Map of Atlantis?
Posted by Hiraghm 12 years, 2 months ago to The Gulch: General
See, while I'm at work, especially when I'm listening to the book or movies, I get ideas, then I get home and get sleepy and forget to bring them up.
Does anyone know of a map or blueprint for Atlantis? Not a map to the gulch, or map of the area where the gulch is supposed to be, but layout plans of the city?
Does anyone know of a map or blueprint for Atlantis? Not a map to the gulch, or map of the area where the gulch is supposed to be, but layout plans of the city?
I go back to the one thing Ayn Rand said in an interview on the subject, namely: the Uncompahgre River Valley, and the town of Ouray, Colorado, that sits on the valley floor. It has the Red Mountains to the south--and red means copper, so we may assume that Francisco d'Anconia drove his mine into it. And Midas cutting off access? Of course: he destroys the Million Dollar Highway--"re-wilds it," however ironical that sounds--and camouflages the route out of town to the north.
I'd say assume MIdas tore down the "touristy" buildings, built his home near the hot springs that give the valley its name (the name given it by the Ute Indians), and go from there.
Last I heard, Ouray had a population of a thousand. Does that give anyone any ideas?
I was thinking more along the lines of 30k.
Seems to me that you got a relative handful. Now I won't deny that a number of anonymous people did go to Atlantis, other than those John Galt explicitly named. Take Dagny's brakeman aboard the Comet, the one she caught whistling Richard Halley's Fifty Concerto. He was, I'm sure, one of many similar examples.
On the other hand, the only Prime Movers I could see bringing people with them whom John Galt did not explicitly invite were Francisco d'Anconia and Henry Rearden. Francisco evaculated the best and brightest from D/Anconia Copper SA, and Hank Rearden set an example that "God knows how many" of his workforce followed. Then, too, there were Ragnar Danneskjöld's officers and crew. (Though this crew did not build homes in Atlantis until after the Rescue.)
Still...thirty thousand? I would have fighred two thousand, tops.
Recall that Francisco told Dagny that manpower was at a premium. So he had to design mining machines with elaborate servo systems so that one man could do the work of ten.
Even the Soviet Union survived 70 years of rule by looters and moochers. They were miserable years, but the collapse had to be precipitated by outside forces that don't exist in the AS world.
But--well, I would probably be one of those A students who couldn't get a job because he wouldn't accept the prevailing twisted notion of how the world worked. And I've always figured there were only a relative handful of us who had not only the knowledge but also the *wisdom* to reject the twisted notions and could form the nucleus of a real Atlantis.
And look at the state of the political debate today. You know what's happening? I see a bunch of James Taggarts yelling their heads off and saying "It wouldn't hurt you to do something!" They are accusing their political opponents of deliberate sabotage-by-omission. Which was the very thing John Galt did.
Anyway, I was thinking maybe 100 of these producers, and perhaps 10-50 times that many in others who know the value of their worth, to make a functioning town, separate from the failed world...
The speed of economic and social decay suggested in AS is unrealistic.
But, if you take out the really productive and creative, and the sloppy thinkers get a free hand, then down is the only way to go.
Consider, Europe and Venezuela today.
How true... My favorite object of the difference between socialist hell and a prosperous industrial population is... wait for it...
Moscow. Really.
it was once a great capitol city that, under the socialista looter marxist society, became a dumpy slum (if you doubt, look at the 5 story "Kruchev Flats" and the deterioration of that 70 year era still present all over the city)... since the return of Capitalism to Russia (something they celebrate with great gusto every year in June, BTW) the city, once dead, drab, and dreary, is starting to teem with life, opportunity, and excitement again... One can really feel it in the air, and it is one of the few places in "Europe" that if I had to live there, I feel I could prosper there as well. And for a right wing commie hating enterpreneuer, raised during the cold war by good, objectivist parents, to say I could live in the once-capitol of the center of the morass of socialist hell is surprising to me. Its one of the few places I've seens where with guts, determination, and drive, one can go from a nobody to prosperous... by the hard work and determination of their minds and hands.
Europe... Much of South America... Asia... dare I say Australia... is following each other to the morass. Even the US... sadly... tragically... look where our "enlightened, socially responsible" government will lead us if it continues on this same path...
These were, until the mass exodus cased by the interstate highway system, very self reliant places. Self contained and Places where about every skill could be found. From a machine shop to grocer. Places were the high school parking lot also had a place to tie up your horse in a small coral and if you looked close a few of the trucks in the lot had shotguns and a rifle in a rack on the back window - for hunting on the way home or practice on the school rifle team.. Where TV was brought in on a antenna and on a clear day you might get three channels and the word "darn" was never heard.
It was the the sort of town I grew up in, but it's pretty much all gone now. All that's left are the dry bones and fear soaked old women.