It's time for Positively Kansas.

Coming up, Vladimir Putin's recent threats to use nuclear weapons bring back unsettling memories of the Cold War.

We'll take a look back at Kansas, his role in the U.S. Soviet arms race.

And we'll show you how former missile sites across the state are being repurposed to serve a different purpose in the event of the unthinkable.

And in our Kansas Wild Edge report, see how winter ice storms put wild lives in jeopardy.

I'm sure it's got a half hour of information and inspirations queued up and ready to roll on this week's Positively Kansas.

Positively Kansas is brought to you in part by before investing your hard earned money, make sure your financial advisor understands your objectives.

Mark Douglass CFP Serving our community for over 25 years, providing customized financial solutions that focus on the individual.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas serves more than 900,000 Kansans in various programs.

Independent member owned Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, proudly supports PBS's Kansas.

Program support provided by the EF Price Kosman Memorial Trust and Trust Bank Trustee.

Bringing you the Kansas Wild Edge segments on Positively Kansas.

Recent developments on the international stage raise concerns once again of nuclear war.

That was an everyday worry for Americans in the 1960s, seventies and eighties as the US and the Soviet Union engaged in a long term standoff.

Kansas was a key player in our national defense with missiles and atomic warheads positioned across the state.

Today, those same locations could serve a different purpose should the unthinkable occur.

Chris Frank has the story.

We own a nuclear missile silo.

There are only a handful of people in the world who can say they own a nuclear missile silo.

Yet the opportunity to become a silo owner recently arose when this property just outside Abilene was listed for sale.

Chris, this is.

An escape hatch from down on the first level.

Which was the barracks for the five man crew.

John Dahl is an Abilene realtor with Hirsch Real Estate.

He typically sells homes and agricultural properties in a four county area.

But he got the most interesting listing of his career when he was asked to list this nuclear missile silo.

How often do you get a missile silo?

You know.

In a moment, we'll go underground to see the amazing complex.

This cutaway sketch gives you an idea of what's to come with the layout of the crews working and living areas and the missiles housing.

But first up above the Atlas missile program enacted during the Cold War had the U.S. building dozens of silos and bunkers to house Atlas missiles.

Most of those were constructed in the interior part of the country, away from major populated cities, including here in Kansas.

Every time I'm out here, I see something new and it's exciting.

This is history.

You know, I grew up in Abilene or the area and, you know, 1962, 64, you know, everybody knew this was out here, but you couldn't go near it.

Yet here it is 60 years later and Doddle is able to traipse throughout the silo property and think about what once was here.

I'll just go out here to the blast doors.

These are the 75 ton missile doors under these doors.

That's where the Atlas missile would be.

This whole silo complex design thing to withstand a nuclear strike.

If you fear a nuclear war sometime in the future, maybe this is the place for you.

Oh, yeah, we're.

We're still preppers.

We just got it all in place.

You may be wondering who would buy a former missile silo.

Mark Hannaford owns the Abilene Silo.

That's for sale.

Ironically, we own two missile silos.

One of them is near Abilene, Texas, and owns near Abilene, Kansas.

There's only two airplanes and we own a missile silo in each one of.

The Hannaford's Texas missile silo has been featured in numerous stories, including on the PBS's Austin program, The Day Tripper, with Hannaford explaining to host Chet Gardner how the blast doors work.

This was the glass doors in this protect against a nuclear overpressure.

So if you got a bomb went off outside, it went inside would be safe.

Okay.

All right.

Good size locks in here.

That is serious steel.

So you're worried about not just sending a missile.

But also taking a missile strike?

This was retaliatory weapons, not a first strike weapon.

Hannifin and his wife purchased their first missile silo back in 1982 after seeing an ad in a news racked tabloid.

He says they didn't like the political and economic climate of the time.

Sound familiar?

Now, I call them preppers, but we were survivalists back in the day and just didn't feel that the political situation coming out of Jimmy Carter and going into Reagan and everything, it just didn't really feel like we were sending our best and brightest up to Washington.

So we thought we probably would have a plan B.

He says their backup plan was having a secure underground home in a missile silo.

And so we kind of put supplies away and stuff like that to kind of look after ourselves a little better and just get more independent without going off grid like Kazansky or something.

That reference was of Ted Kaczynski, the convicted and in prison Unabomber, who, while being an off the grid survivalist, terrorized the nation with mail bombs, killing three, injuring several others.

