Domed Cities: Intriguing or Kooky?

[2046]

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/04/very-c ... clear.html

I'm trying to decide how I feel about this. The basic idea is that a lightly-inflated mostly-airtight half-balloon over a city . . . not some massive plexiglas or concrete shield but merely something akin in principle to cellophane or plastic wrap . . . could protect it from nuclear blast overpressure, chemical or biological nasties released externally, and most other common threats.

But it seems to me that this would also require that any such thing within the dome cannot get out as readily. So blast from a small nuke, fallout from a nuke or dirty bomb, or chem/bio contaminants remain in place instead of dissipating into "mostly harmless" downwind.

It's the same sort of problem behind Buckminster Fuller's earlier dome ideas, and his floating-in-midair buckyball cities.

http://www.thirteen.org/bucky/cities.html

What do you think?

[Flectarn]

my only thought is...

run, runner

[Mr. Oragahn]

I didn't read the stuff in details yet, but obviously, if it worked, the dome sheet would be like a handkerchief, you'd need to roll it and bury it somehow, or try to recycle it.

[Mike DiCenso]

Holy shades of Logan's Run, Batman! ;-)
-Mike