Just an idea
There are 63 states, provinces, & territories scattered across the 4,600,000,000 or so acres of our American estate, which is to say, north of the Rio Grande. (I have excluded the larger bodies of fresh water, but included adjoining islands. Greenland, however, I leave to the Danes.) These in turn are gathered under two federal governments, as the consequence of unfortunate misunderstandings, 2.37 centuries ago, which resulted in a breakaway federal government.
There are approximately 3,400 counties, county-like municipal aggregations, or census county equivalents, across this area. They are hard to count. The Yukon, for instance, is just one big, seriously underpopulated, “census division.” Delaware has only three counties, but these are divided into county-sized “hundreds.” And across the American West, county lines were drawn at a time when everywhere was like the Yukon, minus Whitehorse; for even the native Indians were not so numerous.
Gentle reader may have his own aesthetic preferences, but I flinch at provincial, state, & county lines that were drawn with a ruler; to say nothing of that long monotonous mark along the 49th parallel. The lot lines followed, as smaller polygons within these, & the human enterprise was thus shaped by the ruler, as opposed to hoof, hand & eye. One may fly over Saskatchewan, for instance, counting the quarter sections from the wingtip of the aeroplane against the second hand on a watch, to determine one’s ground speed. For that matter, one can do it in a bus. This will get me a beating from Kate McMillan, perhaps, but I think it is sinful to ignore the natural contours in the land, even where they are subtle. For did you know that even Saskatchewan contains irregularities? That rivers & creeks craze the flattest Prairie?
The roads followed, straight. Here in Upper Canada, in a human landscape constructed by hurried surveyors generations after the Thirteen Colonies had been sorted & countified, one cannot help but say Aves for the late road builders. They pushed the line roads through the most discouraging obstacles, as if to vindicate the rationalism of the Enlightenment. Then died before they could add a few diagonals, for fun. Even the Romans would alter the trajectory of a road, to avoid a cliff or a swamp. Not our guys.
Along the Atlantic, where settlement came earlier, & followed European models by habit, the counties are much smaller, & rather more “organic.” Within the first thirteen United States, Vermont, southern Quebec, & the Canadian Maritimes, the county units are almost invariably smaller than the old counties in England, or the shire equivalents under the Continent’s ancient regimes. I think the reason is that the European units evolved over centuries of human habitation. Whereas here, cutting through the great primaeval forests, distances seemed greater than they were. But also our first settlers, coming from lower strata in the European pecking order, were accustomed to greater coziness.
Jefferson wanted the surveyors to parcel the American West into townships six nautical miles square. (He miscalculated the nautical mile, incidentally.) Eight statute miles square (i.e. 64 square miles) seems to have been the ideal of the Loyalist surveyors taking possession of Upper Canada, pulling their mental strings through the wilderness of “killer trees” — & their killer roots, & the killer stones, that the pioneers then danced with.
Out on one branch of my family tree, I have “Late Loyalists” who spent 20 years manually clearing an acreage of wood to make farm near Zanesville, Ohio; only then to discover they had no freehold, just a lease. Simple people, & easy marks, they had not understood the fine print that progressive city folk like to insinuate into contracts. The bank having taken back the land they’d cleared, they started up again — near Sudbury, Ontario, on lots generously donated by Her Majesty. Readers who have never seen exposed igneous rock on Precambrian Shield will be unable to appreciate how optimistic they were. Or how thick.
Man being the measure of all things — hence the “fathom,” halved to the “yard”; the feet & inches, the pounds & ounces we find throughout pre-modern cultures, East & West — let us observe that the centre of a typical North American township is in reasonable walking distance from its boundary; that of a county within horse-riding distance, allowing plenty of time for business & return on the same day. So that, now we have discovered horses, I would say a county is probably small enough.
It has something like a natural size, usually in the doubling range of 16 to 32 miles square (256 to 1024 square miles) — bigger when there is wasteland to distribute, much much smaller in the case of tightly packed urban “boroughs.” The unit or its equivalent is traceable through many settled cultures, & probably for this reason: that it is big enough to fit dozens, even hundreds of parishes, yet, no part of it is unreachable from any other part, by pre-mechanical means. And therefore it can be fully imagined by its inhabitants, & identified with, at the autochthonic level, anchored deep below the winds of nationalist & chauvinist abstraction. It is “a country,” as our ancestors often called it.
