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Atomic Highways

This post combines two of my recent obsessions — the atomic landscape and traffic (not to mention plugging my previous book), and the advertising image shown is typical of the times — playing on deep nuclear paranoia to help push a corporate agenda.

There’s an academic article, if not already done, to be written on the appearance of the mushroom cloud or other intimations of nuclear holocaust in 1950s advertising — I even have one in my collection for a paint company ‘now what should we paint the bedroom, honey? Nuclear winter?’ (no, it doesn’t really say that); in any case a mushroom cloud is no doubt more effective an image for road building than rote statistics about lost productivity.

In light of recent evacuation troubles (e.g., Katrina in New Orleans) with anticipated natural disasters, it’s hard to imagine that in a surprise strike on major population centers a nice new ribbon of asphalt would have really meant much to the average citizen.

Still, if you were going to hit the road, a “Survival Car” might have come in handy.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 8:38 am and is filed under Etc., Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Atomic Highways”

  1. Jack Says:
    February 25th, 2009 at 10:14 am

    Outstanding, I’ve been looking for this type of rationalized explanation for some time in a concise form and this ad displays it well. Can you provide access in a pdf form for easier copying?

  2. Ken Lowery Says:
    February 25th, 2009 at 2:01 pm

    When worlds collide…

    Andrew’s done a few great posts on atomic age mania/paranoia, partially to feed my own obsession kickstarted by the video game Fallout 3 (about which here, among other things. It’s him that put me onto Survival City, actually, which I’m looking forward to reading.

  3. Yokota Fritz Says:
    February 25th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    Tom,

    In the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s experience from a past disaster (the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake) that prompts investment into non-highway transportation. The partial collapse of the Bay Bridge and portions of other area highways highlighted the importance of alternate modes of transportation.

  4. Bossi Says:
    February 25th, 2009 at 6:11 pm

    The more I dabbled in evacuation planning, the more convinced I became that in the event of an unanticipated disaster: transport lines to evacuate on could be destroyed, the population to be evacuated could be destroyed, and we may not want to evacuate the population, anyway.

    However, with anticipated events, I must agree with a previous comment with regards to the value of proper planning and mass transportation. Britain’s Operation Pied Piper during WWII was a stellar example of a successful evacuation (though it also provides excellent case material of what could be improved) and even generally highway-based evacuations for hurricanes in America have, by and large, been highly successful.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

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