Cold War Secrecy | Lost LA | Season 7, Episode 2 | PBS SoCal

[@Oscar_Von_Doom]

What a great episode.

[@stephenfisher9505]

I grew up blocks away from a Nike site, every weekend they raise the missle's out of the bunkers. A show of force? by the late 1960's it became a National Guard base, still is.

[@orangelion03]

Sepulveda? Routine drills and public relations. They printed announcements in the local papers prior to the events so as not to upset the locals. Several of the sites did this and our family drove out to see them at Sepulveda, Torrance airport, and White Point.

[@orangelion03]

Cold war memories... Friends of the family when I was a kid had a bomb shelter in Chino. German immigrants after the war, they had witnessed allied bombings and wanted to be prepared. Later, I visited a couple houses for sale in my Torrance neighborhood that had shelters. The Nike launch sites, particularly those like Sepulveda in full view of nearby residents, were no secret. They would announce drills well in advance so that folks didnt freak out. I witnessed drills at Sepulveda, Torrance, and White Point as a kid. One item worth noting was that ALL Nike Hercules sites had up to 24 W-31 nuclear warheads on site while they were commissioned.

[@MediaWest]

the nike launch tubes are still in woodley park in encino. they say they are decommissioned, i wonder?

[@orangelion03]

They are. I visited the site in the 90s. The internal mechanisms for storing and raising the missiles had been removed and the magazines were used for storage. Over the years, I have visited nearly all of the Los Angeles area launch sites at one time or another...some were converted to storage areas, fire fighting/training bases for those in remote area (Chatsworth, Bear Divide, Malibu, Mt Gleason), many have been destroyed and built over (Torrance, Long Beach, Stanton, El Monte, Lang), but all missiles were gone by late 70s.

[@manythanks6476]

And now it's burnt down

[@paulbrion2227]

My neighbor had a bomb shelter but rain water would leak in. Not too effective i imagine

[@Junk65]

Paranoid

[@davidsmith4266]

We should’ve kept all of this functional who knows if we’re going to need it and with all the taxpayer money spent to build it 🤦‍♂️