Titan Missile Museum Guide

South of Tucson is the only Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile silo left open to the public anywhere in the world — a preserved relic of the moment humanity kept the end of the world on a hair trigger. From 1963 to the 1980s, this underground complex held a Titan II missile armed with a nine-megaton nuclear warhead, targeted and ready, crews standing 24-hour alert. Today you take an elevator down into the actual silo, stand in the launch control center, and watch a simulated launch sequence carried out with the real keys and switches. A (deactivated) missile still sits in the tube. It is sobering in a way no monument can match.