What’s Inside America’s Abandoned Nuclear Sites? (Full Episode)

I assume there's some sort of view like really pretty view but I can't look because I feel like I'll follow my death if you go a little bit that way or a little bit that way big consequences I want to see if I can stand up on this okay I don't like this feeling I thought I might like it but I don't know this this is better [Music] [Laughter] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] basically a farmer's junkyard but below my feet under the ground is a military junkyard it's a Titan one nuclear missile silo literally red under our feet there were nuclear bombs there were three nuclear bombs right here I can understand why so many people were so paranoid during the Cold War because not only were they afraid of nuclear bombs coming from Russia but they were living on top of nuclear bombs it's a scary scary thought [Music] you know how bad sunburn can feel the atomic bomb flash would burn you worse than a terrible sunburn especially where you're not covered you have some plutonium inside you you wouldn't make any plans to celebrate the event plutonium's Half-Life is 24 000 years after World War II people lost their minds with nuclear hysteria with warning and without any warning the insane power of the atom bomb had been Unleashed on Japan and the U.S wasted no time jumping into an all-out arms race with the Soviet Union requiring a full retiree response upon the Soviet Union but no one pulled the trigger because they knew the other side would destroy them too it was known as mad mutually assured destruction when the Soviet Union fell in 91 the Cold War was officially a four decades-long Bluff probably the most expensive Bluff in human history the U.S spent trillion stockpiling their Arsenal but there are no hurry to clean up the mess that's why places like the Titan 1 nuclear missile silo have been left abandoned in remote places all over America I invited Kristen Allen to join me he's a cold war buff who grew up in a proud military family it's crazy like a scene from a zombie movie for him visiting an abandoned missile silo is high on his bucket list [Music] where did you grow up I grew up in southern Alaska just outside of Elmendorf Air Force Base you're like right next door to uh yeah actually Russia from a house yeah growing up in the 80s you know it wasn't really a case of if nuclear war was going to happen it was like kind of when nuclear war was going to happen that was the sentiment like people felt that way it was a thing that you prepared for just like you prepared for earthquakes you know you knew where the Fallout shelters were you know where to go in the school you know how to sit how to cover your head do you think there's a general paranoia in America that nuclear war will happen I don't think so much anymore I think we've replaced uh nuclear war with with other Boogeyman right I don't think it's as heightened as it was um and maybe that's even a bad thing because you know there are still tons of nuclear weapons out there right yeah tours of old nuclear facilities are hard to come by but the caretaker of this site David Byrne has made a business out of it well today we're going to go down inside the Titan one missile complex okay show you guys some of the stuff most people never get to see David said the complex took over three years to build in the late 50s but it was shut down almost immediately and why'd they shut it down because it was actually obsolete when they were finishing construction they were developing other Technologies so quickly that it was pointless to keep this one around this missile silo is one of hundreds across the U.S that were already out of date by the time they were ready for action well this is a personal entrance to the launcher seems not going to fall on her head is it oh you wouldn't know it if it did so this was the freight elevator to bring everything into The Silo yep whoa well doesn't feel very solid yeah so this room is a powerhouse it's big this is a big room feels like a movie theater people used to live here yes so this complex had 12 people assigned here two officers and 10 enlisted men and they lived and ate and did everything and they just stayed in here they stayed in here yep so we're in the tunnels that connect everything right in the main hub I think I've had a nightmare about this tunnel at some point would it have looked pretty much just like this when it was operational maybe a little nicer paint job or something most of this would be full of wires with these rockets that were here would they be meant for stopping Rockets from coming here or just shooting off and into land these were purely offensive so they were just designed to shoot a really big Warhead over into the Soviet Union somewhere I believe these Warheads were like 3.75 megatons which was about 250 times the Hiroshima bomb really and they were sitting here and there was three of them sitting here yeah foreign this is where the radar antennas would come down you can see the tracks there's three tracks on the side so people who live near these silos probably don't feel the safest I was talking to a old gentleman at the restaurant in town and he said growing up he would be out playing in the yard and he'd all sudden see a 90-foot missile coming up and they never knew if it was a test or if it was a real thing and so they would just keep their eye on them and if these missiles ever left that meant world war three was happening right then that's spooky it's pretty interesting to see how much work went into these places it's kind of crazy that it was only used for about two years and even then it wasn't really being used it's like a huge waste of resources and money and energy right up here we're going to just spot where all the floors on the suspension so it's not actually touching underneath it's just hanging from the ceiling oh so that this this part of the complex could take a shock and this would just ride it out and we can make it Rock you can make it Rock if you're good at Teamwork right