# moonshot925 **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 15, 2012, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747 "2012-09-15T00:27:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/161 "2012-09-25T17:26:34Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > The facts are with me. > > From [siloworld.net](http://siloworld.net) > > LAUNCHER CLOSURE DOOR 110 TONS OF REINFORCED CONCRETE & STEEL > > [LF-08](http://www.siloworld.net/576thSMS/Present%20Day/MINUTEMAN/LF-8/lf-8.htm) So “siloworld” is more reliable than a book published by the National Park Service? Do you have something published by the US government to back up your assertions? If you really used to be an ex-Air Force officer then I assume you would have. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/162 "2012-09-25T17:26:49Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > The key-operated switches were 12 feet apart, so it was impossible for one person to turn both. > > The commander and deputy both had turn keys within two seconds of each other or the launch sequence would not happen. > > And additionally, the final command to launch also required another outside “vote” (two missileers performing the same procedure at another Launch Control Center). > > If everything was done correctly, explosive gas generators would push open the 110-ton blast doors covering the silos and the Minuteman missiles would streak toward the sky. Then the “MISSILE AWAY” lights would illuminate on the commander’s console. Okay, how about this: > [@](#): > > In the Delta One capsule, an alarm would have alerted the two-person missile crew of those directives. Immediately, over the speaker system, the launch control officers would hear a coded message, giving the command to launch. After verifying the message’s authenticity, the launch officers would unlock a small, red, “Emergency War Order” safe above the deputy commander’s control panel. Within the box were two launch keys. Each officer would take one key, and insert it into his or her control console. The missileers would then strap themselves into their console chairs and begin the final countdown. > > At the end of the countdown sequence, the officers would turn their launch keys. The Air Force employed several fail-safes to prevent an unauthorized missile launch. For example, both officers had to turn their launch keys in unison. **Because the launch switches were 12 feet apart, it was impossible for one person to turn both keys at once. The final command to launch also required another “vote” (two missileers performing the same procedure at another Launch Control Center in the missile field) from outside of Delta One.** > > When the second vote came in, the LAUNCH IN PROCESS display would illuminate. **Explosive gas generators would then push open the 90-ton launch doors covering the ten Delta Flight missile silos, and the nuclear-tipped Minutemen would begin streaking toward their targets** half a world away. As each missile blasted from its silo, its upper umbilical cable would sever, triggering **the MISSILE AWAY light on the commander’s control panel.** [http://www.nps.gov/NR/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/128mimi/128facts3.htm](http://www.nps.gov/NR/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/128mimi/128facts3.htm) ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/163 "2012-09-25T17:31:00Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > Are you claiming this was the first time you’ve seen the text I linked to? Yes. I can’t see how you can accuse me of plagiarism when I was just stating the facts that every missiler knows. The facilities technician crewdog told me that the doors were 110 tons. Was he lying? I don’t think so. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/164 "2012-09-25T17:31:04Z")
> [@D\_Odds](#): > > I have absolutely no idea what airmen who worked in a missile silo did or did not do, nor what they carried or did not carry. What I do know is that I had an intelligence job in the USAF, worked in a SCIF, had Top Secret codeword clearance, and yet NO ONE, except the security police not allowed inside the facility in non-emergency situations, carried a firearm. And we had nothing but classified material in there. > > Again, I know nothing about missile bases and their procedures, and maybe some general in that chain of command had a hard-on for arming his people, but in my experience the only airmen and airwomen regularly armed were police. My experience is, for the most part, limited to a little podunk RAF Intel base and a nearby larger fighter base which was usually visited because they had much better and a greater range of services. I grew up in Newport RI, a Navy town, and had several friends who’s parents served at the base and I remember when watching that as a kid, one of the fathers, who’d served aboard a nuclear submarine said he found the idea of the guys in the bunker being armed difficult to believe, though obviously he wasn’t Air Force and could have been wrong. He thought they just put it in for the added drama of having the guy threaten his friend. ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/165 "2012-09-25T17:39:09Z")
