Atlas Shrugged

Horns honk intermittently while the sound of engines revving and brakes whining fills in every last gap of silence. There is no silence in the city. There is no silence in modern life. The smell of exhaust is overpowering, the sickly toxic bonding of carbon monoxide with my blood – the human body craves the poison hundreds of times more than it craves oxygen. My body is killing itself. Modern life is assisted suicide. My body is dying and I can do nothing but feverishly attempt to prevent my truck from being cut-off in traffic. The sun is setting, the filtered light casting strange hues over familiar landmarks. I am locked unmoving in this modern rolling prison cell, raging against every other prisoner. I look into the vehicle to my right, a man with pale clammy skin and clear plastic tubes into his nose sits gasping into his cell phone. His glassy bloodshot eyes darting back and forth as his moist groping hands fumble about the steering wheel. I start to feel queasy. I turn away, look to the left. A gay dude with a little dog on his lap. The dog is yapping and jumping and snapping like an impotent piranha. Ahead of him, a beat-up old minivan, inside of which a fat Mexican woman with lumpy red cheeks blubbers along with the insane carnival music blasting out of her radio. All of us being smothered together. The smell of exhaust. The smell of dinosaur bones. The smell of extinction.

I feel nauseated, I want to move, I need to move, but I’m trapped. I have to get out but there is nothing I can do but wait. Put my mind into a happy place. I turn on the radio every channel is sensationalized garbage. Commercial after commercial. Mindless announcers try and trigger instinctual responses for every product imaginable. I flip the radio off just as a black bmw cuts me off savagely, the back of their vehicle mere inches from my front bumper. Don’t you fuckers realize I will attack? Don’t you fuckers realize that you are moments from death? I will fucking kill each and every one of you. I don’t care how nice your fucking car is or how padded your bank account. I am a savage in human clothing. Just at the moment of crisis I avert my wrath. Another step towards my destruction, my slavery, my capitulation of these intolerable circumstances that with every motherfucker not smashed I become party to a little bit more. Every time I get cut off in traffic, every time I have to wait in line at the post office, every time I have to sacrifice my values as a self-aware and self-determined being I degenerate a little more into the consumer cockroach they want me to be. A fucking cockroach. Vermin. I am aggressive, blunt, fearless, and not a mindless idiot. There is no place for me in society. I am the enemy. I am exactly what they are trying to cull out of the system with every new whitening toothpaste and all-day deodorant. I want to do meaningful acts, but in this prison that is impossible.

I get cut off hard by a sleek black BMW. Instinctively I unbuckle my seatbelt and prepare to get out of the car. Cutting me off in my car is tantamount to a personal insult. I don’t care what pressing matters are influencing your decision, I don’t care how important you think you are, your timeline is not my concern and my lack of courtesy is by no means an invitation to walk all over me. I will not be cut off. My ape brain will not tolerate this. I will swerve in front of you and slam on my brakes. I am not in any way passive aggressive, I’m aggressive aggressive. If traffic slows I will jump out and kick dents in your shit. This is how my ancestors won out over the wilds, this is how my bloodline flowed through history. Maybe your feeble one-upsmanship enabled your pathetic family line to persist, but when confronted with the genuine article your existence is disgusting, abhorrent, an abomination against nature. I will correct that abomination, I do not care about the law, or traffic-lights, or red tape, or cops, or surgeon general’s warnings, or white teeth, or soft and healthy hair. I care about my path through life. Don’t cross it. I know modern society rewards the sneakiest rats while the strong and healthy are exiled and imprisoned. The lumberjack cuts down the straight tree not the crooked one, but I am one straight tree that will not accommodate a crooked tree in the forest. In this anti-confrontational world I am the ugly asshole who will get right in your face and make you submit.

