Nuclear Missile Silo for Sale. Asking Price? Not That Bad

Rick Ellis is selling his old Titan II silo in Arizona
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 17, 2019 4:40 PM CST
Nuclear Missile Silo for Sale
An image from the silo.   (Realty Executives)

Want a bunker with stagnant water, dead rodents, and scary 20-foot drops? For you, $395,000. That's what owner Rick Ellis is asking for his decommissioned Titan II missile silo near Tucson, Ariz. "This is the coolest listing I've had to date," his realtor tells the Arizona Daily Star. Cool or not, it's a 4,000-square-foot basement built to endure a nuclear attack. It comes with a 6,000-pound blast door and nearly 13 acres of desert space. But there are issues, like gaps in the metal flooring, occasional vandals, and a 5-foot rattlesnake Ellis once encountered. He even makes sure potential buyers sign a liability waiver before climbing down a shaky 40-foot ladder into the gloom.

Ellis quips that if he held an open house for possible buyers, "their surviving relatives might end up owning the place." Behind his fixer-upper—which has a listing and 3D tour—is a history of nuclear missiles around Tucson. From the 1960s to 1980s, 18 were built there, each able to fire a Titan II missile as far as 6,000 miles, with 600 times the power of the atomic bomb that landed on Hiroshima. Disbanded in 1984, they were sold off to private buyers. Ellis paid $200,000 in 2002 and spent roughly $80,000 to clean it up, but failed to resell before the Great Recession hit. Now he's getting calls from prospective buyers as far away as Bulgaria and the Middle East, Fox 10 Phoenix reports. (More real estate stories.)

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