mk5 adventures

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I’ll do more research and see what I can come up with.

 

Toyota has functional and reliable electrical systems. And I think ground switching has advantages without adding complexity. But why PWM on the dome light circuit? Who cares if it fades or just switches on/off. Seems like PWM should be reserved for loads that need variable power for dimming real lights, controlling motor speeds, heating elements etc.

 

Agreed. But fading on interior lights is pretty much standard these days, if carmakers omit them it's seen as "low quality."

I am always rolling my eyes when car reviews call out plastic dash and door panels, they want soft touch everything these days. Meanwhile I am hauling 10ft sticks of steel in a 2-door Ford Escort (which surprisingly is the superior vehicle for this, at least for small loads, vs. the Tacoma where I need to strap and flag it!) If that car had a soft touch dash it'd be shredded by now. Same for the truck, for other but similar reasons. Cars are supposed to work... not be soft to the touch. But folks like us don't drive the market, we drive old cars. So fading lights it is.

Truck update:



Don't have much to report these days... actually I do, tons of trips earlier this year. But no adventures since fall... instead I'm towing things around, and doing home projects all winter!

 

That trailer - which appears to be hauling a swimming pool ladder that must be a chair, because I can't imagine that you're moving a pool - would be a lot more secure if you remembered to hook up your rear winch to it.

YOU'RE WELCOME!!!

 

The "standing desk" is so last year... us forward-thinkers are now embracing the swimming desk. Hence the pool-ladder chair. Get with the times!

On a practical note, prior to massively overloading the truck and racing around the LA freeways with a sometimes very heavy trailer... I did manage to install a Tundra booster and master cylinder, which is a great upgrade for 2nd gens that lack the electronic brake booster.

The new master cylinder is slightly smaller in diameter, so it actually gives me less mechanical advantage thru the pedal... which is sure to suck if I ever stall the engine and need to stop. But the vacuum booster is a two stage design, vs. the Tacoma's one stage, so it makes it a lot easier to stop. I haven't even properly bled it yet, but wow, it's nice to be able to stop when I want to, and especially when I need to.

I even had the ABS kick on the other day in the rain! Seems crazy to me this truck came with ABS--the stock brakes were incapable of locking up the wheels on anything but an ice rink. Feels almost like real brakes now... and I only had time to bleed one corner, probably still air in there.

The hardest part of the job... the tundra cylinder has outputs on the opposite side. Have to fashion new lines to cross under the cylinder and connect to the original ones.




Also had to extend the reservoir level switch a bit...



The downside is that my electrical panel doesn't fit any more... it's just sitting loose against the new brake reservoir for now, with the power cable disconnected. So no radios for me... no camp shower, no auxiliary lights, no subwoofer, no phone charger... I'll have to make a new panel next year, but at least I have proper brakes for now. Kind of makes me wonder why I spent years and years adding all that other shit instead of making the brakes work... whatever.

 

This is the physical realization of the frame of mind that all Maryland 4WD vehicle owners operate with when it snows.

"I have 4WD! Nothing can stop me!"

Indeed, nothing can... crunch.

 

See, in Seattle people just go out in their 2WD because, "if the city doesn't have enough plows for the roads, it must not be that bad."

City wide bumper cars! And who needs freeways when you can use them as parking lots?

Sorry, you lost me at practical. Where'd mk5 go?

Nice work on the brakes, bummer on the rest of the electrics. I'm actually looking to disable my ABS, because with the larger Tundra calipers, mine engages way too frequently. And, in 2000, it was so shitty as to be essentially useless from the factory anyway.

 

Seattle certainly delivers top-quality pandemonium when the roads ice over. Y'all have some steep damn hills. Not as many as where I live, but thank God, it doesn't ever ice up down here.

Sadly this is also the physical realization of me in a rental car. By not wasting money on this "insurance" crap, I can afford the premium 4WD!

(Crunch)

This is useful... and actually, I might have slightly exaggerated the useless of my stock brakes. They can lock up the wheels on sand and gravel, in addition to ice rinks. But in soft terrain, the meddling of ABS is an absolute nuisance, if not a hazard. You need to lock up and dig in to stop in sand... and on gravel, ABS essentially doubles as cruise control. Jury's out on snow and ice... I once slalomed down an iced-over hill towards the world's slowest-opening gate (vrbo in gated community, with gate sensor a few hundred feet back, and with a 15mph speed limit which was aggressively ignored), thinking for sure I'd crash into it, but somehow I cleared it by perhaps an inch on either side... probably thanks to ABS retaining directional control. But then on another trip I crashed a rental car into an Australian and he got super pissed, and neither ABS nor 4WD did a damn bit of good.

Anyway, on 2nd gens at least, you can ground the rear locker indicator line coming from the differential, using a dash switch, to tell the computer that the axle is locked. This effectively disables ABS without causing any other issues. I pretty much click that switch on whenever I leave pavement.

