Nuclear Missile Malfunction: Into the Silo…

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1:17subscribers. Upgrade to a plan that includes ESPN to access the full ESPN on Disney Plus experience. Terms apply. It's September the 18th, 1980, around 6 p.m. In the heart of rural Arkansas, right in the middle of the United States, lies the small, sleepy town of Damascus. With a population of just a few hundred, this is a blink-and-you-miss-it sort of place. Little more than a gas station, a post office, and a farming supply store. Tonight, a Thursday, Damascus is characteristically quiet. Walking down Main Street, it's easy to forget that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is still simmering, now well into its third decade.

2:02For many Americans, the red menace of communist Russia remains a real and present threat. But in a peaceful community like Damascus, it's hard to imagine anything disturbing the status quo, or shattering the impregnable sense of safety. Yet, meanwhile, just three miles out of town, a slender gravel access road cuts through the woods and cattle pastures until it arrives at an unassuming chain-link fence. Beneath coils of razor wire, a white placard hangs at eye level, its lettering in bold capitals. US Air Force installation, restricted area, authorized personnel only. Beyond the fence, there isn't much to see at first glance.

2:48A 10-acre plot of closely mown grass and compacted dirt, strewn with antennas, ventilation shafts, and encircled by tall floodlights. But below the ground, directly beneath the concrete slab at the center of the enclosure, a cavernous silo plunges 150 feet into the earth. Sheathed within it is the Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile, the most powerful nuclear projectile ever built by the United States.

3:20Right now, two Air Force technicians are making their way underground, passing through an intricate series of gates and secure metal access doors, descending deeper and deeper into the silo. 21-year-old Dave Powell and 19-year-old Jeff Plum have been dispatched here to carry out some routine maintenance work on the missile. Both men are tired after a long shift, eager to finish the job. But just when they reach the main chamber of the silo, Airman Powell realizes something. He's forgotten to bring down the torque wrench, one of the tools they need to carry out the work. So it's like 11 hours in.

3:57You're 11 hours in, you're tired. Now we've got to run back up topside and get this and run back down. He said, just to get this job done, I'm just going to use the socket and the ratchet that's here. They'll just have to make do with what they've got, a simple ratchet wrench with a socket attachment. It'll make the job fiddlier, but right now that's more appealing than doing the long trek back up to ground level. The two men get to work, loosening a fuel cap on the side of the 100-foot missile. Airman Plum places the socket inside the wrench and starts cranking the tool around the cap. So far, so routine.

4:39But just when the young technician goes to retract the wrench, the socket slips off the end. Powell throws out a hand to catch it, but it's too late. The three-inch metal cylinder tumbles out of reach, falling through the gap between the work platform and the missile. Now these two guys are watching this thing fall, 66 feet gaining speed, and they're praying that it falls straight down into what they call the W. The W. Twin concrete funnels situated below the missile's thrusters. The best and likeliest scenario is that the socket falls harmlessly into this structure, avoiding the missile entirely.

5:21Instead, a stroke of bad luck. The socket hits the frame of a metal thrust mount and ricochets. And when it bounces, it could bounce in a hundred different directions, away from it, to the side of it, but on the single time it falls, it hits that thrust mount, bounces straight in towards the missile, and punctures a hole in this missile. Powell and Plum stare in dumbstruck horror as a jet of pressurized fuel starts spraying violently from the side of the missile. As soon as it makes contact with the air, the fuel turns to vapor, and very quickly the silo starts to fill with a toxic chemical mist.

6:06The two technicians can only watch, helpless, as the missile is slowly enveloped in a thick cloud of highly volatile, highly flammable, vaporized rocket fuel. Then they turn to each other, their faces stricken, behind their helmets' clear visors. If that fuel ignites and the resulting explosion causes the W-53 warhead inside the missile to detonate, it would trigger the deadliest nuclear catastrophe ever to occur on U.S. soil. The small side of that W-53 had the power of Hiroshima, but the black part on the back end made it 600 times as powerful, or three times more powerful than every bomb dropped in World War II.

6:58Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Airman Greg Devlin, a 21-year-old fuel technician in the U.S. military. Stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base, it's the job of Greg and his fellow fuel techs to sort out any fuel-related issues on board the military fleet of Titan II missiles, stored in silos throughout central Arkansas.

