• Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
    2·
    12 days ago

    This is a stitched imaged made from two captures with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digaron-W lens, Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50), and a Cambo WRS 1250 camera, shifted left/right 15mm, producing a 230MP final image.

    The full resolution (16152x14043) version is finally up on Flickr. There had been a bug preventing the upload of very large images there, which had forced me to use a large (but reduced size, 100MP) version as a placeholder there.

    • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
      3·
      12 days ago

      From 1958 through 1980, this incongruous four story (82 foot) monolith was the centerpiece of the “Almaden Air Force Station”, a long-range radar site that was part of NORAD’s SAGE early warning system. The blast-hardened concrete building served as the platform for an FPS-24 radar system, a massive 120 foot wide reflector that emitted a 5 megawatt VHF pulse, continuously rotating at 5 RPM.

      Notoriously, the signal disrupted TV and radio reception throughout the San Jose area.

      • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
        3·
        12 days ago

        It’s unclear if the SAGE system would have actually been effective in detecting incoming bombers, which presumably would have employed radar jammers. Fortunately, we never found out.

        The antenna was removed shortly after the site’s decommissioning in 1980, but the building, a prominent local landmark visible from downtown San Jose, has been preserved.

        • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
          4·
          12 days ago

          I have mixed feelings about these cold war relics. On the one hand, they’re artifacts of what was perhaps humanity’s most dangerous folly to date, locking the world in a deadly game where the stakes only went up with each round. This doesn’t seem like something to commemorate or celebrate.

          On the other hand, these objects, many now destroyed or decayed, serve as visible evidence of just how close to oblivion we are willing to go. And looked at from the right angle, they have stories to tell.

          • Simple Nomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org
            1·
            12 days ago

            @mattblaze@federate.social I lived through that era, telling younger friends about it now there is a disconnect as it is abstract. At least these relics make it real for them, maybe (hopefully) making some of my current paranoia and political “take” seem slightly more, well, justified.

            • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
              2·
              12 days ago

              @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org It now seems hard to believe that for the first 50% of my life I lived with an entirely rational background fear that all of civilization might end at any moment with less than 30 minutes notice, possibly by accident.

              I lack the vocabulary to describe it adequately.

              • Mark Bryant@infosec.exchange
                2·
                12 days ago

                @mattblaze@federate.social @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org

                I was an Army brat. At 8 years I dreaded the drills, because I already knew they were useless. The only place I ever lived as a child where they weren’t done was “nowhereville” Arizona while my father was in Vietnam. I was (thankfully) too young to understand why Christmas came before he left that year. Just how serious was it my generation Z and millennial coworkers want to know. In 1963, before I was born, my father called my mother while he was stationed in Anchorage and said, “Take the kids and the car and get out of Anchorage now.” She did. My mother was the strongest person I’ve ever known. I feel the dread coming back, but not because of the old reason, but because of the very old reason. If it’s not H5N1 it’ll be something else - maybe even something we thought we’d licked because time has a way of making history repeat. Tempus fugit, momento mori.

              • drewelmore@mastodon.sdf.org
                1·
                12 days ago

                @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org I lived my early years in Santa Clara Valley under the shadow of that radar station. The fear of nuclear annihilation was very real to me. Nevertheless it was remarkable to be able to see the radar dish revolving from miles away on the valley floor, and noteworthy when they decommissioned it.

                @mattblaze@federate.social, one of the things I appreciate about your capture is how harmless it looks, and mundane.

              • David Schuetz@infosec.exchange
                1·
                12 days ago

                @mattblaze@federate.social @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org I grew up inside the DC beltway, so it was pretty palpable for me.

                Now I’m 10 miles from the northern Virginia data center wasteland, and feel a similar threat.

                • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
                  1·
                  12 days ago

                  @darthnull@infosec.exchange @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org Native NYer here, so yeah, I know the feeling.

                  But if they want to destroy us, perhaps the most effective thing they could do is leave the data centers running…

              • Patricia Aas@social.vivaldi.net
                1·
                12 days ago

                @mattblaze@federate.social @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org I’ve been wondering if active shooter drills are the duck and cover for later American generations. A repetitive drill focused on possible imminent death. I can’t imagine that anyone comes out of that unchanged.

                • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
                  1·
                  12 days ago

                  @Patricia@vivaldi.net @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org In many ways the active shooter drills seem worse. Duck and cover was about the random threat of total annihilation at the hands of impersonal, out of control global powers. The shooter drills are about the random threat of personal annihilation at the hands of your neighbor.

              • M. Grégoire@cosocial.ca
                1·
                12 days ago

                @mattblaze@federate.social @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org
                Nuclear war is still the greatest danger facing the world.

              • Rodger@mastodon.social
                1·
                12 days ago

                @mattblaze@federate.social @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org I was living in Scotland when Sulzberger was still talking about acceptable amounts of Europe to be annhiliated in a “Theatre Europe” exchange.

                I was going to a US school and the students were very cavalier about this. It was truly bizarre.

                • 60sRefugee@spacey.space
                  0·
                  12 days ago

                  @nyrath @mattblaze @simplenomad “Duck and Cover” may account for much of the generation gap between the WW2 vets and the Baby Boomers. The vets knew from personal experience how hideous war was; but they also saw what happens to people conquered by totalitarians. The Boomers by contrast grew up with an existential fear of annihilation; to them militarism was suicidal insanity.

          • 60sRefugee@spacey.space
            1·
            12 days ago

            @mattblaze@federate.social We might approach the nuclear precipice again if we ever returned to a situation of two rival zero-sum systems, one or other of which inevitably had to die. Fortunately Kennan was right that Communism could be contained and eventually outlasted.

        • Chris L@mastodon.online
          1·
          12 days ago

          @mattblaze@federate.social my oldest son with a painting made right after we moved to the foot of Mt. Umunhum in South San Jose. The box is visible pretty far away but doesn’t seem to register much with people north of Almaden area. Source, years of telling people I lived near the box on the mountain. During COVID they just opened it and you could see SF bay and Monterey Bay in such smog free clarity.

        • Bill Ricker@mastodon.radio
          1·
          12 days ago

          @mattblaze@federate.social I would expect SAGE to have detected jamming
          (either as way too many simultaneous targets, in systematic patterns, OR absurd non-natural noise swamping Rx),
          but
          unless we had advance intel on the device, SAGE operators would’ve struggled to guide early fighters to intercept a significant % of actual incoming bandits, which would still be a mission failure.

  • Bill Childers@mastodon.social
    1·
    12 days ago

    @mattblaze@federate.social This speaks to me - I love going to the top of that mountain and just looking at the beauty all around and contemplating my place in it all - along with that tower and its place in history.

    Thanks for sharing it!