The Gradual Atlantis
September 7, 2016 12:05 PM   Subscribe

When Will New York Sink? Even locals who believe climate change is real have a hard time grasping that their city will almost certainly be flooded beyond recognition: The deluge will begin slowly, and irregularly, and so it will confound human perceptions of change. Areas that never had flash floods will start to experience them, in part because global warming will also increase precipitation. High tides will spill over old bulkheads when there is a full moon. People will start carrying galoshes to work. All the commercial skyscrapers, housing, cultural institutions that currently sit near the waterline will be forced to contend with routine inundation. And cataclysmic floods will become more common, because, to put it simply, if the baseline water level is higher, every storm surge will be that much stronger. {...} Like a stumbling boxer, the city will try to keep its guard up, but the sea will only gain strength.

Special Research Scientist Klaus Jacob of Columbia University's Earth Institute, predictor of the Hurricane Sandy subway storm-surge, has been called a Cassandra, but he is only one of many scientists trying to convince the city's urban planners to adapt to climate change and save the city.
posted by Doktor Zed (81 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
The fact that Red Hook became a hot place to live after Sandy is mind-blowing.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:14 PM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


So I guess it will be like living in Venice.
posted by Gwynarra at 12:20 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Gondolas > Segways I'm just saying.
posted by resurrexit at 12:28 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Venice doesn't have hurricanes (although with climate change, it is experiencing more tornadoes).
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:29 PM on September 7, 2016


I'm quite aware of what's coming; I figure my inland CT-based landlords will try to find a way to get me out of my north Bronx apartment that's in a neighborhood on a hill that much sooner.

Well. And the Midwest is out because everyone will want to live in an area with fresh water and pristine beaches. Alaska, it is. Thank goodness I can work remotely.

All joking aside, i do expect a massive influx by coastal Americans to the Great Lakes region in the next 20 years. Part of me thinks I should go back to Milwaukee now, while the getting's good. I'll need to grow old somewhere.
posted by droplet at 12:32 PM on September 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Jack Shafer for Slate, Sep 7 2005 [slightly adapted]:

"Nobody can deny [New York's] cultural primacy or its historical importance. But before we refloat the sunken city... let's investigate what sort of place [climate change] destroyed...

"[New York] puts the 'D' into dysfunctional. Only a sadist would insist on resurrecting this concentration of poverty, crime, and deplorable schools. Yet that's what [New York's] cheerleaders—both natives and [bagel]-eating tourists—are advocating. They predict that once they drain the water and scrub the city clean, they'll restore [New York] to its former 'glory.'

"Only one politician, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, dared question the wisdom of rebuilding [New York] as it was, where it was. On Wednesday, Aug. 31, while meeting with the editorial board of the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill., he cited the geographical insanity of rebuilding [New York]. 'That doesn't make sense to me. … And it's a question that certainly we should ask.'

"'It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed,' Hastert added."
posted by koeselitz at 12:33 PM on September 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


[p.s. I like New York and do not think it should be bulldozed]
posted by koeselitz at 12:33 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Maybe New York should look at this.
posted by Pendragon at 12:37 PM on September 7, 2016


Never underestimate the stupidity of humanity.

I saw a National Geographic model the other day that showed Philadelphia eventually underwater. The good news is my job, and most of my coworker's jobs can be done remotely, so all we would need to do in preparation is move IT infrastructure off-site, and that's totally do-able, even in a short period of time what with cloud storage and all.

It used to be the question of what do we do to stop the effects of climate change. Thanks to ignorance, we're already beyond that at this point. It's just preparation time now. The dumbass climate change deniers I'm sure will blame this on God's wrath or some such nonsense. My only consolation prize will be enjoying watching them tread water.
posted by prepmonkey at 12:40 PM on September 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


droplet, I am seriously horrified by the notion of what a wave of ultra-gentrification would do to Milwaukee.
posted by The Gaffer at 12:40 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Cool, so I'll be able to afford an apartment
posted by Automocar at 12:40 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


and this is why Portland needs to build a wall. NYC + Florida + SE coastal residents + SW inland climate refugees. It's going to be Children of Men, but with some children. We can survive on rations in the Nike compound
posted by Auden at 12:41 PM on September 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


he is only one of many scientists trying to convince the city's urban planners to adapt to climate change and save the city

They won't care about the science, but they'll likely be convinced by real estate developers, as the insurance companies keep raising their premiums.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:44 PM on September 7, 2016


