Radiotopia

From PRX

From PRX's Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries.

I'm Joe Richmond.

Every day we go about our lives doing thousands of routine, mundane tasks.

And sometimes we make mistakes.

Human error happens all the time.

It just doesn't always happen in a nuclear missile silo.

Today on the show, we're bringing you a collaboration with our friends at this American life.

It's a story of what can happen because of one dropped wrench.

Back in September 1980, September 18th, Jeff Plum climbed into his pickup and headed toward the nuclear missile silo near a tiny town in Arkansas called Damascus.

He was a 19-year-old missile technician, a new trainee, riding with another guy, David Powell, who was showing Plum the ropes.

David Powell was certified. He had done it over and over and over. For me, it was fairly

new. It was the first time I was in training with David. Plum was a city kid from near Detroit.

He remember sitting in the truck that day, watching the farms and fields fly by,

until eventually the truck slowed, pulled into a gravel road in the middle of nowhere,

passed through some woods, and came to a fence.

There wasn't much to see, a concrete slab with a handful of radio antennas sticking up out of the ground.

Under that concrete slab, though,

was a 146-foot silo, like an inverted 14-story building. To get in was a sequence of gates,

phones, secret codes, several super-secure metal and concrete doors. And then at the bottom of the

stairs, you could go two directions. Down one hall was the complex's three-story

...