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I have been presenting all this in purely “secular” terms. A County is of course the domain of an Earl or Count; technically to be distinguished from the Duchy of a Duke, the Marquisate of a Marquis, &c — these latter of superior importance on account of their Lords, but still in the same range of sizes.
In the episcopal polity we have dioceses, subdivided into parishes. The dioceses & parishes of North America today are a fine mess, having been laid down usually before the natural patterns of settlement were established; & when rejigged, by bureaucratic committee. In later Mediaeval England, the dioceses & counties roughly corresponded, putting a magnificent Cathedral at the heart of each. There were 27 dioceses & thus 27 cathedrals (which is to overlook grand abbeys & other major churches) on the eve of the Reformation, by my count. In France there were 136, but France was four times the area, & back then, five times the population of little England. Looking over the rest of 15th-century Europe, we get some notion of natural scales, once society has settled. I think I can recommend the county/diocese as a “natural unit of governance”: the scale on which to build our new, Church-obedient, “nation states.”
Parishes corresponded to villages, with their surrounding fields & commons; or to neighbourhoods within the towns: the scale at which everyone once knew everyone else by name. The idea of a parish would be very hard to improve upon, as the basic unit of self-government below the county & above the family level; which indeed it was in that older & more civilized Christendom. It is the only scale at which direct democracy is even possible; for as the Greeks knew, beyond a certain maximum number, integral social relations break down. Five thousand inhabitants was their ideal for a completely autonomous city state; but as Christians discovered, this is too large. Think dozens to hundreds for a parish, or one thousand at the outside urban extreme. Think what will fit into a single parish church.
The natural size of a parish I learnt from walking around England, & across Europe (often along the footpaths & rights-of-way, that descend from the Middle Ages, & are likely as not to take you from one parish church directly to another). The parish will be one, two, three miles across; four or five in a remote area. In a city, of course, densely populated, it will be much smaller: a couple of dozen parishes or “wards” within a single square mile, inside the boundaries of old city walls. Modern cities are contorted by car-borne urban sprawl, apartment & office towers. But nobody really likes these things, which all depend on central planning, & are unsustainable without complex infrastructure; in time they will all go away. And meanwhile, they can be stripped for useful materials: huge inventories of steel & glass, re-usable brick & so forth.
France had some 60,000 parishes, as I mentioned in an earlier post (average population around 400) — & thus 60,000 parish churches — up to the time of the French Revolution. No two of these parishes were governed quite the same; each had its unique customs & traditions. Overnight, during the French Revolution, the timeless boundaries were amended (so many went back to the Romans), in order to create 36,000 new de-Christianized “communes” — identically governed by dictation from Paris. That evil continues to the present day, in the heritage of French secularity — founded, unambiguously, on slaughter.
England still has more than 11,000 parishes, little reduced from the Catholic era, but rendered likewise powerless under the heel of the Nanny State, & its procrustean bureaucracies. These, in turn, continue to be legitimated through a schedule of “general elections,” in which people vote for disembodied heads that they have seen talking on their televisions.
In North America, our bureaucracies are constantly at play with the municipal units. Occasionally one is subdivided, for unusual reasons, but mergers into “regions” are the norm. This is done to guarantee that the citizen remains deferent to the state. Constant disruption prevents him from creating anything resembling a settled local community in which he might have a voice, or join in the recovery of civil society. “Crowd control” it is called at major public venues; but the principle of treating humans as herd animals in a stockyard — of assigning numbers to them, & calling them up by number to be audited by the tax officials & so forth — has been at the root of all progressive thinking & legislation. It was hatched by the butchers of the Directoire.
Our task, as I understand it, is to reverse this process: to make our world human again, in the least violent way possible. I specify this last on arbitrary, Christian principles. Were I a pagan I might give different advice. Verily, it would be prudent to make sure that our allies have been Christianized before putting them into action, & those of splenic temperament pacified through their Rosaries, & frequent attendance at Mass. For as I have found, it is a challenge to maintain the necessary serenity, while contending with devils in human flesh, & the machinery of their Progress.
