Nuclear Missile Malfunction: Into the Silo…

A young technician is called into action when the USA is threatened with nuclear disaster. In September 1980, Greg Devlin receives an emergency call from his commanding officer in the US Air Force. There’s been a potentially catastrophic fuel leak at a missile silo near Damascus, Arkansas. If the fuel ignites, it could conceivably cause the warhead to detonate, triggering a nuclear explosion right in the very heart of America. Greg and his colleagues must do all they can to try to contain the leak. The stakes could not be higher… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John Hopkins?

  It's September the 18th, 1980, around 6:00 PM. In the heart of rural Arkansas, right in the middle of the United States, lies the small, sleepy town of Damascus.

• 0:13John Hopkins?

  With a population of just a few hundred, this is a blink-and-you-miss-it sort of place, little more than a gas station, a post office, and a farming supply store.

• 0:22John Hopkins?

  Tonight, a Thursday, Damascus is characteristically quiet.

• 0:28John Hopkins?

  Walking down Main Street, it's easy to forget that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is still simmering, now well into its third decade.

• 0:39John Hopkins?

  For many Americans, the red menace of communist Russia remains a real and present threat. But in a peaceful community like Damascus, it's hard to imagine anything disturbing the status quo or shattering the impregnable sense of safety.

• 0:54John Hopkins?

  Yet meanwhile, just three miles out of town, a slender gravel access road cuts through the woods and cattle pastures until it arrives at an unassuming chain-link fence.

• 1:07John Hopkins?

  Beneath coils of razor wire, a white placard hangs at eye level, its lettering in bold capitals: "U.S. Air Force Installation, Restricted Area, Authorized Personnel Only."

• 1:21John Hopkins?

  Beyond the fence, there isn't much to see at first glance. A 10-acre plot of closely mown grass and compacted dirt strewn with antennas, ventilation shafts, and encircled by tall floodlights.

• 1:34John Hopkins?

  But below the ground, directly beneath the concrete slab at the center of the enclosure, a cavernous silo plunges 150 feet into the earth.

• 1:44John Hopkins?

  Sheathed within it is the Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile, the most powerful nuclear projectile ever built by the United States.

• 1:57John Hopkins?

  Right now, two Air Force technicians are making their way underground, passing through an intricate series of gates and secure metal access doors, descending deeper and deeper into the silo. 21-year-old Dave Powell and 19-year-old Jeff Plum have been dispatched here to carry out some routine maintenance work on the missile. Both men are tired after a long shift, eager to finish the job. But just when they reach the main chamber of the silo, Airman Powell realizes something. He's forgotten to bring down the torque wrench, one of the tools they need to carry out the work.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  So it's like 11 hours in. You're 11 hours in, you're tired, now we gotta run back up topside and get this and run back down? He said, "Just to get this job done, I'm just gonna use the socket and the ratchet that's here."

• 2:47John Hopkins?

  They'll just have to make do with what they've got: a simple ratchet wrench with a socket attachment.

• 2:53John Hopkins?

  It'll make the job fiddlier, but right now that's more appealing than doing the long trek back up to ground level.

• 3:00John Hopkins?

  The two men get to work, loosening a fuel cap on the side of the 100-foot missile. Airman Plum places the socket inside the wrench and starts cranking the tool around the cap. So far, so routine. But just when the young technician goes to retract the wrench, the socket slips off the end. Powell throws out a hand to catch it, but it's too late. The 3-inch metal cylinder tumbles out of reach, falling through the gap between the work platform and the missile.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Now these two guys are watching this thing fall, 66 feet, gaining speed, and they're praying that it falls straight down into what they call the W.

• 3:44John Hopkins?

  The W, twin concrete funnels situated below the missile's thrusters. The best and lightliest scenario is that the socket falls harmlessly into this structure, avoiding the missile entirely.

• 3:58John Hopkins?

  Instead, a stroke of bad luck.

• 4:02John Hopkins?

  The socket hits the frame of a metal thrust mount and ricochets.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And when it bounces, it could bounce in 100 different directions: away from it, to the side of it, but on the single time it falls, it hits that thrust mount, bounces straight in towards the missile, and punctures a hole in this missile.

• 4:26John Hopkins?

  Powell and Plum stare in dumbstruck horror as a jet of pressurized fuel starts spraying violently from the side of the missile. As soon as it makes contact with the air, the fuel turns to vapor, and very quickly, the silo starts to fill with a toxic chemical mist.

