Atomurbia: Responding to Atomic Threat by Moving Everyone Everywhere. 1946

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 1018

“It is probably not worth putting (all) railways under ground.”  Ed Teller, 1947

[See also our 50+-part Atomic & Nuclear Bomb series here]

There is a universe of alternate universes constructed of nothing but the dim bits of bad thinking that is the very DNA of the history of bad ideas.  In those realms there are bad ideas that are bad, bad ideas that are toweringly bad, and bad ideas that are so bad that they’re not even bad as they transcend communication capacities of badness.  The idea I’m writing about today lives at that unspeakably-bad level.

And that bad idea is this: relocating and dispersing the entire population of the United States into a geometric grid-work covering all parts of the country, emptying all American cities into a vast nothingness of exurban Atomburbs. 

There.  I said it.  Unfortunately, the thoughtfully blank idea was “real” and  was worked out by three smart guys, the result published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 1946¹.  The kernel of the proposition was republished for the masses in LIFE magazine in (15 June) 1947, complete with maps which stand on their own as being spectacular and peculiar examples of visual propaganda.         

Listen: the crux of the issue was to remove everyone from any American city with a population greater than 50,000 people and place them in newly-built communities set out across the country’s landscape (mostly) like a chess board, the towns existing on all of the connecting lines. [As weird as this sounds, the great Norbert Wiener came up with a similarly astounding, untouchable idea using circles.]. The authors proposed to build 20,000,000 new homes, relocate industry (preferably underground), reallocate and redistribute energy supplies and natural resources, and recreate the very fabric of social and economic life in America.  

The governor of this thinking was the coming arms race and the American susceptibility to clouds laced with Soviet atomic weapons–and worse.[The calculations for destruction being used here were for the Hiroshima atomic bomb; in 1952 the U.S. would detonate the first hydrogen bomb, followed by the Soviets the next year.  These bombs would be measuring explosive force in terms of hundreds of thousands--and then dozens of millions--of pounds of explosives.]  How does this idea get thunk in a group and not abandoned?  And then how does it manage to be published by a a reputable organization?  These are smart men, these authors, and I just cannot think of how they could’ve come to these conclusions–though Teller, who was part of the genius flotilla of superb and essential Hungarian scientists, was undoubtedly mentally affected by his supernova hawkishness. I didn’t know this about Marshak, and I really am not very familiar with Klein.  They were all University of Chicago, and the Bulletin was originally published as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago. 

There are deeper, more disturbingly anti-spectacular ideas laced through the short article, some of which are so soaringly and diligently insane that it is difficult to address them.  For example, the authors suggest that the “ribbon cities” wouldn’t necessarily have to be “laid out in exactly straight lines” and that the lines could be adapted to the terrain.


Even though the authors propose moving and rehousing 20 million people (and so on), this was not what they really wanted to do.

They wanted to put everything in lines and underground. 

“We shall have to forgo elaborate schemes of underground cities” because of expense, they write.  And what of the cost, as long as we’re at it?  Somehow a figure of 200 billion is floated around–200b in 1947 dollars, which is 5 trillion in 2010 dollars (or so), which really doesn’t seem to be a figure that is in any way near to what an undertaking of this magnitude would cost.  (The odd thing about this figure is that $200 billion is about the same percentage for a single year of 1950 GDP as the $5 trillion is of the 2010 GDP.) [It seems unfair to take things out of context like this, but, well, it isn't--the entire article is filled with almost nothing but these statements.  In a way I'm doing the authors a service by taking things out of context so that the entirety of their madness isn't revealed as the ugly road-kill thinking it is.]

Of course, g_d knows where all of this building material was going to come from.  Or the people who would actually do the work.  Were there 3 million construction/building folks in the 1950 census?  I don’t think so.

And so in spite of the overwhelmingly underestimated cost, and the rerouting of the infrastructure of the entire country, and moving everyone in the country, and building 20 million houses, and finding the material to do so, and finding the workers to build them all and reconstruct all of the infrastructure and build all industry underground and have the tools to do it all with, the authors felt as though the whole thing could be pulled off in 10 years.

Someone, somewhere, was certainly going to be working late.

And so the interesting part of this thought-tragedy for me is–what is the equivalent idea of this going on right now?  I know there is one, and there will be a new one tomorrow. 

Notes
1.. Jacob Marshak, Edward Teller, and Lawrence R. Klein. “Dispersal of Cities and Industries.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 1, April 15, 1946, 13.

See also:
“Naked City.” Time. Nov. 28, 1949, 66. Also at.  Also see .The City Under the Bomb.. Time, Oct. 12, 1950

Charles Grutzner. “City folks‘ fear of bombs aids boom in rural realty.. “ New York Times. August 27, 1950, 1.

Michael Ray Fitzgerald.  Sitcoms and Suburbia. The Role of Network Television in the Deurbanization of the U.S., 1949-1991.
               
Molella, Arthur P. "The City as Communications Net: Norbert Wiener, the Atomic Bomb, and Urban Dispersal" Technology and Culture - Volume 45, Number 4, October 2004, pp. 764-777


   

                   

Comments

[Edward Becerra]

Honestly, I can't quite grasp your complaint. I feel that rural life is the best life, and that cities are a blight upon the planet.

Then again, I was born in a small town, raised in a small town, and after a career in the military (itself essentially a small town - in olive drab, with guns), retired to a small town.

Oh, granted, there are folks who enjoy life in the Big City - but there are also folks who enjoy the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. I see them as being much the same.

Can't understand the appeal of a big city - anything more than 5,000 people, preferably less than 100 per square mile - and probably never will.

Ed Becerra

[John F. Ptak]

Ed: if it weren't for cities the US would be "peopled up" much more than it is--you might not be able to look out your window without seeing the back of someone else's head looking at the back of someone else's head (and so on). A plan like the above would make 60,000 small towns of 5,000 each/300k at 1000 each; so I guess there would be a general diffusion of small towns to the point where people were just bloody everywhere. (Now *that* sent a bad chill down my spine.) I can appreciate your appreciation of the small town--I like towns big and small, though presently I live in a smallest city/town of 60,000 which is as small as it has gotten for me.

[Nexialist]

@ John: I absolutely love the post. I'm currently looking into Ludwig Hilberseimer's strategic regional/urban planning of the 1950s in connection to the decentralization "paradigm" which eventually culminated in the emergence of suburbia, so i'm greatful for the detail level!
@ Ed: People may not like cities, but let's not forget that prior to industrialization and/or modernization and prior to the establishment of the United States, cities were the sole "engines" of freedom in an otherwise rural/feudal "world"...we owe cities that much gratitude, regardless how much or less appeal they hold!

[Jeff Donlan]

Cities permit a critical mass ... oh, wait, sorry ... well, anyway, the concentration permits energies of all kinds, useful and not. The dispersion of the population would have been a kind of forced diffusion leading to something like heat death. Small towns are small ponds: They can dry up easily or be distorted by just a few weird fish. It takes a lot of effort to stay connected to thousands of distant places. Also, all the small places of 5,000 (hey, like my home!) are made more livable by the existence of large cities elsewhere. Etc. &c. I have more to say, but it's time to go home for dessert.