AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
Several additional pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53796724938
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@mattblaze@federate.social Significant Borg energy.
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025
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This is a stitched imaged made from two captures with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digaron-W lens, Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50), and a Cambo WRS 1250 camera, shifted left/right 15mm, producing a 230MP final image.
The full resolution (16152x14043) version is finally up on Flickr. There had been a bug preventing the upload of very large images there, which had forced me to use a large (but reduced size, 100MP) version as a placeholder there.
From 1958 through 1980, this incongruous four story (82 foot) monolith was the centerpiece of the "Almaden Air Force Station", a long-range radar site that was part of NORAD's SAGE early warning system. The blast-hardened concrete building served as the platform for an FPS-24 radar system, a massive 120 foot wide reflector that emitted a 5 megawatt VHF pulse, continuously rotating at 5 RPM.
Notoriously, the signal disrupted TV and radio reception throughout the San Jose area.
It's unclear if the SAGE system would have actually been effective in detecting incoming bombers, which presumably would have employed radar jammers. Fortunately, we never found out.
The antenna was removed shortly after the site's decommissioning in 1980, but the building, a prominent local landmark visible from downtown San Jose, has been preserved.
I have mixed feelings about these cold war relics. On the one hand, they're artifacts of what was perhaps humanity's most dangerous folly to date, locking the world in a deadly game where the stakes only went up with each round. This doesn't seem like something to commemorate or celebrate.
On the other hand, these objects, many now destroyed or decayed, serve as visible evidence of just how close to oblivion we are willing to go. And looked at from the right angle, they have stories to tell.
@mattblaze@federate.social We might approach the nuclear precipice again if we ever returned to a situation of two rival zero-sum systems, one or other of which inevitably had to die. Fortunately Kennan was right that Communism could be contained and eventually outlasted.
@mattblaze@federate.social They sure have stories to tell.
@mattblaze@federate.social I lived through that era, telling younger friends about it now there is a disconnect as it is abstract. At least these relics make it real for them, maybe (hopefully) making some of my current paranoia and political “take” seem slightly more, well, justified.
@simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org It now seems hard to believe that for the first 50% of my life I lived with an entirely rational background fear that all of civilization might end at any moment with less than 30 minutes notice, possibly by accident.
I lack the vocabulary to describe it adequately.
@mattblaze@federate.social @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org
I was an Army brat. At 8 years I dreaded the drills, because I already knew they were useless. The only place I ever lived as a child where they weren't done was "nowhereville" Arizona while my father was in Vietnam. I was (thankfully) too young to understand why Christmas came before he left that year. Just how serious was it my generation Z and millennial coworkers want to know. In 1963, before I was born, my father called my mother while he was stationed in Anchorage and said, "Take the kids and the car and get out of Anchorage now." She did. My mother was the strongest person I've ever known. I feel the dread coming back, but not because of the old reason, but because of the very old reason. If it's not H5N1 it'll be something else - maybe even something we thought we'd licked because time has a way of making history repeat. Tempus fugit, momento mori.
@mattblaze@federate.social @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org I’ve been wondering if active shooter drills are the duck and cover for later American generations. A repetitive drill focused on possible imminent death. I can’t imagine that anyone comes out of that unchanged.
@Patricia@vivaldi.net @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org In many ways the active shooter drills seem worse. Duck and cover was about the random threat of total annihilation at the hands of impersonal, out of control global powers. The shooter drills are about the random threat of personal annihilation at the hands of your neighbor.
@mattblaze@federate.social @Patricia@vivaldi.net @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org
Reminder: your neighbour was radicalised and manipulated by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube algorithms pushed by McKenzie consultants and the top brass of tech companies for profit and an ideological agenda (and Fox News, OANN, etc.) and an automatic weapon was put in his hands by Republican legislators, the NRA and the Supreme Court.
The radicalised, racist, bigoted ideology behind the trigger was pushed and riled up by political representatives and their sponsors.
There is responsibility to be assigned, this didn't spawn in a vacuum.
@mattblaze@federate.social @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org
Nuclear war is still the greatest danger facing the world.
