Rehearsing doomsday

Even with the end of the Cold War, U.S. missile silos are poised to launch

This is a text adaptation of CNN's Special Report, "Rehearsing Doomsday," which aired Sunday, October 15 at 10 p.m. EDT.

CHEYENNE, Wyoming (CNN) -- The wheatfields of America are strangely peaceful and reassuring. It's hard even to imagine that the most destructive weapons in history are hidden away under these farms.

Here, at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base, is the biggest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) base in the United States, on 12,000 square miles in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It's business as usual here, as it was during the Cold War. "Nothing has changed," says Col. Stacker.

The entrance to a nuclear launch control center is designed to look perfectly innocuous.

Fifty-five identical facilities are spread all across the American West. And in every one of them, two young launch officers, missiliers as they call themselves, serve on combat alert.

Despite the seriousness of their task, the missiliers say there is never any question in their minds that they would be able to carry out an order to launch an ICBM.

"Well, that's why we're here," says Lt. Deltorro. "I mean, if there were any doubt in our minds that we wouldn't do it, then we wouldn't be here."

Her fellow missilier, Lt. Namath, said, "We signed up knowing that whatever it takes to protect our country, we will do. ... No second-guessing whatsoever."

Ten Minutemen ICBMs stand poised and ready to launch in minutes. That was the message of the missiliers everywhere.

"If it comes down to us having to launch a missile, then I'm sure it's definitely necessary for us to do that to defend our country," said a missilier. "And I will do that."

Do the missiliers think that most Americans have forgotten that they remain in missile silos on alert?

"They have. I'm sure they have," another missilier responds. "They have forgotten. There's a lot of Americans that don't realize we're still pulling alerts 24/7. Every single day we're down there defending this country."

But another soldier says, "Actually, I think that's kind of reassuring because we do our job so well that they can put it behind them and say, 'Hey, we're safe tonight to sleep.'"

Safe, they say, because while America sleeps, they are standing guard, prepared to launch.

What makes them do it? What makes them go down into the silo for 24 hours? And, more important, what makes them ultimately willing to follow through and execute the launch of weapons that would result in destruction and the death of millions?

"It's kind of like what makes a submariner go undersea for 70 days at a time," says Stacker.

"It's just a duty, a mission, that we're called upon to do... to react to presidential orders. Being a civilian, I guess it would be kind of hard to comprehend that but that's why we feel that no country would do that to ours," says Stacker.

For most Americans, those missiliers simply don't exist. This is the 21st century and America is on top, the world's lone superpower. Music, sports, billionaires, IPOs -- it's all happening here. And nothing seems big or menacing enough to stop it. People under 25 don't even remember a time when America had a real enemy. About the last thing on anyone's mind is that we might be just minutes from doomsday.

Up in space, America is king. Most commercial satellites were born in the U.S.A. But the real power in space belongs to the satellites most people never see, such as the satellites ready to signal the launch of a nuclear attack.

It's part of an elaborate network of military satellites that were built to spy on the Soviet Union and, today, nearly a decade after the end of the Cold War, Russia is still their primary target. They are looking at Russia's nuclear empire. They were built to spot a Russian ICBM launch.

A Topol missile launched from a silo at Plesetsk, a Russian ICBM base, could hit the United States in 30 minutes.

"A missile launch from, say, Russia would be detected in seconds," says Gen. Chuck Horner, best known to some as the mastermind of the U.S.-led allied air campaign during the 1991 Gulf War. But from 1992 to 1994, Horner commanded this mysterious facility built to warn America about the one threat it has no defense against -- nuclear weapons.

"We have no ballistic missile defenses," says Horner.

When asked what can be done if a missile is launched toward the United States, "Duck!" says Horner.

While the U.S. has no defense, the North America Air Defense Command (NORAD) is America's early warning center, buried deep under Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

"Cheyenne Mountain is a very interesting place," says Horner. "You drive into this huge tunnel and when you get about a half-mile or so down the road, two huge blast doors are there. And you suddenly come upon a steel building -- not unlike a ship, if you will, housed in this huge cavity in the mountain. The building itself sits on these giant springs. The idea of the springs is that when a nuclear detonation occurs and shakes the whole mountain, the building will be able to resist this shock and won't be destroyed."

