
For Sale: Deep, Spacious Roswell Property, Once Occupied by a Missile - raheemm
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/us/roswell-new-mexico-missile-silo-for-sale.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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ChuckMcM
The potentially new owners (the listing[1] is marked "sale pending") would
definitely have a lot of work to do but fortunately it does not look like the
silo is below the water table. I looked at silos for a while and a lot of them
were simply full of water as they required constant pumping if you wanted to
keep them dry. Not all silos kept the missile vertical (like this one
apparently did), those have large doors which can open up (assuming enough
power/hydraulic fluid). Given the 51' diameter by 300' deep measure of the
silo, if you put an elevator right down the middle you could have 25 floors of
'pie shaped' rooms (assuming a 1/4 section per room that is approximately 1900
sq feet per floor (47,500 sq ft total) That is a pretty big workshop space :-)

[1] [http://www.century21.com/property/8422-clovis-hwy-roswell-
nm...](http://www.century21.com/property/8422-clovis-hwy-roswell-
nm-88201-C2122348538)

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MCRed
In the last decade I spent a fair bit of time working on the idea of buying
and refurbing Missile site. I researched Atlas, Titan and Nike sites and even
joined a list of ex-air force missileers. One thing about those guys who spent
years in them- they talked a lot about the hazardous chemicals, and when one
of these sites would come onto the market often people who had worked there
would talk about accidents that had happened and various dangers.

To be explicit: What the Air Force considered "Safe" for a situation in which
the guys in the station are a long way away in a control room, and what you
might consider safe for your house or work environment are very different. The
fuel refilling area, where there was a massive spill that wasn't really
cleaned up, might be your living room, if you did a conversion. Not saying
it's not safe, just be aware and if you go into this, find some guys who
served there and get their info.

The TLDR of my years looking into this: 0\. Nikes were first and are little
more than garages with opening roofs. Not too exciting. Atlas was the next
generation and these have buried silos and control rooms, there were several
models with the Atlas -F probably the most interesting. Titan is the Big
Kahuna of them. They have miles of tunnels and usually multiple silos (I think
they cam in 3, 6 and 9 configurations) and massive power rooms and control
rooms and all kinds of stuff.

1\. The people selling them have dollar signs in their eyes, much of the time.
One Titan site I ran down the history of (I doxxed the owners effectively) was
bought for $30k in the early 1980s, has never been listed for less than $1M,
has never sold, and most recently was listed for $3M. This despite a massive
hole in the power station wall, which alone will cost $300k to fix, probably.
Most of these are absurdly priced. Realistically, it doesn't matter if the
government spent $300M building it, an unrenovated site should cost maybe
$100k more than the land itself. The cost of renovation will be more than the
cost of getting an equivalent housing built from scratch by a "survivalist"
oriented builder, in most cases.

2\. If it's not renovated it's going to cost you a lot to renovate. IF that
Titan site had been renovated (like some of the homes in Kansas) then maybe it
would be worth $3M But renovations to make something like this livable,
extremely expensive, and problematic because who wants the liability of making
a home out of a toxic waste site (the silos in Denver area are sold with an
attachment declaring them such, and I think forbidding living in them.)

2a. If you don't have $300k (atlas maybe) - $1M (titan, minimum) for
renovations you may not be ready for this. (There is a couple near Kansas City
that renovated an Atlas, probably for a lot less, and they used to give
tours.)

3\. The best place to go is probably here, if you're serious:
[http://www.missilebases.com](http://www.missilebases.com)

4\. The same sites come up for sale, over and over again, over many years (see
#1) They aren't building any more but they aren't running out of them. Supply
remains pretty constant.

An anecdote: I discovered the owners of the Titan site I wanted were real
estate pros in California, and was hoping they were really leveraged. This was
during the bubble (which having studied economics I knew would collapse) I was
hoping they'd be desperate to sell their site after the bubble collapsed and
after we were more than 5 years away from 2001 (and the survivalist surge that
happened right after). Alas I was wrong, their prices went up. Since the crash
their prices have come down a bit, but they're still 10x where it makes sense.

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mattmanser
Great info! What were you planning to do?

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soylentcola
I'm thinking ball pit.

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MCRed
Many times the silos get flooded. The equipment is pulled out when they are
abandoned leaving a lot of half broken stuff (eg: they don't care about stairs
but might care about the thing holding them up).

I know of one that was used as a cave diving environment, but seems really
dangerous to me.

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ruanmuller
There's a number of silo conversions that have been done in the past, some
with fantastic results: [http://www.silohome.com/](http://www.silohome.com/)
[http://dornob.com/ultimate-underground-home-converted-
nuclea...](http://dornob.com/ultimate-underground-home-converted-nuclear-
missile-silo/) [http://www.gizmag.com/luxury-survival-
condos/34861/](http://www.gizmag.com/luxury-survival-condos/34861/)

Can't help but think that maintenance of such a thing could be very
challenging after a while.

~~~
lectrick
A little reminiscent of the Fallout post-apocalyptic game series.

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chrissnell
There were no coordinates given in the listing but I think this may be the
place: [http://goo.gl/maps/mH7d9](http://goo.gl/maps/mH7d9)

~~~
rev_bird
It may sound dumb, but I'm absolutely fascinated looking at the desert in
Google Maps. It's just so... empty. Mysterious little dirt roads, unexplained
(but very square) patches of cleared area, and every once in a while, boom, a
missile silo.

~~~
cwal37
Not dumb! Deserts are beautiful and amazing. If you never have, take a peek at
Namibia[1] (my favorite visited deserts to date).

[1]
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Namibia/@-23.1991868,17.22...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Namibia/@-23.1991868,17.2220959,1442999m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x1bf53c7e6ed37521:0xd3b9e5a5a8ecb261)

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lectrick
If it has a good Internet connection, and is well-ventilated, I bet half the
people reading this would be OK with living there.

I'd install a camera up top and hook it up to a large 4k display for a
"window".