The truth is that I’m angry. Angry and misanthropic. Anyone who reads this site with any regularity could tell you that, but I’m angry in a way that is not overtly expressed here. I’m fucking pissed off at myself. Not because I’ve made any one mistake or done something loathsome, but simply because I’m not being true to myself. Cognitive dissonance strikes again. I’m angry because I’m owned. I had a life where I was outside the system, outside the structure of control, outside the methods of slavery. Not just above it like the rich or beneath it like a criminal… I was outside it. Plucked out of history, alienated from my nationalism, marginalized from anything that could possess me. I grew weary of it, I hungered for the pleasures advertized on television. I wanted things, and friends, and stuff. Now nothing is good enough. My computer is too slow, traffic blows, my house is falling apart, my mortgage rate is too high, I don’t get paid enough, I don’t like my job, I don’t like my friends, I endlessly and futilely hunger for more and better. The system has me. I am so fucked!

Is there a happy medium between hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m never fucking happy with either completely. So I trudge forward through traffic, rebuckle my seatbelt, pop in my progressive muscle relaxation CD and try to escape to my happy place.

I finally get home, unlock the door, kick it open, throw my shit on the floor, and lock myself inside. I am distressed at my own deterioration, my own degradation in the course of ‘betterment’. I plug into the internet. I need an escape. Porn, mp3’s, and virtual communities of virtual people living virtual lives burns into my eyes. A world of virtual goals and virtual responsibilities. A few moments in my fortress of solitude is enough to take the edge off. Time slows down and I drift towards a more zenlike mindset. I watch dust slowly drift through a shaft of light, I hear a dog barking somewhere off in the distance. I stand up, walk outside, touch the screens on my balcony, feel their texture on my fingertips, feel the warm breeze brush against my body. I turn around and watch where a ray of light is slowly creeping up my wall. Evening is approaching, darkness after that. This is my time, and life is oozing out of my body like a sickly sweat. There is no time to waste, every moment a priceless treasure compared to the eternal darkness that is stalking me. I walk back inside, tense up momentarily then exhale. I need an out. I start my search.

After the success at Green Farm it seems unavoidable that I would choose to go back into the wilds and explore further. The abandoned Atlas test area was the inevitable destination. Domesticity is driving me insane, only when away from society, exploring abandonia, can my mind escape the oppression of modern life. Ultimately there is no grand change, no answers, and really no hint of hope, but I continue to hunger for more of the paltry freedoms anyway. I choose to explore, I choose to question, and I choose to take whatever consequences may result from that questioning. I don’t understand everything that is happening, I can’t quite make out the details. I feel like I’m watching a foreign movie through a fog. The language of modern life is strange and unfamiliar. Some words and images that I can make out almost sound like familiar ones, but the context is completely alien. Sadly I keep watching, staring into the fog, but every once in a while an image or idea comes out clearly from the tangled muddled mess and I have a sense of understanding.

I walk over to the coffee pot and fill up a mug with the cold dank brew. As it rotates in the microwave I wonder if it was one day old or two.. or more since the coffee was made. Hopefully the microwave will kill all the bad shit growing in there. It tastes bitter and stale but now caffeinated I commence my research.

History of the Atlas rocket:

“The Western Development Division awarded a development contract for the Atlas to Convair in January 1955, and Convair completed construction of the test stands in 1956. Convair Division of General Dynamics Corporation conducted static test firings of an Atlas missile at its Sycamore Canyon test facility northeast of San Diego.

“The Atlas A was the first R&D configuration that ultimately led to the operational Atlas D, E, and F missiles. It consisted of minimum propellant, propulsion, and guidance systems. Its maximum range was only 600 nautical miles, and its maximum altitude was 57.5 nautical miles. A total of eight Atlas As were launched — all on the Atlantic Missile Range — during the period June 1957 to June 1958.
“The B series was the second Atlas developmental configuration. Its propulsion system was close to operational capability, and one series B missile traveled 5,500 nautical miles down the Atlantic Missile Range. Atlas 4-B, the second in the series B test flights, was launched successfully on 2 August 1958. The eighth missile in the series, Atlas 10-B, placed itself into orbit with the Project SCORE payload on 18 December 1958, becoming the worldÕs first communications satellite in the first successful use of the Atlas as a space launch vehicle.

