A closer look
The entire mid-century US telephone grid relied on brutalist concrete monoliths blasting microwaves at each other across the countryside like a game of high-tech telephone. Before fiber optics, AT&T's Long Lines network utilized thousands of giant horn-shaped antennas on massive towers spaced exactly 30 miles apart. They hurled highly focused analog voice signals from coast to coast, built specifically to survive the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear detonation so you could still reliably dial your grandmother post-apocalypse.