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It strikes me that a way backward might begin with a map. Or rather, more than a map: a kind of Doomsday Survey of the whole American estate. We could, for instance, gradually assemble the materials, geographical & historical, from every location, with which to comprehend the entire landscape; & from which to produce what might even be considered an “ecologically sensitive” redivision into natural counties & parishes, attractively & imaginatively named. We might even use such tools as the Internet & GPS, so long as they remain up & working, to help us in envisioning & re-envisioning what America might be, were she humane. It could be made into a large cooperative project, on the analogy of Wikipedia, once the principles of the thing were laid down.
What I have in mind is a set of general indications, of the sort any geographer should understand: drawing boundaries by the lie of the land, following the natural contours along the high ground to distinguish riparian districts, while bearing constantly in mind the pattern of existing settlement, & where possible distributing arable land with something resembling equity between the counties within any geographical region. And for each new, or redrawn old county & its parishes, an archive could be assembled, of what is known about its past, its genealogies, its roads & buildings, its natural history, its drainage & soils; even such information as can be found about what lies under hideous sprawl, with hints on how it could be scraped, cleansed, & restored to farmland.
Large parts of the continent remain almost uninhabited, because almost uninhabitable, & could be apportioned in “districts” of fairly large size, governed from any existing frontier population centre. Should population grow, such districts would later be subdivided, with new counties hived off from them. Meanwhile, in the absence of the Nanny State (having crashed under the weight of its own extravagance & tyranny), our aboriginal peoples & those of adventurous spirit would be welcome to roam, entirely at their own risk, away from the pressures of settled life.
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I am suggesting all this as a project, only; as a place to start. I could go into much greater detail, but won’t for today. Nothing too terribly ambitious: just a voluntary, cooperative project, by which we might gain a better understanding of how things are & came to be, & what would be better. A “virtual” world, to be sure, but founded upon an actual landscape, & posited directly against what is now there. And again, it would (provided of course it had been printed out in enough copies) be of practical use when the existing economy collapses, the infrastructure goes down, Nanny State has little left to parasite upon, & her agents become fairly easy to defend ourselves against. For county by county & parish by parish it would be full of instructions on what to do next, & how to do it, as a means of survival. It would amount to a vade mecum for a functional Mediaeval civilization, to be built on the ruins of “Canada,” & “USA,” with the greatest possible life-saving speed.
And it would illustrate the principle of subsidiarity. For all the powers of Washington & Ottawa & the other capitals would be transferred immediately to the parishes. All they could not handle, referred upward to the county level by their actual request. Any question requiring adjudication between parish & parish, likewise raised to the county level. And as for the universal issues of criminal law, & common defence — well, those could be referred upward, too, to what we might call the “Holy American Empire.”
Easterner.
Sections and quarters — and straight lines — are normal.
(Have you heard about the Arizona cartographer who lost his job? He had no sense of Yuma.)
The King is correct. Blow Leviathan to bits.
Um, this is not what was said. It was rather, watch Leviathan come down. The need to Christianize our allies was also mentioned, so they don’t go about trying to e.g. blow Leviathan to bits. We are still working on you, CTC.
I think it’s a fine idea. And straight lines might be normal in our era, but they are not natural in any: no straight line occurs in nature. The real world is lumpy.
On a tour of Germany a few years ago, my friends and I observed a few of the differences between the older cities and the cities rebuilt after the war. Much of the modern cities (e.g. Frankfurt, Trier) were steel and concrete efforts, not particularly distinguished in their look. The older towns, meanwhile (e.g. Aachen, Dettelbach, Rothenburg), were built long before the automobile, with their small winding streets and unexpected turns. The people of the latter seemed to be more fit too, owing to the fact that they had to walk or bike everywhere: the roads were often too small for cars, including the toy versions that Europeans are so fond of. During a meal in one of the towns my friends and I chuckled at our inability to decipher the Germany menu (the English-speaking EU had not intruded yet into that eatery) when an anonymous Hans seated at the other end of the table kindly offered to translate and make recommendations. This would seldom happen in America not so much because Americans are unwilling to help but because few Americans have a serviceable command of a foreign tongue (my own sad high school and college Russian being a case in point). But even a muddled translation exercise can communicate goodwill and bonhomie.
