An idea to make countries safer...

This is kind of an unrealistic (at least in the short term) strategy, but I think it would become standard policy in the future if there were a WMD terrorist attack.

The idea is simple but radical. The City no longer presents safety, but rather a nice target.

We could make ourselves much safer if we got rid of them completely. Think about it - in this day and age of instant comunication, there is no real reason to have all buisnesses packed into small areas. All it does is lead to nice juicy targets for terrorists.

They used to be the safe place to be - you know, safety in numbers. Back in the days of knights and armour it was true. But since the advent of the nuclear weapon, they have become obsolete.

I think that there should be a concerted policy to spread the population of the US out into as even a distribution over land as we can. This would make biological, chemical, and nuclear attacks MUCH less effective as well as take away targets such as the WTC where thousands of people all work in the same building.

Anyways, I know this isn't about to happen anytime soon, but IMHO it would make everyone a lot safer.

Although I like rural areas, i do not see the majority giving up the 'urban' lifestyle........nice thought though.

How about this, just kick the damn people who want to hurt us really damn hard where they leave us alone and let us get back to our lives.

Just deport the muslims and their should be no terrorist attacks.

But this can only happen if the terrorism gets out control and the mass majority call for the deporations.

I agree with you Ed - it won't happen (at least for now).

If a nuke goes off in NYC however, I think you'll see a lot of people thinking that the idea of lower living costs, cheaper homes and more land will start to sound really good.

Instead of building cities up in tall building we can start building down. You cant hit a basement with a plane The view would suck though.

The one thing that might hurt a plan like yours American Mad Man is population will sooner or later force us all into somewhat urban enviroments. Something like Japan is now.

But thats a long way off for big countries.

Country Living is nice,

I'd miss cities, but moving cities underground isn't a bad idea. Heck The Gobment has already dug out a few choice places to hide themselves in, in case of emergency. It'd keep americas labor force employed in this day and age of work shortcomings if we started building underground.

Not a bad idea but far too radical for the status quo.

-ADHDsux4me

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
Instead of building cities up in tall building we can start building down. You cant hit a basement with a plane

The view would suck though.

The one thing that might hurt a plan like yours American Mad Man is population will sooner or later force us all into somewhat urban enviroments. Something like Japan is now.

But thats a long way off for big countries.

think of the bright side
all that space for cars and roads

I still do not understand why pro-War on Terror individuals think they are living in more dangerous times than they did during the Cold War. We were on the brink of global nuclear war, which would have likely resulted in the deaths of nearly everybody on the planet, back in the early 60s. To think that the issue of terrorism, even if it was nuclear, would pose a similar threat is to disengage from the reality we have previously lived.

one word about underground cities, well, 2 words-

water table

Cities are more than just conglomerations of people. Irregardless of the actual process by which cities formed in terms of history, nowadays they serve distinct purposes. All those people that live in the citites, they have jobs there. They live there for a reason. One would have to alter those reasons. It doesn't matter how high tech things are, people are still going to offices to do their work. Even if they telecommute part of the time, there are still going to have to be people working in centralized offices. Also, forcing companies to work in seperate towns and be spread out would be, i think, illegal and wrong. Not only that, but, if they are evenly spread out, what happens when a company goes down? The entire town will crumble. This happens already, it'd be worse if all companies were spread out like that. And in terms of shipping, any port is going to have something like a city around it, and lots of companies are going to want to be located near it.

As far as underground cities, the tech really isn't there to build cities particularly deep, and also the cost of replicating entire cities, underground nonetheless, is insurmountable, not without conscripted labour and massive nationalization efforts. Also, any city it still going to have connections to the above ground, not to mention the need for above ground agricultural farms. So they'd be even more vulnerable, having centralized, government run air conduits for one thing.

Originally posted by Thinker
Just deport the muslims and their should be no terrorist attacks.

Maybe instead everyone could deport racist reactionary idiots, then there'd be less problems.

But this can only happen if the terrorism gets out control and the mass majority call for the deporations.

Newsflash, its unconstitutional to deport american citizens.

Well if we must keep cities then we should build walls around our cities and militarize the border and question all who want to come in. It was 3 years ago and "only" 3000 people died so nobody is willing to enforce that kind of change.

Only in a future with no superpowers can that scenario happen. Our cities will kids of be like the ones in Judge Dredd.

Not until we live in a world where our civil rights become a danger to ourselves and to others. The war in Iraq is a distraction from the jihad on America so it will be many years until America becomes like Israel.

But when that does happen it will be much worse. America has long borders and an extremely liberal imigration policy. America can't stop it.