 

Yeah. That’s another one I don’t get. Aside from durability, the only things I touch are the steering wheel, shifter and door and center armrests. So who cares if the top of the dash is hard or soft? Make it strong, easy to clean and resistant to UV fade or cracks. Bonus points for some molded indents in the top-center of the dash, or maybe tie-downs, to restrain those long pieces of lumber resting on the dash, which I’ve slid through the rear window and whose other end is resting on the tailgate.

 

Well, I ended up here at night and at first I just drove by - I had other places to be. But then, I was like... "Mike said this place was creepy, what a wuss," so I turned around and figured I could put a few of your LEDs to use.

It was a windy night and damn that place is f@#$#$ creepy. All the corrugated steel rattling. The birds that I woke from their restful sleep divebombing me. I was ready to go go go!

Still, pretty rad, too.

 

Bad ass!!!

Next time, call me... Still looking for a grown-up to go with so I don't get so scared!

And glad you didn't get murdered... you made it further than I did! As someone who routinely charges into decrepit crumbling mine shafts, gleefully alone in the middle of the night... this place is absolutely too-fucking-creepy

 

That is way more graffiti than when I was there some years ago. I wonder if much of it may be from the odd new tenants down the road in Nipton these days?

 

Once Indecline got in there (I despise those f#@kers for everything they've done throughout the Mojave), it really opened the flood gates for everyone else. I think because:

1. Their video made it so people knew it existed.
2. The fact that they'd defaced it meant that "I'm just adding to the 'art'."

It's not just the additional graffiti. People have burned a lot of what was there (inside), physically destroyed equipment, and of course left vast quantities of trash laying about. I suppose it's always been a superfund site, but it certainly looks the part now.

 

No idea who "Indecline" is, nor do I have any desire to learn, but I hate them already. Looking back at the photo it appears they cut out their name in the metal siding.

 

Indecline is a forward-thinking art collective whose creative and meticulously permitted public art projects draw crucial attention to pressing cultural and environmental issues, which nobody else had ever even heard of, leading to rapid and meaningful changes for the better. For example, they single-handedly eliminated pollution and social injustice by randomly vandalizing historical sites across the Mojave. Their work exemplifies the universally beneficial impact of social media on the human condition.

If you haven't yet purchased one of their $80 hoodies to show your support, then you are literally Hitler crashing the Exxon Valdez into underserved communities every single day.


Edit: sorry... I didn't tell the full story there because I was huffing spray paint and watching Bum Fights. But now all the bottles are just dribbling paint, so I guess I will have to go steal more once I can find an unlocked car. Interestingly, Bum Fights was actually Indecline's first major project, an acclaimed documentary that solved homelessness and violence through hard-hitting yet rigorously ethical journalism.

A few pages ago I described how they leveraged their creativity at the above referenced site--an abandoned small-scale gold mill in Mojave National Preserve. With the blessing of the NPS and regional historical societies, their eye-opening exposé incited global outcry over the catastrophic environmental impacts of mining, which again, nobody had ever realized was a problem. Yet thanks to the resounding international demands for environmental justice, and with countless tourists flocking to this newfound Mecca to respectfully gaze upon this 21st-century masterpiece of art, the impact of their work can be seen world-wide today, and not a single ounce of metal has been mined in any country ever since.

You can read more by clicking the link atop this quote, from my narrative of visiting the site just over a year ago:

Oh and here's another gem, from later in the same trip:

 

I haven’t been traveling much recently... just super busy with other things – but I am finally getting back into it this year.


But I was scrolling through my photos from 2023 tonight and realized what an utterly epic year it had been for me. I'll probably burn out, but I'm going to make an effort to post some more content from the past year's adventures here over the upcoming weeks. I've posted a lot of the photos in other threads, but I'd like them here too, maybe even with some context.


So with that in mind, I present:


Four epic tours in the greater Mojave


There's lots to see in the greater Mojave region, and most of it, you just have to know where it is, then drive or hike out there. But many gems are privately held, or otherwise restricted in their access. Some of them... you can arrange to tour. And I went on some epic tours last year!


1. Tecopa Mines

• Location: A few miles east of Tecopa
• How to get a tour: Email tecopamines@gmail.com
• Availability: Tours are easy to schedule, but do so in advance (don't just show up)
• Cost: Depends on what tour is arranged, just ask him up front.
• Duration: Varies; our tour took a couple hours, and didn’t feel rushed.
• Photography: Allowed within reason, but don't film the whole tour and post it online.
• Camping/lodging: Permission may be requested to camp on site; extensive dispersed camping available on surrounding public lands. Lodging available at Tecopa Springs or Shoshone.
• Dining: None on site, but Tecopa has shockingly good dining options, plus two breweries... and don't forget to stop by China Ranch for a date shake!
• Book pairing: Tecopa Mines: Operating During 82 Years of the Death Valley Region Mining Boom
• Other notes: Don't show up unannounced. Some tours can involve extensive hiking, crouching, and ladder climbs/descents, others are level (but still long treks). Hard hats and head lamps are provided. Consider clothing precautions with respect to White Nose for bats.