But like Hannifin says, they purchased their Texas silo for $75,000 not to go off the grid.

After all, the Texas family lives in other aboveground homes they own in the lone Star State.

He jokes about why they purchased it in the first place.

I kid people, you know, we bought this thing in 1982 in case there was a pandemic in 2020.

He says they like the security of knowing with a well-stocked missile silo, they're prepared in case of a big emergency.

Knowing that I've it kind of prepared ahead of time in case something happened just kind of gives you a warmer and fuzzier feeling rather than, oh, my gosh, something just happened.

When much of Texas was without power and heat during the February 2021 polar vortex blast, the Hannah fans had generator power in their silo and no need for added heat.

That's because Hannifin says the temperature underground stays between 68 and 74 degrees.

Hannifin also says there are about 2 million gallons of water in the silo that he says has been tested and is safe to drink.

But back in Kansas, realtor John Dahl is seeing a lot of interest in this silo.

90% of our calls are from out of state.

Most of that interest, he says, is from people on the East and West coasts.

It's created quite a stir.

Soon after this was listed, it went viral with more than 300,000 Internet hits.

It's going to be a good place for someone.

It just depends on what they want to use it for.

More on what silos have been converted into and what people are using them for.

Coming up in a moment.

But first, the complex on an 11 acre site sits back from the roadway.

These grounds with the Quonset hut building the door to the underground, the security fence and all that's here weren't designed to be on the cover of home and garden.

This was designed for function, not beauty.

What many Kansans may not realizes how many Atlas missile silos there were in Kansas.

Forbes Air Force Base in Topeka oversaw nine Atlas E silos and earlier version.

The former Schilling Air Force Base in Salina managed 12 Atlas F missile silos in the central Kansas area, including sites near McPherson, Carlton Wilson Chapman, Wamego, Waverly, Holton Warden, Kannapolis, Tasca, Minneapolis and Abilene.

Those are counting the 18 Titan two missiles McConnell Air Force Base oversaw in south central Kansas until those were decommissioned in 1985.

Now, if you were living around Abilene or any of the other several communities in 1960, you may have seen these silo construction sites.

You may have also seen the Atlas missile being driven to the site.

Though it would have been without the warhead and not fueled, the silos were close enough to the roadways that the missile could be seen being put in place on its launchpad before being lowered into the safety of its silo.

Building these silos was dangerous work.

50 workers nationwide died at Atlas Construction sites.

There were five fatalities connected to the Atlas sites in Kansas, including one death at the Abilene missile silo, where a 24 year old man slipped and fell to his death inside the silo.

That could speak to the pressure to build the silos quickly, to get the missiles in place for the nation's defense.

The worry then was that the Soviets were ahead of the U.S. in nuclear capability.

There was a different kind of rush preceding the silo work.

Kansas communities, including Salina, were pressed to get houses built for all the construction workers to arrive.

The Salina Chamber of Commerce Secretary at the time quoted in the Salina Journal, describing the housing situation as critical.

At the same time, those cities were happy about the increased money being spent in their communities during construction.

But that being said, the missiles had their detractors.

There were occasional protests also near the silo sites.

The editor and general manager of the Abilene Daily reflect her chronicle wrote at the time about his concern that the nuclear missile silo put Abilene in the crosshairs for a Soviet first strike.

If you think about it, with this missile here, yeah, we're we're on the radar of somebody else, and it's just we live with it.

It's not something you think about every day.

We're not.

We're not doomsday here.

Consider this.

Dwight Eisenhower was president when the missile silos were selected.

His boyhood home, of course, is Abilene, Kansas.

But I was very impressed with the fact that with a stroke of a pen, he could move that thing 60 miles away.

And it didn't have to be in his hometown or anything else.

But he seemed to realize that this was a joint struggle and a joint sacrifice and everything else.

And he allowed him to put one I mean, not two miles from dead center of Abilene, Texas, no enabling Kansas.

And that I can't think of one of the occupants of the White House since then that would have done their.

The Atlas missiles were launched from outside the silo after a silo elevator lifted the missile into place.

And since none were called upon to be fired in anger, this is a scene Kansans didn't see from local sites.

This is video of a test firing.

But what would have been seen if the Atlas had been called upon to answer an attack on America back then?

The Atlas was the US first operational intercontinental ballistic missile ICBM.