Models of future flooding along the Eastern seaboard have been available for some time now. NY is expected to get flooding at its lower end, ie, Battery Park, and not the entire city...At the other end of the country, Miami is to get flooding, with Norfolk, our huge naval base, also being flooded (though of course the ships there are ok)...Additionally, warmer waters are killing off fish etc in the oceans. Draughts, stronger storms, and, in the Middle East, severe rises in temperatures (around 125+) are in the offing. NY officials, aware of this have drawn plans to prevent subway flooding etc but thus far nothing seems to have come of this planning.
posted by Postroad at 1:01 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


i was literally just making this post

u monster
posted by poffin boffin at 1:20 PM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


I guess I don't have a good mental image of NYC (only been once) but isn't a good portion of the infrastructure (subways, electrical vaults, sewers etc.) underground? I guess it was OK during Sandy so it can't be that big of a deal, or they have sufficient pumps to deal with flooding... but Sandy stopped. Rising water isn't going to.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 1:32 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


The NYC floodmap, as Postroad notes. Know your zone! As folks who lived here during Sandy can attest, that map isn't kidding around.

Also surprised to read that folks think nothing is being done by the MTA in response to inevitable future flooding. Here's an update from just a couple weeks ago regarding where their improvement work is. That improvement work includes the L train shutdown.

Here's another interview with Daniel Zarrilli, head of the Resilience & Recovery department in NYC. It takes a while, but the New York magazine article linked in the OP eventually ditches Klaus Jacob's constant Chicken Little-esque doomsaying and just talks to Zarrilli about what's actually being done.

I mean...it's not satisfying to see where we're at, realistically. Massive portions of NYC will flood and we'll be playing catch-up for the rest of our lives. (And seriously Tesla what made you think it's a good idea to build a showroom in Red Hook?!?) But it's not a problem that is being ignored, or not taken seriously.
posted by greenland at 1:34 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


i was literally just making this post

u monster


Looks like that idea...

*fumbles for sunglasses*

went out with the tide.
posted by percor at 1:41 PM on September 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


I guess it was OK during Sandy so it can't be that big of a deal, or they have sufficient pumps to deal with flooding... but Sandy stopped. Rising water isn't going to.

It wasn't okay. Nine subway tubes flooded, causing pretty significant damage that the MTA is still in the process of fixing. The subways were entirely closed for 2 days while they pumped the water out of the most important parts, and parts of the system were closed longer than that. And ever since then they've been closing tubes for months at a time and suspending service to replace all the signals and other bits that were damaged. And this is just getting them to where they were before they flooded--flood protection is still on the drawing board.

If hundred year storms become once every 20 year storms, I don't know how New York continues to function.
posted by Automocar at 1:43 PM on September 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


with Norfolk, our huge naval base, also being flooded (though of course the ships there are ok)

As with Miami, this is already happening. Large parts of Norfolk are inundated after heavy rain or just a particularly high tide, never mind a storm surge situation. Oh, also, did I mention that we use tunnels instead of bridges to get across our many waterways?
posted by indubitable at 1:45 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I guess it was OK during Sandy so it can't be that big of a deal, or they have sufficient pumps to deal with flooding... but Sandy stopped.

My recollection is that a whole lot of the underground copper telephone infrastructure was damaged, particularly where it all met up inside central offices (not great when the wires use paper insulation).
posted by indubitable at 1:48 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


This image from Sandy has stuck with me. Note the illustration of the areas reclaimed from the Hudson that the water is inching toward.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:51 PM on September 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Never mind New York. I'm looking forward to surfing between the absnfoned, crumbling skyscrapers of Malibu or San Diego.
posted by happyroach at 2:03 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


And the Midwest is out because everyone will want to live in an area with fresh water and pristine beaches.
posted by droplet at 8:32 PM on September 7


Eponysterical.

But, wait, what? Iowa has plenty of lakes, as well as lots of roomy property for under 200K, is becoming more self-sufficient in power, and has a cooler t-shirt company (more) than any trendy liberal coastal city. Also pork tenderloin.
posted by Wordshore at 2:05 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


*that's the joke*
posted by percor at 2:13 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


All joking aside, i do expect a massive influx by coastal Americans to the Great Lakes region in the next 20 years. Part of me thinks I should go back to Milwaukee now, while the getting's good. I'll need to grow old somewhere.

I'd say more like 40 years. Before then they'll keep moving to Arizona for some inexplicable reason.