“The Convair Division of General Dynamics produced three different models of the Atlas ICBM destined for deployment with the Strategic Air Command. The first operational version of the Atlas, the “D” model, was a one and one-half stage, liquid-fueled, rocket-powered (360,000 pounds of thrust) ICBM equipped with radio-inertial guidance and a nuclear warhead. It was stored in a horizontal position on a ’soft’ aboveground launcher, unprotected from the effects of nuclear blast, and had an effective range, like all Atlas models, of approximately 6,500 nautical miles.

“The second Atlas ICBM configuration, the series E, possessed all-inertial guidance, improved engines (389,000 pounds of thrust), a larger warhead, and was stored in a horizontal position in a ’semi-hard’ coffin-type launcher. The series ‘F’ missile was superior to its predecessors in several ways. Like the E model, the Atlas F was equipped with all-inertial guidance, but possessed improved engines (390,000 pounds of thrust) and a quicker reaction time due to its storable liquid fuel. The Atlas F missiles also were deployed in ‘hard’ silo-lift launchers which stored the missiles vertically in underground, blast-protected silos and used elevators to raise the missiles to ground level for launch.

“Meanwhile, considerable progress was made in developing second-generation ICBMs such as the Minuteman. Among the numerous advantages the newer missiles had over the Atlas was their ability to be launched from hardened and widely dispersed underground silos. Minuteman was also more economical to operate, more reliable, and because of its silo-launch capability, better able to survive a nuclear first strike than their first-generation counterparts.”

A few days later I was throwing all my kit into an old backpack and preparing for the next infiltration. My bike tire had gone flat again so after a quick stop at the gas station for snacks, fuel, and a refill I was on my way. During the drive I watched the world working around me. Like clockwork signals changes, people responded to various cues crafted into the landscape, and society churned like the gears in a clock. Stepping outside of society, outside of my comfort zone, is a good way to allow my mind to truly define itself. Observing the world’s fixed attitude enables me to define myself outside the boundaries of that attitude. Having lived and worked and grown outside the norms enables me to compartmentalize and deconstruct societal attitudes and conditions while at the same time choosing to move away from them. Its like waking up in a strange town with a hangover. Everything, even if vaguely familiar, seems alien. This ‘outsiderness’ has enriched my life, defined my personal ethos, and enabled my advertures to take on new meaning.

I find myself following my hastily drawn directions through a newly constructed housing development on the edge of an ever expanding suburban sprawl. Track homes sit in various levels of construction with piles of building materials and heavy equipment laying quietly in every direction. The streets are all brand new and perfectly smooth except for a layer of dirt that has washed over them from still unfinished front lawns and construction areas. I used to love exploring construction sites as a kid. There was always cool stuff to see and do, I suppose you could say that I grew up on the edge of society – physically and psychologically, and have been drawn to it ever since.

I park the truck on the side of the road and unload the bikes. Lara Croft has again accompanied me to this destination as she did at Green Farm. Her contributions are always sane, thought out and a welcome comparison to my rash and careless shots from the hip. She always seems to consider the consequences when I get target fixated on the goal. As we ride our bikes towards the target area I casually disregard the many warning signs and markers, occupied military buildings and other danger areas. My desires and actions are frequently illegal. I realize that I am impulsive, impatient, and aggressive. This can and has created situations where I will act first and then suffer dire consequences for those actions. I am always pushing myself, relentlessly at times, telling myself ‘not to be a pussy’. I always seem to choose the hard road, the rocky road. I feel high highs and low lows.. and I act on them. How can I create and live the life I want while still maintaining the life I have? Is that even possible? Can my desires and the world coexist peacefully or is that an impossibility that I am too cowardly to fully embrace? We pass a final warning sign and arrive at a tall fence topped with barbed wire. We jump off the bikes and sit down to ponder our options. After a quick recce it seems as though going around the fence is not an option. I quickly clamor up to the top, perch upon a section of barbed wire, and Lara hands me the bikes for me to carefully lower down the other side. We both jump down, mount our rides, and continue on. The fence was a moderate obstacle and we were highly visible during our passage over it, but our successful traverse has ensured that we will be completely under the radar during our time at the Atlas test site.