The town of my college alma mater sports one short cobble-stone street. At the peak of a hill the street takes an abrupt turn and then resumes course; the detour was fashioned to avoid a large white oak and its stone monument. This arrangement was crafted thanks to the last wishes of the tree’s former owner, who so adored a particular hardwood that he willed to the oak the land within several feet. The Tree That Owns Itself is a testament not only to the owner’s great affection, but to the good faith of locals (not to mention their taste for a good story) who have preserved the custom. That the entire affair could well be just local folklore, that the original tree fell during the war and the current occupant of the spot is the seed of the original sire, doesn’t matter a wit.
In contrast, the city I work in was burned to the ground in an episode of Total War about 150 years back. The replacement architects ever since have constructed and then re-constructed the city as modern, and then post-modern; numerous multi-lane roads were paved to allow for heavy reliance on the car; a fellow today will drive an hour across town to spend the afternoon with friends but does not know the name of his next door neighbor. There’s nothing visually memorable about the place; it’s just another ongoing project of the efficiency amateurs. If anybody is in love with the arrangement, in the 35 years I’ve lived there I haven’t met him.
I think Google earth has most of the needed data, though topography can be hard to discern. But the existence of massive information-collecting aids to Leviathan (statist and corporate) such as Google is a big part of the problem we’re trying to solve.
I see the appeal of the project, a sort of humane contingency planning. But it seems rather centrally planned, not “organic.” Should we get the bishops involved? If not, won’t they just come along later and try to change everything, and then we’re back to square one with civil-church struggles, etc?
I object to the use of nation state, in or out of quotes. The concept has value not to be lightly discarded, but it has brought a lot of problems with it. Need to find a new name for the concept, though the concrete example in Holy American Empire is a fine monicker.
The premise seems to be that forms of non-human and non-animal transportation lead to inhuman consequences, so there is room for coalition building with the climate change crowd and other pagan primitivists. Interesting apostolic possibilities. But will you allow trains? Pope Gregory XVI banned them from his states, but his successors got on board, so to speak, and demanded a Vatican railway in the Lateran Treaty. At 300 meters long, it suggests the possibility of humane material progress within prudential limits of scope.
It sounds like the Shire. David, you have my vote for Lord Mayor of Hobbiton.
“It was rather, watch Leviathan come down.”
It seems to me that the mysterious universal laws put at play by God contain one article or two reserved for the handling of large or small wicked acts. “An eye for an eye,” with the caveat, “vengeance is mine.” In some way I expect the parasitic nature of Leviathan to be properly avenged as follows.
Some like dear Nietzsche had the strange idea that Christianity brought down the Roman Empire. I’d like to propose an alternative: let’s say that the purpose of History is to reveal Christ and the Kingdom of God. Now, get your science-fiction cap on and visualize that inside Eve there was Set ancestor of Noah, ancestor of Abraham, ancestor of Isaac, Jacob, Judah … in that order until we get to Mary of Nazareth. Imagine the successive cultures, tribes, nations that once contained any of the “carrier” individuals as a vessel or shell containing in its DNA the Destiny of the world. Once Destiny is born, was killed and then resurrected He manages to pass a plan of His mission to a number of agents that eventually occupy a host organism called the Roman Empire. When the version 1.0 of Kingdom is born (Christendom) the host organism is discarded. The Roman Empire passed because Christendom was ready to be born. A biblical image of that is found in the story of Samson. I use it because I am not a theologian and so I am allowed to make sense:
[Samson] went aside to see the carcass of the lion, and behold there was a swarm of bees in the mouth of the lion and a honeycomb. Judges 14:8
The Leviathan we inhabit presently has been growing (at least) since the days of Saint Paul:
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4
We have seen this Leviathan grow in size and power steadily since the fall of Constantinople and even more fiercely since the fall of the last few fortresses of Christendom in 1914/1918. Having in mind the preceding episodes of this saga I dare to say that — from the carcass of this Leviathan — version 2.0 of Kingdom shall rise in the same manner as before.