We need to get started on that wall. I'm still trying to think of a decent Shibboleth:

"Michigan or Ohio State?"
"Eh, I don't care really."
"Get the hell out, and take your disturbingly thin pizza with you!"
posted by percor at 2:16 PM on September 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


I hear Homer, Alaska is the next Portland.
posted by Lyme Drop at 2:19 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


In 2011, while working on a government panel, Jacob produced a study that mapped how subway tunnels would be inundated in the event of a hurricane. The next year, he was proved right. After Sandy, Jacob was hailed as a prophet.

“Nature cooperated — at first timidly, with Irene, and then a little bit more forcefully with Sandy. And God forbid what’s next,” Jacob told me. “One way or another, we get educated, and it’s much cheaper to listen once in a while to engineers and scientists.”


This phrasing is really weird, like Jacob was pleased to be proven correct. What is it with these doomsayers who are so pleased with themselves when things start going sideways?
posted by Existential Dread at 2:22 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


All joking aside, i do expect a massive influx by coastal Americans to the Great Lakes region in the next 20 years. Part of me thinks I should go back to Milwaukee now, while the getting's good. I'll need to grow old somewhere.

I'd say more like 40 years. Before then they'll keep moving to Arizona for some inexplicable reason.


I'd go with 40 years as well because people will want probably want Illinois to have a budget before they move to the state and that's about when they will get around to doing 2015's.
posted by srboisvert at 2:30 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Yeah, and a prophet? It's not like God spoke to him in a cave and revealed the elevation of NYC infrastructure. He did an analysis based on available data.
posted by indubitable at 2:30 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Eh, I'm not too worried actually. Sandy did a number on things for sure but a lot of the destruction has been rebuilt more sturdily or in many cases simply not rebuilt at all. For one example, the copper telephone system, which relied on positive pressure to keep water out, being replaced by fiber which mostly doesn't care. Other little things like ~every major commercial building in FiDi getting its own method of waterproofing from erectable flood walls to water-tight street-level doors to raising curbs. The subway is exploring several options.

On a larger scale, the city has already greenlit a $350 million flood protection system called the Big U and there are plans afoot for a much, much larger $5.9 billion storm surge barrier. [previously].

Don't get me wrong, another Sandy would be a shitshow but I don't think it would have the kind of decade-long aftershocks that the first one did. And for sure the third one would be a piece of cake. There's a *lot* of money tied up in real estate that isn't going to put up with mere forces of nature.
posted by Skorgu at 2:39 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Wait until Scott Walker is ousted, then move back to Milwaukee. You could come hang out in the Twin Cities until then.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:39 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


skyscrapers of Malibu

?
posted by Monochrome at 2:47 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Wait until Scott Walker is ousted, then move back to Milwaukee. You could come hang out in the Twin Cities until then.

You mean when he's elected President?
posted by skyscraper at 2:53 PM on September 7, 2016


It's OK; they can just raise the city level, like what they did with Galveston 100+ years ago. You can build it on top of the city as it is now, and you can call the new city New New York.

The best part is that current New York will still be inhabitable by sewer mutants. Win-win!
posted by Huffy Puffy at 3:01 PM on September 7, 2016 [22 favorites]


I have this map, of San Francisco after 200' of sea level rise (the lower end estimate of the contribution from a melted Greenland ice sheet), on my bathroom wall. It's a good daily meditation piece.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 3:03 PM on September 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


I'm half seriously wondering how much it would cost for the entire city to annex higher ground and relocate.
posted by Monochrome at 3:07 PM on September 7, 2016


That is to say, lots and lots of money but NYC is also the home of lots and lots of money.
posted by Monochrome at 3:08 PM on September 7, 2016


NYC is the most important city in the world (I write this as someone who grew up in Chicago and live in LA). There's no way it winds up underwater.
posted by persona au gratin at 3:10 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


That's amazing they found a old shipwreck in the rubble after 9/11.
posted by persona au gratin at 3:17 PM on September 7, 2016


NYC is the most important city in the world (I write this as someone who grew up in Chicago and live in LA). There's no way it winds up underwater.

Uh, okay? I can think of several ways in combination. General sea level rise from ice sheet melt, the expansion of water in a warmer world, the fact that the rise is larger on the coast of New England than say here in Washington, stronger storm surges, stronger storms and more of them, heavier precipitation from non-hurricane sources, and the fact that our most conservative models are proving to be inaccurate and our most extreme models (3.5 C warming and higher) are looking more and more accurate by the year. It will happen. It's happening now.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:17 PM on September 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


We need to get started on that wall. I'm still trying to think of a decent Shibboleth:

I cross the border between Ontario and Michigan quite often, and have a running joke about what "customs" should be like when coming into Michigan:

"Where do you go on holiday weekends?"

