You may be surprised to learn that during the height of the Cold War, South Dakota was one of the ten most dangerous places to live in the US in the event of a nuclear war. We had few people and, aside from Ellsworth Air Force Base, few strategic targets. But what my state had was thousands of square miles of range land peppered with nuclear tipped Minute Man missiles. These missiles sites were like lightning rods: their intent was to protect our nation, but they also turned their locations in to attractive targets.This is one of several "missile flight" centers. These secured compounds were for maintenance and launch of nuclear warheads. Above ground, the places look fairly innocent. But deep underground in reinforced concrete bunkers, the launch commanders would receive their orders, program the flight paths of the missiles they controlled, and push the Big Red Button.*Today, the missiles have been removed, their underground silos imploded, and the missiles flight centers sit vacant. (Here's a broader view of the same site. Also, you can see this on Panoramio - perhaps as the Russians saw it on their own satellite photos.)Incidentally, one of these flight centers has been turned in to a very unique Bed and Breakfast, but you have to go way off the beaten path in South Dakota to sleep there. It's called Juliet 1 B&B and it's located in Opal, SD.(*Big Red Button is my very unofficial term for the launch mechanism.)
I posted a stone carving from a building in Chicago yesterday and observed that it was done in an "era when there was time, talent and money to hand carve decorations for skyscrapers." The building you are looking at is another sort of sky scraper: it is the Notre Dame de Paris. It is the most famous Gothic Cathedral and it took over a 100 years to construct. It, too, was done in an era when there was at least time and talent to construct such buildings.The carvings in this photo are over 1000 years old.
