Breaking into One World Trade Center and scaling to its top was just the beginning for this daring trio, who then not only parachuted from close to the peak but also had to navigate nearby structures on the way down and ultimately land in the street.

If you are not one for suspense, skip to the two minute and thirty second mark in the first video above to watch as the first jumper takes the plunge from the 1,776-foot tower, followed shortly thereafter by the man behind the camera.

After months of hiding their identities, James Brady, Marco Markovich and Kyle Hartwell have turned themselves in and are already raising legal funds for their defense. They are charged with burglary, reckless endangerment and jumping from a structure.

According to the New York Times, the trio have been “described by their lawyers as experienced, amateur sky divers who also sought thrills leaping from buildings, bridges and other structures.” As for how they got in and up in this case: apparently, they simply slipped through a hole in the fence, scaled the stairs and did not encounter any security along the way to the top of the tower above. A similar stunt was pulled by a teenager not too long ago, but reporters who tried to follow suit found themselves caught and arrested.

One of the biggest challenges of settlements in space is the cost of transporting materials and technologies for construction, a problem addressed beautifully via 3D printing technology in this architectural proposal (currently being prototyped on Earth).

The design by Foster + Partners (in conjunction with the European Space Agency) uses a minimum of imported materials – mainly: an inflatable core, pumped up into domes and tunnels on site.

Yet despite its simplicity, the project addresses everything from extreme temperature fluctuations to gamma radiation in this ingenious multi-person dwelling, effectively allowing humans to bypass the need to burrow below the surface while still using it effectively as a shield.

The man-made domes at the center of the concept are augmented by 3D-printed material derived from locally-sourced soil – a concrete-style foam substance providing stability, safety and structural support.

It’s a jaw-dropping hideout worthy of a James Bond villain – so some may find it appropriate that Pionen White Mountain in Sweden is indeed connected to WikiLeaks, international whistle-blowing organization and current foe-du-jour of the U.S. government. Though it seems that this former Cold War bunker located nearly 100 feet below the granite rocks of Stockholm’s Vita Berg Park is not exactly WikiLeaks headquarters, it does host two WikiLeaks servers, and its combination of modern steel and primitive caves is undeniably fascinating in its own right.

Pionen White Mountain was originally created as a World War II bomb shelter and was converted into a civil defense center in the 1970s to house an emergency unit of the Swedish government in case of nuclear war. In 2008, Albert France-Lanord Architects updated it into a state-of-the-art data center for Banhof, a Swedish internet hosting company. Bahhof expanded the space to accommodate gas oil power generators that keep the servers running in the event of a power outage.

Science fiction was naturally a major inspiration for the design, Banhof CEO Jon Karlung told Pingdom. Old sci-fi movies like Logan’s Run, Silent Running and Star Wars all contributed visual clues as did – of course – James Bond.

“Since we got hold of this unique nuclear bunker in central Stockholm deep below the rock, we just couldn’t build it like a traditional – more boring – hosting center,” he said. “We wanted to make something different. The place itself needed something far out in design and science fiction was the natural source of inspiration in this case – plus of course some solid experience from having been a hosting provider for more than a decade.”

Formerly spark plugs of the cold war, dozens of decades-old, decommissioned underground nuclear missile silos are slowly slipping into disrepair and decay. Not all of these relics are destined for the ash heap of history, however, a precious few are taking on new life as post-apocalyptic family homes – without the apocalypse. The best thing about living in a refurbished missile silo? Telling your kids, “You can’t fight in here, this is the war room!”

Home, Home On The Firing Range

(images via: UP-HAA, Arms Control Wonk and Pyjamas Media)

Why would anyone want to live in an old missile silo? Let’s look at the positives, starting with the best construction work government money can buy. Then there’s the feeling of security that comes with living in a structure built to withstand tornadoes, hailstorms, wildfires and the odd Soviet pre-emptive nuclear strike. Home handyman types will find little to do besides changing light bulbs.

A Real Fixer-Upper?

(images via: Think Or Thwim and Artificial Owl)

There are negatives, of course, that go beyond the lack of skylights, picture windows and kidney-shaped swimming pools. Though they were built to last, missile silos and their associated infrastructure did require maintenance of the preventive variety. The oddly beautiful installation above is the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard complex in Nekoma, North Dakota: the only operational anti-ballistic missile (ABM) base ever completed and dating from the late 1960s. ABMs were designed to protect ICBM sites from attack by enemy missiles, in other words protecting our protectors.

