"Will New Orleans survive?"
Ive seen more intelligent questions.
For those who insist that "New Orleans will be back, Americans are hardy folk, we've dealt with hardship before, blah, blah, blah!" . . . I have one simple question:
When was the last time you've ever heard of a mandatory evacuation for a metropolitan area of 1.4 million people?
> Ive seen more intelligent questions.
I think it is a very intelligent question to ask if New Orleans will survive. I could easily see a decision to rebuild the city down the road, above sea level... or to raise it, like they did with Galveston at the turn of the 20th century, post-hurricane.
I am reminded of that old 19th century classic study on mass behavior and the irrationality that it brings, named something like "Popular Delusions, and the Ordinary Madness of Crowds." In retrospect, it was easy to conclude not IF New Orleans would get annihilated, but WHEN. It is the height of hubris to think that technology can indefinitely stave off the time bomb that is represented by a below-sea-level city. The amount of potential energy represented by the elevation of Lake Ponchartrain, with respect to the New Orleans bowl, is a force that can't be ignored or talked away.
Sure, I have great sympathy for all those people, and I'm sure many just never gave it any thought in their lifetimes, but if I were confronted with the fact that I owned a house below sea level, or that someone was asking me to invest in a sports stadium, or to build a high rise, in a city below sea level, without mentioning the words "New Orleans", I would burst out laughing at the preposterousness of the idea.
Dealing in pure rationality, one would sell and get the heck out of Dodge and not look back. But again, I see how things evolved as they did, and once you've had multiple generations dodging the bullet, one begins to discount the possibility of disaster, almost reflexively.
And in the same way that many, Monday afternoon, said New Orleans dodged the bullet, while those wise in the ways of science and engineering said "let's wait and see," I now say let's wait and see about the possibility of whether or not the city will be rebuilt as it was. I believe that if it takes them a month to "drain the swamp," as it were, that most, if not all of those structures' foundations will have been potentially compromised.
The reality may take a while to sink in, but not only the residents who are contemplating rebuilding, but also the government, who doles out the disaster money, may decide that something fundamental needs to change.
And I've seen dumber.