By Dorothy Brush / Chronicle staffwriter
Often we hear the words, "What goes around, comes around." Several headlines this month brought that saying to mind. The first asked if it was time to reset the Doomsday Clock. Some of us remember when that clock first appeared.
The idea originated with a group of atomic scientists concerned for the future. Their headquarters is a small room on the campus of the University of Chicago, very near the laboratory where the first work was done on harnessing the power of the atom. In 1947 their academic journal, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, featured a clock on the cover. Only the numerals in the last quarter of the clock were shown and the hand was set at 11:53.
Over the years the clock has been reset to indicate greater or lesser threatening events. The closest the hand got to midnight was in 1953 when the hydrogen bomb was exploded. The hand was moved to 2 minutes to 12. In 1991 after the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed the threat was reduced the farthest, to 17 minutes to midnight. Since Feb. 27, 2002 the hand has remained at 7 minutes to 12. Because of the recent North Korean bomb test the question is being debated as to whether it is time to reset the Doomsday Clock.
That headline was still fresh in my mind when I read that out in Colorado the Cheyenne Mountain's war room is being placed on "warm standby." In July 1983, I was with a group of press women who visited that very sophisticated "hole in the ground." We were given badges and a brochure describing the mission of NORAD, a combined American-Canadian military command to provide warning of attack on North America; to survey space and to provide limited defense against bomber attack. Then we boarded a bus which carried us through a short tunnel into the mountain until we arrived at a pair of steel blast doors framed in rock. More than three feet thick and weighing 25 tons, they open or close hydraulically in only 30 seconds.
Special arrangements had been made for us to visit this modern underground city equipped with the latest computers of that day plus millions of miles of communication lines carrying information and activity going on around the globe. More than 1,500 persons kept the complex running 24-hours a day. All those workers were breathing air cleaner than people on the outside because it was processed through a system of chemical, biological and radiological filters to remove any harmful agents.
All those people were well taken care of with a large dining hall, and a modern medical facility with operating room, dental office, pharmacy and a small hospital. Physical fitness was important and there was a center with weights and a steam room. There was also a barber shop, snack bar and a base exchange.
It was during the tense days when the Soviet Union loomed as a threat that work began to build a secure center that would withstand a nuclear strike. Digging into the mountain on the edge of Colorado Springs began in 1961. One million pounds of explosives were used to blast out more than 693,000 tons of granite from the 100-million-year-old Cheyenne Mountain. When the complex was completed 15 tunnel-like steel buildings, 2,400 feet underground were put into use.
Two headlines which seem to pose the question — on the one hand but on the other hand.
Dorothy Copus Brush is a Fairfield Glade resident and Crossville Chronicle staffwriter whose column is published each Wednesday. She may be reached at ebrush@frontiernet.net.
