surrounding mountains (“WARNING! No Smoking, In or Out of Cars-$500 fine and six
months imprisonment”) from Mount Wilson Observatory to the sea. It would destroy the
railroad terminal half a dozen blocks from the City Hall and play hob with the water
system, water fetched clear from the State of Arizona.
If that is dispersion, I’ll stay in Manhattan.
Los Angeles is a modern miracle, an enormous city kept alive in a desert by
a complex and vulnerable concatenation of technical expedients. The first three
colonies established there by the Spaniards starved to death to the last man, woman,
and child. If the fragile structure of that city were disrupted by a single atomic
bomb, those who survived the blast would in a few short days be reduced to a
starving, thirst-crazed mob, ready for murder and cannibalism.
No, if we are to defend ourselves we must not assume that Los Angeles is
“dispersed” despite the jokes about her far-flung city line. The Angelenos must be
relocated from Oregon to Mexico, in the Mojave Desert, in Imperial Valley, in the
great central valley, in the Coast Range, and in the High Sierras.
The same principles apply everywhere. Denver must be scattered out toward
Laramie and Boulder, while Colorado Springs must flow around Pike’s Peak to Cripple
Creek. Kansas City and Des Moines must meet at the Iowa-Missouri line, while Joplin
flows up toward Kansas City and on down into the Ozarks. As for Manhattan, that is
almost too much to describe- from Boston to Baltimore all the great east coast
cities must be abandoned and the population scattered like leaves.
The cities must go. Only villages must remain. If we are to rely on
dispersion as a defense in the Atomic Age, then we must spread ourselves out so thin
that the enemy cannot possibly destroy us with one bingo barrage, so thin that we
will be too expensive and too difficult to destroy.
It would be difficult. It would be incredibly difficult and expensive-Mr.
Spaulding’s estimate would not cover the cost of new housing alone, but new housing
would be the least of our problems. We would have to rebuild more than half of our
capital plant-shops, warehouses, factories, railroads, highways, power plants,
mills, garages, telephone lines, pipe lines, aqueducts, granaries, universities. We
would have to take the United States apart and put it back together again according
to a new plan and for a new purpose. The financial cost would be unimportant,
because we could not buy it, we would have to do it, with our own hands, our own
sweat. It would mean a sixty-hour week for everyone, no luxury trades, and a bare
minimum standard of living for all for some years. Thereafter the standard of living
woula be permanently depressed, for the new United States would be organized for
defense, not for mass production, nor efficient marketing, nor convenient
distribution. We would have to pay for our village culture in terms of lowered
consumption. Worse, a large chunk of our lowered productivity must go into producing
and supporting the atomic engines of war necessary to strike back against an
aggressor-for dispersion alone would not protect us from invasion.
If the above picture is too bleak, let us not prate about dispersion. There
are only three real alternatives open to us: One, to form a truly sovereign
superstate to police the globe; two, to prepare realistically for World War III in
which case dispersion, real and thorough dispersion, is utterly necessary, or,
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third, to sit here, fat, dumb, and happy, wallowing in our luxuries, until the next
Hitler annihilates us!
The other necessary consequences of defense by dispersion are even more
chilling than the economic disadvantages. If we go it alone and depend on ourselves
to defend ourselves we must be prepared permanently to surrender that democratic
freedom of action which we habitually enjoyed in peace time. We must resign
ourselves to becoming a socialistic, largely authoritarian police state, with
freedom of speech, freedom of occupation, and freedom of movement subordinated to
military necessity, as defined by those in charge.
Oh, yes! I dislike the prospect quite as much as you do, but I dislike still