Millions of textbooks and books, films, paintings, sculptures are devoted to the history of the 20th century, but some of its pages can be eloquently told about the once majestic abandoned structures that have become a kind of monuments of the era.
Stanley Mikelsen anti-missile base, USA
Pyramids can be found not only in Egypt - one of them is located in North Dakota. True, it was created not by representatives of ancient civilizations, but by the American military, because the mysterious object is nothing more than the radar of the missile position of the Stanley Mikelsen anti-missile base.
The complex was built as part of the Safeguard missile defense program to protect areas where Minuteman ICBMs were based. Phased radar antenna arrays, mounted on each of the four walls of the truncated pyramid, allowed the radar to track missiles flying from any direction, and the command bunker was located under the object itself. Also in the central position of the base included early warning radar, 30 anti-missile silos "Spartan" and 16 anti-missile silos "Sprint".
It was planned that after the base in North Dakota, other similar complexes would appear in the country, but after the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems was signed in 1972, work on other facilities was curtailed. And the Stanley Mikelsen base itself did not stay in service for long: in 1975 it was put on alert, and literally the next day the US Congress decided to stop working on the project: they decided to assign the defense of the country's nuclear arsenal to submarine missile carriers, which was cheaper and more efficient. Five months later, the base was mothballed.
For a long time, the empty complex gave rise to legends about secret communities hiding inside and secret experiments taking place there, until the American government put it up for auction. In December 2012, for 530 thousand dollars, the object was bought by the Hutterite religious community from the city of Forbes in North Dakota. True, it is not yet known what she is going to do with her property - the former base still looks abandoned.
Bayantal Air Base, Mongolia
The North Dakota pyramid is not the only symbol of the war fever of the 1970s. Another large-scale abandoned military object of that era is located in the Gobi Desert. This is the Bayantal airbase, which, due to aggravated Soviet-Chinese relations, was built by the USSR in case of a conflict with the PRC.
The runway of the largest Soviet airbase in Mongolia stretches for more than three kilometers. Also, numerous hangars, bunkers, barracks, monuments and five-story Khrushchevs were built here, in which about 1800 military men lived with their families. The developed infrastructure and security of the base were supposed to ensure its survival in a variety of conditions, but, fortunately, it did not come to war.
After the Soviet troops left Bayantal, the looters took away everything that had at least some value from the base, and today travelers who have stopped in these parts are greeted by dilapidated and dilapidated buildings. Only the legendary MiG-21 aircraft on a concrete pedestal, proudly directed into the sky, reminds of its former greatness. In recent years, Bayantal was chosen by the Gobi nomads, who began to break up their homes on the territory of the base, and some Mongols settled and more or less put in order at least one of the empty five-story buildings.
Hydrierwerke Pölitz AG synthetic gasoline plant, Poland
A huge maze of dilapidated concrete buildings overgrown with greenery in the Police is all that remains of one of the most important sources of fuel for Nazi Germany. Once there was one of the twelve factories for the production of synthetic gasoline by the German conglomerate I. G. Farben, who sponsored the Nazi movement.
The construction of the Hydrierwerke Pölitz AG plant began in 1937. With the outbreak of World War II, the construction process accelerated - prisoners from the occupied lands, prisoners of war and prisoners of concentration camps were actively used as a slave labor force. During the war, five labor camps appeared near the plant, as well as subcamps of the Stutthof, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps. Of the 30 thousand people who worked here in those years, 13 thousand did not survive the war.
By 1943, this plant, whose area occupied 1.5 thousand hectares, produced about 15% of the synthetic gasoline of Nazi Germany, which is why the Allied troops bombed it more than once. In 1945, they finally managed to stop the work of the enterprise. Most of the buildings of the plant were thoroughly destroyed or completely destroyed. Nevertheless, its ruins today attract many tourists interested in history.
Viaduct Petrobras, Brazil
Over 40 meters above the lush jungles of South America in eastern São Paulo, rises a stretch of highway that, as if by magic, was transferred here from the big city. This is the Petrobras viaduct, which has become a kind of monument to the inept use of public funds.
In the 1960s, construction of the Rio-Santos highway began in Brazil, and the Petrobras viaduct was to be part of it. The erection of this concrete mass 300 meters long in the middle of the jungle was an extremely difficult task: the delivery of the necessary materials to the construction site and the deforestation required enormous efforts, not to mention the construction of the viaduct itself. In addition, the working conditions were exacerbated by the hot climate and the large number of insects. Despite all the difficulties, by 1976 the building was completely ready and was waiting for a section of the new road to connect it to the motorway. Only at the last minute the plans changed: instead of the viaduct, they decided to connect the highway with the coastal route, and a completely new and never-before-used outstanding engineering facility was left in the jungle. Since then, the huge concrete structure has been slowly absorbed by the surrounding vegetation.
Today, the Petrobras Viaduct is a popular attraction for adventure tourists. You can get to it only on foot or by bike, and climb up - along an old and not very reliable-looking staircase.
Electronic reconnaissance station Field Station Berlin, Germany
A mysterious object in the western part of Berlin, on top of which an orderly shabby tower is located under a geodesic dome in the company of two similar domes next door, is one of the most unusual sights of the city. This is an abandoned US electronic intelligence station.
Curiously, the structure is located on Teufelsberg Mountain - or "Devil's Mountain" in German - which was formed from broken bricks, stone debris, broken tiles and other material after the bombing of the Second World War, dumped in this area. After the victory of the allied forces, this territory was in the British sector of the occupation of Berlin. The Americans quickly discovered that Mount Teufelsberg was a great place to listen to communications from East Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Warsaw Pact countries. Having agreed with the British, in October 1963 they began to build their station here. The facility, which was operated by the US National Security Agency, existed until the unification of Germany, after which the station was closed and the equipment removed.
During the economic boom in Berlin that followed the reunification of the country, there were plans to build hotels and entertainment venues here, and there was talk of creating a spy museum inside the station. But later, these projects were recognized as unprofitable. The buildings were immediately flooded with street artists, whose numerous graffiti still adorn the walls and domes of the station, both inside and outside. Since 1996, the unusual object has been privately owned, but you can still see it by paying five euros.
You can find out more about these and other impressive abandoned structures in the world in the program Forgotten Engineeringwhich airs on Saturdays at 10:00 on Discovery Channel.