Nuketown Field near Springfield at Xtreme Paintball (2024)

Nuketown is a multiplayer, national survival game with a focus on very close combat quarters and a battle ground for tactical team warfare. You will use all your gaming skills in a real life setting to meet the mission’s end game. You will maneuver through the main structure in Nuketown, around the iconic giant school bus, numerous vehicles, mannequins and several buildings to meet your mission’s objective. And to welcome you to this warzone is a replica of the “Welcome to Nuketown” sign with 2025 replaced by 2013.

You most likely are familiar with the 16 Call of Duty video games. The first seven, minus Call of Duty Modern Warfare, were set during WWII (enter Nuketown). The rest of the Modern Warfare series is set during present time. The first Nuketown map came out in November of 2010. This Nuketown map was transitioned from a video game to a real-life experience in 2013 by Tippman Sports, a paintball manufacturer out of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Tippman Sports funded the first Nuketown paintball field in East Dundee, Illinois. According to the reviews, which have mostly been positive, this first Nuketown had everything the Nevada nuclear test site model had. Tactical positioning, a giant school bus, homes, vehicles and mannequins to simulate the real life people of Nuketown.

So, is “Nuketown” a real place or a pretend playground for paintball players? It is actually a real place. In January of 1951, the Nevada Test Site (NTS), which is approximately 65 miles north of Las Vegas, was a testing ground for a significant number of nuclear weapons tests in the United States. The mushroom clouds from the 100 atmospheric tests could be seen in Las Vegas, almost 100 miles away. The city of Las Vegas had noticeable seismic activity and the mushroom clouds became tourist attractions to those in downtown hotels.

To test the effects of a nuclear bomb on a residential setting, Nuketown was built. It is a replica of a typical 1950’s urban town in western United States. It was built complete with houses, real vehicles and mannequins staged throughout the town in every day settings. It was complete with the iconic “Welcome To Nuketown 2025” sign and built to determine the impact of a nuclear bomb on a residential setting during World War II.

You might wonder how the game of paintball got started? Well, first of all there was a company, Nelson Paint Company out of Michigan, that actually designed a gun that shot a paintball (which was a horse pill injected with paint) to mark trees in the forest to identify them for cutting. Then, some ranchers decided that was a good way to mark their cattle for various purposes.

FUN FACT: After one failed attempt to build a paintball gun, the owner of Nelson Paint eventually collaborated with Daisy, the maker of the Red Ryder BB gun to build the first ever gun used in the first ever paintball game!! In 1972, they created the Splotchmaker which eventually became the Nel-Spot 007! This gun had to be reco*cked between shots with a maximum of 12 shots before the cartridge needed to be replaced. This left the players defenseless.

As the story goes, it was a common practice for the players to “Throw” paintballs at each other to defend themselves instead of risking reloading when near the enemy. There are still players who prefer the tactics and accuracy that comes along with the “pump paintball game.”

Fast forward to 1981 and you have these two guys up in New Hampshire, who were friends, having an argument about who could manage to survive better in the woods…. a person from the city or a hunter used to holding his own in the woods? To put it to the test, 12 men agreed to play a version of Capture the Flag on an 80-acre cross country ski resort. Six were “city folk,” while the other six were experienced “hunters.” They had 48 flags and four judges all armed with whistles (so the city guys wouldn’t get lost). In the end, a forester named Ritchie White went down in Paintball History as the first winner of the first ever paintball game.

You may be asking, what does this history of Call of Duty Nuketown and Paintball have to do with me playing a game of Paintball or Airsoft with my friends?? Nothing! It is just some fun facts to share with your paintball enemy, your opponent, as you are trying to draw them out from their cover and pelt them with paint.

You just can’t have much more fun than that! You will have memories that will last a life time…..and a little bit of history that you might not have known yesterday about two of your favorite things combined. Playing Paintball at Xtreme Paintball on the Call of Duty Black Ops “Nuketown” map!!

Xtreme Paintball in Agawam (near Springfield) is determined to make sure your experience in Call of Duty’s Nuketown is as exciting as it is memorable. The Xtreme staff are trained and prepared to help your experience in Nuketown be amazing!