There's nothing unusual about what I'm towing in this pic, what is unusual is where it's located: The only place on the planet where I believe you can drive up and park inside a crater created by the explosion of a nuclear weapon.
The steel concrete-filled column you see is 8 feet in diameter and about 12 above ground. This is what remains of the steel drill stem they used to lower the 200kt-1MT nuclear weapon down a hole about 3200 feet deep. The 12 feet of exposed steel pipe is how far the ground dropped after the nuke went off and the ground collapsed.
This is the Shot Faultless site in NV at what used to be called the Central Nevada Test Site. This property is on public BLM land and is open to the public 24/7, 365 days a year. This is one of two sites in NV open to the public, and one of about 4 sites US-wide open to the public (there are about 4 sites on private property and are not generally accessible) where nuclear weapons have been tested for various reasons, most were associated with the old Plowshare program or the Vela Hotel nuke detection program. None of the other sites created a crater however.
This is a closeup of the plaque mounted on the steel drill stem:
What is even more interesting is the fact that although this test was conducted over 40 years ago, I work on a defense program that is directly related to the purpose of this test.
Hope this was interesting for you.
Al