• 4:43John Hopkins?

  The two technicians can only watch, helpless, as the missile is slowly enveloped in a thick cloud of highly volatile, highly flammable, vaporized rocket fuel.

• 4:54John Hopkins?

  Then they turn to each other, their faces stricken behind their helmet's clear visors.

• 5:00John Hopkins?

  If that fuel ignites, and the resulting explosion causes the W-53 warhead inside the missile to detonate, it would trigger the deadliest nuclear catastrophe ever to occur on U.S. soil.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  The small side of that W-53 had the power of Hiroshima, but the black part on the back end made it 600 times as powerful, or three times more powerful than every bomb dropped in World War II.

• 5:35John Hopkins?

  Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations, people suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

• 5:55John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet Airman Greg Devlin, a 21-year-old fuel technician in the U.S. military.

• 6:02John Hopkins?

  Stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base, it's the job of Greg and his fellow fuel techs to sort out any fuel-related issues onboard the military fleet of Titan II missiles, stored in silos throughout central Arkansas.

• 6:16John Hopkins?

  On September the 18th, 1980, Greg receives an emergency call from his commanding officer, informing him of a potentially catastrophic fuel leak at one of the missile sites just outside the town of Damascus.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  He said, "We need volunteers for this mission out there." And he said, "It's bad. It's real bad. We don't even know what's gonna happen. That's how bad this is. It's never happened before in history. You know, this is uncharted territory here."

• 6:46John Hopkins?

  As word of the accident and its possible implications spread through the upper echelons of the military, Greg and his colleagues will head to the silo to try to contain the leak. The stakes could not be higher. If the fuel spilling out of the missile ignites, it could conceivably cause the warhead inside the missile's nose cone to detonate, triggering a massive nuclear explosion right in the very heart of the USA.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  The vapor panel has the main gauge in the center is a LIRA, L-I-R-A, LIRA gauge. This needle was pegged all the way, all the way to the end of the gauge. I mean, that's explosion level. The missile will explode.

• 7:26John Hopkins?

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

• 7:57John Hopkins?

  It's around 8:00 PM on Thursday, September the 18th, 1980. Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas.

• 8:05John Hopkins?

  Inside a briefing room, a group of young Air Force technicians sits in fraught silence as their commanding officer, Tech Sergeant Mike Hanson, delivers a grave pronouncement.

• 8:15John Hopkins?

  "There has been a serious fuel leak at one of the Titan II missile sites, and he needs volunteers to go and assess the situation in order to determine the next best course of action."

• 8:26John Hopkins?

  Among those anxiously listening is 21-year-old Airman Greg Devlin.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  He finished the sentence with, "If you don't wanna go, you don't have to." And my thought, and honestly, everyone that was there, and I can't speak for everybody, but I'm just telling you, all the guys that went out that night said, "You know, who else is gonna do it? You need fuel techs. Of course we're gonna go. I mean, it's bad, but you know, of course we're going."

• 8:54John Hopkins?

  Following the briefing, Greg and his fellow fuel techs load up a couple of pickup trucks with the gear they'll need. The mood among the group is subdued, but stoic, businesslike. They have a job to do, and there is no one in the military more qualified than they are to get it done.

• 9:11John Hopkins?

  But just as Greg is climbing into the back of one of the vehicles, his colleague, a 22-year-old fellow fuel tech named Dave Livingston, confides his true feelings.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  We were real close to leaving, and Dave Livingston, he's in the backseat there with the driver's side backseat, and doors open, and he's really getting ready to scoot over so I could get in next to him. He said, "Man, I have a bad vibe." He said, "Somebody's going to die out here tonight."

• 9:49Speaker 02

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• 10:19John Hopkins?

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in the Sign of Four.

• 11:02John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. Temperamentally, Greg Devlin is suited to life in the Air Force. He is tough, scrappy, and never shies away from a fight, even when the odds are stacked against him.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  I come from a family of fighters. My father and uncles are Golden Gloves fighters and champions. My grandfather was pro that had 93 flyweight fights from 31 to 39. And so from a young age, I was always taught, don't take any crap off anybody, you know, don't start any fights ever, just finish them if they start them with you.

• 11:40John Hopkins?