We stop just out of sight behind a large dirt mound and conduct a quick map study. Through internet research we discovered an old diagram of the site and was able to superimpose it upon a printout from Google earth. This has provided not only a viable diagram but the geography and distance measurements to ensure a successful exploration. We stand now at a rusting old water tank at the observation area. The observation building is completely demolished. Vines and plants are in the process of overtaking the ruins as well as the road. There is a sorrowful juxtaposition of man verses nature taking place. On the one hand there is this unstoppable force, the unyielding spreading out of the human plague of track homes slowly trampling the wild earth into submission, yet at the same time I stand amidst the ruins of what was at one time the height of our nations technological achievement as it is being swallowed up by the earth. My thoughts contradict each other and my mind drifts out of my body, slowly being sucked into a dark pipe where a million buzzing bees have made their nest. We avoid the bees and climb on top of the water tower to gain vantage over the area. I look back at the track homes, fuck that shit, fuck that cookie-cutter world, and fuck their whole ethos. Society has every advantage, you have to fight tooth and nail for every fucking inch or you will be plowed under the track homes just like everything else. Society is using every fixture of modern life, every establishment, every institution to keep bulldozing everything in its path. It’s so twisted that a society that celebrates individualism so much would do everything in its power to destroy it. I look back into the wilds, the cracked and faded buildings all align with their suspected positions on the map. Lady Croft and I share an exited look of acknowledgement, we have definitely found the site, then we proceed onward.

We race our bikes down a cracked road. Weeds emerge through the cracks and flower in the quiet air. We swerve around plants and debris all the way down, snaking our way between the faded dotted line in the middle of the dead road. Passion rules our movement, fun, abandonment, not fear. We have exited ‘stay between the lines’, gone outside the philosophical boundary and can conduct ourselves without the burdens of an over-regulated world. Arriving at Building 4 we immediately drop bikes and begin to look around. After the owl incident at Green Farm we both go into reaper-mode for the duration of our explorations, the last thing either of us wants is a mouth full of owl shit. There is an old rotted out bus sitting at the edge of what looks like a firing range. The range signs are all bullet riddled along with the bus. We break out the headlamps, enter the building, and start to look around. The place is mostly cleared out. Most of the old machinery and computers and stuff were probably removed when the site was shut down. The only things left are the old computer racks, some of the hard-wired electrical systems, and small crumbling piles of old 50’s era office furniture. The old blast windows have all been smashed by other explorers, “420” and other equally cerebral messages are spray-painted over the flaking walls.

We descend to the lower level and discover an underground tunnel that extends into the murky darkness. We explore it for several hundred feet to where a square port-hole allows white light to cascade into the space. I step forward and peer up into the blinding sunlight. Almost immediately Lara Croft grabs my arm and yanks me back hard. I turn to her questioningly;

Me, “What the fuck dude!?”
Lara Croft, “Hey fucker, there’s a snake right there!”
Me, shining my light in the direction she is pointing, incredulous, “No.. That’s a goddamn cable, that’s not a snake.”
Lara Croft, indignant, “No fucker! THERE!”
She points her finger directly at a motherfucking rattlesnake that was coiled near the hole. My face was literally inches from its goddamn fangs when I was staring up the hole.
Me, “Ho-ly shit!”
Lara Croft, “Yeah, asshole, I just saved your fucking life. You owe me bigtime.”

