Saturday, March 19, 2011

fond faulty memories

Did you notice the Earthquake map? Bend appears to be on the border between the yellow (second most dangerous) and green (right in the middle.)

Growing up, the sort of assumption was -- rumor, I suppose -- that Bend was one of the safest places from natural disasters. (I guess they weren't taking into account volcanoes and forest fires.)

Supposedly, we were in a zone that even in the event of nuclear attack would be nestled on the 'other' side of the mountains, etc. Prevailing winds and rainfall and all that.

Probably all fantasy, or I'm just remembering stuff wrong -- cause I was young. My Dad was a storyteller, and I probably embellished.

Supposedly, the Redmond airport became Central Oregon's main airport because it was long enough to be an alternative (2nd? 3rd?) runway for the B-52's.

Supposedly, there was a vast weapons and equipment and energy cache in the high desert, hidden by the government.

Supposedly, the Deschutes could never flood because of all the lava tubes.



I also don't remember wild turkeys in Central Oregon, so what do I know?

4 comments:

Carl said...

You, of course, are joking? A B-52 fully loaded with fuel and weapons load takes almost a full mile just to clear the wheels and almost another mile for clearing any obstacles in the c/L flight path at takeoff.And that is at standard air density and temperature. Our elevation and temps would make those lengths even longer. Right now the longest R/W at RDM is a little over 7,000 ft.

Wasn't RDM always the major A/P around here because it was a WW II Bomber training base?

Duncan McGeary said...

Like I said, faulty memories.

But supposedly they had a quick way of expanding?

Probably not, huh.

Anonymous said...

There was a top-secret under ground bunker to house all our poly-tickians. This bunker was out by the 'bad-lands'.
I think they were trying to sell it a few years ago, but back in the day of the cold-war, they were quite serious about this under-ground bunker so that only the best&brightest politicians and chosen people could survive the nuclear holocaust that all were hoping for.
Like in the movie dr-strangelove, just put in the right number of women for every man, and the dooms-dave cave would really be paradise.
Don't forget the vast storage of nerve-gas at Umatilla. Bend may not be paradise for 'bombs', but Umatilla really wasn't that far away, and was the one the biggest storage facility's for biological weapons in the world.
Of course don't forget our own SUTERRA here in Bend that leads the world today in bio-weapon delivery systems, with specialization in population sterilization.
'Rumors' go that DARPA has even developed a 'zombie' compound that makes men turn on each other. This compound can easily be delivered with suterra bio-encapsulation, and even have a controlled delay, so that the effect can take place from hours to weeks of aerial delivery.

H. Bruce Miller said...

Some old-timers claim to remember a time when there was an actual spring in Central Oregon. If there was, it definitely was before I came here (1985).