Extensive hard-rock mining activity took place in a district east of Tecopa. Three of the most extensive mines in the region are the War Eagle, the Noonday, and the Columbia. They are patented claims, meaning they and the surrounding lands are privately held -- which is different from a lot of other historic SoCal mines which are on public land, and although many claims may still be active, few are worked, and most of the rest are fair-game for casual exploration (i.e., with a camera, not a pickaxe). Not so at the Tecopa mines--if you don't have permission to go there, then you are trespassing. But for many decades, though, the Tecopa owner(s) weren't active in keeping explorers off their lands or out of these mines. So you can find a lot of online content of people exploring them on their own. That is no longer an option.

Several years ago, early in the pandemic I think, the mines were purchased by a one-legged notorious chicken scofflaw named Ross. He had retired from a very different career in very distant states, and wow, I can only hope to have such an interesting retirement plan. No chance I’ll have the finances or motivation to follow through on that, of course, but this guy did. He has since begun restoring the place, including cataloging and display of artifacts from within the mines and (re)acquired from elsewhere, re-opening long-sealed passages for exploration, and installing simple structures to support his living there and hosting of visitors (e.g., a much-needed shithouse). He has aggressively clamped down on folks visiting without permission, as was the norm in years past. If you stumble in simply uninformed, he will intercept you and likely offer you a tour, but if you try to sneak in or vandalize the place you are going to be in for a very bad time.

What put these mines on my radar was stumbling upon online photos of this epic cart trestle at the back side of the Noonday mine--clearly collapsing, but with enough left standing to evoke imagery of mine carts once rolling across:

Update: I've deleted the pictures I stole from other's web sites, and regret having selfishly re-posted them without permission. You can find a picture of the trestle on ExploreDesert here.

This alone was something I really wanted to see--after all, I really like bridges--and the promise of super-cool mining stuff made it even better. I first tried to visit in late 2021--only to find freshly erected barriers and no-trespassing signage surrounding the place. What a bummer!

One thing I've learned about exploring cool places in the desert, or really anywhere on earth, is that it's best to do it ASAP. Things are always changing, and who knows how long you will have the opportunity to see a particular place or thing. If the future brings greater opportunity, you can always revisit a place. But if the future brings less, then you can't go back in time. And believe me, I've tried... but driving 88 MPH has thus far only yielded speeding tickets.

Even from afar, I was able to discern that the trestle has since nearly completely collapsed. But it was clear that these were massive mines. I sure hoped I'd get a chance to see them up-close someday.


Lots of earth moved at the War Eagle... the concrete-lined adit above is the black spec in the middle here. A truly massive mine here!

Perhaps most impressive were the remains of a gigantic ore chute (or inclined trackway?), which once facilitated delivery of the ore to railroad cars:



That's right, this place had its own railroad, the Tecopa Railroad to be specific, which was built in exasperation to connect these mines to the Tidewater and Tonopah in nearby Tecopa, when the latter wouldn't construct the branch line themselves. Here's a colorized photo of that operation I found in the Shoshone museum:



I drove what I could of that grade towards Tecopa as the sunset gave way to dusk...



It actually served another big mine on the way, the Gunsite, which once had an even more impressive ore chute and loading trestle than the Noonday. However, it burned years ago, and I ran out of daylight and my wife's patience on this visit, so I have yet to visit the place.

[Fuck! I loaned the book to a friend!]
Here's a photo of the Gunsite workings from the book linked above. Lost to history.



Anyway...

Some time after my initial abortive visit, Ross moved out to the mine to live there full-time, and now he offers tours. So, when some old friends invited us for a Vegas weekend in 2023, I knew the Tecopa mines would make a perfect day-trip.

We toured the Noonday, beginning by climbing into Ross's car for the lumbering drive up to an adit, partway up the swiss-cheesed hillside, passing the remains of the massive ore chute (or inclined trackway?) on the way.




Hard hats and headlamps are provided, if you aren’t cool enough to have brought your own ridiculously patriotic helmet that you wore all day like a gleeful child

There's tons of historical stuff in these mines... but for as much as I love old mines, I'm not much of an artifact person. Apparently there is a big problem with people stealing artifacts, though, which doesn't make any sense to me. In any case, I don't remember too much about the various artifacts we encountered, other than that they were plentiful and seemed pretty cool. Also plenty of historical “vandalism” which was created using the miners’ carbide lamps.


Apparently, these phrases had different connotations at the time.

It's also hard to appreciate the extent of these mines. They're HUGE. Like gigantic ant hills with fascinating three-dimensional topology. I'm sure we barely scratched the surface.


That’s the surface up there, so I guess technically, it has been scratched.



After what felt like a mile of hiking (probably way less, but time goes slower underground) we emerged on the other side of the mountain. That's right, you literally high through the middle of a mountain, how cool is that?

And this took us directly to the site of this once-epic trestle, for a slightly better photo op:




The coolest kid in class brought his own mining helmet

It was early summer, so it was already pretty sweltering outside. Returning to the mine was a welcome relief. I think we took a different route back, but I’m not sure.