(images via: English Russia, Getty Images and Telstar Logistics)

A missile base that was completely neglected for years may have a number of daunting issues any new owner must deal with before moving in such as flooding, mold and structural settling. Got a sticky set of blast doors? That’ll require more than just a few shots of WD40.

Blasts From The Past

(images via: Gypsy Journal and Wikimedia)

Most nuclear missile sites comprise much more than the actual missile silo. Underground control complexes attached to the silo by tunnels provided personnel with long-term living facilities (kitchens, bathrooms etc.) and these are the portions most often chosen for home conversion. Even so, life at an updated missile base isn’t a bowl of cherries – and there are usually few stores or supermarkets nearby from which to procure said cherries.

(image via: Expedition Portal)

For obvious reasons, nuclear missile bases were located in places with sparse population and negligible infrastructure. The image above shows an old Titan -1 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launching base located east of Denver, Colorado. Electrical power, gas & water, waste disposal and the lack of friendly (or often ANY) neighbors are serious considerations for anyone contemplating living in a renovated silo.

My Home Is My Subterra Castle

(images via: Jiaju and Trip Advisor)

When luck is on their side, homeowners can acquire a decommissioned missile silo in good repair at a decent price. Take the Subterra Castle in Dover, Kansas. Edward and Dianna Peden originally purchased the former Atlas E ICBM site for around $40,000 back in the 1980s – presumably at the bottom of the market.

(images via: Roadside America and Subterra)

The Pedens proceeded to renovate & revamp the 34-acre site to the point that organized tours now visit their home. With 6,500 sq ft of underground living space, an 11,000 sq ft underground shop/garage, his & hers side-by-side toilets and a hot tub, the Cold War is just a fading memory.

Check out this video that introduces the Pedens and their upcycled silo home:

Cold War, Hot Properties

(images via: MissileBases.com, RedGypsy1969 and Roadside America)

The Pedens love living in their renovated missile silo so much, they’ve gone into business finding and selling similar properties. The couple set up a real estate company named 20th Century Castles and run it from their home in a decommissioned Atlas E missile site. “This has been the best investment of our lifetime, we love our home,” say the happy silo-dwellers. “We sold our first missile site in 1995 and as of January 2010, we have sold 49 of these properties.”

(images via: MissileBases.com)

One problem the Pedens face is that prime sites are becoming difficult to find. Many of the newer bases built in the early 1960s are being destroyed by the government due to international treaty obligations while the older sites dating back to the 1950s are considered by long-time owners to be “hard assets” that are steadily rising in value.

Underground Titanic

(images via: Think Or Thwim, Wikimedia and O’Reilly/MacDevCenter)

Some of the largest missile silo bases were those constructed to house and protect Titan II ICBMs. The base depicted above features three missile silos and associated command & control facilities that take up a total of 47,000 sq ft spread over (under, actually) 57 acres. One of these bases recently was offered up for auction at eBay for a cool $1.5 million.

From Launch Pad To Bachelor Pad

(images via: Oddity Central and Wired.com)

America’s nuclear deterrent evolved over time, as did the bases built to store and – if need be – launch the ICBMs at the evildoers. This gives homebuyers some leeway in terms of size: both of their investment and their, er, new digs. Bruce Townsley decided to go the more modest route after seeing Ed Peden discuss his missile silo home with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.

(images via: Oddity Central)

In 1997, Townsley plopped down $99,000 for an Atlas F missile base near Abilene, Texas. While Atlas E sites like the one the Pedens converted were built to store multiple missiles, Atlas F sites stocked just one, along with about 2,200 sq ft of living space. By the time Townsley was finished his renovations, his new home boasted just 1,000 sq ft of space but is bright, white & cozy.

Down The Hatch!

(images via: Silohome)

Got a hankering for the missile silo lifestyle but can’t be troubled to whip an old base into shape? Silohome knows what you’re thinking – they’ve done most (if not all) of the whipping so you don’t have to. You DO, however, have to plunk down $2.3 million but what you get is a true turn-key special… not THAT turn-key! Whew, that was a close one, and so is Silohome’s “model home”, as it were: just a few miles from Lake Placid, NY. Who knew an Atlas ICBM missile base was in, er, shooting distance of the 1980 Winter Olympics?

