Customer Reviews

Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm usually a rather tough grader, but this is the best book I've read in quite some time. Vanderbilt takes us on a lively and diverse tour of cold war America's remaining architectural artifacts (the interstate highway system, bomb shelters, missile silos, misc. military installations - some still in use, nuclear waste sites, etc.) and weaves an analysis of same into an interesting and often surprising commentary on the historical period and the society which gave rise to these structures. For me, the novel perspective of looking at things from an architectural standpoint worked quite well at making the history and those times come alive.

The style is part documentary, part story-telling, part travelogue, part cultural anthropology, and part essay on topics in architecture (generally) which I previously would not have thought about, or thought I had any reason to think about. The approach was successful enough that I found myself frequently being simply and skillfully led to surprising and profound insights, which were a delight. I came away from the book thinking Vanderbilt was an excellent writer with many new and important ideas on the fascinating subject of nuclear weapons, the cold war, and national security generally -- subjects which can easily be made drole, heavy, boring and/or tedious. For many, the so-called atomic era seems long gone and forgotten (and slightly silly in many aspects), but Vanderbilt makes the issues faced then seem relevant to many similar problems facing us today by placing them in a context of continuity. Highly recommended to a broad audience.

One of the characters at the end of the movie Dr. Strangelove intones emphatically, "we must not have a mine..shaft..gap!" In Tom Vanderbilt's Survival City: Adventures Among The Ruins Of Atomic America, the reader gets to explore the actual architecture of the Cold War period. The book is a well-written combination of essay, travelogue, architecture text, and archaeology book. Even though the book is published by the Princton Architectural Press, it is well within the reach of, and should be enjoyable to, people outside the community of architects and architectural enthusiasts. Mr. Vanderbilt set out on his travels because he wanted to know what the Cold War looked like, and even though I'm not sure he found everything he was looking for, it was damn interesting to come along for the ride. My only complaint is that the book lacks an index, which I hope is remedied in later printings. If the potential reader is concerned that the postscript concerning 9/11 is gratuitous or merely an attempt to cash in on the disaster, rest assured that it is an appropriate ending to the book. The remnants of the Nike missile base nearest to where I live was recently removed for an encroaching housing development. I recommend that you read Survival City and then take a trip to look for Atomic America before it's all gone.

Author Tom Vanderbilt takes us around the country examining the evidences left by the Cold War, a war which did and yet didn't happen. From missile silos being destroyed to ones being turned into homes, from "proving grounds" to backyard bomb shelters, Mr. Vanderbilt uncovers sites which often sit right in front of us and simply blend into our landscape in spite of their obviously militaristic features. But he goes beyond the aging and disappearing signs indicating "fallout shelters" and discusses how the threat of nuclear annihilation shaped our cities and our thinking. Cities became the targets, and today's suburbs, often denigrated under the label of "urban sprawl," were a reaction to and a defense against the calamities which befell the densely packed cities of Germany and Japan which proved so fatal during the firebombing raids of WWII. Attempts to fortify buildings, strategies for minimizing casualties, underground cities, interstate highways, early warning systems, NORAD, massive retaliation... it all walks a fine line between critical and absurd, interesting and boring.

I can't help imagining the puzzlement the younger generation must feel at seeing some of these things. Growing up in the 70s and 80s I only saw the end of the Cold War, but the Reagan years witnessed an increase in tensions with the USSR (do younger people even know who that was or what it stood for?) and I recall some events like the local opposition which prevented the deployment of MX missiles in the Utah desert in the late 70s. It also reminded me of movies I saw as a teenager like "War Games" and "The Day After," or music by Sting ("Russians") or Frankie Goes To Hollywood ("Two Tribes") which reflected the contradictions of a peace maintained by the ability of two nations to assure "mutual destruction" of each other within minutes. And yet that seemed to be the reality of the world we lived in, and I thought this book captured that sense very well. Mr. Vanderbilt ends with some sobering observations on how September 11th relates to this struggle to protect ourselves without falling into a "bunker mentality." Overall, an interesting and reflective look at a fading time, a look at the darker side of the optimism and technological advances of the 50s and 60s, with lots of great pictures (all in stark b&w) although maybe not quite 4 stars.