The tour was fantastic, and I really enjoyed meeting Ross. On one hand, it can seem frustrating that this once free-for-all historical site is now off-limits for whimsical exploration, but it's hard to argue that this isn't a change for the better. There's no way I would have explored so much of this mine on my own, if it was just abandoned, and that would have been considerably riskier as well. This aside, the historical insights provided during the tour made it a great deal more fascinating. The place is being actively preserved and restored, so its future seems considerably safer than it was under prior ownership. While I expect he’ll do some development in upcoming years, and is also making an effort to document this on social media (e.g., YouTube)... I don’t see the place losing its character any time soon, or heading towards the sad modern-day status-quo of commercialization and social-media grift that besets the evolution of many such uniquely special places.


Pretty sure that's looking at a downward angle...

One thing that definitely sets this apart from other mining-related tours in the greater DV area, or at least the others I’m aware of and have visited myself – this is a mine tour, not a structure tour. In fact, save for a giant concrete block down near the road, there aren’t really any structures left here, except for the mines themselves (and associated ore chutes and headframes). So this tour is going to take you deep underground. Like insanely far, if you haven’t explored mines before. It’s also quite unlike the polished Disney-like experience you can expect at some of the more popular family-oriented mine tours that thrive in tourist areas (e.g., in Colorado)... you aren’t going to get funneled through a museum into a gift shop by uniformed employees... At least not any time soon.


And that makes it pretty cool in my book. I look forward to coming here many times – and since have.




We concluded our day-trip with a visit to China Ranch. Those date shakes just so amazing... who cares if I'm, like, "lactose intolerant" or whatever.

Oh, and one more word of caution, if you are going to poke around the talc mines to the south. Beware of unstable ground--there are collapsing subterranean works beneath the lower pit levels.

 

Epic tour #2: Ryan

I regret to state that my initial post on this topic overstepped what was prudent for such a unique and special place in Death Valley history. I deeply regret that. I nonetheless encourage you to research the history of Ryan, CA, and then to seek a tour yourself. It is epic.

Here is a lizard I saw on the trip:

 

I don’t think you’ve mentioned this in any of your posts about boron/borax but the original 20 Mule Team Borax company was started by Stephen Mather who went on to be the first director of the National Park Service.

 

3. Mitchell Caverns

Okay... I didn't visit this one in 2023, but it seems worthy of including in this list, because it’s a pretty awesome place to tour. So here are my photos from our 2022 visit, and I've done my best to provide updated instructions below, as they've changed since we went.

• Location: Providence Mountains SRA, southern Mojave National Preserve. About an hour east of Ludlow.
• How to get a tour: Reserve online at ReserveCalifornia.com -- search for "Providence Mountains SRA"
• Availability: Plentiful in advance, but frequently fully booked. Offered once or twice daily on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and holiday Mondays--park fully closed July and August, and on non-tour days.
• Cost: $10 park entry per vehicle plus $20/ea for tour.
• Duration: ~2 hours
• Photography: Allowed, but no tripods or artificial lighting (incl. flashes). Lights installed in the caves are sufficient with a fast lens and a steady hand. Drones are illegal.
• Camping/lodging: Small campground in the park, reservations recommended. Hole in the Wall CG is nearby, within MNP, which also has infinite dispersed camping. Motel in Ludlow.
• Dining: None on site or nearby--so pack snacks! I recommend the diner in Ludlow.
• Book pairing: Digonnet’s Hiking the Mojave Desert, which isn’t specific to this place, but I bought my copy here!
• Other notes: Tour covers ~1.5 miles of hiking but is not particularly strenuous. Note park recommendations regarding white nose precautions to protect bats.

This one is an official California State Park—er... I guess it’s a State Recreation Area. But out there in the middle of nowhere is a spectacular cave system. I don’t know why they built a cave out there, but it’s worth checking out.


I picked up a book to start reading as we waited for the tour to begin.



This is certainly a much more popular and better-known tour than the other ones on my list, so I don’t have much to add that you can’t find online. Enjoy the photos!









Without going into details here, there are some pretty amazing old mines in the surrounding mountains (outside of the state park), if you are looking for a sketchier, unlit, self-guided tour of the underground. As well as more caves, I’ve read, but if I recall those are either off-limits or highly technical, and I haven’t attempted to find them.



It turned out that I was brutally hung-over on this trip, which would have made it a lot less fun, had we not stopped by the diner in Ludlow for a time-proven cure to this condition: greasy food. In this case it was an off-menu breakfast burger with extra bacon that restored my interest in being awake and/or alive. Now I usually make a point of stopping there when I’m passing through on the 40.

Right out front is a historical post, reading:






How crazy is that... they wanted to voluntarily blow up nuclear bombs out here?

Who thought that would be a good idea?

And for that matter, who would even want to drive through a place where nuclear bombs had been detonated? You’d have to be crazy!


Hello?