left oh wow [Music] this room is rocking [Music] [Applause] [Music] well this is classic military you notice what these two are right you're sitting there and I'm sitting here yeah this is how the nail chair Works hey brother hey how's it going the complex seemed endless but we'd only seen half of it to see the rest we had to climb all the way back to the surface [Music] that's when David suggested a wardrobe change we're getting changed into wetsuits because there's chest high water in there apparently and it's really cold I'm ready to enter the missile silo [Music] oh it is cold oh yeah I feel like I'm in the coolest sci-fi movie oddly beautiful like I didn't expect it to be like pretty how many stories is that it's about 11 stories straight down I'm feeling like a fear of heights right now even though I'm in the water yeah it's like your rational brain says if you fall you can just swim but your eyeball says this shaft once held a hundred foot long 110 ton intercontinental ballistic missile now it's a giant underwater playground for scuba divers I have a sinking feeling that I'm gonna have to jump into this water from the top just because it's a nuclear missile silo and when you're in a nuclear missile silo that's full of water you gotta Dive In okay I'm gonna jump off of this thing you're high yeah [Applause] all right I'm gonna go [Music] I couldn't see the water my eyes were open when I hit the water holy dude I didn't think this was gonna be so fun [Music] I'm going to satsop nuclear power plant well it was supposed to be a nuclear power plant but they pulled the plug on the project just before they finished it and I see it now whoa there's two big towers [Music] ground broke on satsop in 1977. but thanks to a massive budget hookup and a growing anti-nuke movement the project was abandoned before a wad of power was ever produced today satsop stands as a gigantic two billion dollar Tombstone for the utopian nuclear power movement of the 70s yikes looking at these places it sort of feels like there's this ominous thing about to happen like if this was full of corn or something I'd be like oh it's just a silo it's just a tube but because this is meant to be a nuclear power facility it sort of has like a stigma like that's the end of the world [Music] even though there's never been radioactive material here just looking at the structure gives me bad vibes but I met up with someone who's actually really stoked about nuclear energy Jessica lovering is the director of energy for the Breakthrough Institute an environmental Think Tank focused on clean energy this is kind of place you like to hang out normally not normally that I'm it's very cool to come here and see these [Music] so what is the structure we're looking at this is the reactor containment building just a big shell now wow I grew up in the 80s in the era of being told that nuclear is bad and scary when I see them I think you know meltdowns I think nuclear bombs I think three-eyed fish I don't think it was intentional or you know someone misrepresented nuclear I think it's fair that a lot of people have those associations especially from you know our history with nuclear weapons but I think it it is unfair for nuclear power to get lumped together with all things military and Cold War it's really a very separate technology it's actually kind of sad thinking about what could have been it could have produced a huge amount of clean energy that's really what we abandoned was that promise and vision of a clean right Energy System wood sets off and produce clean energy for generations to come or would it have poisoned this beautiful landscape it's impossible to know but to Jessica satsop was a huge missed opportunity why nuclear why are you interested in in that option I was really motivated by climate change and finding solutions to climate change I started out looking at all sorts of energy to me if you need a large amount of clean energy nuclear is the best option right 30 years ago you know or 40 years ago in the 70s we were on this path towards a really bright future of lots of abundant clean energy and things went wrong and we changed our minds and we kind of took a different path did we make the right choice I I would say no but sort of thinking about how can we make sure we're making the right choice going forward although the big nuclear projects seemed really scary and big it's actually to me they're sort of inspiring getting you know thousands of people to work on this project and build these huge structures that are going to provide electricity for 60 or 80 years like that scale and that audacity aren't frightening to me they're very um optimistic and filling me with hope satsop never produced any electricity but the space hasn't totally gone to waste this enormous tower has found itself producing a whole different type of energy apparently these things are giant amplifiers so I'm going to meet up with a local percussionist named Paul Kikuchi who's been making recordings in them you need help hauling some uh indeed so here's one of the large Tams we'll be bringing up okay so this is one you could grab a few yeah and I'll grab the large wind gong we can start there we're about to enter cooling tower wnp3 as they call it what a feeling of almost like entering a cathedral but it's better yeah it's so unbelievable crazy it amplifies it so it's really easy to get a lot of people clapping for you when you perform your exactly you just get like [Applause] a huge audience how did you I hear about this place it's kind of iconic in the sound artist musician experimental musician world it's become a destination really for people all over the world yeah in a way the first time I recorded he was more just out of sheer interest in this sound yeah yeah but since then it's taken on new meaning you know right since Paul recorded here in 2011 the Fukushima disaster happened an event that struck close to home my relatives were from one of the hardest hit areas of the tsunami luckily they survived it so what are your feelings on nuclear power