This may seem like “just an idea” to our dear author but I present you with the notion that it is something very close to an inspired insight. This present darkness shall increase no doubt but that is only a sign that we are about to see a new world being born by the dawn’s early light. You just have presented us with a very plausible version of its organic structure. Let me add that I think this structure will be replicated until the whole world is taken.
Our enemy opposes the principle of conquest to the principle of sovereignty. Our King will own the world according to both principles and the enemy will be cast to a corner where he can sulk for eternity while we produce honey like busy bees in a spring that will never end.
Lord Beast, I believe I am on record in an earlier post toying with the notion of your railway exemption. We have, up here in the High Doganate, some attractive designs for narrow gauge railroad carriages that are well adapted to the peaceful life. They ran along the old rural railbeds one may still hike in upcountry Ontario (beware snowmobiles in winter), & could be boarded even without the assistance of an elevated platform. Like town trolleys, but through the fields & forests. In some places their rails ran along the streets.
Light, personable affairs — constructed almost entirely of wood above the chassis — of the kind you could hail at a country crossroad, & from which deliveries were dropped onto carts waiting by. They could be assembled by a carpenter & an ironmonger. So light, indeed, they could be pulled by horse, or at their heaviest when paired or trupled, by a team of horses.
There is nothing that cannot be done without the aid of motor engines, once we have agreed to forego the infernal hurry of our modernist acedia.
Catino – I would love to buy you a beverage. As I read your comments (and being a glibervative, I am vulnerable to big picture, broad sweep, history condensing master plan ruminations) the now proverbial tingle ran up my leg. It is customary to see technology as objectively good, but the drift of it is undeniably satanic. Technology has now evolved to the point where it furthers isolation, atomization, focus on the self, and distraction from what is (tech kills love) all the while the technical are refining and stockpiling enough firepower to kill all or most of the people and infrastructure on earth — the destruction of Leviathan! When the fig branch is tender, know then that spring is at hand. Technology furthers darkness and allows the morally insane to multiply and project force worldwide to touch millions in an instant. How can there be any doubt that the present darkness shall increase? It will increase until it is fully ripe, in the Lord’s good time. And then …
Other Joe — Invite accepted in a place and time to be convened.
Although I used to make a living in the sacred halls of Mammon — as a systems priest in the arcane of automated analysis applications — I was rescued and I am a translator now. I have gone underground and some believe I moved to Buenos Aires (true) where I quietly expect the arrival of the Lord’s liberation troops (see Nightwings by Robert Silverberg.) I have become sort of a technology refusenik and there are indications that my condition is getting worse. I can still remember the definition of algorithm and a well-designed program can still bring tears to my eyes but in the Windows/Apple warp we are currently crossing my nerve terminals get very irritated.
Technology started a long time ago when someone started messing with arrows and such. In general one could say that new technology brings new trouble but you and I know technology is amoral and what has really increased our troubles is the deterioration of our already pitiful human condition. In a world made perfect by the Good Lord (Matthew 5:48) all technology will be in good hands and marketing shall be no more.
Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect, follows the line of let there be light. He is making us perfect by the power His Word; we are a new creation in the making. No harm will come from perfected mankind. The world so many saints saw from afar is now so close we can almost touch it. But first we must cross the Valley of Shadows without fearing the missile that flies by day or the statistician that kills by night.
By the way, I am partial to English ale something we don’t get to enjoy here in the Southern Hemisphere. Be well!
The Rolling English Road
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
Otio,
With regard to the last line of your comment, agreed. Like, really, really agreed. We need Walker Percy to weigh in but he is unavailable for direct comment. But in retrospect, would you forego all of your abundant and fruitful overseas travel for a life without ships and planes? Close call.
This descendant of English Catholics thanks you My Lord.
I gather Lord Catino is thanking Lord Jowls for transcribing Almighty Chesterton, to which King David Tas-de-Sablon can offer no rebuttal, for he thinks “The Rolling English Road” is a fine thing, himself.
But Lord Beast: we must distinguish between the ships & the aeroplanes. The latter will fall out of the sky of their own accord, when their motors are detached, but the former will continue floating, & may be fitted with sails; may even be propelled by oars, if it comes to that. In my olden days I walked wherever I could, great distances with my little satchel, & found pleasure in the road that I never found in a commercial airliner. (Though just between us I found low-flying helicopters quite a thrill.)