  Greg grew up in small-town Ohio. His father was an ex-marine who owned a gas station, and Greg used to work the pumps for pocket money. Bright and industrious, he did well in school, but ultimately decided to join the Air Force instead of going to college. He completed basic training in Texas, after which he was required to choose between one of three job offers.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  I have no memory of what the first two offers were, because when I got to the third offer, it said Titan II Nuclear Missile Fuel Systems Specialist. And I'm 17, and I want to do something important in the world. And I said, wow, Titan II Nuclear Missiles? I didn't even know what a Titan II missile was, but to me, it sounded important. I said, yeah, that's, I'll do that.

• 12:36John Hopkins?

  Since the start of the Cold War in the 1940s, the United States has been locked in a frenzied arms race with the Soviet Union. By 1980, each superpower has amassed a stash of weapons great enough to destroy the world several times over. And in America's vast arsenal, no missile is larger or more destructive than the Titan II. First built in the early 1960s, when Cold War tensions were at their feverish peak, the Titan II missile is over 100 feet in length and weighs about 150 tons, roughly as heavy as the Statue of Liberty. It is fitted with a W-53 thermonuclear warhead, a device capable of unleashing an explosion

• 13:18John Hopkins?

  with a yield of nine megatons, or around 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Simply put, a Titan II is the most powerful nuclear missile ever built in the United States. As of 1980, the US military has 54 of them. The main point of these weapons is as a deterrent, to ward off any would-be Soviet aggression. But they still have to be ready, primed to launch at the push of a button. And keeping them in this permanent state of readiness requires work, constant, round-the-clock maintenance and monitoring, with dedicated teams, whose job is to keep the missiles

• 14:00John Hopkins?

  ticking over in their silos. After finishing his training, Greg is shipped off to Little Rock Air Force Base, where he joins a specialist group of technicians responsible for everything fuel-related onboard the Titan II.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  So it's called PTS, Propellant Transfer System. That's our group. And we are the people that put the fuels onboard the Titan II missile. What we worked with was called UDMH, which is unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine. So that's the fuel. It's extremely toxic. It's cancer-causing. It's explosive. It's dangerous in every aspect.

• 14:42John Hopkins?

  Working in close proximity to this hazardous liquid, Greg and his colleagues in the PTS team carry out their work in full body-protective gear, known as REFCO, Rocket Fuel Handler's Cover-All Outfit. Picture a white hazmat suit with an oxygen tank strapped to the back.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  It has a detachable helmet, has a metal ring around the top, and then you pull the two pins on the side, and you can pop the helmet off if you have to get out of that quickly so you can breathe. It has a one-hour backpack. They call it an ECU, Environmental Control Unit. So it has blended liquid air in it, and it lasts for an hour and 12 minutes. They call it a one-hour pack, and typically, they cut you off at one hour, you've got to be back and undressed.

• 15:31John Hopkins?

  One hour and 12 minutes. That's how long REFCO suits are designed to keep the technicians safe. But there are some scenarios that no amount of protective gear can defend against. Inside the missile, that's W-53 nuclear warhead, sits above two gigantic tanks. One contains rocket fuel, the other contains liquid oxidizer. When these two highly reactive substances come into contact inside the missile's combustion chamber, the Titan II is launched. If they were to ever come into contact outside of the missile's engine, it would cause a massive explosion and fire. To stop this from happening, the two propellants are never handled at the same time.

• 16:15John Hopkins?

  But even that might not be enough to prevent disaster, because the rocket fuel alone is so violently combustible, it can ignite spontaneously, simply upon contact with oxygen in the air. If there are enough fumes, and a technician waves their hand too quickly, the fuel could ignite. Whether or not the ensuing explosion would trigger the nuclear weapon itself, no one can say for sure. But as more and more gallons of fuel spill into the silo, that is the fear gripping the military's chain of command. They simply don't know what might happen.

• 16:57John Hopkins?

  It's around 10:00 PM. A reflective silence presides over Greg and his colleagues as they drive north towards Damascus, each man left to mull on what exactly it is they're walking into.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  It's real quiet going out there, too. There's not conversation in the truck. Everybody's like, how bad is this gonna be when we get there?

• 17:18John Hopkins?