"Up North."

"You need to bring beer to a party. Where do you stop on the way?"

"A party store."

"Faygo is..."

"A kind of pop."

"Finish this phrase: Win Schuler's—"

"Bar Scheeze."

"You're visiting the Dunes. Which lake are you on?"

"Michigan."

"You take a tour of the Dunes. The name of the tour company is:"

"Mac Woods."

"Where do you live?"

*lifts right hand and points*

"South til you smell it, east til you step in it."

"Directions to Ohio State."

Customs officer hands back ID, says, "Welcome home," waves you on.
posted by not that girl at 3:20 PM on September 7, 2016 [27 favorites]


Isn't there tonnes of historical precedent for rebuilding a city on top of a city that's been destroyed through natural disaster?

I vaguely thought that was the story of almost every major European city.
posted by Silentgoldfish at 3:21 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Rome used to think it was pretty important too. The Earth doesn't recognise how important we think particular conglomerations of glass and steel are.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:24 PM on September 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


For a long time Manhattanites have been complacent about that $24 land trade business, but guess who's going to haves the last laugh?
posted by BlueHorse at 3:38 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Good news, the Great Lakes region is ready for you! They've been razing entire neighborhoods and building condos here in Cleveland for 5+ years. And now we're winners!

Now someone please tell me where I'm supposed to move. Hmm, Pittsburgh might work.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 3:42 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Wait until Scott Walker is ousted, then move back to Milwaukee.

Dont count on it. In the dystopic post-global warming Wisconsin, Scott Walker will be eternal emperor governor. His governor's mansion will be filled with God's life support equipment, and a thousand Cheeseheads a day will be sacrificed to keep his desiccated body alive.

So I dunno. You might want to try North Dakota instead. That will only have roving bands of mutants.
posted by happyroach at 3:51 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


And seriously Tesla what made you think it's a good idea to build a showroom in Red Hook?!?
Funny, saltwater seems to be good for it!
posted by mccarty.tim at 3:52 PM on September 7, 2016


I'm reminded of a passage from The World Without Us:
Below 131st Street and Lenox Avenue, for example, a rising underground river is corroding the bottom of the A, B, C and D subway lines. Constantly, men in reflective vests and denim rough-outs... are clambering around beneath the city to deal with the fact that under New York, groundwater is gradually rising.

Whenever it rains hard, sewers clog with storm debris... and the water, needing to go somewhere, plops down the nearest subway stairs. Add a nor'easter, and the surging Atlantic Ocean bangs against New York's water table until, in places like Water Street in lower Manhattan or Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, it backs right up into the tunnels, shutting everything down until it subsides. Should the ocean continue to warm and rise even faster than the current inch per decade, at some point it simply won't subside. Schuber and Biffa have no idea what will happen then.

Add to all that the 1930's water mains the frequently burst, and the only thing that has kept New York from flooding already is the incessant vigilance of its subway crews and 753 pumps. Think about those pumps: New York's subway system, an engineering marvel in 1903, was laid under an already-existing, burgeoning city. As that city already had sewer lines, the only place for subways to go was under them. "So," explains Schuber, "we have to pump uphill." In this, New York is not alone. Cities like London, Moscow and Washington build their subways far deeper, often to double as bomb shelters. Therein lies much potential disaster.

Shading his eyes with his white hard hat, Schuber peers down into a square pit beneath the Van Siclen Avenue station in Brooklyn, where each minute 650 gallons of natural groundwater gush from the bedrock. Gesturing over the roaring cascade, he indicates four submersible cast-iron pumps that take turns laboring against gravity to stay ahead. Such pumps run on electricity. When the pumps fail, things can get difficult very fast. Following the World Trade Center attack, an emergency pump train bearing a jumbo portable generator pumped out 27 times the volume of Shea Stadium. Had the Hudson River actually burst through the PATH train tunnels that connect New York's subways to New Jersey, as was greatly feared, the pump train- and possibly much of the city- would simply have been overwhelmed.
posted by BungaDunga at 3:57 PM on September 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Rome used to think it was pretty important too. The Earth doesn't recognise how important we think particular conglomerations of glass and steel are.

It still is. Are you thinking of Pompeii?
posted by jaduncan at 4:03 PM on September 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


I have this map, of San Francisco after 200' of sea level rise (the lower end estimant of the contribution from a melted Greenland ice sheet), on my bathroom wall. It's a good daily meditation piece.

