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Minuteman missile silo destroyed DEDERICK, Mo. (AP) -- In the 10 years he has lived in this quiet nook of rolling farmland, there's been only one thing that Bob Burnez never really cared for: the fact he was all but sitting on "Ground Zero." So it was a day of celebration for Burnez on Monday when the last of the nation's workable Minuteman II missile silos was destroyed, and he brought his wife and six children to watch. "We drove by them all the time. We knew they were here, and that meant we were sitting on Ground Zero, and that if there was ever a retaliatory strike that we'd be the target," he said of the nuclear-tipped missiles that sat in a reinforced steel and hardened concrete silo on Jerome and Suzanne Bellinghausen's farm. "We're very grateful to see them go," he added as he clutched his son Bo's hand while they stood waiting with some 300 other people -- including 100 schoolchildren on a field trip -- in the Bellinghausens' pasture, 500 yards from the silo sight. A few minutes later, after a dramatic 10-second countdown, Brig. Gen. Tom Goslin Jr. joined six other people representing the military and community in turning the keys that set off 90 dynamite charges and imploded the now-empty silo. As the blast echoed across the pasture and a puff of smoke rose from the silo, the crowd whooped and cheered. The silo was the last of 150 in Missouri that once contained Minuteman II missiles aimed at targets in the Soviet Union. In all, there were about 1,000 silos across the Midwest and the northern United States holding both Minuteman II missiles and Minuteman IIIs. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty ordered that the Minuteman II silos be taken out of service and destroyed. One by one they have been, leaving only one in South Dakota that is to be turned into a museum, said Staff Sgt. Dee Ann Poole of Whiteman Air Force Base. The remaining 550 silos still hold triple-warhead Minuteman III missiles, as well as Peacekeeper missiles. But these days these missiles are aimed at the sea rather than Russian cities, said Capt. Mike Busch, who helped run the Minuteman II launch program.