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Atlas F Missile Silo

December 14, 2011 by · Comments Off on Atlas F Missile Silo 

Atlas F Missile Silo, Whether you’re an evil mastermind, doomsday believer, or Batman himself, this just might be the house for you. Welcome to your new nuclear-and biochemical warfare-proof lodge complete with underground cold-war era missile silo.

Located in Upstate New York, the 185-acre property’s backstory reads like a concept for a graphic novel. According to Wikipedia, in the 1950s the U.S. government built hundreds of Atlas-F defensive missile silos in the event thermonuclear war were to erupt. These specific missiles were stored vertically underground and were rigged to rise out and then lift off via a control center built adjacently. Since nuclear war thankfully never came, these missile bases were all but abandoned.

Enter Gregory Gibbons and Bruce Francisco. In 1991, the two cousins and business partners flew out to Saranac, N.Y., to check out the silo after Gibbons heard it was up for sale.

“When I first went to look at the space, it was just a stairwell coming out of the ground,” Francisco told the N.Y. Daily News. “I saw that the missile base here was in raw condition, and I thought we should do something amazing with it. I wanted to build a surface home as a covert entrance.”

Actually renovating the structure proved grueling. The biggest challenge was making the circular two-level launch control room inhabitable – the place had been swamped in water for over 30 years. In a video for CNN , Francisco described some of the conditions they faced.

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