Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126419
Guest
Editorial
)
M'X isn't
always
motocross
If you've been following the news
lately .. you probably know ·that
President Jimmy Carter has de-'
cided that tIe is all for MX, Of
course, it would be nice if he was
expressing his interest in the sport we
understand - motocross _ but !,Infortunately that isn't so. The "MX"
that President Carter is all for is a
brand-new 30 billion dollar ICBM
missile system, which, when deployed,
will be our latest weapon to wipe out
the Russians should they ev.er have the
notion to wi~ us out.
It's bad enough that the "Cold
War," as they call it, has us and them
building nuclear bombs designed to
blow the world up in the name of
~ace, What is worse, when they come
down to it, is the choice of loca tions
for missile launching sites. In the case
of the newly-approved MX missile, the
choice of where it will be deployed
hap~ns to be the southwest part of
the United States - the desert areas of
Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and
Utah, to be exact. '
Don't stop reading, the story gets
more interesting.
According to those intelligent
Pentagon planners, the "beauty" of
the new MX ICBM is that it will be
. completely portable. The top brains
haven't really decided yet, but when
the MX system is built it will be able to
either' move
around
in
an
underground tunnel 20 miles long or
along a special roadway on the desert
surface. To keep, the Russians
guessing, the missiles will either be
shifted around in the trenches or
parked in any number of hardened
shelters along the roadway - sort of
like the old shell game. The basic
theory here is that by moving the
missiles, it would take the Russians (or
anybody else who happens not to
"like us much) 15,000 nuclear warheads
to wipe out the entire system of
trenches or roadways - a theoretically
practical impossiblity. Or so they say.
But supposing that they don't have
15,000 bombs to drop, and they don't
get all of these new rockets, al.1 we'll
have to do is then bust 'em out of the
.trenches or take 'eD;! out of the parking
sheds and zap those Commies back.
Even though It is being planned that
the first MX missile will be set up in
about 1986, the concerns are more
immediate as to where they're going to
be. Defense officials are quoted as
saying that when all the trenches or
roads are laid out with everything else
to make up the complete system, it
shouldn't take any more than 100
square miles, tops. But sinc.e the
locations for these missiles are going to
be in the desert, the Pentagon has
figured that it will use land owned
either by the, Department of Defense
and/or our buddies, the Bureau of
Land Management.
Guessing that the odds are stacked
anyway (Like what the hell? Whose
going to protest? Where', the Sierra
Club now? Aren't they going to get
riled over a potentially harmful use of
public lands?), these missiles are going
to be set, let's say, over half DOD and
half BLM turf - and that brings to
mind a number of less than cheerful
thoughts.
Like, what would it be like riding
over what you know would be the
largest shooting zone in the Universe?
Gee, Russian spy satellites will be
watching these things, they may think
that desert races are actually
stampedes of large radioactive
'jackrabbits_ Or, knowing that
somebody is watcfring, all you'd have
to do is look up and smile, say hello to
your diStant cousin on your D;!other's
side living in Leningrad, or flip 'em
the finger. On the other hand, it could
be a drag to find out that the
emergency gas stop in your enduro was
vaporized because the Russians
thought it was a covert, hostile act of
aggressio,! by the U.S. How would you
feel, riding through the puckerbushes,
knowing that at any'minute you could
have a box seat for World War HI?
Well, a lot of the above is purely
hypothetical for now but probably not
too improbable as to what could
happen to us in the future. Simply
put, I don't think that nukes and bikes
should share the same desert, much
less the same planet. But one can
presume that - as crazy as it may be
- it will happen anyway. It is
hilarious to note that the DOD is, in its
consideration to locate missiles in the
desert, deciding what environmental
impact such a move could make on the
land. (If they have any brains they
should guess what will hap~n to th;
desert during the next war; it ought to
be considerably worse than any bike
race imagined.)
.You may ask, after all this
rambling, what does ICBM missile
have to do in the pages of Cycle News?
Who really cares? Honestly, maybe
you shouldn't care at all.
The simple fact of life for the
present is that our beloved government
will most likely put these missiles in the
desert five or six years from now, and
they will be just as commonplace as
puckerbushes. The fact is that even
though a considerable amount of
desert will be torn up to dig either 20mile long trenches or build roadways
that lead to nowhere, it won't be
anything compared to what will
happen if and when they push the
button that will start WW HI. The
clouds raised and the marks made by
the worst motorcycle race won't be a
drop in the bucket compared to what
one thermonuclear warhead can do
from a Russian 55-19 ICBM.
With the possibility of such a
grievous impact upon our desert, I am
truly surprised that the Sierra Club,
with all its hikers and flower-lovers,
hasn't filed a suit in court already to
stop the missiles_ But then, maybe all
they can really understand hating is
motorcycles.
In any event, consider this: As
remote and irrelevant as another war
may seem for IlJ)W, it will be a very
short one. The only ~hing is, there
probably won't be anybody left
afterwards - not even to ride a
motorcycle, if there are any of those
I~,too,
•
Rex Reese
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os
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