JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 469
The Illustrated London News for 16 July 1938 was screaming at its readers--14 months away from the British involvement in WWII--that the MOST EFFECTIVE form of ARP (air-raid protection) was via the evacuation of London. And of course what the "article" meant was the orderly evacuation of London, as decentralized evac during a crisis (i.e. bombing) would be an "appalling" and chaotic mess.
The answer was elevated highways.
The reader was told that "the cost of such roads will necessarily be high", but the high ticket price wouldn't be quite as bad as tearing down buildings and widening streets through central London. The tearing/widening idea is so original and so shockingly bad I don't know what to say, if there was actually anything to say at all. But then it is second only to the idea of building elevated roadways for evacuation purposes--road that look from the picture like they were four lanes wide. These roads would have "the additional merit that under them the traditional appearance of London can be maintained unimpaired". Stress that part about the appearance "underneath". Not only that, the heartbeat of London evacuation=, these elevated roads, were evidently immune from bombs themselves; or at the very least nothing is mentioned about these roads being targets in themselves. One bomb, one hit, one severed artery. (Looking back through the Bad Ideas Department I see Buckminster Fuller's tragically goofy idea for building a mile-high dome over midtown Manhattan that was "radiation proof"...he didn't say anything about it being impervious to actually being the direct target of a nuclear weapon, though.)
Generally when ideas are this terrificly bad there is usually a reason for it, a reason that transcends logic and honest coherent thought. And that reason in this case was money.
At a time when Nazi Germany was bursting at the seams for more people to fight and for nations to devour, when there was a true and real fear of London being a target of German bombs, this simple and weak and strategically indefensible solution was proposed by one large and interested party.
The "article" is signed by the Cement and Concrete Association of Grosvenor Gardens, London. And thus all is clear.
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