The back roads of America are speckled with relics of what could have been Armageddon in America, if the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union had come to a head.
Though the Cold War never got hot, America was prepared for the worst, with everything from underground nuclear bunkers to house important figures to facilities that developed uranium and plutonium for nuclear bombs. In Arizona and South Dakota, nuclear missiles gather dust as they still sit in place, pointing skyward.
The development of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park means that these artifacts and sites will be protected and be available for the public. The National Park Service and Department of Energy are working together to preserve once-secret sites at Los Alamos, New Mexico, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington, three places with key roles in the race to produce an atomic weapon.
Though these locations will be incorporated into the park, there are countless other sites across the country with ties to the Cold War and lasting impacts from the atomic testing and end-of-the-world preparations.
Additional reporting by the European Pressphoto Agency