 

4. NTS


Teapot-Hornet (1955, 4 kT) -- Wikipedia

There’s almost nowhere else I’ve wanted to visit as much as this place -- over 900 nuclear bombs were detonated here! It’s now known as the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), but I prefer the more historic nomenclature: Nevada Test Site (NTS). Either way, the fact you can tour this place as an ordinary human is simply amazing, given the utterly profound developments that unfolded here, and the extreme secrecy that surrounded it.

• Location: Tour departs from the Atomic Museum in Las Vegas. (Note that the museum doesn't run or coordinate the tours.)
• How to get a tour: Monitor the tour webpage, note when tours will be released for reservation, then hawk over the site to sign up the instant they're made available. Note that this occurs infrequently, a̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶p̶p̶e̶n̶!̶ Correction – just happened. My bad -- better luck next year!
• Availability: Scarce--tours are offered monthly, but are in extremely high demand.
• Cost: Free! But it's based out of Vegas, so you should tip your guide and the bus driver.
• Duration: Full day--must arrive by 7:30AM, returns around ~5PM.
• Photography: Strictly illegal--absolutely no cameras, cellphones, or electronic recording or communication devices allowed. You get a handful of low-resolution group photos afterwards, though.
• Camping/lodging: Given early departure, I recommend getting a hotel in Vegas. Be advised that the hotel/casino immediately adjacent to the museum is run-down, gross, and depressing... despite the upbeat and highly misleading webpage.
• Dining: Tour stops are provided for a quick breakfast snack (Mercury) and a leisurely lunch (Yucca Flat). These are cafeterias, and the experience is fantastic, but bring snacks and a water bottle for the bus. Leave the flask at home though.
• Book pairing: The Baneberry Vent: A Geologist Remembers -- an especially fascinating narrative. Definitely bring a book to read, though, it’s a long drive.
• Other notes:
  • Available to US Persons only; must provide identifying information for background check; must present with RealID or equivalent photo identification.
  • No backpacks allowed, bags must be clear, essentially no electronic or optical devices allowed (except for eyeglasses).
  • Not strenuous, rather little walking... but be prepared for desert climate.
  • Do not fuck around—a literal busload of other people don’t want to find out. The cold war never ended and the peace dividend is long-since spent. So sit down, follow the rules, and enjoy the fleeting illusion of a hollow global peace with the rest of us.

Hidden beyond sight of any highway in the Nevada Desert lies a major battleground of the most expensive war ever waged--the Cold War.

Threats had been a normal part of all wars for all times... perhaps a prelude to battle, perhaps a currency of negotiation... but certainly not the main part of the whole entire war. The Cold War gave us a bizarre and new kind of war, a war of threats, made possible by a new and terrifying kind of threat.


The beginning, Trinity (1945) -- New Mexico

I’m not talking about that post-9/11 “threat level orange” bullshit, either. I’m talking about decade after decade of calculated, articulated, demonstrated, non-stop escalating threats of literal global annihilation. Fuck the airport security charade... duck and cover, motherfucker!


When I say I’m at threat-level orange, it means that I ate too much ice cream and urgently need to find a bathroom. (Luckily, we haven’t reached threat-level red since the Sizzler incident back in ‘08.)

Now, there are two key prongs to proper nuclear war-mongering: demonstration, development, and stockpiling. Astute readers will note I’ve listed three things, but the third one is boring, so it doesn’t get to be a prong. In short, cold-war participants are tasked with demonstrating their current capabilities to substantiate their thinly veiled if not overt threats, while also frantically developing even-more-terrifying weapons to substantiate even-worse threats in the future. NTS was instrumental on both fronts, but really did the heavy lifting on the latter front, with the more prominent events of the former unfolding in the Pacific, at a safer distance from anyone who wasn’t a pacific islander or an unlucky Japanese fisherman:


To convince your enemies you can wipe them off the face of the earth... give earth’s face a convincing wipe! (This one was named Mike.)

Despite the utter success of early US nuclear arms development, the early weapons were unwieldy, expensive, and difficult to stockpile. They were also terrifyingly dangerous, which was kind of the point, but we kept inadvertently almost nuking ourselves and our allies, so there was room for improvement -- at least probably if you asked the places we almost accidentally nuked, including: Canada, Greenland, Ohio, New Mexico, California, Spain, Florida, Canada, Europe, North Carolina, South Carolina, Canada, East Carolina, the Pacific Ocean, Maryland, South Dakota, Texas, England, New England, Louisiana, Korea, New Jersey, Canada, Morocco, Snow, Kentucky, Anywhere With Trees, the Number Seven, and the Letter F.

There was also a slightly shorter list of places we had actually nuked on purpose--I suspect those places were in favor of having safer nuclear weapons too, and could probably also offer the best argument for ‘none at all’ if only that were an option. In any case, there was a clear need to improve the technology. Not just to glass even more communists, but to make it easier, safer and cheaper to do so, and hopefully maybe to reduce the odds of nuking such places as “Canada” and “Oops, Canada again” in the process.