(images via: Silohome and Moviemuse Reviews)

In any case, Silohome has domesticated the former base inside and out, below ground and above. It’s even got a small private airstrip in case you want to invite like-minded fellow travelers over for some pinocle or fly out rolls of microfilm hidden inside pre-Columbian art ala Hitchcock’s North By Northwest.

Sleeping With The Enemy

(images via: WebUrbanist, Martin rolle and Truthdig)

Perhaps the Pedens and others like them will have to set their sites beyond the border… catch my drift? You guessed it, Mother Russia! The successor state to the former Evil Empire has just as many nuclear missile bases as the USA (more or less) and a series of treaties dating back to the mid-1980s has resulted in many of them being abandoned to various degrees. Better act fast, potential homeowners, lest we fall prey to a missile silo home gap!

(image via: WorldChanging)

You may be wondering just why the military, after going to great expense to build a huge network of missile silos, now sees them as obsolete? Blame technology – the development of inertial guidance systems in the 1960s turned the bases into sitting ducks. Much better to have mobile ducks, such as submarines. Maybe someday, somebody will be selling obsolete nuclear subs as high-tech houseboats… and we wonder what sort of deterrent will replace them?

Antarctica – this huge, frozen continent is bitterly cold, inhospitable as Mars and as far from civilization as any place on the planet. Just getting there has been a struggle; staying there has been near impossible. These 10 amazing Antarctic abandonments, frozen in time as well as in place, bear mute testimony to mankind’s perseverance in mastering what is literally the last place on Earth.

Shackleton’s Hut, UK, Abandoned 1909

(images via: Fogonazos and Noah Strycker)

Sir Ernest Shackleton participated in a number of Antarctic exploration expeditions in the first two decades of the 20th century, including the 1907-09 Nimrod Expedition. Upon arriving at McMurdo Sound, Shackleton selected a landing site about 20 miles away from Hut Point, established by rival explorer Robert Falcon Scott during the 1901-04 Discovery Expedition.

(images via: Icecubicle and Antarctica2000)

Though Shackleton pushed to within 97 miles of the South Pole, setting a record, he and his party were forced to turn back. When the expedition departed Antarctica in March of 1909, he left the fully stocked, pre-fab hut behind – where it still stands, not much the worse for wear, to this day.

Take a video tour of Shackleton’s hut at Cape Royds, Antarctica:

(images via: Luxury Insider and Whisky News)

In 2006, a team from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust paid a working visit to Shackleton’s hut and made an exciting discovery: several cases of Australian brandy and Scotch whisky! The scotch, “Chas Mackinlay & Co’s ‘Rare and Old’ Whisky”, is a true treasure as the original recipe was lost.

Scott’s Hut, UK, Abandoned 1913

The heroic yet ultimately doomed Terra Nova Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott in 1911 was based at Hut Point, the original base set up by Scott when he first arrived in Antarctica. Though Scott and his 4 companions reached the South Pole on January 17th, 1912, to their great disappointment they found that Roald Amundsen of Norway had beat them by nearly a full month.

(images via: Nomadwarmachine, NHM and Cool Antarctica)

As history records, Scott and his team (Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Evans) did not survive the return from the Pole but their hut on Ross Island remains, preserved by frigid cold and low humidity.

Mawson Station, Australia, 1914

(image via: Rafsanchez)

The 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) led by Sir Douglas Mawson set a number of scientific goals plus one rather surprising one: making the first flight over Antarctic territory. Unfortunately Mawson’s flying plans were scuttled when the aircraft, Vickers Monoplane No.1, suffered damage to its wings in transit and was used, wingless, as an air tractor.

(images via: Alliance Travel Partners and Australian Government)

Mawson Station was abandoned in 1914 though Mawson returned for short visits in 1929 and 1931. Remains of the Vickers aircraft’s metal frame were discovered on January 2nd, 2010, by a team from the Mawson’s Huts Foundation. The original huts at Mawson’s base at Cape Denison can be seen above, nearly subsumed by decades of snow and ice.

Whaler’s Bay, Norway/Chile/UK, Abandoned 1931

(images via: David Zaks and Dark Roasted Blend)

Ring-shaped Deception Island off the Antarctic Peninsula offered whaling expeditions of the late 1800s a sheltered harbor and shores – Whaler’s Bay – where they could process their catches. The island is also the site of an active volcano which last erupted in 1970.

(image via: David Zaks)

Deception Island is strewn with rusted relics of uncounted whaling expeditions as well as several abandoned scientific bases sponsored by Norway, Chile and Great Britain.

