{"id":12058,"date":"2022-04-17T12:13:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-17T19:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=12058"},"modified":"2022-04-18T12:15:47","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T19:15:47","slug":"boom-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2022\/04\/17\/boom-montana\/","title":{"rendered":"Boom Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from Washington Post via MSN<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nuclear missile next door<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

by Eli Saslow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a>
\u00a9\u00a0Demetrius Freeman\/The Washington Post The Air Force bought an acre of the Butcher ranch during the Cold War when it was deploying hundreds of missiles in the Great Plains as part of the U.S. nuclear deterrent against the Soviet Union.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

WINIFRED, Montana \u2014 Ed Butcher, 78, tied up his horse, kicked mud off his cowboy boots and walked into his house for dinner. He\u2019d been working on the ranch for most of the day, miles away from cellphone range. \u201cWhat did I miss?\u201d he asked his wife, Pam, as he turned their TV to cable news. \u201cWhat part of the world is falling apart today?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRussia\u2019s aggression has gone from scary to terrifying,\u201d the TV commentator said, as Pam took their dinner out of the oven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about a war that involves a very unstable nuclear power,\u201d the commentator said, as they bent their heads over the venison casserole to say a prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis could escalate,\u201d the commentator said. \u201cIt could explode beyond our wildest imaginations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ed turned the TV off and looked out the window at miles of open prairie, where the wind rattled against their barn and blew dust clouds across Butcher Road. Ed\u2019s family had been on this land since his grandparents homesteaded here in 1913, but rarely had life on the ranch felt so precarious. Their land was parched by record-breaking drought, neglected by a pandemic work shortage, scarred by recent wildfires, and now also connected in its own unique way to a war across the world. \u201cI wonder sometimes what else could go wrong,\u201d Ed said, as he looked over a hill toward the west end of their ranch, where an active U.S. government nuclear missile was buried just beneath the cow pasture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you think they\u2019ll ever shoot it up into the sky?\u201d Pam asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI used to say, \u2018No way,\u2019 \u201d Ed said. \u201cNow it\u2019s more like, \u2018Please God, don\u2019t let us be here to see it.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at MSN<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Washington Post via MSN The nuclear missile next door by Eli Saslow WINIFRED, Montana \u2014 Ed Butcher, 78, tied up his horse, kicked mud off his cowboy boots and walked into his house for dinner. He\u2019d been working on the ranch for most of the day, miles away from cellphone range. \u201cWhat did I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}