It was put in service in the early 1960s, but the Atlas had drawbacks and so these sites only remained active until the spring of 1965.

Soon thereafter, the Defense Department decommissioned Schilling Air Force Base in Salina.

The Air Force in its contractors removed most everything relating to the missiles operation from the Abilene silo.

Even so, this very rusted rack remains on the launch control floor.

There are two levels which can be converted to living areas here.

These two levels of 1260 feet were free floating systems that they're not attached to the walls around.

They were attached the floors were held up in four places by giant chains that came off of that hook and hooked into here.

That's why there is a gap between the solid wall in the floor to allow for movement.

Now these floors are solid, sitting on large timbers.

But when this was operational, the floors were on a pneumatic system that allowed them to float during a nuclear strike.

There are six high security blast doors in the Abilene silo.

So each one of these would be closed in to get in.

You had to have the code.

If you didn't, they automatically would lock down if you didn't put the right code in.

So each one of these was designed to stop intruders and or if there was an outside blast to keep it from getting in to the command center.

You may recall I showed you the escape hatch earlier.

A buyer would still have that available, minus the blast absorbing sand that once filled in.

But what we looked at on the top that had the snow cone on top that we removed and you looked down.

This was filled with sand in case of a missile strike up top and the gentlemen needed to get out of here, or if something went wrong, there's a lever that they tripped.

This hatch would open and this was filled with sand.

It would come down.

They grabbed a ladder, hooked it on.

And this is how they got out of the facility to get to ground level right here.

The silo that housed the missile is mostly filled with water.

That's because the silo is 174 feet deep and below the groundwater table.

The vertical steel crib housing the missile can be compared to a 15 story building below the surface.

Now, the Air Force used powerful sump pumps and a French drain system to keep the water out when this was operational.

An owner can still pump the water out, but Hannifin keeps the water in his Texas silo to use as a scuba tour site called Dove Valhalla.

It's opened by reservations only.

This hole is 174 foot deep.

It's 52 feet across, and we've got about 120 feet of water in it.

And, of course, it's completely surrounded by concrete and concrete, not waterproof.

And so the water actually comes from the groundwater around us and flows through here.

So the water is replaced all the time, but it gets stagnant.

So besides the silo being a part time home for Hannifin, the scuba business helps pay some bills, and Atlas Silo near Roswell, New Mexico, has been turned into a bed and breakfast destination and closer to home.

This former Atlas silo near Carlton, Kansas, was on the market in 2021 with an asking price just under $1 million.

As you can see, it's been renovated.

Instead of rust, there's fresh paint which illustrates the silos potential.

The water was throughout this facility.

That water led to rusting.

So it would take a lot of scraping to remove the rust before painting.

But that's been done in other silos.

I mean, let's come down here and look, you know, this has very little pitting to it.

That's what I'm saying about the water being hard and it put a protective coat on.

I mean, this metal solid here, this isn't there's nothing wrong with it.

We really want to find somebody has the wherewithal to finish the project.

It could be used for numerous things a bed and breakfast, a home business.

And then there's other things I can't reveal that clients that told me that they would do.

Some people just want to live underground.

People who are investors, people who have money.

You know, this is $380,000 for 11 acres in a hole in the ground, basically.

But as we've clearly shown in the story, it's not just any hole in the ground.

It's a hole with a lot of history behind it.

And some of those who buy these silos are clearly interested in preserving that history.

Perhaps others want to hedge their own security concerns about the future by having a place they can run to and hide.

Just in case the unthinkable happens.

We are going to be turning it into an awesome Airbnb.

Hidden in plain sight in southern Dickenson County, near the small town of Carlton, is a relic from the Cold War era.

The high security fence, cameras and warning signs give a clue that this isn't a typical farm field, but it's seeing this property from a bird's eye view that demonstrates this site has much more to offer than what first impressions give.

These are the 75 to 100 ton doors covering an eight story deep silo where a nuclear tipped Atlas missile was housed in the 1960s.

The intercontinental ballistic missile could reach targets in the former Soviet Union 30 minutes after launch.

We are currently standing on an Atlas Glass missile silo that has been fixed up and we're going to be turning it into, uh, initial an Airbnb followed probably by survival condos.

Hugh Carnahan on the right and Dave Logan on the left are the owners of what's named the North Star Missile Silo.

Carnahan and Logan are business partners investing in all sorts of real estate.

This has to be the most unusual venture.

