During the Cold War, the US Air Force installed an arsenal of nuclear weapons across the rural West of the US. About 400 Minuteman III missiles remain ready to launch at a few seconds notice in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska. They are located on bison reserves and Native American reservations. They sit across from a national forest, behind a rodeo grandstand, down the road from a one-room schoolhouse, and on dozens of private farms like the one belonging to Ed Butchers, who has lived for years with a nuclear missile as his closest neighbour.
As tensions mount once more betwen Russia and the United States, Ed joins us from Fergus County, Montana.
Photo: Chad Kainz