow what an engineering marvel even though it was constructed over 30 years ago I continue to be amazed at the technology resident within the mountain getting all this technology inside a mom was one of the 20th century's toughest engineering challenges the builders wrenched four hundred sixty thousand cubic yards of hard rock from the core of the mountain and replaced it with seven thousand tons of steel yards of concrete and miles of wiring what drove men to hollow out a mountain and build this amazing superstructure it was fear in the 1940s and 50s mankind unleashed the power of the stars on the face of the planet nuclear weapons darkened America's post-war optimism with fears of Armageddon could anything survive this unparalleled destructive force to have any chance of winning the unthinkable war America had to build something that could no one was sure it was possible at the beginning of the nuclear age the technology to build a working city deep within a mountain strong enough to endure a nuclear blast did not exist no one knew how many problems engineers would face once a project of this magnitude was started or how innovative and creative they would have to be to solve those problems the call went out to America's most talented engineers challenging them to create something totally new to defend against phenomena whose effects were mostly unknown 1958 I received a call to go to Omaha to be with a core of engineers to discuss a project and that's how it all began for me I didn't know anything about Colorado Springs didn't know anything about NORAD at that time in the late 1950s tom cassell and Steve Greenfield were young engineers with a New York firm of Parsons Brinckerhoff Greenfield had proven skills on some of his company's toughest projects he specialized in hardened underground defense facilities his work was often highly classified Keisel was more of a specialist in tunnel design and bridges he brought innovative solutions to engineering problems but nothing they had done prepared them for the mysterious top-secret atmosphere of engineering North America's survival the young engineers and their colleagues were given an unprecedented task to design and build quickly and economically a fortress that could survived the unsurvivable the power of a new weapon that for the first time in history could destroy the entire human race a weapon that was now in the hands of America's enemy in 1949 the Soviet Union detonated a nuclear device Soviet bomber is armed with nuclear weapons could strike North American cities [Applause] the nuclear superpowers settled into what they called Cold War a permanent confrontation that could instantly turn hot when I was in the regulan military with very regular military training for the future war against Americans colonel stanislav luna is the highest-ranking russian military intelligence officer ever to defect he is currently in the federal witness protection program and i didn't know any other life then to live inside Cold War we consider all this peacetime as a some kind of break which we here to train our self for the future war all the break is break but so [Music] in America the Soviet threat gave birth to a massive campaign called civil defense you know how bad sunburn can feel the atomic bomb flash could burn you worse than a terrible sunburn while the public wants to upbeat training films federal and local authorities built shelters and tried to prepare for the worst where we would hire an architect engineering firms to go out and identify existing shelters in existing buildings hallways and then put up sign says this is a fallout shelter and then eventually put in provisions food and water so that you could spend some time there till the fallout decayed enough to wear safety gloves I have a nuclear war we could get a heavy fallout even though we were not anywheres near the target area hey but thoughtful Americans wondered how much protection civil defense could offer against a nuclear onslaught the key to survival was to stop an attack before it came in 1957 Canada and the United States formed the North American Air Defense Command or NORAD to operate the continents early warning frontline against attack by the Soviet Union to detect incoming bombers Canada and the u.s. cooperated to build a series of radar outposts across the far north the do Mid Canada and pine tree lines provided early warning of enemy attack over the North Pole but the new defense system suffered from a fatal flaw NORAD headquarters was an old hospital building a masonry structure built in the 1920s a direct hit from an old-fashioned conventional bomb could have knocked it flat a nuclear attack would have turned it to dust in 1956 the Continental air defense commander reported that a man with a bazooka passing in a car could put the establishment out of commission to fight its cold war with Russia America had to build something previously unimaginative estate of an atomic bomb the daunting challenge for military engineers was how and where as such a building could be constructed or even if it could with a marketing daily danger they had to succeed the first design followed the plan of the Strategic Air Command headquarters at Omaha Nebraska this plan combined an aboveground headquarters with an underground combat operation center but defense planners protested that this design was too vulnerable for a facility as important as NORAD headquarters the RAND Corporation a defense think-tank recommended locating the base underground if possible within a Granite Mountain military engineers combed the Front Range of Colorado's Rocky Mountains in search of a suitable site the site was eventually chosen in Cheyenne Mountain South to Colorado Springs which is a great big blob of granite and it was chosen because was