Shooting Missiles
SHAMBROOM, PAUL
Shooting Missies A rare peek at the nuclear arsenal BY PAUL SHAMBROOM Ithought a lot about atom bombs as a kid, maybe more than most other kids. I wrote this haiku at right in second grade. My...
...This was extremely upsetting because I had some idea from spy movies what can happen to people when they see things that "don't exist...
...In the command centers, though, this was not possible, so I tried to have them put up computer displays that might look vaguely realistic...
...I found these after-work periods very unsettling...
...That was around 1963, one year after the Cuban Missile Crisis...
...I was told, "They live just to jack people up...
...To civilian ears, some of the terminology was so ridiculous I had to wonder how they could use it with a straight face...
...I make these assessments without any pretense of expertise, simply as a citizen who has been permitted an intimate look...
...In fact, I wrote the haiku because I was a wise-guy and knew it would upset everybody...
...Soon we will be dead...
...We landed outside the fence, and after a discussion with the facility manager, my escort whispered to me, "We have to get out of here, they're going to 'jack us up.'" I thought she meant they might get irritated with us, and I tried to convince her there would be no harm in taking a few shots around the outside...
...I had previously produced several photographic series on hidden places of power: factories, corporate offices, police stations...
...I was told the equipment was top secret and "didn't exist...
...I asked my escort if we could stop at a launch-control facility for which we had not previously made arrangements...
...As I proceeded, however, I realized I was being driven by something much deeper and more fundamental...
...Many, but not all, of them had wry senses of humor...
...This meant that all sensitive documents had to be covered and all computer screens had to be cleared of classified data...
...Seeing is believing...
...Security procedures varied widely at the different installations and sometimes bordered on the bizarre...
...Look up in the sky...
...My ©1993 PAUL SHAMBROOM modest ambition was only to help people believe they are real, not abstract...
...It was the sound, sight, and smell of money being spent— lots of money...
...For a few seconds I thought the apocalypse was actually at hand...
...treaty-verification team for possible use at (former) Soviet sites...
...I'm convinced that if ordered to do so, these people will launch the weapons, and the weapons will function as they're designed to...
...It looked like a school science-project model of an atom...
...An exhibit of his work, "Paul Shambroom: Hidden Places of Power," opens at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis July 23 and runs through October 21...
...Except, perhaps, now the public perception is that nuclear weapons aren't much of an issue anymore...
...My escorts from the base public-affairs offices were usually quite helpful and open-minded...
...It was just part of our world, disturbing and sinister but unseen, remote, and ultimately unthinkable...
...It was never my intention to change anyone's mind about nuclear weapons...
...She must have thought my poem represented the terrible psychological burden children were carrying because of the bomb...
...It's natural to want—to need—not to believe that hardware for our extinction exists, not to believe that it is made of real nuts and bolts, and kept at the ready by living, breathing human beings...
...Warheads are "physics packages...
...The deafening roar brought to mind the image of a giant waterfall with a wide, endless river of dollar bills cascading into a bottomless void...
...Isuspect the military authorities had no idea what to do with me...
...She had me go around the school and read my haiku to other classes, which was a big deal for a second-grader...
...This essay was excerpted from the preface to the book of photographs he is working on about nuclear weapons...
...This was fine with me because I had a big crush on her...
...Except my son, who is unfortunately burdened with a father who is obsessed with them...
...The public-affairs officer said in a humorless voice, "Frank Zappa was no friend of the military...
...When I first had the idea of photographing nuclear weapons in 1989 I had little understanding of my own motivations...
...Nuclear weapons seemed like the final extension of this work—the ultimate in power, and certainly the ultimate professional challenge to gain access to them and show what is hidden...
...Once, after driving several hours to a remote missile-launch-control facility and showing our documents, we were told, "Yes, you have permission to be here, but there's no paperwork allowing you to take pictures...
...My teacher became very agitated, showing a weird mixture of pride and horror...
...I continued shooting, and after climbing out of the silo, I received some bad news from my escort...
...Trident submarine missile tubes on the USS Alaska, Bangor, Washington...
...Sensing common musical interests, I joked that I was surprised upon my arrival at their base to find that the flags were not at half staff to note the passing of musician and counterculture icon Frank Zappa, who had died the previous day...
...I had been trying not to rearrange things or pose people for this project, in hopes of documenting areas in their natural working states...
...The public-affairs escorts responsible for making these arrangements sometimes neglected crucial details...
...Although I tried to avoid being around anything I knew was classified, sometimes it happened by accident...
