During the Cold War, while building defenses to protect from attack by the Soviet Union, the U.S. established means of massive long-range attacks in response to Soviet advancements in weaponry as a means of deterrence. These defenses detected and tracked manned bomber aircraft, hostile submarines, and missiles launched from the other side of the world. This talk shows how these defenses evolved from fledgling stop-gap measures into a complex fabric of interconnected combinations of high-tech equipment over 40 years. Maps illustrate the extent of the geographic coverage required for these warning and response systems and charts display the time frames and vast numbers of both people and equipment that made up these forces.