the hardest and strongest Rock around besides its granite core several factors attracted NORAD designers to Cheyenne Mountain it was near the geographic center of North America far from Soviet strategic bombers in a relatively inactive geological region and near an existing military base at Fort Carson Colorado the engineers had their site know how could they carve such a massive structure out of solid granite hard rock miners had the technology but no one had ever tried a project of this scale before the whole concept of this structure was to create a series of caverns 1500 feet under the surface of the mountain and they were kind of like an egg crate there were three galleries that went in one direction and three that crossed them so there were intersections where the two galleries came together work on the massive caverns began in June of 1961 the miners make quick progress in only one year they blasted loose and hauled away over a billion pounds of granite but suddenly their work took on a desperate urgency in the fall of 1962 the Soviet suddenly brought the nuclear threat to America's front porch aerial photographs revealed that the Russians had placed missiles capable of carrying powerful nuclear warheads on the island of Cuba a scant 90 miles from our nearest shore both sides went nose to nose and prepared for the worst fortunately most the American public wasn't aware it was that close till afterwards we were redeployed to the reserve position very deep in the mountains from our permanent location and received weapons ammunition gas masks special closes for the protection against radiation and solar stuff it was a good luck of mankind that we had the chance through with this war I knew that fallout shelter wouldn't help you and that Lee I took the attitude if a war happened nuclear missile attack I'd be dead I wouldn't have to worry about it after 13 days of tense negotiations the Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba tempers cooled but the arms race continued to escalate the near apocalypse of the Cuban Missile Crisis made the successful completion of the Cheyenne Mountain complex even more important in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis work proceeded on NORAD with an even greater sense of purpose the project was put on what is called a wartime construction schedule it was to be completed as soon as possible everyone involved with the project knew what was at stake nothing less than the continued existence of the free world today you might never guess that the free world survival once depended on these old friends who still play golf together in Omaha in the 1960s they were the rising stars of the Army Corps of Engineers charged with a seemingly impossible task of building a nuclear bomb proof NORAD it was an elite group of what we considered ourselves elite at least group of people that were the good structural electrical mechanical engineers that were giving super challenging problems as far as I know there were no projects designed to withstand the effects of a nuclear explosion the most important requirement of the underground facility was its ability to survive a nuclear blast before work began geologists and soils engineers drilled test holes to discover if the rock would support the enormous cavern that needed to be hollowed out of the belly of the mountain the military engineers had plenty of experience in underground tunnels and mines but blasting a hole inside Cheyenne Mountain would be like no mining project ever conceived NORAD headquarters required far more space than a mining tunnel at first this seemed to be no problem the miners were very good at blasting and removing massive amounts of rock but this project required more finesse the rock chamber has had to be excavated to a very specific size the remaining rock had to be structurally solid normal blasting very effectively removes the maximum amount of rock in the shortest possible time but it's very destructive blasting inside Cheyenne Mountain threatened its overall stability now before the excavation is made of course the joints are tight because you have the mass of rock above which is keeping everything real tight but once you start blasting then once you've created an opening you have a loosening of the joints the massive blasting not only weakened Cheyenne Mountain it left its brittle granite with sharp jagged edges that could break off and fall if a nuclear impact shook them in desperate need of a solution the engineers called in dr. Clifton W Livingston a blasting expert from the Colorado School of Mines the rock of Cheyenne Mountain was very brittle granite and as such and the blasting it broke very jagged corners doc Livingston was a rock dentist he came in and friended up he would say halfway between a quarry blaster and a sculptor of Mount Rushmore he was much more precise and careful and more expensive and he used very small charges precise drilled holes doctor Livingston's technique of smooth blasting significantly reduced fracturing and weakening of the rock Livingston precisely calculated the dynamite charges so that the rock fractured only to the desired depth when he was brought in I guess was sometime in 1961 or two there was considerable concern about the security of this cavern and Doc Livingston took the contractor in hand and directed where to drill the holes and how deep and how much power to put in them and what sequence to set them off and he worked on it for six months and he had the price looking pretty good and the Air Force came through to look at this they'd heard there was all this trouble up here and they came in and saw the Chamber's were all nice and smooth what's all the fuss about why don't you this pack for and they fired him but he did his job he made a major contribution