  The truck pulls off the highway onto an unmarked gravel access road. They bump along for a few miles, a ribbon of asphalt unspooling in the headlights, until eventually, the security fence of the missile complex looms from the darkness. The truck parks outside the main gates, and they radio back to base. They're here. Now what's the plan? But no order comes. Senior Command is still trying to figure out how to handle this unprecedented situation. For now, all the PTS team can do is wait.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  It seemed like we were waiting for hours and hours. We just wanted to go, either send us in, what do you want us to do? Send us in or send us home. You know, to just sit out here and wait seemed helpless. Like, what are we doing? Either let's get in or not.

• 18:11John Hopkins?

  Greg stands by the truck, surveying the darkness beyond the fence. It's an eerie scene. The night air is hazy with smoke coiling from the ventilation ducts and tinged with the distinct chemical odor of hydrazine, one of the main ingredients in the rocket fuel. Finally, word comes through from Mission Command. In pairs, the technicians are to enter the silo and take a reading from the vapor detector panel located in one of the interior control rooms. That will tell them how much fuel has leaked up to this point, and what the chances are of an explosion. It's decided that Greg and his colleague Rex Sukel will go first.

• 18:56John Hopkins?

  But before they even step inside the complex, there's a problem. Over the last couple of hours, the Missile Combat Crew, the team in charge of the site, has evacuated the Command Center, which means there's no one to open the main gates or any of the interior doors. The fuel techs are going to have to break in.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  We had a three-foot-long crowbar and three-foot-long bolt cutters and a handheld hydraulic pump. And what they wanted us to do was break through the steel-framed door at the portal entry, where you would step into the code control area.

• 19:36John Hopkins?

  After using bolt cutters to break through the outer fence, Greg and Rex, kitted out in their bulky refco suits, head toward the silo. They force their way past the portal entry, then head down a set of steps to the next obstacle, a 6,000-pound steel and concrete door. To open this, they'll need to use a hydraulic hand pump, a confusing contraption made up of various tubes and valves, and which neither Greg nor Rex has ever operated before.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  So they hand us this thing, and no instructions. There's only two lines, so it's a 50/50 coin toss when you hook this thing up. Will it be trying to lock the door? Move the pin tighter in the hole? Or is it gonna be used to unlock? You don't know.

• 20:22John Hopkins?

  With precious time ticking away, they line up the device as best they can and start pumping.

• 20:30John Hopkins?

  Ten minutes pass. Nothing seems to be happening.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  We're pumping this door, and I'm looking at Rex. I say, "Is the pin moving? Is it moving at all in any direction? Because we're pumping, but the pin's not moving." Well, come to find out, we actually had it hooked up 50/50 coin toss backwards.

• 20:50John Hopkins?

  It's a sucker punch. They've been wasting time. They reconfigure the pump and start again. But with only an hour of oxygen in their tanks, the fuel techs have been told to leave themselves at least 30 minutes to get back to safety.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  So we were right coming up on that 30-minute mark, and Sergeant Hanson radios, "Hey, you guys are right at the 30-minute mark. Come back."

• 21:14John Hopkins?

  Ruing their mistake, Greg and Rex leave the pump in place for the next pair. Then they turn around and start making their way back to ground level, wading through clouds of toxic vapor.

• 21:26John Hopkins?

  After regrouping with the rest of the team by the perimeter fence, the two men take off their helmets and unzip their coveralls.

• 21:33John Hopkins?

  Then they watch as the next pair of technicians, Dave Livingston and Jeff Kennedy, set off towards the smoldering silo.

• 21:47John Hopkins?

  It's half an hour later. The PTS team waits around the main entry gate, listening for updates on the radio.

• 21:54John Hopkins?

  Greg and Rex are gearing up to go back inside the complex.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Rex and I are halfway suited up. Rex is sitting on the back of the pickup truck, which is facing the gate, the entry gate. Over to the left is the hole cut out of the fence where we had come in and out of. And I'm standing up because on the radio I can hear Kennedy and Livingston coming back.

• 22:16John Hopkins?

  Kennedy's voice crackles through the radio. It sounds like they made it through to the control room where the vapor detector panel is located.

• 22:25John Hopkins?

  Greg listens carefully as Kennedy describes what he saw on the panel's gauge.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  The vapor panel has this main gauge in the center is a lira. When there's no fumes out there, obviously the needle's on zero. As it climbed, right about three-quarters of the way up is a line straight across there, okay? There's a marker there. And it's 18,000 parts per million. This needle was pegged all the way, all the way to the end of the gauge. It went to 24,000 parts per million. I mean, that's explosion level. The missile will explode.

• 23:07John Hopkins?

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world.