And that’s really where NTS comes into play. This is where the US perfected nuclear weapons. Not the only place, of course--they dreamed them up and built them elsewhere. But this was the premier science lab.


Teapot-Turk (Wikipedia)

And I really mean that: perfected. They say nothing is perfect, but nuclear weapons are damn-near perfect.

Think about what they are designed to do... have been proven to do. Think about how many were built, and how many remain active today—launch-ready in missile silos and submarines, zipping overhead in aircraft as we idle impatiently in traffic and swipe at cellphone screens in states of catatonic consumption...

Now ponder the fact that these silos, submarines, and nuclear bombers are staffed by humans, and that all humans make mistakes. And no disrespect to our armed forces, but have you met the folks that work there? They’re almost as crazy and reckless as the rest of us!

Next, and not to divulge national secrets, consider that bombs are probably made from bomb parts, just like a car or a computer is made from car or computer parts. You probably don’t drive a 40-year-old car or use a 1980s computer today, and if so, you’ve probably needed lots of parts to keep it working. But this is around how long it’s been since our nuclear arsenal was under active wartime development, meaning that some designs are very old, and newer designs haven’t been tested like older designs were—by blowing them up to see if they work. (I think today, they almost blow them up to see if they almost work?)

For nearly all of us, nukes have been around, locked and loaded, since before we were born. When we called our teachers ‘mom,’ when we shit our pants in gym class, when we got caught driving drunk or screwing the intern again... when the levees burst, when the markets crashed, when the wall fell, when the planes hit the towers, and when we lost—are you kidding me—not one but TWO fucking space shuttles. Go back further... nearly eight decades of fuck-ups and shit-luck spanning everything everywhere—and not a single nuclear bomb has ever detonated unintentionally. Anywhere. Not even the Soviets fucked this up, and they gave us Chernobyl.

That’s what I mean by perfection. Imagine if we could do anything else so perfectly, like roads, healthcare, or education. Our kids would think so good, plus sports win and bridge stay up! Oh well... if nuclear bombs are on the list, I guess that’s the most important one to get right.

NTS is where they got it right. Not the only such place, of course... the physics were first worked-out and tested in New Mexico, immediately wielded to great effect against Japan, later retested in curiosity in the distant Pacific, and perhaps might have been forever shelved. But once it became clear that the atomic age would unfold as an insane two-player no-limits game of bluff, the Nevada Proving Grounds sprung to life in the Nevada Desert in 1951, dazzling the burgeoning metropolis of Las Vegas with midnight sunshine and distant mushroom clouds—wagers of bizarre and escalating stakes beyond the imagination of even the most hopelessly reckless casino gambler.


Welcome to NTS

Vast swaths of land in the west had been requisitioned for wartime activities in the decade prior, so I suppose this was no different. Whatever had been here before, was suddenly somewhere else, and fences and guard stations were thrown up overnight to ensure that whatever would hence unfold, would be largely shrouded in secrecy.

Not that you can truly keep a secret this big... we’re taking about explosions into the 100 kT range here. (I guess the South Africans pulled it off once... but in a distant ocean, not 900 times right next to Las Vegas.) And in any case, the secret wasn’t the big bhang itself, it was everything else... the recipes in particular -- decades of secrecy, much still classified, regarding the most-secret and spiciest “special sauce” ever concocted.

So of course the world would get a taste from time to time. After departing Mercury, on the way in to Frenchman Flat, we pass the tasting room: a historic row of benches just past the saddle:


I stole this from Google... not sure who took it or posted it on the internet. But thanks, whoever.

Here, important people, politicians, and members of the press once watched live nuclear detonations take place upon the distant Frenchman Flat. No spending program can live forever in secrecy, at least not in this country. Gotta loop in the public, or at least make them feel looped-in. Broadcast it in in prime-time. Find sponsors...


NNSS

The benches are falling apart today... some seven decades later.


Icecap

Cut forward to the final moments of US nuclear testing. Actually, it was a British weapon: The Icecap site.

The bus door opened in the shadow of a 150-foot tall tower--a looming white rectangle shrouded in windowless corrugated metal save for the hatches along a precarious external stairway at one corner. And a door at ground level, through which we will funnel once our host figured out the lock combo following a lengthy radio call.


A photo from the construction phase... the tower is even taller today, I think, and the cranes are long gone. (NNSS)

This was built to test a UK weapon, up to 150 kT, intended for delivery via a high-altitude rocket, perhaps a cruise missile (our host said, but I forgot). This would mean that the warhead would reach near-cryogenic temperatures in flight – so, someone must have wondered... would it still work?