to this project but it was not enough just to smooth the cracks in the cavern the engineers also needed to strengthen the hollowed out sections of the mountain so that it could withstand the power of a nuclear blast to do this would require taking a mining technology to a level where it had never been before and the result was one of the greatest innovations of Cheyenne Mountain Rock bolting I think it's kind of interesting not just how he removed the rock but how they left the remaining rock in place with rock boats aren't too many people were familiar with rock boats The Rock bolts used in Cheyenne Mountain were metal rods six to thirty feet in length that were similar to but much larger than the expansion bolts used by the home do-it-yourselfer to anchor objects to a concrete or brick wall but these bolts and unprecedented 115,000 of them kept a half mile thickness of granite from falling in on itself since this facility was designed for dynamic loads that would could be induced by a possible nuclear detonation it was very important that you have a really good rock reinforcement system shockwaves move very quickly we planted no second this is not a an earthquake type of long frequency the stuff Zippo the shock wave propagates through the rock and hits the interface where the rock and the chamber the wave creates some tension and tends to take the rock and spoil it and the bolts and the mesh kept it all together and mobilized a massive amount of rock by tying it all together each bolt was torqued to 275 foot-pounds a one-inch diameter six foot long bolt created a tension of ten thousand pounds on the exposed rock face this tension heaved the mountain into thinking it still had a center just as the engineers began to believe that they had conquered the interior challenges of Cheyenne Mountain a shocking discovery threatened to derail the entire project for good they found that the mountain had a fatal weakness and they picked the mountain they thought was going to be the best mountain in the world but when they got inside of it they found it was rotten in the core to make matters worse this fractured rock zone was precisely over the tunnel intersection where NORAD's Operations Center was to be placed the collection of joints was known as a shear zone it was an area where the rock had been sheared apart ancient geology if the shock wave had come across the unreinforced chambers with the weak Rock the weak Rock would have been squeezed out into the chambers like toothpaste out of a tube and would have crushed the buildings and filled the chamber the nearly completed project was in serious jeopardy unless this massive natural shear zone could be reinforced Cheyenne Mountain kiesza went back to the drawing board to figure out a way to overcome mother nature's capriciousness I went back to New York and devised a concrete sphere that would be constructed inside the mountain at the intersection of these two chambers and the sphere could withstand the squeezing pressure of the weak Rock being tended to be squeezed out and hold it in place this dome although unplanned is one of the greatest engineering marvels of Cheyenne Mountain it took nearly two years to complete the form for the dome was constructed outside Cheyenne Mountain once complete it was then disassembled for the move underground at 100 feet in diameter the forum was a mammoth jigsaw puzzle putting the pieces back together inside the mountain presented Keisel and his team with another challenge the construction of this was more of a problem than the design the chamber had to be enlarged in order to make room to put this concrete sphere in place expanding the excavation only added to the instability inside Cheyenne Mountain the engineers would need another innovation to keep the project alive Keizo came up with the answer over lunch while visiting the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters I remember sketching this idea out on a napkin and I cafeteria in Omaha so we came up with a very strong steel tower composed of heavy steel columns laced together which was jacked up against the roof workers poured thousands of yards of concrete to create the structure that would transmit the weight of the mountain around the fractured area to the solid bedrock below [Music] while work on the steel tower and concrete dome added months to the project the urgency of completing NORAD's command center never lessened the miners and excavators gave way to the welders and steel fabricators construction never stopped on the steel buildings in the completed underground chambers we had to bring a 40-foot building to a 15-foot diameter tunnel so all team and pieces and all had to be welded together underground in the roller cavern before tonight and day August despite the added work over the command center NORAD's interior protective shell was finally completed in May of 1965 the steel buildings that would eventually provide two hundred eight thousand square feet of working space took their place within the two and a half miles of tunnels in the cavern now it would take eight months just to install the complex electrical and surveillance equipment inside the mountain the centerpiece of the new command center was an $800,000 combination camera processor projector that could display at 12 by 16 foot image of the planet in seven colors on that screen commanders got a sophisticated global picture of objects that were tracking observation posts even satellites in orbit the screen was fed by radar and satellite information from an array of computers around the world by today's standards NORAD's initial computer technology was primitive but at the time but massive mainframe computers were state-of-the-art throughout the Cold War the computer technology race was as fierce as the