I thought the 200' rise was for Antarctica, Greenland was 20', I mean 20' would be terrible enough.
posted by coust at 4:19 PM on September 7, 2016


I'm wading here! I'm wading here!

Dam' commuters and tourists, paddling in the kayak lane on 8th...
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 4:23 PM on September 7, 2016


I can remember a flood in the early 1970s that flooded the subway station at Canal and West Broadway almost up to the top of the steps at sidewalk level. I can remember looking down those steps and seeing the water a few feet below the ceiling. The light bulbs were still burning. It was awesomely surreal. As I recall, the flooding was widespread throughout lower Manhattan. Does anyone else remember this? You'd think it would be legendary, like Sandy. But I suppose New York City was already so apocalyptically dysfunctional at that time, that it was just another day's craziness.
posted by Modest House at 4:35 PM on September 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yay for living inland?
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:38 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


You might want to try North Dakota instead. That will only have roving bands of mutants.

Well, we could certainly use some sane liberals to balance out the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing inbreds that swept in with the oil boom and now with the bust are too poor to move out. Not to mention a governor and legislative majority that are bought and paid for by Harold Hamm and John Hess. Of course, a majority of the locals suffer from the same fate that bedevils Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota: decades of media saturation from the right have turned families once proudly progressive for generations into folks who hurry home for Glen Beck. I've got neighbors that now swear to Jebus that Obama is still coming for their guns. They also fly a Trump 2016 flag. I am not bullshitting.

I was born in this state and I'll likely die here but damn I miss being surrounded by sane people like I was in the twenty years we lived in Minnesota.

But provided big oil doesn't fuck us up and that's a big if, we've got plenty of fresh water. There's some massive aquifers running under us and that'll be a hot commodity in the End Times. Again, provided big oil doesn't fuck us up.
posted by Ber at 4:49 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I cross the border between Ontario and Michigan quite often, and have a running joke about what "customs" should be like when coming into Michigan:

"Coney Island is..."

"a Greek Diner with awesome hot dogs that require a fork."
posted by percor at 5:14 PM on September 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's going to be Children of Men, but with some children. We can survive on rations in the Nike compound

Do we get to eat the children? And those Nike people are stringy- no fat!
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 5:37 PM on September 7, 2016


I don't get why people hate on the Midwest so much. Have y'all never been to Colorado? It's fucking gorgeous and will be a great place to live during the climate apocalypse.
posted by a strong female character at 7:58 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Boston Magazine recently did a similar review of how Boston will fare with rising seas. Not very well, of course.
posted by adamg at 8:01 PM on September 7, 2016


I was checking a sea-level rise simulator and it looks like climate change may actually be the thing that forces the New South Wales government to move Sydney Airport, as even a 1m rise causes it to become distinctly puddley.
posted by um at 8:53 PM on September 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Dont count on it. In the dystopic post-global warming Wisconsin, Scott Walker will be eternal emperor governor. His governor's mansion will be filled with God's life support equipment, and a thousand Cheeseheads a day will be sacrificed to keep his desiccated body alive.

CHEESE FOR THE CHEESE GOD! CURDS FOR THE CURD THRONE!
posted by Ghidorah at 8:56 PM on September 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


So I gather those offended by 'flyover state' will soon be referring to 'boatover states'?
posted by pompomtom at 8:58 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Houseboat States
posted by Ghidorah at 8:59 PM on September 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


It still is. Are you thinking of Pompeii?

Rome is once again a large city, but between the Roman Empire and the sixteenth century, it spent more than one thousand consecutive years with a population under one hundred thousand, with a nadir estimated at twelve to twenty thousand.
posted by Fongotskilernie at 9:17 PM on September 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


Rome is once again a large city, but between the Roman Empire and the sixteenth century, it spent more than one thousand consecutive years with a population under one hundred thousand, with a nadir estimated at twelve to twenty thousand.

Yes, and regarding human geography/politics that's interesting...however it's still full of stunning classical-era buildings because no natural disasters I'm aware of have occurred, and hence my confusion in the context of the post.
posted by jaduncan at 11:22 PM on September 7, 2016


It did burn, but that was a man-made disaster.
posted by maxsparber at 4:00 AM on September 8, 2016


Look, there is a very good reason to keep NYC alive and thriving.

Have you ever seen Jersey Shore? It's hard to miss, they had six friggin' seasons and Snooki was in a match at Wrestlemania and everythin'. So anyways.