NNSS

Within the tower, a two-story-tall rusting cryostat still hangs from cables above, housing whatever science package had been devised for this test. We took turns giving it a push. It was massive, but swung free. Beneath our feet, below a false floor, a 1600-foot vertical shaft had been drilled, into which this experiment would be placed, then buried to contain the blast. I believe the cryostat was to be packed with dry ice, but owing to the various cryogen lines lying about, I suspect LN2 was to be used as well, to achieve the desired thermal conditions once emplaced. Or perhaps compressed CO2? I forget. Countless other bundles of cables and hoses radiated from the bore, in seemingly all directions, coiled up atop each other, most leading to the dozen-plus weathered instrumentation trailers surrounding the test site. Their distance was determined by the expected diameter of the subsidence crater, into which we would instantly fall should this aborted chapter of history suddenly unfold off-script today. Near the door, a display table shows us samples of the various cables and fibers used to convey critical signatures of the blast to surface instrumentation. I don’t know a lot about nuclear testing, but I know a hell of a lot about instrumentation. Optical fibers. Coaxial cables. Cleanly cross-sectioned for us to ponder the cladding, the conductors, the insulators... I can tell a lot about what kind of signals these cables were designed to carry. But I have no idea what they would have meant.


NNSS

And this chapter of history was indeed aborted quite abruptly. Apparently it was a call from the White House:

“Hello?”

“Hey, this is Bill at the White House. The Cold War is over!”

“Great, I’ll let the team know, thanks!”

“You’re welcome, bye!”​

Everyone just shrugged and went home. And that was like 30 years ago.

Apparently, in recent years, a British scientist, on a bus tour, asked permission to enter one of the trailers to retrieve his lab notebook. Perhaps more surprising, the request was granted, only for the plan to fall through when he couldn’t recall the combination lock at the door. So I can only assume his lab notebook is still there, frozen in time within this bizarre snapshot of history—an intricate yet temporary emplacement of scientific equipment all designed to record the violent chaos of a few microseconds, against all odds, now a permanent display of an abrupt, fragile, and somehow lasting peace.

Another point of discussion, the details of which I’ve sadly forgotten, involved someone falling down the shaft. I forget if it happened at this shaft, or a different one. But tragically, it happened--someone, perhaps several people, had died this way. And someone in our group, knew the family of someone who had fallen. I forget if they were able to retrieve the body, but I remember taking a step back from the shaft.


Sedan


Sedan shot (Wikipedia)

There was also brief era in which hope prevailed, that nuclear weapons could be used for “peaceful” applications. After all, conventional explosives had enabled decades of mining, drilling, and civil engineering projects at unprecedented and ever-increasing scale. Could nuclear explosives unlock a new era of mineral or petroleum productivity, or speed the construction of the nation’s new interstate highway system? Looking at you, I-40 east of Ludlow...

The answer was obviously the-fuck not, but that didn’t stop them from trying. Not only here, but in, like, Colorado. And Arkansas. No joke. But the high-water mark for this whole mindset – the program known as ‘Plowshare’ – took place here at NTS in July 1962: The Sedan shot.


Sedan crater – 1300 feet wide, 300 feet deep. 12 million tons of "job done, boss!" Note viewing platform at lower right.

They literally designed this one to move as much earth as possible. Which... is exactly what causes radioactive fallout. “But...” I’m assuming someone argued, “it would move soooo much earth! What’s a little fallout for moving so much earth?” The committee must have agreed.


Tour group at the Sedan Crater.

Sedan contributed significantly to public exposure to radioactive fallout – essentially tied for first place in NTS history with a 1952 shot. Interestingly, I was born in one of the counties most heavily impacted by its fallout. Didn't know 'till today.


The gun

If you're thinking of the "atomic cannon" gun... well that did actually happen here:





But that isn't the gun on this tour. In fact, I think I saw the atomic cannon on display in Bettendorf, IA, but I don't have a picture.

NTS wasn’t just a place of showmanship, it was a place of science. Bizarre, balls-to-the-wall science. And as an example... apparently they did science with this gigantic battleship gun:



I have been a scientist for a few decades, and I have yet to do any science with a battleship gun. And I’m not talking about the science where you are trying to study battleship guns—that would make sense, but I’m not that kind of scientist. But neither were the folks that used this battleship gun at NTS. So I’m talking about the kind of science that is so crazy, where you can look around and say, “hey, what if we just put our science shit in a gigantic battleship gun on a hillside, and pointed it at this other even-crazier shit?” and everyone else says “yes, that is a good idea,” and then a few weeks later someone shows up and gives you a battleship gun.

That is the kind of science I long for. Instead I am researching renewable energy, which is super important now, but only because environmentalists in the 1970s ruined our one and only chance to actually prevent global warming. I don’t get to use battleship guns to research batteries and solar cells—at least not yet. But long before the entitled ignorance of environmentalism had scuttled a generation of unprecedented technological innovation, before misguided self-righteousness could thwart the hard-fought pathway to a carbon-neutral 1990s, and before the modern plague of intellectual subversion disguised as social activism would emerge as a permanent cultural boat-anchor to ensure a future of superficial profitability rather than decisive or meaningful progress... back then, folks out here in the Nevada desert were unlocking the secrets of nuclear power at a slightly faster, more promptly critical timescale... somehow, with a fucking battleship gun.


Viewed without the idiot tourist leaning on the barrel... (NNSS)

Just up the road from here is the gate to Groom Lake. Area 51. All that alien shit. You don’t get close enough to even see the gate, but you can have fun talking about it on the bus!



