A Glimpse of Madness

For most of the 1960s, the world's major powers played a dangerous game of nuclear brinkmanship. The main principle in this game was that any nuclear attack would be responded to with such overwhelming ferocity that all life on earth would be exterminated. This was officially referred to as "Mutually Assured Destruction" or MAD for short.

It really was a frightening time to be alive, and I well remember the nuclear drills that were practised at schools. This morning we had the opportunity to see one of the old 1960s nuclear missile silos at close range. The missile complex is situated only a few km from our hotel in the Zemaitija National Park. It had been constructed by hundreds of Estonian forced labour workers,who had to excavate the enormous underground spaces by pick, shovel and wheelbarrow,

Apparently the reason why they used Estonian labour was because they could not speak Lithuanian and therefore would be easy to recapture if they escaped. To make matters more complicated the plans were in Russian, which the locals could not read. Little wonder therefore that the standard of construction was even worse than appalling. They could never undertake any test launches because any such event would have likely caused the structure to collapse. It was strictly intended to be used once - to launch 4 ICBMs, each carrying a 2 Megaton warhead. In the process it is almost certain that the people working at the site would also be killed.

It really was interesting to tour the vast facility and see just how primitive most of the technology was. The soldiers had low morale and were often drunk on the job. I wonder just how easy it would have been for a disgruntled one or two Russians to start a nuclear war.

The base was built in the early 60s and was decommissioned about a decade later as part of the agreement signed by Gorbachev and Reagan. Much of the equipment (but hopefully not the warheads) was then promptly stolen by the local population.Read more