Survival City: Tom Vanderbilt – Viki

Tom Vanderbilt (born 1968), a renowned American journalist and author has focused his career on writing on topics such as design, science, technology and culture where his most recent bestseller “Traffic: why we drive the way we do” intertwines a multitude of these themes into both an insightful and light hearted novel. In 2002 Vanderbilt published Survival City in which he explores the ruins of atomic America post Cold War and to a certain extent reflects on the events of September 11th.

The central theme of the novel is based on the build up of military conflict (primarily between the USSR and the United States) which led to the development of “sacrificial’’ cities in the United States where its’ only purpose was to be vaporized in the event of a war. As Vanderbilt travels through the country uncovering sites of Cold War architecture as a reader we start to wonder how would one feel knowing that they were the target of a nuclear attack. In the process of revealing the heritage sites that have survived we start to question what the true identity of an American encompassed during that time and whether if civilians were shunned or felt unpatriotic if they were not willing to die for their country for the supposed greater good.

Although the novel displays the senseless and deranged ways that society responds to their inner most fears in securing their survival we should really question if the United States has progressed from the Cold War in which they were in possession of a secret weapon of mass destruction (the nuclear bomb) which was subsequently used on Japan. Parallels can be drawn between the Cold War and to the present day war in Iraq where the United States claims that Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction poses a threat to the nation’s security. However have nations in the past and present such as the USSR and the United States been in actual fear that they have felt a need to prepare and retaliate or rather can we interchange ‘fear’ with ‘power’ and are they really in the quest of showing the rest of the world that their the boss?