• 23:38John Hopkins?

  In Jane Austen stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

• 24:01John Hopkins?

  It's 3 o'clock in the morning. Greg stands at the entry gate of the missile complex.

• 24:09John Hopkins?

  He is halfway suited up, holding onto the steel mesh fence and peering out towards the silo. Somewhere in the hazy, fume-choked night, Jeff Kennedy and Dave Livingston are making their way back towards the entry gate.

• 24:23John Hopkins?

  Word has come through from Kennedy that the vapor gauge is reaching around 24,000 parts per million, an unprecedented level. Essentially, there is now enough vaporized fuel around the missile for it to blow at any second. It could be a stray spark, a static discharge, even a hot surface could cause the fuel to ignite and trigger an explosion. Could that explosion in turn cause the nuclear warhead to detonate? Nobody can say for certain. But if it were to, the blast would unleash the power of 600 Hiroshimas on rural Arkansas, potentially wiping the entire state off the map and poisoning vast swathes of Middle America with masses of radioactive fallout.

• 25:10John Hopkins?

  Greg squints his eyes, trying to catch sight of his colleagues. It's quiet, as if the breath of every man here is being held on a collective inhale.

• 25:21John Hopkins?

  And then, disaster strikes.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh. It was the loudest bang I ever heard in my life. It broke my left eardrum. The first thing that hit me, it felt like a Mack truck or a heavy-duty 10-ton truck just hit me at 50 miles an hour. I boom. But it was wind. The first thing to hit me was the wind.

• 25:53John Hopkins?

  The force of the blast knocks Greg flat onto his back. In a fraction of a millisecond, the dark silo has erupted into a giant ball of blinding light and excoriating heat. A ring of fire shoots outward, then up, 300 feet into the air, coiling and reshaping into an immense fiery sphere. It billows black smoke and illuminates the surrounding farmland with an infernal red glow.

• 26:23John Hopkins?

  The superheated air rapidly expands, creating a concussive shock wave that rips branches from trees and sends every person in the vicinity hurtling backwards like crash test dummies. Greg can feel the gravel scraping the skin from his body as he careens on his back down the access road.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  I'm sliding backwards so fast. I mean, I only had one thought in my mind. "I know I'm gonna die. I just hope it doesn't hurt." That's the thought. My left eye was cracked open just slightly. I didn't open it. It's cracked open, and I'm sliding, and I can see what looks like lava going past me at 1,000 miles an hour. And I went, "Oh, God." "Oh, God, I mean, I know I'm gonna die."

• 27:12John Hopkins?

  The missile's rocket fuel will burn through skin and tissue. Just breathing its vapors can kill. Right now, the air around the silo is ablaze with deadly vapor from thousands of gallons of leaked fuel.

• 27:28John Hopkins?

  As he slides, Greg's hands are up by his face, and through his cracked eyelid, he can see that the skin of his left hand has been completely stripped off, revealing the muscles and tendons.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  I'm sliding, sliding, sliding, sliding, sliding, and I feel like I'm gonna slam into something behind me because I'm going so fast. But I was on the access road, and there was no equipment behind me there. So there's nothing I would slam into. So I slide 60 feet back up the asphalt road.

• 27:59John Hopkins?

  Finally, Greg skids to a juddering halt. The vapor-thick air congeals around him, settling on his skin in a toxic film. Lying on his back, he blinks up at the night sky. It's filled with a million burning embers, twisting and darting like fireflies.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  I'm burned badly. I have all the wind knocked out of me. I'm stunned. I'm dazed. I'm confused. As soon as I stop, I'm on the ground, and two inches from my ear, I hear a woman scream, "Bloody murder." This is a long-winded scream to run. I

• 28:51John Hopkins?

  Greg instinctively turns his head towards the voice. There's nobody there, just a desolate expanse of burning grass. But the message is as clear as day. Run.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  And I went, oh my god, lady. I mean, it gives me chills telling you that story right now. I'm not kidding you. Gives me goosebumps. Like, ah, god, like, go. And it brought me to my senses.

• 29:18John Hopkins?

  With that disembodied voice reverberating in his bones, Greg hauls himself to his feet and starts to run.

• 29:26John Hopkins?

  His refco suit is zipped to his waist and the top half sags heavily by his side as he staggers across the scorched ground.

• 29:34John Hopkins?

