Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

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