nuclear arms race today NORAD's granite sentry system remains state-of-the-art all the computers we use are off-the-shelf items it's just a software that is specially designed and created to perform the missions that we require of them basically we have our fingers on the pulse of Cheyenne Mountain we can tell at a glance if there's a problem with our missile warning systems our space defense systems or our air defense systems throughout the mountain by early 1966 the power was on at Cheyenne Mountain the Sentinels at their stations everything waited in readiness for an event everyone hoped would never happen after nearly five years of work at a present-day replacement cost of eighteen billion dollars the Cheyenne Mountain complex became fully operational on April 22 1966 the men who designed engineered and built the massive underground Center were proud of their work they were also quite aware of its limitations everyone hoped that this superstructure would never be put to the test even more they prayed that it would survive that test the design was based on that premise where the odds were rather high that you would not have a direct hit on the complex if you had a direct hit than the dynamic loads would be so great but the openings would collapse or just no way to have offset the terrible stresses that would be developed in the rock in the end NORAD's survival rested on a principle called circular error probability [Music] CEP was simply the probability that a nuclear weapon fired from halfway around the world would fail to score a direct hit on Cheyenne Mountain as far as a vulnerability of NORAD that was really mostly a function of the accuracy of the device because you know it was a foregone conclusion that a direct hit would destroy even though it cannot survive a direct hit the command center is designed and built to resist the effects of a nuclear weapon blast heat seismic shock electromagnetic pulse and radiation the access tunnels weaken the effects of blast and heat simply by letting the blast wave pass through the tunnel unimpeded to avoid a direct strike by the blast wave the designers located the blast valves and blast doors at right angles to the tunnels at the first sign of a credible nuclear threat the blast doors are closed and Cheyenne Mountain is sealed off from the outside world Tech sergeant Marvin hires and his team of specialists maintained these doors here in Norway we have three blast doors the blast doors are designed to protect the mountain from an overpressure imploding from the inside each doors hydraulic system is self-contained and the speeds of the door is anywhere from 40 seconds 15 seconds if we had to they're perfectly balanced fifty thousand pound doors you can actually move them with your hand when the doors are closed technicians reconfigure the ventilating fans to run backwards the reversed air flow keeps radioactive contaminants or chemical warfare agents from entering the mountain another engineering innovation at Cheyenne Mountain is designed to protect NORAD from the seismic shock of a nuclear blast massive steel springs more than 1300 of them support each of the 15 buildings in the complex each spring is about this big around and and the wire that that that makes the spring as three inches diameter of high-strength steel the springs about a thousand pounds a piece in weight and they stand 48 inches tall unsprung the weight of the buildings compress those springs to approximately 36 inches and the purpose of the springs for all these facilities is to prevent a shock that might come through the rock resulting from either a man-made or a natural shock these Springs will attenuate that shock just as they would car Springs on your vehicle my recollection is that we were just barely able to make one spring out of one ingot of Steel couldn't have made a much bigger than this and the manufacturing facilities that were available NORAD's gigantic Springs worked so well that the concept of seismic shock isolation has been incorporated into many modern buildings in earthquake zones flexible passageways and couplings allow the buildings to sway independently without breaking vital connections but the designers needed even more reinforcement to meet the challenge of a nuclear bombs electromagnetic pulse or EMP this tremendous burst of energy similar to but far more powerful than a lightning strike can destroy sensitive electronic equipment and damage even sturdy electrical circuits to combat its effect the engineers constructed the buildings like the hull of a ship or fuselage of an airplane the continuously welded 3/8 inch thick steel skin gave structural strength as well as electromagnetic pulse projection it was found that the pulse could be deflected if the entire building inside was surrounded with a steel shell just like a ship so the basic description of this facility was a fleet of upside-down ships constructed in a cave floating on a sea of springs the day-to-day operation of this complex facility must seamlessly support the primary defense mission of Cheyenne Mountain been borth is the deputy based civil engineer for the Cheyenne Mountain complex there aren't too many situations that our utility system cannot accommodate today fortunately the people that designed and built this place had in mind all of the redundant equipment necessary to operate in the event that a primary water system electric system or HVAC heating ventilating air conditioning system would fail it's the redundancy and the unique design of those types of systems that make this a very interesting place to work a reliable source of power is absolutely necessary for the complex network of critical electronic equipment right now we are in the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain in fact we're at the