~~~
jqm
Internet connection is wireless only (unless you get a phone line to
property). No broadband and cell coverage is hit and miss.

5Mbps is about as fast as you can reasonably get and runs about $80/month. It
lags very slightly, and the receiver better stay pointing right at their
tower. The winds sometimes shift the receiver a little, and it has to be
adjusted or speed really drops.

~~~
lectrick
Yeah, I would fix all that. I'd run a fiber out there myself if that's what it
took lol. And lag, lag is right out unacceptable.

Of course, this is still merely a fantasy in my head at this time ;)

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jrockway
I would love to live in a missile silo. Great insulation. No noise from your
neighbors. Tornado warning? Not a problem. I can't think of any downsides!

~~~
divegeek
No noise from neighbors? No neighbors at all!

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peapicker
Having been there, it is hard to imagine wanting to live in/near Roswell.

~~~
jqm
I live in Roswell, and am trying to think of a reason to disagree with you....

If you really value remoteness and open space it's good. I live on a hill on
some acreage outside of town and can see nearly 40 miles off my back patio
without a houses or building in view. I can (and sometimes do) shoot guns from
my back porch.

But, If you want to be near decent restaurants, stores with clothes you might
actually wear, and people you can hold a conversation with.... it's probably
not the best place.

Oh, don't let me forget the wind and dust-storms. It's blazing hot in the
summer, but the winters are fairly mild. The economy is not good (except
during oil booms)... wages are very severely depressed, there is not a lot of
educated people nor people with ambition as they have left for the most part.
The general culture reflects this degeneration. Lazy and slow and non-curious
is a way of life.

So why am I here? (I'm not from here). Well... you should see the night sky
for one. Far away from big cities in the desert.... you feel like you are
right there in the universe and the milky way is a river of light. But truly,
the desert to the south (Carlsbad to South Texas) or west of here (Arizona) is
a lot more amazing as far as plants and scenery. This is is really the very
far Southwestern edge of the Great Plains. (Actually... its a girlfriend
thing, that's the real reason. But the sky is nice.).

This site is about 20 minutes outside town. Not too far away are the
mountains.. an hour or so from a ski resort (Ruidoso... a pretty little town
but not much there). It's on the very edge of the foothills as the plains
start turning into the Rockies. The drive up the canyon to Ruidoso is quite
pretty. The site is right off the highway (power close or right to site) and
has BLM ground surrounding it. There are no trees nor large cactus... it's
arid grassland with cholla and prickly pear cactus and low scrubby mesquite.
There are lots of coyotes, hawks, antelope, foxes, porcupine and skunks. And
rattlesnakes. I found 7 of them on the property over last summer. The soil is
caliche... old ocean bed reef, and hard as a rock. You would have trouble
growing anything between the critters and poor soil. A decent well would
probably be around 300 feet deep and the water very very hard. I'm not sure it
would be an acceptable place to live for anyone but the most hermit
minded.....

~~~
batbomb
I grew up in Farmington and lived in Las Cruces and Albuquerque. Spent some
time in Ruidoso as well, as my uncle is a pipefitter and helped redo the Inn.

It's still hard to explain to people what living in a place like Roswell or
Farmington is like. Both places swing up and down according to oil prices.
both are big enough to have just barely what you might want or need, but not
much more. More importantly, they are their own big cities. And that's the
thing that people don't get: When the nearest (modest) cultural mass is at
least three hours away, you don't live anywhere near an interstate, and every
other town is an order of magnitude smaller, everybody tends to stay put and
things get insular (not necessarily in a bad way though) and weird.

I've gotten in arguments about this before from people who claimed they grew
up in smaller towns, but the key difference is those small towns aren't their
own isolated islands. I liked growing up there as a kid, but I'd take a small
town of 2000 people an hour away from a major city over the Ruidosos and
Farmingtons in a heartbeat.

On the other hand, the desert was literally our playground as a kid, and
that's an amazing thing to grow up with.

BTW: Lots of great astronomy still happens around Cloudcroft if you ever get
up there.

~~~
jqm
Great summation. Especially the island part. That is exactly what it's like.
Living on an island. The surrounding desert is the ocean. Three hours to get
anywhere (and it's not much of anywhere when you get there). 8 hours to a real
cultural center like Denver, Dallas or Phoenix.

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ghostDancer
From userfriendly.org :
[http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010611](http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010611)
and the following strips

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prawn
At that price and depending on clean-up costs, you could potentially make
money setting it up as a really novel AirBnb property.

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raheemm
_The military designed the missiles and the bunkers that housed them with the
utmost urgency, working at a moment when the concern over national security
was so severe that it bordered on panic._

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spiritplumber
Sounds like the perfect place to take my X-Com collaborative writing project
to the next level!

