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Commander Chainsaw leads his troops into the depths of an abandoned Titan 1 Missile silo.
The Commander stands and drops money on the table for the coffee and food. "All right, let's do it."
But an important tactical decision has been overlooked.
"Where are we going to pick up smokes?" Subcommander Stretch asks.
Ah, yes. Agent Borland and The Newbie will procure cigarette rations. Everyone else rides with the Commander.
Move out!
0100 hours. Location: Forty feet below ground.
The six Titan 1 missile bases buried in Colorado's southeastern plains were completed in 1962, seven months before the Cuban Missile Crisis, when they were put on high alert and readied for launch. They remained operational until being decommissioned in 1965; the complexes were then gutted of all equipment and wiring -- including the 2,500 feet of steel-grate flooring in the personnel tunnels.
Agent Geiger balances his way across a five-inch-wide I-beam, trying not to slip into the chest-deep pool of stagnant gray liquid below. He leaps onto a heap of yellow insulation and then adjusts his respirator. "Gotta love asbestos."
Geiger waits as the rest of the crew painstakingly climbs through the muddy obstacle course of support beams, pipes and ten-inch-thick blast-lock doorways. He's been intrigued by Cold War-era fortifications since the moment he saw an old black-and-white photo of three Titan 1 missiles fully raised on their platforms, protruding 98 feet from their glory holes into the ever-threatening sky. Tipped with a four-megaton plutonium-based warhead, each missile weighed 220,000 pounds (with fuel) and had a range of 6,200 miles.
"People don't really know about [the silos], and if they do, they're surprised about how close they are to the city," he says, continually shocked that he shares a zip code with these Titan 1s, the dead grandfathers of the 49 nuclear-missile silos currently active in northeastern Colorado (mostly Weld and Logan counties).
Assembled on a platform, the crew peers into one of the three launch silos. Above them, capping the shaft's 160-foot depths, are two 125-ton horizontal doors that open to the surface. Flashlight beams bounce off the concrete cylinder's forty-foot diameter, and they spy graffiti written all around in impossible-to-reach locations. Steve is a pimp. Roger is a pussy 98. And, of course, Metallica Rules!
"They must have rappelled from the ceiling," someone offers. Flashlights immediately point downward into 25 feet or so of murky water collecting at the base. It's quiet for a moment. Then the same voice asks dryly, "How many dead bodies you think are down there? Ten?"
Although the only corpse Subciety has ever discovered was that of a withered possum, stumbling upon a human carcass is an ever-present fantasy/fear. Rural teenagers and squatters have long utilized the abandoned Titan 1s, leaving behind artifacts for future explorers to ponder: Coors cans, a beanbag chair, a ring of candles, petrified condoms, mattresses, used diapers, a box of baby wipes. Like any good urban archaeologist, the Commander takes note. The thought of a child being brought into the dank, putrid facility sickens him, the proud father of little Chainsaw Jr.
"I consider myself a good parent," the Commander later writes in his expedition log. "If this is the best environment you can find to care for a child in, it's probably time to lay off the hooch and get your kid into state care."
1000 hours. Date: Classified. Location: Undisclosed office building.
Every superhero has an origin story, and Commander Chainsaw is no different.
It's 2002. A mild-mannered Chainsaw sits in front of a computer terminal, fingers clacking across the keyboard. He speaks into his headset with a voice as soft and patient as a kindergarten teacher's. Okay now, right click on the icon -- no, right click. Yes, good job. Nearby, three future subcommanders, Big E, Quad and Stretch, sit hunched in their own five-by-eight cubicles, also doing time in this maddeningly typical office they call the "pink-collar ghetto."
Information technology isn't exactly glamorous. Occasionally there is a rush of inquiries, a panic about some new virus or a system crash, but mostly the calls are sporadic. The downtime is spent surfing the Internet or outside with a smoke, chatting about international politics, new software or inter-office relations (i.e., who is boinking whom) and bitching about the tech industry.
"It used to be that you'd work at a company for your entire life. Now everything's temp or contractual; no one even knows who they're working for anymore," Stretch later vents from the world of unemployment, exhuming a typical refrain from their many smoke breaks. No benefits, no job security, casual layoffs -- it's all bad, he says. But the worst? "There's no loyalty."
After one of these bitch sessions, the Commander heads back to his cubicle and assumes the position, headset arching over his bald spot, fingers back at the keyboard. He surfs around the Internet for a while and then stumbles onto a link for a group called the Action Squad.
Double-click.
It's like nothing he's ever seen. People climbing into manholes and sewer grates on purpose, for fun, then posting Web sites about their experiences.
The Commander spends the entire day reading about the sport of urban exploring and the Minneapolis-based UE group led by infamous punk spelunker Max Action. The Action Squad voyages through the labyrinth of sewers and tunnels that spiderweb beneath the streets of the twin cities. Old breweries, abandoned churches, naked chicks -- the site has it all.
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