Lunch

And then lunch. Damn, I really wish I had pictures to share. Imagine going back to the 1950s, and you are a nuclear test scientist in the Nevada desert... perhaps you worked all morning hooking up instruments and taking readings. Or maybe you just sat in your battleship gun, pointing it around and making battleship-gun noises with your mouth.

BtTCHCHOOOOWWWSSsshhczczczczcz... ka-POW! ​

cachunk-cachunk, vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... vrrrrrrr... vrrr vrrr vr

BtTCHCHOOOOWWWSSsshhczczczczcz... ka-POW! ​

Mission accomplished – time for a cheeseburger. Head over to the cafeteria.

Well, it’s not the 1950s any more, but you can get that same cheeseburger on the tour today, at the same exact cafeteria. I don’t know if that’s true, but either way, this is the most American cheeseburger you will ever eat. Cherish it.



The house

Next up is the true high-point of the tour. Not literally -- I think that would be up at the saddle by the benches -- but this is what you came for. If this were an art museum, this is its crème-de-la-Mona-Lisa: The Apple II house.


And all we get is this one picture?

It’s just not enough. I’ve heard a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’m going to cash in some words for a few more.

Words just can't do it justice... the desert floor had burst forth with implausible quantities of green foliage, like hopelessly-out-of-gamut in all directions, and some of it was still in bloom. Then, these puffy clouds rolled in to punctuate the sky with patches of ominously deep blues, silhouetted by delightful fringes of yellow, with trailing whisps tending towards pink and purples in their shadows as the day went on, but still long before the sun approached the horizon. Then the winds whipped up the perfect amount of late-afternoon haze, offering spectacularly vivid depth gradients over the lakebed.

And as this unfolded, we rolled up on this dilapidated wooden house in the middle of nowhere... not just any house, but THE iconic house that we've all seen in footage of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing--you know, the one that instantly bursts into flames moments before being blown to splinters by the passing shockwave?



Okay, well obviously this wasn't that specific house. It was an identical one they built a bit further away... just far enough that it didn't get blown to splinters. But there's no doubt, this is an atom-bombed house -- likely the finest such specimen still standing today, and certainly the only one I've gotten to see in person.

So there we were at this historical structure, milling about its doorstep, gazing in awe at its sun-bleached timbers--its white paint long gone, the shards of its shattered windows long since swept away, the lifeless mannequins once posed to simulate its misfortunate human habitants apparently returned to the department stores from which they were borrowed...

And that's when I stumbled upon it. The most-perfect photographic composition I'd ever encounter. Right directly in front of me. And I didn't have a fucking camera!

Looking squarely at this iconic relic of mankind's most terrifying battleground; its aging exterior gleaming in the afternoon sunlight... I gazed through the empty frame that once held its living room window, and saw perfectly centered on the opposite wall an identical empty window frame, distanced from the former on all sides by the converging orthogonal textures of the intricate woodwork that once supported floor, wall, and ceiling treatments. And there, centered in the lower third of the view through these perfectly aligned window frames, perhaps a few hundred yards in the distance, stood another lonesome house of seemingly identical construction -- this one made from brick, but the distinction barely resolvable at such distance. What was clear, despite the distance, was its surreal lifelessness; even from here appearing empty, hopeless, and colorless amidst the sea of green desert foliage and glistening sunlight separating it from my vantage point. Beyond, the desert floor gradually gave way to the muted tan hues of the distant lake bed, which incidentally had borne the brunt of post atmospheric-test-ban underground weapons testing, its surface forever scarred by seemingly countless craters of varying size, each bearing a unique and name and purpose in our nation's history. Of course the craters couldn't be resolved from here; the lakebed appeared through the golden haze of dusty afternoon winds just like any of the countless dry lakes dotting the region. Towering beyond, the landscape was capped by the subtly deep oranges and magentas of distant mountains, finally yielding to the infinitely deep blue late-afternoon sky for the upper third of the frame, punctuated by the contrast of a single perfectly-centered sunlit cloud:


Best photo I never took

It was utterly profound... surreal. The rest of this report has been pieced together from withering fragments of fading memories... but this image remains seared vividly in my consciousness. I really wish y’all could have been there.



There was more to the tour, but I’m getting tired of typing. I absolutely devoured the book recommended above, and cannot recommend it strongly enough. It really brought the history to life.

Soon we were back in Vegas, inching through rush-hour traffic back to the museum. To the left... a massive sphere projected vividly colorful animations on its surface – the latest over-the-top multibillion-dollar Vegas megaproject. It would soon host its first show, an Irish rock band, but today it was advertising... I forget, perhaps a software company, or a hemorrhoid cream. The whole sphere would probably fit in the Sedan crater, I speculated, but it makes better sense to build it here in town. To the right, a junkie writhed face-down on the sidewalk as tourists briskly sidestepped the commotion. I imagined the ground shaking and a mushroom cloud rising to the north...


Now... that's a proper Vegas show.