My greatest regret being that so much of my youth was wasted, when I should have acquired a yacht. Just a little wooden one, mind, not more than 30 feet on deck, rigged as a cutter, or just maybe as a ketch — wide, flat-bottomed (to be beached), with leeboards & otherwise Dutch in appearance (nary a straight line, all curves). And of course without an auxiliary engine. A botter of some sort: a go-anywhere craft, which one might sail about solo. With a hinged mast, for passing under bridges in canals, or hunkering down through the gales in the Southern Ocean. We have several alternative designs for that, too, up here in the High Doganate.
The Vikings buried their ships with them for good reason. Pure love. Not only did they transport them so they could rape and pillage the coastlines, but they could get away from all those fat women back in the smoking huts with horns on their helmets.
My greatest joy was in the 50s paddling a small wooden punt up Killpecker Creek to where the rainbow trout swarmed in abundance under the hemlock and tamarack boughs. The punt is long rotted into the forest floor, along with the sawmill camp where I grew up in summer. Only the creek remains now, a thin remnant drained when the weir beside the sawmill was blown up the same year that the ghastly Lester Pearson took power in Ottawa.
Otiosus — Yes I was thanking Lord Jowls for taking me to London one more time. The London I knew is partly gone but Kensal Green is about the same it always was. Of course Chesterton is pointing at the quietest part of the neighborhood.
I had the great grace of being baptized at Most Holy Blood of Christ Cathedral. On a pleasant day one can walk across Hyde Park, Kensington, Notting Hill, etc. from the Cathedral in the general NW direction and reach the Kensal area where good pubs abound. I remember walking those streets many times hoping to find some sort of time wormhole that would allow me to run into good G.K. and have a good conversation — and of course a pint or two. It would suit me fine to reside in Kensal Green between my last breath and the day of resurrection.
The idea of a self-governing parish is not just wishful thinking, but a going concern in Switzerland. Switzerland was and still is, organised along Christian parish lines, with a majority of taxes raised at the parish (Gemeinde) level. The parish decides how the monies will be spent, and what fraction it will give to the supplicant federal government. All issues are subject to a referendum at the parish, canton and federal level.
The Swiss are the boss, while the politicians are truly what they claim to be in the rest of the world – public servants. Just to ensure that the federales don’t get any wrong ideas, all able bodied Swiss men have state of the art assault weapons at home.
It is for this reason that EU oligarchs despise Switzerland, as it gives politically incorrect ideas to the peasantry in EU land.
I have often enjoyed studying maps road and other, and have noticed the annoyingly straight lines cutting furrows across particularly western lands of this continent. At first I liked them for they were easy to understand but as I grew slightly wiser they became bothersome, boring, unnatural and unimaginative. I heartily throw in my lot with your proposal. I have come to the conclusion that utter economic collapse is the best thing that could happen to the West at this hour.
On an introductory note I stumbled upon the Essays via The Monarchist and have received a wonderful education since then. Though I am coming to share your views concerning technology I would be fairly unable to read you without the Internet.
Please do speak more on this topic. It’s a fascinating idea.
I come from a particular geographic perspective as I live this Phoenix, Arizona area. Development here is recent. There were about 30,000 people here in Phoenix and 100,000 in 1950. There is a grand boulevard not far from my house that was a dirt road in 1969. You can see pictures of it at the McDonalds (of all places) not far up that road.
As far as the Doomsday Survey, wouldn’t it be best to start with local historical societies? They might have quite a lot of the information you describe, especially as to landforms as the existed prior to urbanization (here, if that didn’t mean untouched Sonoran Desert, it meant cattle ranches, orange groves, and cotton fields). There are also living history organizations that preserve, perhaps as in aspic, the crafts and techniques of former times.
I can’t imagine our current population staying if there was no central air conditioning. At the turn of the 20th century, we sent our women and children “up the hill” to Prescott for the summer if we could. Just too hot for them here. So, not sure how much effort to put into a vade mecum for this part of the world. People will either figure it out quickly or move away quickly. Same argument for the Yukon?