Duress Code at Nike Missile Launching Area

Security at a Nike Missile Installation - from the Nike Historical Society
Security at a Nike Missile Installation - from the Nike Historical Society

Duress code.  Yes, it’s a real term and it means “panic code,” or a code that you give instead of your “real” code to indicate that you’re in trouble.  Or under duress.  I had never heard of it until reading The Nike Historical Society’s excellent section about security at Nike installations.

One reader wrote in with an anecdote about duress codes:

I was escorting a Major around the [Nike Missile] Launching Area during — I think it was a NAICP test. When we approached the Exclusion Area guard shack he asked me to give the guard the duress code. I said I can categorically vouch that everyone knows the duress code and will take appropriate action. He said I want you to give the code. I reluctantly complied. The guard without hesitation through the Major to the ground and cocked his weapon and put it directly on his temple. I had to physically pull him off and explain it was only a test and that there was no threat. It took some convincing but the guard backed off. I don’t think the Major ever did that again.

Here is a video some guy shot at the restored Nike Missile installation on the Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco.  It could benefit from some editing, so just skip ahead to -1:00 so that you can see the beginning of the launch process, where the missile is raised.

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By Lee Wallender

Deception, influence, fakes, illusions, themed environments, simulations, secret places, secret infrastructure, imagined places, dreamscapes, movie sets and props, evasions, camouflage, studio backlots, miniatures.

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