1960’S NUCLEAR ALTERNATE REALITY

Carson Gensert and I worked together to look at the potential of project Carryall. Carryall was an infrastructure based nuclear project, under Operation Plowshare, in the Mojave Desert about 95 miles inland from San Bernardino, that proposed boring 22 holes along a 10,940-foot stretch of mountainside to blast out a path for I-40 and two rails for the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Rail Company. In displacing an estimated 68 million tons of earth, the blasts would create a canyon with a maximum depth of roughly 350 feet and would save an estimated 28 million dollars and 50 minutes of travel time. The Division of Highways stopped being supportive of the project in 1967 due to the delay of construction, and Operation Plowshare, and subsequently Project Carryall, fell through because of the health implications to the rest of the world. For our story, we are backing up to 1968, when the government stopped supporting Project Carryall, and instead are supposing that the project proceeds, only with support and funding from the Rail Company. AT&SF wants to complete this project in an era where public perception of domestic nuclear operations and the rail has declined since WWII. Consequently, the marketing department of Santa Fe Rails develops a marketing campaign to gain public support for these potentially very lucrative projects. So, for our project, AT&SF railways would transform these lucrative nuclear blast sites into isolated ecological oases to generate positive PR and business for the rail company. To do so, the train cars have been designed so that they can carry passengers in some cars and hydroseed the banks in others. This was done not only to prevent erosion, but to layer in a spectacle for tourists as they pass by. The seeds are ultimately what allows the train to continue operating. Without the seeds, the mountain sides would not be able to stabilize, and in turn the train would not have a clear path to use. The passengers would have to use their cars to get to work with unpredictable traffic, the tourists and workers would have to find something else to do with their time, and the birds would have to look elsewhere for their food on their migration route up the west coast. On a larger time scale, the purpose of this whole project is to show that AT&SF Rail can eventually become profitable by using the money from the tourists and commuters to create a spectacle of all the good they are doing for the landscape. When in reality, AT&SF Rail is the least connected to it and the furthest removed from how much time it takes for this process to take root. The series of transportational and ecological landscape systems that act on the site show just how precise this would have to be in order for it all to work out.