When this popped up, we said, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

We should go jump on it instantaneously.

They purchased the silo complex in 2021.

Welcome to the safest place on earth.

Carnahan says the previous owner used the silo as a place to socially distance from the world during the COVID pandemic.

That owner used the time to do a lot of renovating of the silo, the silos, being underground, of course, get water inside, leading to rust, as you noticed, inside the silo near Abilene.

But most of the rust here is gone and there's a fresh coat of paint in much of the structure.

Compare the painted stairwells of this silo to the unfinished stairwells in the Abilene silo.

Those who grew up during the 1950s and 1960s remember the anxiety from what was known as the Cold War.

The threat of a possible nuclear war was real.

We practice duck and cover drills in school, which is why Carnahan and Logan picked duck and cover for a business name.

They want to make this a destination site for those who want to learn about Cold War history.

We knew that it was a spot of interest.

You bring people to a place like this.

It invokes that spark of interest in history.

Like we don't think about the 1950s, what was going on in the world, like our parents or our grandparents did as much.

But when you're here, you can't help it.

It's all around you.

And then you go into the silo, you see how it was constructed.

You start thinking back on what was going on in the world at that time.

And besides, what can be seen down inside the silo, the duck and cover guys want to have attractions topside to help tell the story.

Carnahan says those attractions could include reassemble being a B-52 bomber as a static display.

This silo still has the original suspension cable holding the floor in a cradle like manner.

A crazy thing is, if you see this spring, this entire floor setup is suspended from the ground by a cradle.

And this was pneumatic operated.

So as the airmen would walk back and forth to the bathroom, this would auto level and watch.

And it really drove them crazy.

You follow the feeder tube in.

This is really the connecting tunnel to the main silo itself.

This silo where the missile was housed isn't full of water like some of the others.

It's unfinished.

But consider what the potential of this space is.

It's nearly 180 feet deep.

Picture an eight story tall building.

Its height compares to the depth in here.

Glass bottom attractions are popular with tourists.

Logan says that's an idea considered for the silo.

The whole idea was get people interacting with the silo itself and it's going to be quite a fun project.

So a project to develop, he says, unless the right price were offered.

And so we would say yes, we would sell it for something crazy, like 2.5 to $3 million.

So missile silos, which were designed to destroy, are now being repurposed, redesigned into livable spaces meant to preserve life in Dickinson County by now.

Why?

This is Chris Frank for Positively Kansas.

The missile silo in Dickinson County recently sold to an Iowa couple for $365,000.

Meanwhile, a missile silo north of Salinas then developed into a luxury survival condo.

Those doomsday apartments sell for up to four and a half million dollars.

And yes, there have been buyers when rain falls and the temperature hovers at 32 degrees.

Beautiful, but treacherous ice storms come to Kansas.

In this week's Kansas Wild Edge report, Mike Blair shows us how those dangerous storms threaten the lives of hungry wildlife.

The pattern of rain is a harrowing sound.

At 31 degrees.

At first, it's a nuisance.

Glaze ice develops and footstep slip.

Windshield wipers warm up as slush gathers and streaks.

The smooth glassy surface.

The radio crackles with warnings as massive low pressure pulls cold moisture into the chilly air.

Temperature stalls at the freezing point for a day and night and the rain keeps pouring down.

Ice grows and trees bend.

A silver sheath transforms the world.

We the winter day is silent.

Save for the sound of steady rain.

Limbs creak and break each bringing a fresh winds.

The trees, the trees.

We listen in shiver.

And it's not from the cold.

Wildlife searches looking for food.

Such conditions are hard on animals.

And then it's finally over.

A Kansas winter isn't easy, but it can be wondrous.

I'm Mike Blair.

Four Positively Kansas.

That's a wrap for this week.

Our email address is positivelykansas@kpts.org, if you have a story idea.

You always need them.

Im Sierra Scott, thanks for watching and we'll see you again soon.

Positively Kansas is brought to you in part by program support provided by the F price Kosman Memorial Trust and Trust Bank Trustee bringing you the Kansas Wild Edge segments on Positively Kansas.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas serves more than 900,000 Kansans in various programs.

Independent member owned Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas and independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association proudly supports PBS's Kansas.

Before investing your hard earned money, make sure your financial advisor understands your objectives.

Mark Douglass CFP Serving our community for over 25 years, providing customized financial solutions that focus on the individual.