lowest excavated point within the complex behind me is a five hundred thousand gallon diesel storage reservoir that we use to power our generators in the event that we need to go to generator power and this reservoir will permit us to run for an extensive period of time if we should lose commercial power even the backup power has a backup 3400 powerful battery cells maintain what is called uninterruptible power supply or UPS for the operation of NORAD it is one of the largest backup power systems ever built perhaps the most important supply for the operation of NORAD is water more than a million and a half gallons of drinking and four and a half million gallons of industrial water are stored here Cheyenne Mountain must also regulate its air supply air enters through two sources the north and south portals and then is directed through a so called air delay path this construction is crucial to prevent damage from the force of a nuclear blast and the pressure pulse it would create a destructive blast of air traveling at the speed of sound the air delay tunnels are equipped with blast valves one of the ingenious design elements of Cheyenne Mountains respiratory system if a blast occurs and that pressure pulse drives up the tunnel that pulse will hit a disk located on the backside of this valve and drive that disk across these slots preventing any air from entering the complex the mountain must also be able to repel chemical biological or radiological contaminants to combat that threat the engineers can force outside air through sophisticated CBR filters in the cooling towers Cheyenne Mountain is more than just a panoply of technological wonders it's a place where people live their lives and do their jobs more than 1200 people keep the complex functioning on a 24 hour a day year-round basis at any given moment there are as many as 800 highly-trained people working inside from a collection of 12 government and civilian agencies and from the combined branches of both the US and Canadian Armed Forces each of those individuals is very carefully screened and they represent the very best that their services and their country have to offer it's incumbent upon me to make sure that those people who work shifts do not develop a false sense of security of sitting in a command center staring at a blank screen for eight hours a day and then going home security is tight not only getting into Cheyenne Mountain but also in getting from area to area within the complex although always on guard the complex does have its amenities not surprisingly it's engineering makes it a unique and inspiring place for the people who work here when I first got to shine mouthing to know red I was astonished the size of it I had no idea that we had this much room inside the mop our work environment is not unlike any other large office building or headquarters building that our people would routinely work in being inside the mountain you really don't get a feeling of claustrophobia because of the space inside the buildings you really if you were in the same building downtown you really wouldn't notice the difference other than not having a window to look out of it's just like being in office without a window for more than 30 years the NORAD Operations Center in Cheyenne Mountain has faithfully fulfilled its mission but was that mission necessary or was it Cold War paranoia now that the Cold War is over we know that the Soviet threat to North America was real the Soviet plan for global thermonuclear war was revealed in a 1985 report it consisted of a surprise attack that would be launched on several fronts land sea and air based elements of the Soviet military forces would simultaneously attack targets in Western Europe and in North America the first barrage would destroy us coastal cities and create an electromagnetic pulse that would disrupt satellite and ground communications the Soviets estimated that in the first 20 minutes of this massive nuclear assault 75 to 125 million Americans would be killed Cheyenne Mountain was high in the list of primary targets then you wrote about north and locations of weapons system include fighters interceptors missile interceptors numbers and location of American spy satellites not for Samsung abstract ago but for very real reason how to destroy this system in time of possible war the Soviet attack never came the Cold War is over some say NORAD has outlived its usefulness others say a threat is still present it has only changed hands [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Cheyenne Mountain was inspired by a time in the Cold War threatened North America originally designed to combat the threat of Soviet bombers it's priority shifted to monitoring Soviet missiles even as it was being constructed during the 60s and 70s the United States in the Soviet Union played out a Danse Macabre of nuclear missile superiority to the inexorable beat of mutually assured destruction the Soviets never achieved numerical superiority but they built bigger missiles with more powerful warheads both nations relentlessly added to their stockpiles of destructive power their combined arsenal held enough firepower to destroy the world more than a dozen times over and challenged by Cheyenne Mountain the Soviets built elaborate subterranean military command posts connected by secret subways it was located not very far from Moscow in highly protected bunkers very highly protected bunkers not so not so strong ground as NORAD is located but in green it we never consider this facility like maybe you'll consider NORAD headquarter as a 100% security and protected no because after first sign of possible attack this headquarter will be evacuated immediately to another Center which located in much more secrecy and much more protected Western intelligence