As I've shown, many air defense sites had heavily-used public roads running
> right through them!
Since Nike sites in the US were normally deployed around major cities, it would have been rather hard to place one far from public areas.
The Union Lake, Michigan site was surrounded by a Little League ball field, a public golf course, and housing developments.
If we had had to fire, the boosters would have come down in a housing tract, but better a Nike booster through your roof than a Soviet nuclear device.