  Pieces of silo rain down from the sky like meteors, great hulking chunks of steel and concrete that shriek overhead and lodge themselves in the dirt around him.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  So I get five steps, fifteen feet max, five steps away from where I was laying. And it felt like an earthquake behind me, like this massive freaking concrete.

• 30:02John Hopkins?

  The earth shakes as a slab of concrete the size of a school bus slams into the ground just a few feet behind him, right in the spot where he was just lying.

• 30:12John Hopkins?

  Greg commands his body to keep moving. But he's only made it a few more meters down the road when a savage impact jolts through the back of his leg.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  It felt like a major league baseball player took a baseball bat homerun swing and he crushed, shatters my ankle, severs the Achilles tendon. When that foot hit the ground, it buckled because the ankle was shattered and I went down.

• 30:38John Hopkins?

  Greg crumples. Unable to stand on his broken ankle, he curls into a ball, shuts his eyes, and with flaming rubble raining down around him, waits for the inevitable.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  I'm hearing chunks of concrete as big as cars and trucks hit the ground around me. Because that's the pieces of stuff and bigger, stuff they found around us. Boom, boom, boom. And I'm like, I'm in a fetal position on my left side with my hands over my head like it would make any dag on difference.

• 31:13John Hopkins?

  Greg braces for impact. He listens, teeth clenched, as the pieces of concrete raining down get gradually smaller, from fragments to shards, until finally, all that's left is a shower of gravel, skittering across the surface of the road.

• 31:31John Hopkins?

  Still, Greg lies there, arms up over his head as the sound and fury of the explosion gives way to a deathly quiet.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  I've never heard silence like that in my life. For three or four seconds, no birds chirping, no crickets, nobody screaming, yelling, nothing. It was just like pure dead silence for four seconds.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  And then guys are screaming, oh god, help me, help me. You know, they're screaming, I've been burned and Rex had a shattered kneecap and, you know, guys kind of scattered in different directions.

• 32:13John Hopkins?

  It looks like a battlefield, a cratered, smoldering hellscape littered with detritus and strewn with injured men.

• 32:22John Hopkins?

  Dazed, Greg peers around through the haze of smoke and settling dust.

• 32:28John Hopkins?

  As mighty as that explosion was, it may only have been a precursor. At this stage, the nuclear warhead can't have detonated or there would be no survivors. But if indeed, the Titan II's nuclear bomb remains intact somewhere, the question is, where did it land?

• 32:48John Hopkins?

  That's when Greg turns his head and sees a bulky, cylindrical object silhouetted against the burning field beside him.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  The front side of it is pointed. You could make out a shadow. The shadow looked like the point, looked like the nose cone in the warhead of the missile. So I turn over and look and I went, oh my god. This Titan II is laying right next to me, man.

• 33:14John Hopkins?

  Greg stares, terrified, mere inches from one of the most powerful weapons of mass destruction ever built on US soil. But after a few moments, his vision adjusts to the gloom. It is just another piece of concrete. Relief, for now. Greg rolls onto his back, suddenly assailed by volleys of excruciating pain. He tries to get up, but his shattered ankle makes it impossible to stand. His left eardrum was ruptured in the blast. The world has a muffled, muted quality, but from somewhere close by, he can hear the dull thudding of approaching footsteps.

• 33:55John Hopkins?

  A moment later, Greg is looking up into the bloodied face of one of his senior officers, Colonel Morris.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  He comes over, reaches under my legs with one arm and my back with another. He's carrying me like an infant, picks me up and he starts running up the access road.

• 34:13John Hopkins?

  With Greg's full weight in his arms, Colonel Morris's endurance and tenacity is remarkable.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  He's running into rocks that are as big as coffee tables. I mean, he runs with me for, I know he ran with me for 40 yards. And I'm going, I'm looking at him. I'm looking at him in the face as he's running with me and blood is pouring down his face. And I, I was stunned. I was like, this is like superhuman strength here. This guy's carrying me so far.

• 34:43John Hopkins?

  There's good reason for Colonel Morris's haste. Before the explosion, a military support crew assembled at the foot of the access road. But they're not sticking around for long.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  As soon as that missile exploded, everybody at the end of the road, ambulance drivers included, all took off. They all thought a nuclear bomb has just went off.

• 35:08John Hopkins?

  Right now, Colonel Morris is doing everything he can to reach the end of the road before the last ambulance is leave and abandon the men here to their fate.

• 35:18John Hopkins?