it's it's hard to say that nuclear is a great evil and that we have great Alternatives but it shines a light on that inclination humans have to design things and not really think about what could happen right you know it's like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill it's like oh there's a bunch of oil leaking from the bottom of the ocean and we don't we're not quite sure how to stop this we're standing in a Nuclear cooling tower about the bangs and gongs which is uh I think a really cool repurposement of this place I agree yeah I have an idea for a piece I want to try with you thinking of the that 100 foot tsunami wave or whatever is that raging wall of water we basically just start really quiet and build up just to a raging Crescendo a malleted I'm also malated longing [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] the abandoned Titan 1 missile silo and the satsat power plant are nuclear relics that were never put into action [Music] but paranoia from that era still hangs in the air especially on the west coast where the fear of radiation was reawakened after the Fukushima disaster right now I'm on the Washington coast right behind me is the Pacific Ocean and out that way is Japan I think at the time of the Japanese tsunami and the Fukushima disaster that there were a lot of people on the west coast here that were really afraid of radioactive material coming over here I think that fear has died down a lot it's been five years but there still are some people that are are concerned about it one of those people is Cameron McCurdy he basically abandoned society and moved into his van which is decked out for survival let me show you my kit that I got okay there's a couple different systems it's all about redundancy right so like I have a day pack and then I have my bug out bag and so they're going to have some of the same items but they're all different kits okay so I got uh superfoods there's some Goji berries on top this is like full of meats and different protein powders so okay there's some salmon and spam that'll last a few years yeah you got your wet wipes yeah you got to have butt wipes in the wilderness man that's like the number one thing man so your hygiene will go downhill real fast in two three days so you got to keep it clean you're in the van now but have you spent a lot of time Outdoors yeah I do love tenting and and hiking the less shelter the better I like sleeping just on the ground or in a bivvy bag a bio back sack it's pretty fascinating to see what you can get away with not having right so ideally I want to be good enough at survival where I can just walk around with the fanny pack and have enough to survive so you think someone might have been sleeping here yeah it looks like there's a little Dugout area and it's got a wind break and they've done a pretty good job of building it up with the logs so I think that would shelter us at least from the wind but um I would have thought it was just like some kid building a playhouse yeah I don't know it's pretty cool but see if I can feel the wind in here that would work yeah to keep warm though at night it's a good idea to do like just air squats you know so just like if you keep your core temperature up just doing like that so you can stay active or you can get protected from the elements in something like this wow [Music] yes I like the beach Vibe yeah you should definitely move out here just driving out here is cool do you remember where you were when Fukushima happened yeah I was in Seaside and I had my everyday carry backpack ready to go and extra water and a Growler and a glass container and the lantern so I was ready the whole town was evacuated so I was checking that out do you think there's a lot of people here that just are oblivious to that possibility of a tsunami now I think everybody that lives here is concerned about it really and we do have weekly tsunami tests in the area so they they test the sirens and we hear those all the time okay but we don't know how far offshore the earthquake is going to be so it could be just right offshore we might only have a few minutes to get to Higher Ground tell you what though it definitely helps me sleep at night knowing that I have the bags ready to go and survival cash is in the ground cam doesn't just have his van primed for disaster he has bug out kits buried on Escape Routes all over the coast so we can bolt whenever the hits the fan what threats do you believe exist right now that that you might have to face right now I'm concerned about tsunamis and earthquakes and civil unrest I'm also concerned about being homeless because I live a pretty crazy lifestyle so that's why I'm building these caches and getting the gear that I need just in case something like that does happen right in case you can't like make enough funds to survive yeah at least I have the basics you know I have shelter and water so yeah got everything I need I don't even know what day of the week it is right now I don't even like looking at calendars or a watch so yeah I'm a pretty free spirit right now was there an event that happened with you in working or something that made you just over it I'd have to say it was just going through a divorce honestly so that kind of freed me up I'm like you know I'm just gonna do what I want from here on out and that's when I kind of Blossom so right when I stopped making all these compromises and stop settling that's when I became the person I was supposed to be just doing my own thing and then cuddling on the side everybody's professional I'm a professor original cuddler so I give hugs for a living really yeah yeah dollar a minute would you like one sure you a hugger yeah wow you're good at it yeah you're pretty comfortable bring it in man you're a great hugger how did you get into cuddling for a living well it actually started because of the van dwelling thing so I was living out in the woods and running the hot springs and I realized that I need more touch so then I sought it out and I started cuddling my friends and some family members