New Swabia, Nazi Germany, 1938-39

(images via: Echoes Of Enoch, Gnostic Liberation Front and Greyfalcon)

One of the most mysterious episodes in Antarctic exploration involves Nazi Germany, who claimed and explored a large area of Antarctica in the late 1930s. The expeditions included Dornier flying boats that mapped and photographed extensive areas of “New Swabia”. The planes dropped a series of Nazi flag pennants and boundary poles over the territory, none of which have been recovered… yet.

(images via: CG-IMDB and Barista)

Certain parts of the former New Swabia (Neuschwabenland) are clear of ice due to geothermal heating, fueling speculation the Nazi’s set up a wartime base there supplied by U-boats. In 1946-47, the United States sent a 13-ship task force that included an aircraft carrier and numbered 4,700 men to New Swabia, ostensibly to practice arctic warfare techniques. Operation Highjump was (and still is) shrouded in secrecy (many official documents pertaining to it are still classified), leading to even more speculation as to what the Nazi’s were really up to in Antarctica, if anything.

Bust Of Lenin, Soviet Union, 1957/1967

(images via: NPI/NSF and Paul Landry)

Antarctica features not only the South Pole and the South Magnetic pole, but also the Pole of Inaccessibility: The point on the Antarctic continent that is the most distant from any coast. Not the sort of place you’d want to leave anyone important, even if it’s a statue – yet that’s just what the Soviet Union did.

(image via: Paul Landry)

A truncated pyramidal building topped with a bust of Lenin was built at the P of A in 1957 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Though the Soviet Union ended up, as Ronald Reagan famously predicted, “on the ash heap of history”, this monumental bust of Lenin continues to cool his non-existent heels in a much, much colder place.

Base W, UK, Abandoned 1959

(images via: Antarctic Fury)

British Survey Base W was established in 1956 at the head of an ice-free bay on Detaille Island. At least, it was thought to be ice-free – the original surveyors arrived during an unusually warm summer.

(images via: Antarctic Fury)

When the last provisioning ship of the season arrived in 1959, the base personnel were told they had just one hour to pack up their belongings and abandon the base. Just over a half century later, Base W remains pretty much the way it was left over a half century ago.

Dobrowolski Station, Poland, Abandoned 1959/1992

(image via: Luminous Landscape)

Located relatively close to where the New Swabia expedition landed in 1938, Dobrowolski Station was first set up by the Soviet Union in late 1956 and was transferred to the Polish government in 1959. The area around the base was described by Admiral Richard E. Byrd in 1947 as “one of the most remarkable regions on earth, an island suitable for life had been found in a universe of death”.

(image via: The Age)

Evidently the Poles did not share Byrd’s sentiment, as they abandoned Dobrowolski Station after only a few weeks. It was last occupied by Soviet scientists from nearly Oasis Station in the early 1990s.

Almirante Brown Station, Argentina, Abandoned 1984

(images via: Canuck01, Dark Roasted Blend and Waymarking)

Whomever named “Paradise Bay” in West Antarctica must have read about Eric the Red’s naming of Greenland. Argentina set up a research station at Paradise Bay and named it for Admiral Guillermo Brown, father of the Argentine Navy.

(image via: Waymarking)

The story goes, a researcher was so upset at the thought of being left at Almirante Brown Station over the long, dark Antarctic winter that he set some of the buildings on fire as the supply ship was preparing to leave. The base burned, the researcher left on the ship, and Argentina was too broke to do anything about it.

Leningradskaya Base, Soviet Union, Abandoned 1991

(images via: Cool Antarctica, Wikipedia and Kaibab Journal)

The Soviet research station “Leningradskaya”, located in Oates Land, was set up in 1971 and abandoned in 1991 in the wake of the fall of communism and the accompanying fiscal crisis that beset the country.

(image via: Cool Antarctica)

Today the remnants of the old station lie scattered around its remaining outbuildings – some of the metal surfaces barely display a hint of rust. Cleaning up the base is somewhat problematic… it sits at the edge of 100-ft high stone cliff looking out to the desolate Oates Coast of Antarctica.

(image via: Australian Antarctic Division)

It’s easy to be smug and chastise a century’s worth of explorers for not cleaning up the messes they made in one of Earth’s most pristine environments. Take a walk in their shoes, however, and you might gain some understanding of how harsh a place Antarctica really can be… at the cost of a few fingers and toes abandoned to howling, 200mph katabatic winds that never, ever stop.