estimates indicate that the Soviets were prepared to shelter as many as 175,000 key officials and support workers who would rebuild their country after a prolonged nuclear engagement for nearly 40 years the world trembled under the cloud of imminent nuclear annihilation for all this military buildup Cheyenne Mountain has entered an advanced state of alert only once in its history it was in October 1973 during the Yom Kippur War is the Arab allies advanced on Israel America ordered b-52s armed with nuclear into the air American missile launchers went into a pre-launch check as NORAD monitored the war the American military was placed on defense condition for DEFCON 3 an advanced state of alert halfway between peace and thermonuclear warfare the alert warned the Soviet Union's Arab allies that an invasion of Israel would not be tolerated the advance was halted and the alert relaxed then in the late 1980s the Soviet empire collapsed and with it so did much of its nuclear threat today the Cold War is over NORAD has been forced to redefine its role yet its mission remains the same make certain that nothing enters US airspace that we don't know about and today there are many more potential threats some of them are external from new nuclear states like India Pakistan North Korea and four from former Soviet republics Garang and Iraq could soon join the nuclear Club and China already has nuclear capable ballistic missiles conventional weapons remain a threat closely monitored Iraqi missile strikes coordinating with allied theater commanders in Saudi Arabia and Israel it was able to issue warnings of scud missile launches that were related to troops on the ground the same technology is also being used to stand watch over possible airborne attacks from terrorist teams looking for an American target [Music] you know that international terrorist groups just now are growing like mushrooms after rain so I think that danger to Nora is not only still existing but challenges to Nora just now much more than it was before or in time of Cold War know red also protects against enemies from within by tracking all aircraft movement in and out of North America it's a powerful resource in the war against drugs thanks to the ever watchful eyes of NORAD there have been a number of dramatic interceptions of drug traffickers in North America NORAD even monitors threats from outer space international treaties ban the deployment of weapons in space the space control center tracks every object that orbits the earth from an altitude of 200 miles all the way out to twenty-two thousand five hundred miles nothing goes up into space or falls out of it without the centre knowing about it we've been doing this ever since Sputnik launched in October of 1957 object number one is the rocket body from that launch Sputnik is object number two we're currently up to 25,000 484 over the years NORAD has become a kind of near space traffic cop we'll use the shuttle as an example while it's on orbit we will build a 10 kilometer by 50 kilometer long theoretical box inside of our computer we'll compare that to the 8200 objects that were tracking for 36 hours if any of those objects penetrate that box we have a hotline to the flight dynamics officer at NASA and NASA is the one that makes the decision to maneuver the shuttle in the 91 missions they maneuvered seven times to avoid an object the support for the International Space Station will be quite similar to what we currently provide for the shuttle and the MIR space station the only difference will be we will have a dedicated person to support that mission and it will compare all the objects that we're tracking for 72 hours advise 36 hours that we do with a shuttle they will also use the same hotline to the flight dynamics officer at NASA and NASA will make the decision whether to maneuver it to avoid an object since its Cold War origins this engineering marvel has matured to fulfill several important roles in the technologically complex world of computers space weaponry satellite communications and even the colonization of near space by the International Space Station yet those who built the Cheyenne Mountain complex have never forgotten the terrifying times that gave it birth children being raised with this nuclear threat over their head he needed to do something about it first duck and then cover when the wall came down and essentially the u.s. won the Cold War looking back I feel well maybe I had a small contribution to that total impact and although it was expensive it was a lot cheaper in both money and people to go that route than to have a nuclear holocaust today the risk of global thermonuclear warfare seems like a nearly forgotten nightmare but other bad dreams have sprung up to take its place in the post-cold war world a threat to peace can come from any direction at any time many believe there is no foreseeable end to NORAD's mission the engineers and builders who met the challenge of constructing this superstructure did much more than confront the Cold War's nuclear threat this monument to their ingenuity will continue to serve the security and sovereignty of North America well into the coming millennium

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Keywords: norad air defense, N.O.R.A.D, Super Structures Spark, norad colorado springs, Cheyenne mountain, norad defense system, colorado experience, norad missile defense system, north american aerospace defense command (organization), colorado (us state), norad, colorado springs, usnorthcom, peterson air force base (military post), alain parent, lance blyth, Engineering, science experiment, steven rose, science explained, Science, Spark, Technology

Id: c6Yz0ReoU5Q

Length: 51min 41sec (3101 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 25 2019