In 1969, shortly after the Atlas ICBM program was shut down, I was a college freshman filled with curiosity who more eagerly explored every silo location near the town where I went to school than I did the subjects in my classes. Inactive for such a short time, they were likely to be in pristine condition if only I could find one that was open. Flooded entrances, welded doors and no trespassing signs usually greeted me so how exciting it was when I finally found one that was wide open and with operating electricity! Someone appeared to live there who, probably fortunately, wasn't home. Unlike so many who followed me and vandalized these places, my policy was look but don't touch and leave everything as you found it.

It was with familiarity, then, that I read Vanderbilt's account of his own descent into an Atlas site of exactly the same design.

Like Vanderbilt, I was always fascinated with the old silos, Nike sites, weapons plants and other military detritus that spoke of great power, huge expense and top security now turned to open ruins left to rot, yet telling a story for the amateur detective to interpret. To think that these crumbling places might have meant The End and that what was now casual climbing might once have meant setting off alarms and being shot by an armed guard.

Vanderbilt's book is not a dry description of the specifications of such ruins (though he does seem to be fond of mentioning the number of inches of thickness of reinforced concrete) but a lively account that puts them in place among the ideas and technologies of the Cold War period. Unlike my often clueless speculations on visits to some of the sites, this author has educated himself and brings along others who can expand his knowledge and ours. For me, it's like a dream come true - to visit the places and have along with you knowledgeable company to answer your questions. This investigation is impressively thorough and filled with the detail that his more recent book, Traffic, also shows. Unlike Traffic, the information provided in Survival City would otherwise be far more difficult to come by. He takes his subject and squeezes it for all the juice it can provide. The pictures are an added treat and illustrate the often stark quality one finds in these places.

This book gives voice to otherwise mute monuments of man's power to destroy and in Vanderbilt's writing they are quite conversational. Survival City will never come close to Traffic in popularity but I think it's a much better book both for the depth of thought that the author shares with his readers and the compelling nature of the subject.

The "Ruins" of the Cold War are fading fast. Time, weather, and man's inattention to preserving history are everyday factors leading to the eventual disappearance of the relics of the cold war infastructure. Survival City is a facinating look at some of these relics and how and why they were developed. It is a very interesting journey and I really enjoyed reading this book because like the author, I too enjoy looking for, and finding these cold war artifacts. Thank you for a facinating and interesting journey into Atomic America.

Tom Vanderbilt's book is not only factual, but provides a riveting adventure through the remnants of America's Cold War. His writing is compelling. What he reveals is astonishing, and the pictures placed through out the book give the story crucial details that portray the reality of the Cold War in a way that words simply cannot articulate. The book draws you in and changes your perspective on and knowledge of history as well as the residue that coats America today.

A terrible book. I thought I was reading a book on Architecture and how to build buildings and or cities. The only adventures this author saw was looking out of a window or walking around some ruins that he was trying to make exciting and the only things that kept us out of the Atomic War. This was not an adventure, but a boring trip down a college Architectural course.

Tom Vanderbilt would love to be an architect. He's constantly critical of 1950's architecture - wherever he finds it.

With surprisingly little technical knowledge, he tours testing grounds and bunkers. But it's not all Atomic America: he has the same commentary towards Arcosanti and Biosphere. Where I yearn for a storyline, he delivers watered down architecural critique.

Vanderbilt's writing seems to follow this algorithm: Begin a paragraph using a sentence with an odd phrase in quotations. Then refute this with an academic argument. The first dozen times are fun. A whole book written in this style is tedious.

The 1950's nuclear crazyness presents a rich lode for research. The subject (and readers) deserves much more.

I found this book SO interesting! Tom Vanderbilt has unearthed amazing information about the country's mind set during the Cold War.