Secure A Copy The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman In The American Heartland Imagined By Gretchen Heefner Released As Hardcover

is a really interesting look at a piece of notsowellknown US history, Growing up in southwest North Dakota, I did learn a little about the Minuteman missile sites, but it was one of those things that was almost taken for granted.
It was mentioned in ND History class briefly and occasionally talked about if you happened to be driving past a site, but it wasn't something people talked about much anymore by the time I was growing up.
I found this book to be a great way to fill in my knowledge gaps and think Heefner did a great job capturing the attitudes and contradictions in attitudes about the government and government money that seems to be unique to this particular part of the country.
It didn't come across as dry and was an easy book to listen to, so I would recommend it to anyone interested in military and/or rural political history.
I recently read sitelinkCommand and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser, in which he detailed US nuclear policy fromto present, as well as discussed the safety of these weapons from accidents in the context of the Damascus, AR accident.
I was very engaged by his writing and wanted to learn more, While reviewing titles at my library, I noticed this book, The Missile Next Door, and decided to give it a shot, In the end, I wish I had just stuck with Schlosser's book,

I'm not sure how much to trust the claims of The Missile Next Door, which appears to be largely the content of Heefner's PhD thesis.
Inaccuracies abound such as

a claim the War Department was temporary until postWWII while the War Department existed continuously since the days of the Articles of Confederation and fromtothe Secretary of War was third in the presidential line of succession a far cry from "a temporary department.


discussing the relative frequency of "Broken Arrow" events in the US nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, The issue is not that the frequency was not relatively high but rather the fact that "broken arrow" events are "accidental events involving nuclear weapons that DOES NOT create the risk of nuclear war.
" For instance, the crash of a plane carrying a nuclear weapon or the accidental explosion of a missile as happened in Damascus, AR are "broken arrow" events.
The scrambling of bombers would not occur due to a broken arrow, which is opposite the claim made in the book,

Heefner treats development in missiles as to be almost interchangeable, For instance, there seems to be no reason for the development of the Minuteman missile given the existence of the Titan/Atlas missiles and, once given the Minuteman I, there is no reason for II or III.
However, the Atlas missile couldn't be stored readytolunch and had a circular error probable the radius of a circle about the target within whichof missiles will land of.
miles. On the other hand, the first Minuteman missiles were accurate to,miles. The Minuteman II was accurate to,miles and the III is accurate to,milesmeters. This is important as the early missiles and Minuteman I were basically only useful for targeting cities and other large population centers where a miss bymile is still "close enough.
" A "counterforce" or "nocities" strategy that attempted to narrowly target nuclear weapon sites or the military of an enemy would require much higher accuracy: missing a hardened silo bymile would not disable that silo.


Other examples exist in the book but these are three that stood out to me when I was reading it, If Heefner does not accurately report the history of the War Department, to what extent do I trust her claims of rancher attitudes and trust her not to be sampling an extreme fringe movement If she doesn't understand what a "broken arrow" event is, despite "defining" it in the book, how accurate is her coverage of the safety tradeoffs of nuclear weapons Does she not see why some see/saw a moral value in a counterforce/nocities approach to targeting Does she not see why older weapons like Atlas/Titan or even the Titan II were not the preferred weapons for this type of approach

Additionally, Heefner seems to position the ranchers in this story as noble heroes fighting the "national security state" and nuclear war.
They were "social justice activists" and fighting for what is clearly Heefner's vision of what is right no nuclear weapons, However, nearly every action taken by the ranchers from thes tos in opposition to the Air Force or to the missiles can be viewed as sitelinkrent seeking, an activity designed to increase their share of existing resources land and wealth without creating any new value.
They were acting as selfinterested economic actors concern about the the Air Force and Army Core of Engineers possibly damaging the aquifer, for instance, was not because of some desire to be stewards of the land the rate of decline in the Ogallala aquifer, for instance, suggests little concern for those issues but because they wanted to use the water and the land for their purposes.


In total, I don't trust Heefner's authority on these issues, She has a strong personal opposition to nuclear weapons, This biases her view of the ranchers and casts their antinuclear weapon efforts which likely were entirely selfinterested as noble opposition to nuclear war and militarism.
I don't trust her not to distort actual community sentiment to these weapons and the related processes, She seems to have a weak command of US military history and US nuclear policy and the interaction between that policy and weapon technology, which combined with her personal antimilitary views, suggest a biased reading of evidence and history.


At this point, I'd recommend staying away from The Missile Next Door, Schlosser is clearly deeply uncomfortable with the risks posed by nuclear weapons and it shows in his book sitelinkCommand and Control but he approaches the topic in a much more balanced and open manner.
The relations between US and NATO political demands, missile technology and US strategy are more fully explored, A very fast and accessible read, I knew nothing about this topic before starting the book and I think Heefner approaches it in a very comprehensive way, Are you considered with nuclear weapons of mass destruction I am so i read this book, Some will say it is too left leaning and some will say it does not go far enough, if you want to understand how the cold war affect America's heartland foryears, it's really good, if you want a better understanding of how we got so many nukes and what happened to them, . . it's kind of good too, Overall, I gave it three because I learned a great deal about the cold war but I wanted to really understand the current threat the nukes in the US

may be under.
I didn't really get that here, This was an excellent book to read after my tour of the Minuteman missile and control sites near Wall, SD a few weeks ago.
Great history of the program AND the local feelings, on both sides of the issue, about having nuclear missiles buried on your privately owned property.
This book covers the history of the Minuteman missile the west and midwestern United States, Focus is on the ranchers and farmers who had Minuteman silos installed on their property, The book discusses the impact of the missile and Air Force on the local communities and economy, This an interesting read, if you are interested in the history of missiles or Cold War History, This book highlights another example of how the US government has taken advantage of citizens in the name of “national security, ” half way into audiobook and its still talking about getting land, boring . Gretchen Heefner's "The Missile Next Door" gives a nice background on the Minuteman missiles and their widespread deployment in the upper Midwest and Western states.
While I clearly remember the Cold War and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, the details about the location, extent, and how the missiles came to be buried in rural areas in these States is not a topic I'd ever thought about very much.
So from that perspective, I found there were some interesting tidbits in the book, just not enough to keep me fully engrossed,

One interesting question the book does make you think about, is how did the government amp military convince farmers and ranchers across the heartland of the Country to give up parcels of their property for placement of these missiles.
In today's lawsuit crazy and "not in my backyard" era, when people agree they need services, as long as those power plants or other necessities of daily life are placed in somebody else's neighborhood, it seems miraculous that these weapons ever were put in place.
Knowing you're living in the crosshairs should war break out, or even in peace, living with nuclear weapons in their neighborhood, is remarkable given today's mindset.
Those issues, along with the high cost of the missile program and the Cold War are things Heefner does highlight, Of course, not everyone was pleased by the placement of the missiles, and many grew dissatisfied with the government handling of the dismantling of the silos, and those personal stories are included in her book.
Whether or not the political leanings of people in these heartland States, tending to support the defense spending, but distrustful of large government has any roots in the minuteman missile program from fifty years ago is not easy to conclude, but I can see the author leaning this way.

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