3 – designated for annihilation in the event of World War III. nuclear weapons arsenal, putting it on the Soviet Union's top-10 list of targets – some say as high as No. In its 20 years of existence, Clarksville Base was at one time the repository of about a third of the U.S. The reality was less dramatic, if you remove the fact that the place maintained – in a quietly professional and entirely orderly manner – the tools to initiate the end of civilization. Rumors sprang up about a Navy nuclear submarine stored in one of the bunkers, of UFOs landing in fields inside the compound and near-catastrophic (as well as highly improbable) incidents involving armed H-bombs triggered in a careless moment and disarmed just in time before detonation, amid a host of other hair-raising tales. In its heyday, the base was an information black hole, though a few clues inevitably surfaced, forming the basis of stories embellished by imagination in the absence of actual knowledge. Now, in what would have been impossible 50 years ago, he has an exhibit up at the museum, with a website and brochures to help people do their own self-guided tours of the abandoned base – once so secret that many lifelong Clarksvillians didn't even know it existed. O'Brien has spent years trying to untangle reality from the urban legends that have sprung up as a consequence of having hundreds of people working on a nuclear weapons facility that no one could talk about for decades. More: Radioactive dogs exploded during diner hanky panky, and other 'Birdcage' stories It's called Clarksville Base, and bit by bit it's giving up its stories as the fog of Cold War super-secrecy dissipates, freeing former workers to tell more of what they know and filling in the blanks for historians like John O'Brien of Fort Campbell's Don Pratt Museum. One of the best – certainly one of the strangest – is only a few miles away. If the idea of exploring a ghost town appeals to you, you don't have to drive to Arizona to find one. View Gallery: PHOTOS: 'The Birdcage,' aka Clarksville BaseĮDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published April 5, 2014.
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