We carried .38 revolvers to protect the Sealed Authenticators and launch keys that were located in a steel box pained red above the DMCCC’s console. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/166 "2012-09-25T17:41:21Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > We carried .38 revolvers to protect the Sealed Authenticators and launch keys that were located in a steel box pained red above the DMCCC’s console. Yes, yes, we all watched Wargames. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/167 "2012-09-25T17:44:45Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > 1. Titan II ICBMs are shown be launched from Minuteman LCCs. > > 2. The MCCC is talking about smoking pot. Missilers never do drugs. > > 3. The launch procedure is inaccurate. > > 4. The DMCCC points his sidearm at the MCCC. That would never happen. > > 5. The MCCC refuses to turn his key. That would never happen. Nothing about that says “liberal”, though, just “Hollywood inaccuracy”. For that matter, the computer equipment Matthew Broderick is shown using is grossly inadequate for the tasks at hand, but that’s just fantasy without any particular political bent. The technical aspects of (1) and (3)… big deal. Virtually every movie about something military screws up stuff like that - World War II battles being staged with ship types that didn’t exist at the time, or a character is shown taking off in an F-14 and later landing in an F-15, while talking about how much he loves his F-16. (2) - Missileers _never_ do drugs? Maybe you just didn’t get invited to certain parties. But fine, whatever, I could buy that missile crews were routinely subjected to urine tests and whatnot. In any case, Spencer’s character’s hobbies are not relevant to the story at hand. I don’t see how a fondness for good weed makes him a liberal. Possibly it sets him up as a rebel and rulebreaker that would hesitate to turn a key just because a computer told him to. Heck, the missileers may as well have been chatting about sports as they headed to their duty stations. (4) and (5) - I know these aren’t accurate and that missile crews routinely went through launch drills such that the events in the movie shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to Spencer and Madsen. One element I did find annoying was that we’re treated to cutaway shots of the missiles being prepped with silo doors opening (during a snowstorm, yet!), gantries being retracted, engines warming up and whatnot, and the whole thing turns out to be a drill anyway. Great. Now you can spend a day or so cleaning up the mess and re-prepping the missiles. In any case, that scene is necessary to set up the larger premise - the phasing out of manned missile sites because of perceived human unreliability, giving the runaway computer system the potential for independent launch. It’s easy to say _that_ would never happen, either (because, of course, it never did), but the movie is a work of fiction, after all. In retrospect, I guess it would have been more of a twist for Spencer to be the casual hophead and Madsen the dead-serous professional, and yet for Madsen to be the one to blink at “launch” time (thus showing how unpredictable and unreliable humans can be), but no matter. Heck, if you want to nitpick the movie, how can Barry Corbin’s character (presumably the NORAD Commander) casually order the DEFCON level up and down (including going directly from “one” to “five”) without direct input from the president? It’s easy to nitpick this movie - it’s easy to nitpick _any_ movie - but “liberal fantasy” ? You’re reaching, there, I presume because you’re so determined to annoy “liberals” (since you’re either a conservative or a troll, or both) that facts are irrelevant. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/168 "2012-09-25T17:54:08Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > Yes. I can’t see how you can accuse me of plagiarism when I was just stating the facts that every missiler knows. The facilities technician crewdog told me that the doors were 110 tons. Was he lying? I don’t think so. [Quote=Wikipedia] Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the “wrongful appropriation,” “close imitation,” or “purloining and publication” of another author’s “language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions,” and the representation of them as one’s own original work. [/Quote] I’d appreciate it if you could explain for the audience how your word choice just happened, by pure coincidence, to be a near-duplicate of the text I linked to, and that quoted by **Hentor** in Post 162. ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/169 "2012-09-25T18:00:05Z")
Why are people arguing with the liar? To convince him that he’s lying? He already knows this people. He’ll just continue the game of cherry picking the points he can make some sort of response to. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/170 "2012-09-25T18:02:08Z")
To enjoy watching him squirm? OK, I admit it, I’m a bad, bad man. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/171 "2012-09-25T18:03:45Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > What boat? SSN-690. It was not a Trident boat. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/172 "2012-09-25T18:05:38Z")
