A huge pyramid in the middle of nowhere tracking the end of the world on radar. An abstract geometric shape beneath the sky without a human being in sight. It could be the opening scene of an apocalyptic science fiction film, but it's just the U.S. military going about its business, building vast and other-worldly architectural structures that the civilian world only rarely sees.
The Library of Congress has an extraordinary set of images documenting the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex in Cavalier County, North Dakota, showing it in various states of construction and completion. And the photos are awesome here
Taken for the U.S. government by photographer Benjamin Halpern, the particular images seen here show the central pyramid—pyramid, obelisk, monument, megastructure: whatever you want to call it—that served as the site's missile control building. Like the eye of Sauron crossed with Giza, it looks in all directions, its all-seeing white circles staring endlessly at invisible airborne objects across the horizon.
The pyramid's location is given somewhat absurdly as "Northeast of Tactical Road; southeast of Tactical Road South." Like I said, then, it's in the middle of nowhere.
There is nothing really to compare outside of their same overall geometry, of course—yet it's striking to consider the functional, if obviously metaphoric, similarities here as well.
One structure was built as part of a kind of divine tracking system for celestial events and epic calendars, as dark constellations of gods spun across the sky; the other was a temple to mathematics built for pinging incoming missiles as they streaked horizon to horizon, a site of early warning against the apocalypse, as nuclear warheads would burst open to shine their artificial world-blinding light on the obliterated landscapes below.
Trajectories, paths, horizons: both pyramids, in a sense, were architectural monuments for navigation of different kinds. Both timeless, strange, and seemingly inhuman, spatial artifacts of a lost civilization.
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