@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org Thanks for the information.
@mattblaze@federate.social @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org I was living in Scotland when Sulzberger was still talking about acceptable amounts of Europe to be annhiliated in a "Theatre Europe" exchange.
I was going to a US school and the students were very cavalier about this. It was truly bizarre.
@mattblaze@federate.social @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org I grew up inside the DC beltway, so it was pretty palpable for me.
Now I’m 10 miles from the northern Virginia data center wasteland, and feel a similar threat.
@darthnull@infosec.exchange @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org Native NYer here, so yeah, I know the feeling.
But if they want to destroy us, perhaps the most effective thing they could do is leave the data centers running...
@simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org I lived my early years in Santa Clara Valley under the shadow of that radar station. The fear of nuclear annihilation was very real to me. Nevertheless it was remarkable to be able to see the radar dish revolving from miles away on the valley floor, and noteworthy when they decommissioned it.
@mattblaze@federate.social, one of the things I appreciate about your capture is how harmless it looks, and mundane.
I remember when I was a child being taught to "Duck and Cover". And being shown some cartoon about a turtle.
@nyrath @mattblaze @simplenomad "Duck and Cover" may account for much of the generation gap between the WW2 vets and the Baby Boomers. The vets knew from personal experience how hideous war was; but they also saw what happens to people conquered by totalitarians. The Boomers by contrast grew up with an existential fear of annihilation; to them militarism was suicidal insanity.
@60sRefugee @nyrath @simplenomad
I find it rather disturbing that any time one mentions that a globally apocalyptic nuclear arms race is perhaps a bad thing, someone always feels the need to jump in and defend it.
@mattblaze@federate.social Yikes, really? I thought it bad enough when they were telling you to CW your monochromatic images. I think it's terrifying that someone with a very thin skin and no impulse control now sits on the largest pile of nuclear arms in the world. @60sRefugee@spacey.space @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org
@CStamp @60sRefugee @nyrath @simplenomad Yes. That’s the gift left to us by those best and brightest WW II vets who ran the world for 30+ years worshipping the likes of Herman Kahn and his ilk. A giant pile of civilization-ending weapons contolled by two opposing sociopaths. Thanks a lot.
@CStamp@mastodon.social @60sRefugee@spacey.space @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org The thing about the escalation game is that every individual move is rational, but the game itself is completely insane. And we spend almost all our effort (especially in the 50’s and 60’s) strategizing each next move instead of finding an exit.
@mattblaze@federate.social @CStamp@mastodon.social @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org 2/2: the problem ultimately is, what do you do about nuclear weapons in a world in which nation-states still fight wars?
@mattblaze@federate.social @CStamp@mastodon.social @60sRefugee@spacey.space @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org
Students in my class play a simple game called the escalation game which I started a couple of years back after physicist Max Tegmark claimed there was a 1/6 chance of a nuclear war starting over Ukraine.
The first time we played we had 1/7 teams end in nuclear war. This year half of the teams ended with a nuclear war.
It's more about the competitive nature of the players than a real estimate of any probability of course.
It was very convenient that the first year my boss was in the class and I was being evaluated for my teaching abilities and we got 1/7 vs. Tegmark's 1/6. Phew!
See Ellsberg's book The Doomsday Machine.
PS Most estimates of the annual probability are lower, generally below 1% but of course not zero.
@mattblaze@federate.social @CStamp@mastodon.social @60sRefugee@spacey.space @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org Have you ever read “Wizards of Armageddon”? The “logic" behind some of the decisions was seriously insane and often driven by quite narrow interests. For example: initially, the (US) Navy's submarine-launched missiles were inaccurate, so they advocated a city-destroying strategy, since that was all they could hit. The Air Force denounced that as immoral, not because they felt that way but because they could come close to military targets. Later, the Navy had more accurate missiles, so they preferred a counterforce strategy. But then the targets, e.g., missile silos, were hardened and warheads were very plentiful, so attacking cities with multiple missiles or bombers was preferred by the Air Force.