7:39On September the 18th, 1980, Greg receives an emergency call from his commanding officer informing him of a potentially catastrophic fuel leak at one of the missile sites just outside the town of Damascus. He said, we need volunteers for this mission out there. And he said, it's bad. It's real bad. We don't even know what's going to happen. That's how bad this is. It's never happened before in history. You know, this is uncharted territory here. As word of the accident and its possible implications spread through the upper echelons of the military, Greg and his colleagues will head to the silo to try to contain the leak.

8:20The stakes could not be higher. If the fuel spilling out of the missile ignites, it could conceivably cause the warhead inside the missile's nose cone to detonate, triggering a massive nuclear explosion right in the very heart of the USA. The vapor panel has the main gauge in the center is a lira, L-I-R-A, lira gauge. this needle was pegged all the way, all the way to the end of the gate. I mean, that's explosion level. The missile will explode. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

9:20It's around 8pm on Thursday, September the 18th, 1980. Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas. Inside a briefing room, a group of young Air Force technicians sits in fraught silence as their commanding officer, Tech Sergeant Mike Hansen, delivers a grave pronouncement. There has been a serious fuel leak at one of the Titan II missile sites, and he needs volunteers to go and assess the situation in order to determine the next best course of action. Among those anxiously listening is 21-year-old airman Greg Devlin. He finished the sentence with, if you don't want to go, you don't have to. And my thought, and honestly, everyone that was there, and I can't speak for everybody, I'm just telling you, all the guys who went out that night said, you know, who else is going to do it?

10:10You need fuel techs. Of course we're going to go. I mean, it's bad, but, you know, of course we're going. Following the briefing, Greg and his fellow fuel techs load up a couple of pickup trucks with the gear they'll need. The mood among the group is subdued, but stoic, business-like. They have a job to do, and there is no one in the military more qualified than they are to get it done. But just as Greg is climbing into the back of one of the vehicles his colleague, a 22-year-old fellow fuel tech named Dave Livingston confides his true feelings We were real close to leaving and Dave Livingston, he's in the back seat there with the driver's side back seat and the door's open and he's really getting ready to scoot over so I could get in next to him He said, man, I have a bad vibe He said, somebody's going to die out here tonight.

11:32to calculate rates and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy, or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple to see your options. No guesswork, no surprises. Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit progressive.com and give the Name Your Price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Now you can watch ESPN College Game Day and select live college football games on Disney+.

12:11All day every Saturday at no extra cost for Disney Plus subscribers. Now there's something for every kind of fan. Select live college football games are now on It's going to be wild! A limited sampling of content from ESPN is now available to all Disney Plus subscribers. Upgrade to a plan that includes ESPN to access the full ESPN on Disney Plus experience. Terms apply. Temperamentally, Greg Devlin is suited to life in the Air Force. He is tough, scrappy, and never shies away from a fight, even when the odds are stacked against him. I come from a family of fighters. My father and uncles are gold gloves, fighters and champions.

12:53My grandfather was pro that had 93 flyweight fights from 31 to 39. And so from a young age, I was always taught, don't take any crap off anybody. You know, don't start any fights ever. Just finish them if they start them with you. Greg grew up in small town Ohio. His father was an ex-Marine who owned a gas station. And Greg used to work the pumps for pocket money. Bright and industrious, he did well in school, but ultimately decided to join the Air Force instead of going to college. He completed basic training in Texas, after which he was required to choose between one of three job offers. I have no memory of what the first two offers were, because when I got to the third offer, it said Titan II Nuclear Missile Fuel Systems Specialist.

13:43And I'm 17, and I want to do something important in the world. And I said, Titan II nuclear missiles? I didn't even know what a Titan II missile was. But to me, it sounded important. I said, yeah, I'll do that.

14:02Since the start of the Cold War in the 1940s, the United States has been locked in a frenzied arms race with the Soviet Union. By 1980, each superpower has amassed a stash of weapons great enough to destroy the world several times over. And in America's vast arsenal, no missile is larger or more destructive than the Titan II. First built in the early 1960s, when Cold War tensions were at their feverish peak, the Titan II missile is over 100 feet in length and weighs about 150 tons, roughly as heavy as the Statue of Liberty. It is fitted with a W-53 thermonuclear warhead, a device capable of unleashing an explosion with a yield of 9 megatons, or around 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

14:53Simply put, a Titan II is the most powerful nuclear missile ever built in the United States. As of 1980, the US military has 54 of them. The main point of these weapons is as a deterrent, to ward off any would-be Soviet aggression. But they still have to be ready, primed to launch at the push of a button. And keeping them in this permanent state of readiness requires work, constant round-the-clock maintenance and monitoring, with dedicated teams whose job is to keep the missiles ticking over in their silos. After finishing his training, Greg is shipped off to Little Rock Air Force Base, where he joins a specialist group of technicians responsible for everything fuel-related on board the Titan II.