...When photographing underground missile-launch-control centers, I had to put down my camera and stand with my face to the wall whenever certain coded messages were being received on the teletype...
...I've experienced first-hand the tremendous difference between knowledge and belief...
...In spite of these strong childhood memories, I was not obsessed with daily thoughts of the bomb, nor was anyone else I knew...
...But then we'd have to kill you...
...From what I saw, nuclear weapons appear to be technologically sound and safely and efficiently maintained by bright, competent, normal people...
...I was told on more than one occasion, after asking to see a particularly sensitive area, "Sure, we could show you that...
...The military people I was with used terminology that seemed to promote denial of the real function of the hardware...
...I've been both pleasantly surprised and deeply troubled by what I've learned in the course of this project...
...To enter the warhead storage and maintenance area at one Air Force base, I had to walk down a narrow path across a no-man's land (presumably mined) between two concertina wire-topped fences, undergo a body and equipment search, and approach a metal booth that looked like a confessional...
...Like Chicken Little, I feel compelled to spread the word...
...The public-affairs officer told me: "This may sound a little like James Bond, but they are concerned about hidden recording devices and things like that...
...It took me a long time to clear the many bureaucratic hurdles, but once inside the gates, my sense of having infiltrated a bizarre and alien world only grew more acute...
...I was traveling by helicopter to remote missile facilities to make landscape photographs...
...Amazingly, I was right...
...My heart beating wildly, I waited for the shock wave but it never came...
...I think by that time they had stopped the "Duck and Cover" drills, although I have vague recollections of hiding under my desk or solemnly filing to the school basement fallout shelter in drills in kindergarten or first grade...
...The dubious privilege of being able to touch, see, and walk among the physical manifestations of our societal nightmare left me shaken...
...I remember a vivid dream when I was a few years older...
...It was only after I left the bases at the end of the day that I had time to contemplate the implications of what I had seen...
...Who would want to...
...I felt an almost irresistible compulsion to confront this hidden entity that had been the bogey-man of my childhood...
...After we got back in the helicopter and took off, she explained what "jacking up" means: a guard pushes you onto the ground or against a fence with the muzzle of his M-16 (safety off) jammed into your back and handcuffs you...
...The Progressive / 2q and chat with them and look at their literature...
...She said more insistently, "No, we really have to go or they're going to 'jack us up...
...In private conversations, some were critical of the military for not being more open to the public...
...I was sharply corrected the first time I referred to the MX missile, and was told the official name is "Peacekeeper...
...My unfamiliarity with military terminology almost had serious consequences at one Air Force site...
...During the long work days I stayed creatively focused, preoccupied with the photographic process, and the constant negotiations with my hosts over access to particular areas...
...In that sense, very little has changed...
...My fear was similar to that raised by the science shows on television explaining the remote chance of an asteroid colliding with the Earth...
...I wondered if the person responsible for this name ever saw Dr...
...The Navy, perhaps just to be different, calls them "RBs" for Re-entry Bodies...
...Rather than sit in my hotel room, I would often go for long evening walks or drives during which I would feel delayed but powerful emotional responses to the day's experiences...
...Every "i" had to be dotted and every "t" crossed, or there was no access...
...I was the object of stares and great curiosity in many restricted areas because it was so rare to see anybody taking pictures, let alone a civilian...
...It was not until adulthood and the birth of my own child that I came back to these thoughts and realized that some things exist whether we can imagine them or not...
...There were limits to what could be joked about...
...It turned out to be an explosion at one of the huge chemical refineries in the New Jersey meadowlands fifteen miles away...
...This may seem like old news because we have long known intellectually that nuclear weapons exist...
...To gain access to the USSTRAT-COM (formerly the Strategic Air Command) underground command center, I had to agree to the following stringent security requirements (in addition to having my film reviewed): an Air Force photographer had to actually take the pictures, and I was not allowed to bring my own equipment, even though I had offered to send it ahead of time for examination...
...It was about two feet high, covered with numerous thin rods with little balls on the ends projecting out of a central structure...
...The main technical area in the USSTRAT-COM Command Center is called the "Essential Element...
...On one visit I overheard my escort and another officer discussing the music of Ginger Baker (the drummer in the 1970s rock band Blind Faith...
...Real in an everyday, familiar, undeniable way...
...My passes were inspected over and over again by officers and cops who had trouble believing that I was actually authorized to be there...
...Kids today don't hide under their desks, and they probably don't think much about nuclear weapons at all...
