RIP, scarecrow.

Double top secret, I have to kill you if I told you what I know type of stuff.

Only the oxymoron, military intelligence people are allowed to know, then they have to have the Men in Black treatment before they are allowed to retire from the secrets they keep.

Also, I wonder if CNN is right in its claim that "the 1,527-foot-tall BREN tower was the tallest free-standing structure west of the Mississippi River." The video clearly shows guys stabilizing the tower, so I'm going to assume that guys are not some disqualifying factor for the concept of "free-standing." In that case, let's turn to a structure I've seen while on the Interstate between Fargo and Grand Forks, North Dakota, the KVLY TV mast.

The KVLY-TV mast (formerly the KTHI-TV mast) is a 628.8 m (2,063 ft) tall television-transmitting mast in Blanchard, Traill County, North Dakota, United States, used by Fargo station KVLY-TV channel 11. Completed in 1963, it was the tallest structure ever built until succeeded by the Warsaw radio mast in 1974; that mast collapsed in 1991, making the KVLY-TV mast again the tallest structure in the world until the Burj Khalifa overtook it in 2010. It remains the third-tallest structure in the world (since the construction of the Tokyo Skytree), and the tallest structure in the United States. It is a guyed mast, not a self-supporting structure, and is therefore not included in lists of tallest buildings.

BREN tower

BREN Tower is a guyed steel framework mast, 1,527 ft (465 m) high, on the Nevada Test Site in Nevada, USA. "BREN" stands for "Bare Reactor Experiment, Nevada."[1] The structure is now owned by the Department of Energy and maintained by National Security Technologies. Access to the tower area has been closed since July 2006. No reason for the closure has been given. As part of the Nevada Test Site, it is also located in restricted airspace (R-4808N).

So maybe it wasn't so free-standing after all.

...i remember it showing up several times in this 1989 Film

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I really need to rent that one again, one day. I remember it being such a good film. Martin, Emilio & Lea Thompson did a fantastic job. A really bold statement for that time as well. Nightbreaker

I believe it was a made for TNT movie when i first saw it.

Another good one to see, or see again: The Atomic Cafe

Synopsis

The film covers the beginnings of the era of nuclear warfare, created from a broad range of archival film from the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s - including newsreel clips, television news footage, U.S. government-produced films (including military training films), advertisements, television and radio programs. News footage reflected the prevailing understandings of the media and public. A quote which illustrates how the producers used archival footage to illustrate the absurdity of the government's public nuclear propaganda of the time:

Civil defense film: Be sure to include tranquilizers to ease the strain and monotony of life in a fallout shelter. A bottle of 100 should be sufficient for a family of four. Tranquilizers are not a narcotic, and are not habit-forming.

Though the topic of atomic holocaust is a grave matter, the film approaches it with black humor. Much of the humor derives from the modern audience's reaction to the old training films, such as the Duck and Cover film* shown in schools. A quote to illustrate what can be perceived as black humor culled from the archives:

Army information film: When not close enough to be killed, the atomic bomb is one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

Yeah, it's coming back to me now. The people who made the film lived in Arlington, Virginia. They'd go down to the National Archives in DC to snoop around for appropriate footage.

Great film. Please try to see it.

* You'll have to cut and paste the link. I can't make it link directly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_Cover_(film)

Now I'm watching the British videos for how to quote/unquote "survive" a nuclear attack.

How is this not psychotic?

...a training exercise for FBI agents on how to identify signs of truly disturbed individuals as well?

They marched them across ground zero and swept off the radioactive dust, just like the video.

...with the complete panic and concern on the soldier's part about being dropped of so close to that testing tower - moving them up closer to it with each new test - I truly feel much sympathy to what he and others were forced to go through.

-thank you hunter