15:41So it's called PTS, Propellent Transfer System. That's our group. And we are the people that put the fuels on board the Titan II missile. What we worked with was called UDMH, which is unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine. So that's the fuel. It's extremely toxic. It's cancer-causing. It's explosive. of it's dangerous in every aspect. Working in close proximity to this hazardous liquid, Greg and his colleagues in the PTS team carry out their work in full body protective gear known as REFCO, rocket fuel handlers cover all outfit. Picture a white hazmat suit with an oxygen tank strapped to the back. It has a detachable helmet, has a metal ring around the top, and then you pull the two pins on the side and you can pop the helmet off if you have to get out of that quickly so you can breathe.

16:36It has a one-hour backpack. They call it an ECU, Environmental Control Unit. So it has blended liquid air in it and it lasts for an hour and 12 minutes. They call it a one-hour pack and typically they cut you off at one hour. You've got to be back and undress. One hour and 12 minutes. That's how long REFCO suits are designed to keep the technicians safe. But there are some scenarios that no amount of protective gear can defend against. Inside the missile, that W-53 nuclear warhead, sits above two gigantic tanks. One contains rocket fuel, the other contains liquid oxidizer. When these two highly reactive substances come into contact inside the missile's combustion chamber, the Titan II is launched.

17:28If they were to ever come into contact outside of the missile's engine, it would cause a massive explosion and fire. To stop this from happening, the two propellants are never handled at the same time. But even that might not be enough to prevent disaster. Because the rocket fuel alone is so violently combustible, it can ignite spontaneously, simply upon contact with oxygen in the air. If there are enough fumes, and a technician waves their hand too quickly, the fuel could ignite. Whether or not the ensuing explosion would trigger the nuclear weapon itself, no one can say for sure. But as more and more gallons of fuel spill into the silo, that is the fear gripping the military's chain of command.

18:14They simply don't know what might happen.

18:23It's around 10 p.m. A reflective silence presides over Greg and his colleagues as they drive north towards Damascus, each man left to mull on what exactly it is they're walking into. It's real quiet going out there, too. There's not conversation in a truck. Everybody's like, how bad is this going to be when we get there? The truck pulls off the highway onto an unmarked gravel access road. They bump along for a few miles, a ribbon of asphalt unspooling in the headlights, until eventually the security fence of the missile complex looms from the darkness. The truck parks outside the main gates, and they radio back to base.

19:03They're here. Now what's the plan? But no order comes. Senior Command is still trying to figure out how to handle this unprecedented situation. For now, all the PTS team can do is wait. It seemed like we were waiting for hours and hours. We just wanted to go either send us in. What do you want us to do? Send us in or send us home. You know, to just sit out here and wait seemed helpless. Like, what are we doing? Either let's get in or not. Greg stands by the truck, surveying the darkness beyond the fence. It's an eerie scene. The night air is hazy with smoke coiling from the ventilation ducts and tinged with the distinct chemical odor of hydrazine, one of the main ingredients in the rocket fuel.

19:56Finally, word comes through from mission command. In pairs, the technicians are to enter the silo and take a reading from the vapor detector panel located in one of the interior control rooms. That will tell them how much fuel has leaked up to this point and what the chances are of an explosion. It's decided that Greg and his colleague Rex Huckel will go first. But before they even step inside the complex, there's a problem. Over the last couple of hours, the missile combat crew, the team in charge of the site, has evacuated the command center, which means there's no one to open the main gates or any of the interior doors.

20:38The fuel techs are going to have to break in. We had a three-foot-long crowbar and three-foot-long bolt cutters and a handheld hydraulic pump. And what they wanted us to do was break through the steel-framed door at the portal entry, where you would step into the coat control area.

21:02After using bolt cutters to break through the outer fence, Greg and Rex, kitted out in their bulky Refco suits, head toward the silo. They force their way past the portal entry, then head down a set of steps to the next obstacle, a 6 ,000-pound steel and concrete door. To open this, they'll need to use a hydraulic hand pump, a confusing contraption made up of various tubes and valves, and which neither Greg nor Rex has ever operated before. So they hand us this thing, and no instructions. There's only two lines, so it's a 50-50 coin toss. when you hook this thing up. Will it be trying to lock the door, move the pin tighter in the hole, or is it going to be used to unlock?