I skimmed the thread looking to see if the subject-troll was an example of Poe’s law or a Deep Cover Conservative. Instead, it’s merely clear that he’s faking some service background. :rolleyes: So… anyone want to take a stab at the demographics here? Is he some 17 year old angsty kid shaped by WND, Brietbart, etc. and angrily expressing himself as best he can? Is he a 42 year old mild liberal with a tedious job that offers plenty of time to play dress-up and lets him try and get the goat of both conservatives (who are embarassed that he’s distracting the conversation from actual topics) and liberals (who, when taking him as a poster in earnest, are dismayed at the dismal level of discourse)? And perhaps most importantly, if he’s going to shoot the goat out of a PVC cannon, what’s the best way to go about it? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/173 "2012-09-25T18:07:15Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > (2) - Missileers _never_ do drugs? Maybe you just didn’t get invited to certain parties. But fine, whatever, I could buy that missile crews were routinely subjected to urine tests and whatnot. Reliable urine tests weren’t even available before 1980, so I doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/174 "2012-09-25T18:09:44Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > Yes. I can’t see how you can accuse me of plagiarism when I was just stating the facts that every missiler knows. The facilities technician crewdog told me that the doors were 110 tons. Was he lying? I don’t think so. Did he also tell you that everyone puts the word “vote” in quotation marks followed by a verbatim duplication of text in parenthesis explaining what you meant by the term? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/175 "2012-09-25T18:10:07Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > The link should take you to page 51. At the top is a sidebar labeled “Countdown to Doomsday”. While not word-for-word, **Moonshot** ’s quoted post is clearly lifted from pargraphs 3-5. It’s close, but **moonshot** mentions “two seconds”, while the book does not (the book says the two officers turn the keys “in unison”). It seems similar enough to me that it’s likely that both **moonshot** ’s post and that book got their data from the same source (like perhaps an Air Force training manual), but it’s not clear to me that he lifted his post straight from that book (the 110-ton thing and the 2-seconds are different enough that, IMO, it’s at least not plagiarised from that particular book). ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/176 "2012-09-25T18:17:28Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > SSN-690. It was not a Trident boat. Do you know Tom Perry? He was the skipper of that boat. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/177 "2012-09-25T18:18:19Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > It’s close, but **moonshot** mentions “two seconds”, while the book does not (the book says the two officers turn the keys “in unison”). > > It seems similar enough to me that it’s likely that both **moonshot** ’s post and that book got their data from the same source (like perhaps an Air Force training manual), but it’s not clear to me that he lifted his post straight from that book (the 110-ton thing and the 2-seconds are different enough that, IMO, it’s at least not plagiarised from that particular book). Just to be clear, my source was not the book, but an NPS document that was even more consistent with moonshot’s text. Interestingly it referenced the aformentioned book for the crucial text. How can you explain the identical text that I posted and his? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/178 "2012-09-25T18:19:26Z")
I have to say- while I think **moonshot** has ridiculous political views relatively unencumbered by facts, and his views on history and warfare are monstrous, I’m not convinced he’s lying about his service. People in the military, particularly some of the very technical specialties, almost have their own language as far as the technology and procedures. On the submarine, certain phrases would be used and bandied about over and over again, exactly word-for-word. It’s possible he’s lying, but the apparent similarity in his post and that book is not enough evidence to convince me. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/179 "2012-09-25T18:20:41Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > It’s close, but **moonshot** mentions “two seconds”, while the book does not (the book says the two officers turn the keys “in unison”). Doesn’t have to be a word-for-word duplicate, per Post 168. Anyway, I’m fine with however people want to interpret his word choice. The point has been made, and I’ll leave it there. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2012, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747/180 "2012-09-25T18:22:06Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Just to be clear, my source was not the book, but an NPS document that was even more consistent with moonshot’s text. Interestingly it referenced the aformentioned book for the crucial text. > > How can you explain the identical text that I posted and his? It is closer (though the tonnage is different yet again; perhaps the tonnage was not the same for every single missile door?). It’s also the most straight-forward way to say those things, as far as I can tell. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moonshot925/634747.md?page=10)