and then I'm like hey I can do this professionally that's really interesting yeah give you a hug anytime all right maybe later I'm still feeling the one we just had oh yeah cam for me is hard to gauge he's really unique I would say that cam has abandoned Society in a lot of ways I actually think he really enjoys this lifestyle like it's a challenge and it's fun he just probably doesn't want to live a normal nine to five lifestyle I think he has a lot of worries about Society in general he's doing donuts right now he's gonna flip that thing if you're in a tsunami evacuation Zone the ocean is a disaster waiting to happen walking along a beach that will sooner or later be pummeled by a massive seismic wave I was inspired to build my own survival kit and I didn't want to do it alone [Music] this is John rattray former skateboard teammate what's up current friend is it weird we're both wearing black hoodies uh nope do you have a plan for the day uh we're gonna go and do some tsunami survival preparation okay but first we skate just for General exercise enjoyment exercise entertainment okay [Applause] what's the trick that's associated with the end of the world is there a radioactive is there a bomb bomb draw bomb drop foreign we have any other kind of Armageddon themed Maneuvers probably just a frontside Ollie disaster okay hurricane I think we've done all the disaster related themed tricks is there a trick called a tsunami not that I know we could just do anything and call it a tsunami oh well then a cab pivot yeah that cat pivot's a boring name for it anyway yeah now it's the tsunami it's your turn you go this Rick come on that was good come on I'm gonna post that one even though me and John have been friends for years we've never really taken the time to discuss the end of the world was it something he even thought about was he prepared do you think there would be some sort of end days or disaster that's going to happen I'm open to it earthquake volcano uh Trump have you done any kind of prepping for anything no no I just recently I feel like I haven't had time it's one of those things that's easy to procrastinate on right the whole prepping for a disaster that may or may not happen when there's like daily life to deal with right I think a lot of people come at this topic with fear yeah and that would be the I need Firearms I need ammunition I need to defend my home from the cannibals that we're going to try and eat my face right I met this guy named cam who's a prepper okay so today I want to bring you to meet Cam and he's going to teach us how to prep that's good yeah we're going to be developing some skills at least yeah all right let's talk to him he's a nice guy what's up cam hey over there man yeah this is John hey John let's go here cam cuddles great nice to meet you nice to meet you so the plan today is to build the cash find some supplies put them in some sort of container and then bury it somewhere for another date yeah exactly I want you to be prepared for a tsunami if you're out here you'll have the gear right when building a survival kit you'd probably think food and water would be number one on the list but you'd be wrong what do you think knife knife or like a tool a multi-tool are we just making one cash no we're gonna make one each so you might need them well then in that case When the Smoke settles the lines become clear between what is good and what is not guard the good see they're marketing yeah sold it to me knives check headlamp check gloves first aid kit glow stick check check check check check check out these cash containers potentially I feel like that's a good size is this too big now honestly I feel like this will do I guess what we're doing is we're creating some sort of a semblance of an insurance policy may or may not pay off but you're at least some way prepared for dealing with could be a pretty crazy situation I feel like my cash is going to be better than John's because I feel like my box is the perfect size and his is too big it's funny I went a little bigger in my container I want to have like decent amount of food in there it's kind of a bummer to be hungry so we'll see how we go Rick has a smaller container I mean I want to share with brick the food obviously I hope it wouldn't end in violence I really do that's pretty solid violence isn't the only danger you need to guard against cam insisted on ponchos for the rain and cord because you just never know when you'll need cord this is parachute cord it has inner strands and we can unweave it all so it's really easy to take apart right there's only one yeah you're coming up on all the good stuff we're gonna share it okay I doubt we're going to share it I mean I will have more food than you so I'd bear that in mind this is like a board game it certainly is and just remember I'll have more fruit than you so I just want to share it I know I trust you I'll let him use the little one so we got all this for 30 bucks 30 bucks this is the string I'll share with you okay hmm okay foreign day of survival shopping cam took John and I to his hometown Beach to prepare for the worst case scenario all right let's uh divvy this up and get it packed into our boxes you should be putting the stuff that you want first on the top okay I might should have got the bigger one well that's unfortunate that's unfortunate do you eat meat yeah here's the meat man wow I think that's good for like 25 years or something crazy and I'll give you this superfood this is some more green powder so wheatgrass powder stimulant for your mind you need some mind stimulant dude I had two of those before we rolled out here is that what happened yeah yeah I'm on another level you'll go up and check on these and maybe just yeah I'll rotate caches like these every couple years make sure water didn't get in them but no I'm really hoping for the best I'm hoping my town doesn't get annihilated by a tsunami wave but um I got to be realistic do you feel like you're living kind of outside of regular Society at the moment yeah I'm trying not to pay