cheyenne mountain complex is one of the icons of the cold war - a self-contained and sufficient town buried under the rockies meant to be impervious to a soviet nuclear barrage .
it was home to the north american aerospace command and control center of the united states in the event of world war three .
the high tech base entered popular culture with appearances in the 1983 cold war thriller war games and 1994 's stargate - which imagined the complex as a clandestine home for intergalactic travel .