  But after a while, the Colonel's stamina falters.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Finally, he gets about 40 yards in and he's like, oh, Devlin, I gotta put you down. If I don't make it to the end of the road, they will leave us.

• 35:37John Hopkins?

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea and a man is struck blind all alone at the very top of the world.

• 36:08John Hopkins?

  In Jane Austen stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad free on Noiser Plus.

• 36:28John Hopkins?

  Greg lies sprawled on his back by the side of the access road, his skin charred and peeling, covered head to toe in foul smelling black soot.

• 36:38John Hopkins?

  Unable to move, he waits, helpless, not knowing whether or not Colonel Morris has reached help in time.

• 36:45John Hopkins?

  The minutes stretch out

• 36:48John Hopkins?

  until at last, he hears the sound of truck tires on gravel.

• 36:53John Hopkins?

  Colonel Morris is back with a few other guys heading towards the silo to look for survivors.

• 36:59John Hopkins?

  Despite his injuries, Greg wants others to be prioritized before him, but the Colonel won't hear of it.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Colonel Morris says, take Devlin to the hospital now. And I said, no, no, don't take me. Get those guys, get everybody. We'll lead together. And Colonel Morris said, Devlin, you're too bad off. You're so badly burned. I gotta get you to the hospital now.

• 37:25John Hopkins?

  It takes some time, but Greg eventually accepts. He is loaded into the back of a pickup truck and driven to the end of the access road. There, he is placed in a larger truck along with fellow PTS team member Buddy Boylan. Spotting some large jugs of water in the flatbed of the pickup truck, Greg asks Buddy for a favor.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  I said, Buddy, pour the water on my face. I was worried about hydrazine. If it's liquid hydrazine and it gets anywhere on your body, it mixes with the moisture in your skin and becomes an acid that just keeps eating you. So Buddy takes this big jug of water, man, he's pouring it on me, ice water. It feels like heaven, man. It's like, oh my god, man. So for sure, I know that it's being neutralized.

• 38:13John Hopkins?

  When the jug is empty, the pain soon returns. The journey to the hospital passes for Greg in agonizing discomfort.

• 38:23John Hopkins?

  When they finally get there and he is loaded onto a gurney, the pain is so intense, the medical staff are concerned Greg might lose consciousness.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  So they get me inside the hospital and I'm hyperventilating. I'm in so much raging pain from the fire. And this nurse comes over, Mr. Devlin, if you don't calm down, you're going to pass out. I said, I can't calm down. I'm in so much pain. And 30 seconds later, somebody takes a syringe, there's a woman, stabs me in the leg, the thigh with it and pushes that into me instantly. Before she even got the needle out of me, all the pain in my body was gone. I went, oh my god, I love you.

• 39:04John Hopkins?

  Greg has suffered a combination of chemical and fire burns to his face, neck and back. He has lost all the skin on one hand, ruptured his left eardrum and severed his Achilles tendon.

• 39:17John Hopkins?

  Over the course of the next 10 days, he is treated for his injuries with regular rounds of morphine to dull the pain. He is joined in the hospital by other wounded airmen, all suffering similar injuries, burns and broken bones. One PTS technician, Airman Dave Livingston, tragically dies from the trauma he sustained in the explosion.

• 39:39John Hopkins?

  He was 22 years old.

• 39:43John Hopkins?

  While Greg and his colleagues recover, outside of the hospital, an inquiry begins into what went wrong and how. Amid feverish press interest and concern for public safety, the Air Force is anxious to control the narrative.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  The media were trying to get to us in the hospital, and the Air Force wanted us back so the media couldn't get to us. You know, the hospital officials basically were keeping them away from us, but the Air Force wanted us back so we couldn't talk to the media.

• 40:13John Hopkins?

