Here and there along the highway north of Oriska, N.D., unobtrusive markers point to modest little industrial sites among the wheat. For the most part, over those 30 years, North Dakotans haven't approached. Unless they owned the surrounding fields and have had to dodge the fences with their equipment, travelers along Highway 32 simply have passed by, with barely a passing glance. They know they've not been welcome in these little enclaves. They know what's there.
Death is there.
Death and unimaginable destruction have, for 30 years, lurked beneath the peaceful waving fields of grain along Highway 32 and elsewhere in northeastern North Dakota. Intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles have been sitting in thick, hardened underground silos, fueled and armed and ready to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States. Sites in the former Soviet Union locked into their targeting computers. During the long years of the Cold War, it seemed these little plots of annihilation would remain forever on guard, forever unapproachable. At the same time, the shroud of secrecy that once surrounded the missiles is being lifted.