Now whether or not she saved my life is debatable, I mean, the rattler was not that big and did not appear to be pissed off in any way. On the other hand, it would have sucked absolute ass to have to walk my mountain bike all the way back up that goddamn mountain to the car with a giant fucking rattlesnake bite on my swollen, throbbing, pissed-off goddamn face. It is completely conceivable that the little fucker would have struck for my headlamp and in the process stabbed one of my goddamn eyes with venom, thereby causing it to completely explode. Regardless of what would have happened I realize that I had another close call with a wild creature and decided to withdraw from the tunnel immediately. All I can say is thank god for reaper-mode, and Lara’s cautious eye.

We get topside and I spray a quick tag up before we head down to Stand 1. Giant concrete blast walls tower above us on every side. We park the bikes and lean over the edge into the gaping maw of the abandoned rocket stand. Old rusting fittings and fixtures stick awkwardly out of the concrete wall face. We talk about how desolate this must have been fifty years ago when it was built. San Diego was barely a dot on a map back then – just a rowdy Navy town, and out here.. fuck.. it must have been like a million miles from anywhere. We spot another building on the far side of a small wash. After completely investigating the test pad we head over to the next spot.

The mystery building turns out to be more than we expected. Aside from crumbling ruins, piles of old equipment and furniture, and a glimpse into a lost piece of history it was home to millions and millions of bees. Now I’m not one to let the truth get in the way of a good story, but this motherfucker was bee-heaven. I have never seen, nor heard, nor been in the presence of so many angry little bastards. It was like being at a Mexican soccer game, just noisy, annoying, pissed off little fucks in every direction. We were both chased out of the area several times by raging swarms, Lara at one point being stung on her back as we extricated. We climb down an embankment and poke around the piles of crap at the bottom of the structure. Its funny to see all this old furniture in good condition. I mean, its rusted and nasty looking, but its sturdy and still holding together well. Things were built with more quality back then. I suppose it’s no surprise, a decline in quality, a decline in values, a decline in America. Everything is made to break, it’s just that the half-life of decay is much shorter these days. We explore the rest of bee-heaven, crank off several photos, and decide to head all the way over to the rest of the buildings and the second test pad.

The first structure on the other side is Building 2. Empty, unused, useless, vacant, yet locked up securely. There is nothing to hide, nothing to keep, and yet the place is locked up as if simply for the sake of locking it. There is lack of reason in much of man’s actions. We press on.

Moving over to stand 2 we imagine a world without people. A world created by the weapons developed here. This place is almost like that world. Barren, meaningless, the only testament to humanity is idiotic graffiti and empty rotting structures. These hollow buildings – our cultural skeletons. After climbing down to the bottom of the test pad we sit down in the shade of the blast tube and imagine massive flames shooting through the site. We zone out, relax, and contemplate the place. It’s mesmerizing; the massive yet barren structures convey an age of fear and despair, yet now expressing apathy and alienation. We are in a future without a future. Contrary to every aspect of modern life the horrifying message here is not explicit. This place does not so much predict change as it does escalation. Every negative tendency in our time is here amplified. The most striking and at the same time terrifying theme is decay; omnipresent, irreversible, terminal. Everything here is slowly turning into a gigantic trash dump. It’s haunting and beautiful simultaneously. Lara loves pictures with barbed wire in the foreground. We talk about the difference in meaning between the barbed wire being focused verses being unfocussed. The world is so tragically similar to that of Ayn Rand’s novel.  The transportation parallels are enough to put true fear in your heart.  Socialized industries, state owned corporations, the death of competition.  America descendant.  We climb back up and I break out the spray can one more time. I leave my mark amongst the ruins and rubble of the back of the test pad. Maybe somebody a hundred years from now someone will see it and laugh. Probably not.

We retreat from the site. Throw our bikes back over the fence, ride back from the wilds into society. Driving home into a human bees nest of noise and commotion. Back into track homes, back into traffic lights, back into honking horns, back into staying between the lines. I’m glad to have done it, glad to have tried, but what difference does it really make. Judge for yourself.

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