New York is where half of those people came from. Jersey beaches aren't where they live; it's a containment zone. Now, if the Bronx is underwater that means Jersey's even deeper, ya know? So these people need to go somewhere. They can't go east unless they grow gills. So what's left? They're comin' west. They're comin' to where YOU are. That's right. A plague of Snookies on your friggin' town. You hearin' me?

So take your pick. Either build a wall to keep the water outta New York or build one outside your town. And it better be a big wall 'cause I hear Pauly D can climb real good.
posted by delfin at 6:31 AM on September 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


I don't get why people hate on the Midwest so much. Have y'all never been to Colorado? It's fucking gorgeous and will be a great place to live during the climate apocalypse.

I made an FPP about this a couple years back but to me Colorado is definitely not in the Midwest. (The eastern part of it is flatter and resembles Nebraska much more than the west, but the eastern part is generally also not the part that people describe as "fucking gorgeous" most of the time.)
posted by andrewesque at 6:58 AM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Rome used to think it was pretty important too.

Protestant!
posted by Segundus at 7:53 AM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


delfin, no worries! The Bronx is on a moraine. I think half the reason people don't want to move here at the moment is how many hills one has to walk up to get anywhere, especially in Kingsbridge. Oof.

If anyone knows how to keep people out of a place, it's the good citizens of the Bronx, especially in Riverdale. Riverdale has that "keep the hoi polloi OUT!" down to a science, tbh. Westchester, I don't know. Perhaps if any come up that way, they can all be lured to the Empire City Casino and Raceway complex in Yonkers. They wouldn't know what hit them, but then again, they wouldn't care.

So the rest of the country is reasonably safe for now.
posted by droplet at 8:10 AM on September 8, 2016


Stay out of Milwaukee! I can rent a circa-1925 craftsman-style three bedroom with fenced in yard for ~$1000.
posted by AFABulous at 10:40 AM on September 8, 2016


I don't get why people hate on the Midwest so much.

i don't hate on it but i do get very uneasy being landlocked. being near a lake or river does not apply in this situation, only sea coasts provide that feeling of relative safety. i attribute this to ancestral memories of the white ppl coming to set me on fire.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:14 AM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Summerisle was on the ocean and a fat lot of good it did Sgt. Howie.
posted by maxsparber at 11:24 AM on September 8, 2016


i'm not ascairt of bees, i am bee frand
posted by poffin boffin at 5:12 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Milwaukee has a Calatrava, you can move there with your cred intact.

I have long thought buying land along the Spoon River (nice fertile farmland on High ground with a four season river and a literary reference) is the best apocalypse bet, but farmland around here is now $6200/acre for average yields and FUCK THAT NOISE, at that price joining a roving band of land pirates is obviously the better option.

Did you know some of the subway pumps in NYC are over 100 years old and come from the Panama Canal construction? I guess after Sandy everyone knows that and it is no longer an obscure fact.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:04 AM on September 9, 2016


I don't get why people hate on the Midwest so much.

I've been saying for years that this is about the best damn place to live. The fewer people who know it, the better.
posted by slogger at 11:13 AM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've spent half of my adult life away from Minnesota and I increasingly think that's the half I wasted.
posted by maxsparber at 11:26 AM on September 9, 2016


I've had the "is the Rockies region Midwest or not" discussion before, and I know a lot of people consider further east to be the Midwest, but I just always think of everything between the coasts as Midwest. And that's where I'm from so I'll keep calling it that.

And yes, I'm thoroughly familiar with Colorado and I know that it's not 100% beautiful and perfect everywhere. But goddamn, it still has a lot going for it. When I'm fed up with the east coast, I intend to settle permanently in Colorado.
posted by a strong female character at 3:18 PM on September 10, 2016


For all you people talking about moving to Alaska, most of our major cities are coastal. Pretty much Fairbanks is your only city of size to choose from. It is a collage town, but not so much with the bohemian flair. My town is 3 ft above sea level, but if I go 7 miles I'm at 3000 feet.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 7:29 PM on September 10, 2016


My brother lives in Fairbanks...you have to be cool with -40 and below (celsius or farenheit? First one, then the other) if you want to live there.
posted by Existential Dread at 11:41 AM on September 11, 2016


NYC is the most important city in the world (I write this as someone who grew up in Chicago and live in LA). There's no way it winds up underwater.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level waves stretch far away.

posted by traveler_ at 3:43 PM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


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