@mattblaze@federate.social @CStamp@mastodon.social @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org 1/2: They tried to find an exit; but none logically existed. Ban nuclear weapons? Then we're back to June 1945, when total strategic (conventional) war complete with burning down cities prompted the development of nukes in the first place. International control? The USA proposed it, the Soviet Union vetoed it (while secretly working to develop their own nukes). Mutual disarmament? The first side to cheat wins.
@60sRefugee@spacey.space @CStamp@mastodon.social @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org Yeah, Nuclear fetishists love to declare that there's no alternative, simply nothing we can do. Much like the way there's no solution to health care or gun violence.
@mattblaze@federate.social @60sRefugee@spacey.space @CStamp@mastodon.social @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org One hope is that the nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Union might not work today, but the Russian rockets are still mostly reliable. A few leaks from the International Space Station, but not many serious malfunctions.
@mattblaze@federate.social @CStamp@mastodon.social @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org If you're in favor of unilateral surrender to others who DON'T give up their nukes, please say so.
@60sRefugee @CStamp @nyrath @simplenomad No. But unlike you, apparently, I think the current situation is unacceptably dangerous and inherently unstable, and that working to find ways to dismantle a system in which the entire world can be blown up in less than the time it takes to get a pizza delivered should be considered an urgent international priority.
This is actually a pretty mainstream view. In fact, while the world is still quite dangerous, various treaties have made it safer.
@mattblaze@federate.social @CStamp@mastodon.social @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org Find "ways". People have tried for 75 years. And no it wasn't because people were evil, insane warmongers that it hasn't happened. People were scared shitless about the possibility of nuclear war practically from the day after the Japanese bombings.
@60sRefugee@spacey.space @CStamp@mastodon.social @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org The difference between people like you and people like me is that you seem eager to give up.
Not me. I think nuclear war is fundamentally evil, and that there is room to continue to make it much less likely, if we have the will.
@mattblaze@federate.social @CStamp@mastodon.social @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org Give up? More like have no idea how to start. If you have a concrete suggestion beyond "do something" I'm all ears.
@mattblaze@federate.social @CStamp@mastodon.social @60sRefugee@spacey.space @nyrath@spacey.space Of course we've mainly been discussing USA and Russia in this thread. It is very possible that someone else could start something that simply "gets out of hand" and pulls others into things. Or USA with the right (e.g. wrong) leadership decides to play Team America: World Police to "fix the problem".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons
@mattblaze@federate.social @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org The arms race was scary but as it turned out wasn't apocalyptic. The WW2 vets who ran the world until about 1990 weren't stupid or insane; they did everything they could to avoid nuclear war OTHER than unilateral surrender. And no, mutual disarmament was never realistic given the irreconcilable differences between the two sides.
@mattblaze@federate.social @60sRefugee@spacey.space @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org I don't think I can defend the arms race itself. I can, though, point out that developing an alternative means not just one that's resistant to Putin or Kim Jong Un, but one that's resistant to Kim Yo Jong (who worries me much more than her brother does).
@mattblaze@federate.social my oldest son with a painting made right after we moved to the foot of Mt. Umunhum in South San Jose. The box is visible pretty far away but doesn’t seem to register much with people north of Almaden area. Source, years of telling people I lived near the box on the mountain. During COVID they just opened it and you could see SF bay and Monterey Bay in such smog free clarity.
@mattblaze@federate.social I would expect SAGE to have detected jamming
(either as way too many simultaneous targets, in systematic patterns, OR absurd non-natural noise swamping Rx),
but
unless we had advance intel on the device, SAGE operators would've struggled to guide early fighters to intercept a significant % of actual incoming bandits, which would still be a mission failure.
@mattblaze@federate.social
We like The Box here.
@mattblaze@federate.social recommended thread, including the image.
#ColdWarInfrastructure #why
Curious why one would stitch images from two different cameras?
@FellowEnt@sh.itjust.works huh? There’s only one camera involved here.
@mattblaze@federate.social This speaks to me - I love going to the top of that mountain and just looking at the beauty all around and contemplating my place in it all - along with that tower and its place in history.
Thanks for sharing it!
@mattblaze@federate.social at first I thought this was 3D computer graphics 🙂