attention to what's going on in the news and just following my passions so the broader world out there the news does it get you down yeah I think that's what it's designed to do is depress you or distract you so I'm not going to distract myself with any nonsense right now I'm pretty focused on getting prepared and the whole cuddling game so you think is there's a design to it I think there is yeah I think there's some Architects at the Department of Defense is really in control of the media but that'll probably get me killed for saying that well we're the media and I don't think anybody's controlling us now that we know not that I know of maybe I've been a little paranoid but um I'm free now and that's all that matters and you know if Cam's been interesting I think he has some really underlying uh fears and paranoias that he kind of touched on a bit with like anti-government sentiment and you know talking about how uh he doesn't trust a lot of things but he's also a very caring person too I haven't given you a hug yet can I give you one for sure bring it in you're a great hugger yeah I like a hug how is it it's nice you want a hug yeah going around these days that's good The Next Step was to bury our survival kits and I knew just the right place to do it [Music] so John this is a Nuclear cooling tower oh it's a big hole in the sky the thing about burying the cash here is this looks like tough ground to dig in yeah and somebody that watches this might know where it is and they'll just come steal it uh yeah it's sort of a landmark that's awesome John do you know that there are skatable full pipes here I've heard that yeah would you like to skate them all right it's a good size full pipe yeah I'm gonna sweep some dirt up into some piles what sort of dust is I hope it's not radiation dust no it's probably just asbestos damn sure maybe we weren't breathing equipment I'm trying not to kick up too much dirt yeah well you're doing a bad job of not kicking up there too much I want to get some fresh air I feel like we should have some breathing apparatus you're hitting up that tunnel I don't trust the dust and I uh I Really Wanna maintain some healthy pulmonaries the dust was a major bummer wow I had some dust but then we realized we're actually ready for anything Let's see we have to tap into our emergency stash for this situation I'm going to save the ginseng ass track but yeah that's this is probably a good call cam would be proud of us at the first sign of trouble we were prepared oh wait I think I'm gonna take this before we skate okay you take that I'll not take one and then we can compare and contrast results okay are free it brings the guests to the gastrointestinal tract back into balance I'm gonna wait on that and I'm going to take it once I'm near a bathroom are you going to use that to weatherproof any of your radio equipment I'm just serious that's what you use it for if you're not going to use it for your knob it's oily you know this might diffuse the light a bit [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] John and I are going to climb to the top of the cooling tower 749 stairs all the way you're not that nervous right now we'll wait for the nerves to kick in when we're about a third of the way up you see how it arcs out like that yeah that's that's psycho this view right here is crazy oh I feel like I'm I'm gonna just have to trust these stairs ah it doesn't seem like there's much holding it on to the site though oh wow wow this is weird now this is very weird this is no less scary I feel better standing on this solid piece of cement right now and I almost feel like I'm on top of like a giant diving board you know your way to go in do that are you ready just put your feet on there doing you can go that way foreign why did we come up here I don't like looking down that you know what keeps happening to me is my testicles keep getting a pain in them what with fear you get like a feeling in your tummy with fear all the way into your bowls yeah [Music] it is interesting to think that when nuclear power was first being developed after I guess after World War II the general perception of it was as something that's bright and utopian and futuristic and clean I guess it took Chernobyl and Fukushima and a few other things to completely reverse public perception and I wonder if in the face of like climate change based on carbon emissions from coal-fired Plants we're going to have to as a species really ramp up on developing nuclear as an energy solution again I can't say that nuclear is a clean energy because it's not it just doesn't have the carbon emissions that the other ones have right now it's a tough call it's the lesser of many evils people need a lot of power and they're not going to give it up it sounds easy enough to say you know just use less power like go off the grid more but no one really wants to do that when you were talking seven billion people do you like the concept of the end of the world no don't like it I like the world I mean there's some dumb in it but for the most part it's great fun I mean even abandoned nuclear reactor cooling towers are pretty cool see I don't want the world to end and I don't either it's weird how fear does that to you whether it's a fear of heights fear of a tsunami or nuclear apocalypse nothing makes you appreciate existence more than the fear of Oblivion so if you find yourself in despair about the end of the world or anything at all my advice is Throw your arms around an old friend or even someone you just met and just squeeze [Music] like can we begin again [Music]

Channel: VICE

Views: 1,039,935

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, film, short films, movies, abandoned, abandoned places, abandoned mansion, nuclear war, nuclear fusion, nuclear bomb test, nuclear, missile launch, missile, missile silo, missile silo bunker, abandoned missile silo, abandoned missile site, interesting places in the world, pacific northwest, america, us, usa

Id: z4X6NhemL48

Length: 43min 55sec (2635 seconds)

Published: Thu May 04 2023