...The mystery gadget was an experimental device for counting warheads that was being tested by a U.S...
...The complexity of paperwork and clearance procedures required to visit some areas was maddening...
...This seems to be true for many adults as well and, by extension, whole nations and societies...
...For a child, the pile of unfinished homework or the broken vase may seem to cease to exist if the child leaves the room and closes the door...
...The young Air Force photographer loaded and unloaded the camera and released the shutter on my command...
...It was nighttime, there was an orange glow in the sky, and things were burning everywhere...
...Not that the sky is falling, but that the means exist to make it fall...
...When I entered the command centers I was usually greeted by a wall-sized computer display reading something like "Welcome...
...Horror, because being around such potentially deadly weapons just gave me the creeps...
...I thought about atom bombs a lot as a kid, but now I think about them all the time.M Paul Shambroom is a documentary photographer...
...After sliding two forms of picture ID (my driver's license and YMCA card) through a narrow slit, I was asked one question by the faceless soldier inside: "Are you under any form of duress...
...Several told me they support the rights of anti-nuclear demonstrators who gather regularly outside the gates of their bases, even going so far as to stop Peacekeeper missile silo in a preparatory test launch drill at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California...
...He seemed as baffled as I was by the pointlessness of the arrangement, but he did his best to accommodate me...
...While the world today may seem like a very different place compared to fifty years ago, we still all carry the same psychological burden that my second-grade teacher recognized in me...
...Instead, the Air Force calls them "RVs" for Re-entry Vehicles...
...Strangelove, in which a renegade Air Force officer is convinced the communists are trying to deplete his "life essences" and "precious bodily fluids...
...They had procedures and staff for handling media and VIP requests, but there was probably nothing in their policy manuals regarding "artist/photographers who intend to demystify...
...While photographing in a Pentagon command center, I noticed a special telephone installed by the seat of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and asked what it was for...
...This and several other areas had to be "scrubbed" or "sanitized" before I was allowed to enter...
...All they did, though, was confiscate my film and later return it to me after determining that their device was not on it...
...On my first trip, to Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, I was struck with a sensation that I would feel repeatedly throughout the project...
...I sometimes felt I was visiting a primitive society that had never seen a camera before...
...I usually had simultaneous feelings of horror and fascination when doing this work...
...No one spoke, but I and everyone else knew that "this was it" and that we would never see the fight of morning...
...My escort and I stood by a runway amidst the odor of jet fuel and watched a constant stream of Bl-B and B-52 bombers taking off and landing on training runs...
...See the pretty mushroom cloud...
...One summer evening I was walking near the river when I heard and felt an earth-shaking rumble and saw a glow far off in the distant sky...
...One even suggested I hide my exposed film when we were approached by security officers after inadvertently photographing in a classified area (my guide knew the film would undergo security review at the end of my visit anyway...
...At USSTRATCOM the only unclassified thing they could find was Cable News Network, which they apparently often watched anyway...
...People were quietly wandering in a daze around our suburban neighborhood, although no one appeared to be dead or injured...
...Apparently the guards are authorized to do this to anyone, regardless of rank, who does not follow correct procedures around nuclear weapons...
...Fascination, because like many American males, I grew up with a strong attraction to weapons and technology...
...Most seemed to take a genuine interest in my project and did whatever they could to help arrange access to the areas I wanted to see...
...Words like "bomb" and "warhead" are rarely used...
...I operated on the idealistic belief that I'm a citizen and taxpayer, that this is my stuff, and that if I ask the right people in the right way eventually they'll let me in...
...I wasn't sure what he meant, so I said, "No," and hoped it was the right answer...
...For calling people," my escort deadpanned...
...I came to the awareness that the bomb takes up a lot of my psychic and emotional space, mostly far below the surface...
...Paul Shambroom . . . to the USSTRATCOM Command Center...
...They sympathized with my frustration in dealing with the various bureaucracies, and some adopted an almost "us-against-them" attitude when trying to get me into difficult areas...
...Anything nuclear is "non-conventional...
...Once while I was inside a missile silo photographing maintenance work, some people pulled back the curtain covering the top and started installing a strange-looking device on the ledge over the missile tube...
...I've seen that they are real and I'm terrified in a way that I never was before...
...The basic method was that I set up and composed each shot and adjusted the camera settings...
...Who could imagine such a thing actually happening...
...This seemed sort of possible but unlikely and completely beyond anyone's control...
...Bombs are "gravity weapons...
Vol. 59 • August 1995 • No. 8