21:46You don't know. With precious time ticking away, they line up the device as best they can and start pumping. Ten minutes pass. Nothing seems to be happening. We're pumping this door, and I'm looking at Rex. I say, is the pin moving? Is it moving at all in any direction? Because we're pumping, but the pin's not moving. Well, come to find out, we actually had it hooked up 50-50 coin toss backwards. It's a sucker punch. They've been wasting time. They reconfigure the pump and start again. But with only an hour of oxygen in their tanks, the fuel techs have been told to leave themselves at least 30 minutes to get back to safety.

22:30So we were right coming up on that 30-minute mark. and Sergeant Hanson radios out, hey, you guys are right at the 30-minute mark, come back. Ruing their mistake, Greg and Rex leave the pump in place for the next pair. Then they turn around and start making their way back to ground level, wading through clouds of toxic vapor. After regrouping with the rest of the team by the perimeter fence, the two men take off their helmets and unzip their coveralls. Then they watch as the next pair of technicians, Dave Livingston and Jeff Kennedy set off towards the smouldering silo.

23:13It's half an hour later. The PTS team waits around the main entry gate, listening for updates on the radio. Greg and Rex are gearing up to go back inside the complex. Rex and I are halfway suited up. Rex is sitting on the back of the pickup truck, which is facing the gate, the entry gate. Over to the left is the hole cut out of the fence where we had come in and out of. And I'm standing up because on the radio I can hear Kennedy and Livingston coming back. Kennedy's voice crackles through the radio. It sounds like they made it through to the control room where the vapor detector panel is located.

23:51Greg listens carefully as Kennedy describes what he saw on the panel's gauge. The vapor panel has this main gauge in the center is a lira, L-I-R-A. When there's no fumes out there, obviously the needle's on zero. As it climbs, right about three quarters of the way up is a line straight across there, okay? There's a marker there. And it's 18 ,000 parts per million. This needle was pegged all the way, all the way to the end of the gauge. It went to 24 ,000 parts per million. I mean, that's explosion level. the missile will explode.

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25:37It's three o 'clock in the morning. Greg stands at the entry gate of the missile complex. He is halfway suited up, holding onto the steel mesh fence and peering out towards the silo. Somewhere in the hazy, fume-choked night, Jeff Kennedy and Dave Livingston are making their way back towards the entry gate Word has come through from Kennedy that the vapour gauge is reaching around 24 ,000 parts per million An unprecedented level Essentially, there is now enough vaporised fuel around the missile for it to blow at any second It could be a stray spark, a static discharge even a hot surface could cause the fuel to ignite and trigger an explosion.

26:22Could that explosion in turn cause the nuclear warhead to detonate? Nobody can say for certain, but if it were to, the blast would unleash the power of 600 Hiroshima's on rural Arkansas, potentially wiping the entire state off the map and poisoning vast swathes of middle America with masses of radioactive fallout. Greg squints his eyes, trying to catch sight of his colleagues. It's quiet, as if the breath of every man here is being held on a collective inhale. And then, disaster strikes.

27:04Oh my gosh, it was the loudest bang I ever heard in my life. It broke my left eardrum. The first thing that hit me, it felt like a Mack truck or a heavy-duty 10-ton truck just hit me at 50 miles an hour. I, boom! But it was wind. The first thing that hit me was the wind. The force of the blast knocks Greg flat onto his back. In a fraction of a millisecond, the dark silo has erupted into a giant ball of blinding light and excoriating heat. A ring of fire shoots outward, then up, 300 feet into the air, coiling and reshaping into an immense, fiery sphere. It billows black smoke and illuminates the surrounding farmland with an infernal red glow.

27:59The superheated air rapidly expands, creating a concussive shockwave that rips branches from trees and sends every person in the vicinity hurtling backwards like crash-test dummies. Greg can feel the gravel scraping the skin from his body as he careens on his back down the access road. I'm sliding backwards so fast. I mean, I only had one thought in my mind. I know I'm going to die. I just hope it doesn't hurt. That's the thought. My left eye was cracked open just lightly. I didn't open it. It was cracked open. and I'm sliding, and I can see what looks like lava going past me at a thousand miles an hour.