The moment a missile launch is detected here, a countdown begins, because they only have minutes to confirm if the rocket is coming their way.

So the military has a very brief time in which to inform the president about an incoming attack.

"We talk about three minutes to provide the president with a characterization of an attack on North America," says Horner, adding that amount of time is "very quick."

Just three minutes -- that's why the early warning commander is not the man with his finger on the nuclear trigger.

"The beauty of the system we have is you do not have a person that cries, 'The attack is coming,' [being] the same person with their finger on the trigger," says Horner.

"There is no doubt about it. You want your commander of NORAD, the guy who warns of attack, to err on the side of caution. On the other hand, since you want to have good deterrence, deterrence based on threat, then the commander of strategic forces has to be very aggressive. He has to be a person who is out in the world, with great enthusiasm," says Horner.

Four-star Gen. Eugene Habiger was one of those men. He was America's nuclear commander until 1998.

"The only time I ever thought I'd see Moscow from the air was in a B-52 at 300 feet, getting ready to drop a nuclear weapon," said Habiger.

From the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) in Omaha, Nebraska, Habiger was in charge of all of America's nuclear forces -- land, sea and air. STRATCOM's mission, unchanged since the height of the Cold War, is to stand ready within minutes to retaliate massively.

"People assume when the Cold War was over ... nuclear weapons went away. They have not," says Habiger. "There's only one thing that can destroy the United States of America as we know it today ... and that's those Russian nuclear warheads."

Russia's hidden nuclear empire is intact to this day. It stretches across 11 time zones, a network of secret cities and bases that appear on no map, thousands of nuclear warheads still on full combat alert.

"The loser didn't lose...and the loser doesn't think he lost ... and the loser isn't acting like he lost ... and has not acted like he lost since 1991," says Habiger.

At the end of the Cold War, both sides cut their arsenals from about 10,000 warheads to 6,000 each. It appeared that the old nuclear face-off was coming to a close. But since then, in spite of years of negotiations, no further reductions have been implemented.

Under Secretary of Defense Walter Slocombe, the man who watches over U.S. nuclear policy, defends the United States' policy of maintaining its nuclear capabilities in the post-Cold War era.

"We think it's important to have a hedge against the possibility of problems in the future," says Slocombe.

"We cannot be absolutely certain of the course of political power and policies in Russia," says Slocombe. "And, therefore, one of the reasons we maintain nuclear weapons is to have a hedge against the possibility of a serious deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations."

At Balabanova, Russia, there is a threat that strategists like Slocombe feel they need to counter. It's Russia's newest intercontinental ballistic missile -- the Topol M.

According to the Russian military, the missile, transported through the Russian forest in an enormous flatbed green truck, can take out practically any target in the world.

"Without even saying practically, every target on the globe," says a Russian officer named Kozlov.

When asked if the missile could take out Detroit, Philadelphia, New York within 30 minutes, Kozlov responds, "Sooner than that."

And so, in both countries, rehearsals for nuclear war continue.

Military personnel like Horner practice for the moment when they would have to inform the president that an attack is underway.

What would they say?

"'Mr. President, this is the commander-in-chief of North America Air Defense Command. You've received information about an impending attack on the United States. Here is the situation as I see it.' You try and bring reality out of this unreal series of events," says Horner.

But while Horner's former job seems like it would be a heavy burden, he says there was another job that was worse.

"I think probably a tougher job would be to be the commander of the Strategic Forces," says Horner. "The guy would have to order the end of the world."

"There can be no question in anybody's mind that when someone selected for missile duty, that that young 24-, 25-year-old lieutenant ... would do what he or she was directed to do by the president of the United States," says Habiger.

Although the moment has not yet come, the military still prepares by running exercises practicing the scripted procedures for doomsday. How do those exercises end?

"They would generally end with what they call the nuclear lay down," says Habiger. "... You would end the exercise by having a massive attack on the Russians or the Soviet Union, followed by a retaliation from the U.S. And then we'd all go home to our wives and families and have breakfast, and end the exercise."

How did the United States fare?

"We didn't worry about it," says Habiger. "It was over with."