Cold War Phase II

Cold War Phase II was a thirty-year defensive buildup before the Third World War. Its defining response to the prospect of overkill was to move cities and military infrastructure underground; these preparations shaped the crowded, enclosed world that the war would devastate.

From inevitability to defense

Cold War Phase I ended in the 1970s, when war was considered inevitable. Phase II followed as a period of preparation for surviving overkill. It lasted three decades before the Third World War finally broke out, placing the war at the end of a long interval in which defense—not prevention—organized the response to the expected catastrophe.

Cities beneath the surface

One major undertaking was the construction of subterranean cavern cities, known in planning terminology as canister cities. Public announcements gave these settlements more reassuring names, including Jade City, DownTown, Golden Grotto, North and South Diamond, Onyxville, Sub-City, and East Pyrites. Beneath the Smokies, the enormous North American Continent antimissile complex, Ironwall, was sunk two miles underground. Together, the settlements and military installation show the scale of the attempt to shelter both civilian life and defense infrastructure below the surface.

Enclosure and its consequences

The canister cities became dense environments with few pleasures beyond the ordinary routines of enclosed life. Their inhabitants multiplied, and the population expanded through the cities' tunnels and connecting passages. The protective architecture thus belonged to a wider history of pressure and crowding, not simply a collection of military precautions. When the Third World War came, it followed decades in which people had been preparing for catastrophe while continuing to reproduce within the very underground settlements designed to shelter them.