  In the weeks following the explosion, facing scrutiny from all quarters, the Air Force remains tight-lipped, refusing to confirm whether there had even been a nuclear warhead on the site at all. But as anyone who was there that night knows, the fact of the matter is, things could have been so much worse. When the fuel exploded, the warhead thankfully didn't go off. It is eventually recovered from a roadside ditch a quarter of a mile away from the silo, still intact. The Air Force will later say that it never could have detonated, but many experts will disagree with that claim. In any case, following the accident at Damascus, thorny questions are raised

• 40:58John Hopkins?

  about the way the military stores these super powerful nuclear missiles. Some will say they shouldn't be kept so close to populated areas. Others will point out that a culture of shortcuts and lax workplace practices had been able to take root over the years, leading to the accident. For their part, the Air Force does not admit to any systemic fault. Instead, its official explanation is simple human error, that all this stemmed from a young technician who forgot to bring the right tool.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  If the error would have been something in the system, then there's a, oh my gosh, this could happen in all, we got 54 of these around the US. 18 in Arkansas, 18 in Kansas, 18 in Arizona. If that same thing happens, we could have a catastrophic event out there too. So, but it wasn't. It was, whose fault was it? Oh, him, that guy, Dave Powell. It's because he didn't use a torque wrench. And I had to tell you this. That couldn't be further from the truth.

• 42:03John Hopkins?

  Greg says that even if a torque wrench was used, the accident could just as easily have happened as that tool also had parts that could have fallen off. And the truth, Greg argues, goes deeper still. By 1980, the Titan II missile, once the pride of America's nuclear arsenal, had become outdated. Designed and built nearly 20 years ago, the entire fleet is now an operational relic, a product of a different era with aging systems and components. Of course, human error did play a part in the accident at Damascus. But many argue that focusing on one technician's mistake only obscures deeper problems within the Titan II program.

• 42:47John Hopkins?

  Indeed, within seven years, the Titan II system will be decommissioned entirely, with the old missiles repurposed as space launch vehicles or packed off to museums. The Air Force has also since stopped using liquid rocket fuel, replacing it with safer, less volatile alternatives.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Liquid fuels are extremely dangerous compared to solid rocket fuels. And I can't really speak on solid rocket fuels. All I know is they've gotten rid of the liquid propellant missiles, these monster missiles like the Titan II, and now all of our missiles are solid rocket, which are way more stable.

• 43:32John Hopkins?

  After the accident, Greg and his fellow fuel technicians are awarded the Airman's Medal for Bravery. But despite this honor, Greg says that everything changes in the wake of Damascus. The whole PTS team is treated differently by the upper command, as if their very presence is an unwelcome reminder of how close they all came to catastrophe. It isn't long before Greg leaves the Air Force. He goes to work for NASA as a fuel technician at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he still lives today.

• 44:07John Hopkins?

  In the years since, he has tried to move on from the events of September 1980. But it's not easy. He suffers from long-term health problems as a result of his injuries, including issues that may stem from the inhalation of fumes. Today, almost half a century on from the accident, Greg still advocates for more recognition of the lasting side effects of exposure to hydrazine.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  The amount they were allowing us to inhale on a daily basis was 50 times more than today's standard. I'm not crying about any of this. What I'm saying though is there are guys that we are losing to cancer that is directly tied to that, that they should be getting the veterans' benefits tied to that.

• 44:51John Hopkins?

  When Greg looks back on the accident today, he says he's struck not by what happened, but by what could have happened.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Is there a possibility of an accidental explosion? Yeah, sure. Even if the odds are a billion to one, we still have the one. And if that warhead would have went off and the radioactive fallout, they predicted it could have killed up to 10 million Americans. Nobody cares about the Cold War. That's in the past. Nobody cares about Titan missiles? Yep, they're gone. We don't have liquid propellant anymore. So it's easy to forget the event, forget the Cold War. The good thing about podcasts like yours and people that still discuss it and they tell stories is it doesn't let the world completely forget about it.

• 45:47John Hopkins?

  Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet John Graham, who, at 48 years old, has already lived more lives than most. Formerly of the US Foreign Service and the US State Department, John is now working as a lecturer aboard a cruise ship, the MS Princeton Dam. But on the night of his first talk, four days into the cruise, a fire tears through the commercial liner and more than 500 people are forced overboard. To make matters worse, a typhoon is on its way, and John and his fellow survivors must face down the storm with nothing but a metal dinghy between them and the roiling deep. As the hours tick by, seasickness and hypothermia aren't their only concern.

• 46:30John Hopkins?

  For John and his companions, time is running out.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  The real factor that's important is light. The odds on us being found by a Coast Guard cutter are small enough with a bit of daylight left in the storm. But we don't have any lights, no flares, no radio, of course. And it's going to be dark in 45 minutes or an hour. Once it gets dark, we're dead.

• 46:55John Hopkins?

  That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now, without ads and without waiting, by joining Noiser Plus. This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories,

• 47:40John Hopkins?

  Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in the Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.