Beneath the headlines, behind the timelines, there is a
story no one wants you to find.
Welcome to some unapproved thinking where forgotten truths, buried patterns, and
invisible systems rise to the surface.
You weren't crazy.
You were just early.
Let's begin.
There are seven cities in America where millions of people pay
thousands in rent to live in what are essentially concrete tombs, beautiful,
bustling, expensive concrete tombs.
I remember the first time I really understood how completely urban life
depends on systems you don't control.
It was during a power outage that lasted three days, not in some remote area,
right in the heart of a major city.
Within hours, the veneer of civilization started peeling away.
No elevators, no water pressure above the third floor, no
refrigeration, no communication.
Just millions of people suddenly realizing they were trapped in vertical prisons,
completely dependent on infrastructure that had just stopped working.
That's when it hit me.
Modern cities aren't built for resilience.
They're built for efficiency, and efficiency becomes a death sentence.
The moment the power grid fails.
Las Vegas exists as a hallucination in the desert, importing
everything, including water.
Miami sits trapped on a peninsula with one escape route.
New York becomes a vertical prison where millions live above the
20th floor with no backup systems.
These aren't cities, they're machines that could stop working Tonight,
we ask when survival depends on systems you don't control in places
that can't sustain life naturally.
Are you living in a city or a death trap?
This.
Some unapproved thinking.
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Now back to the show.
We live in an age of increasing urban concentration where more people live in
cities than ever before in human history.
These urban centers are marvels of engineering, commerce, and culture,
but they're also unprecedented experiments in human dependency on
complex systems that could fail.
I've spent years inside corporate systems watching how efficiency gets prioritized
over resilience, how short-term profits override long-term sustainability.
The same mindset that creates corporate fragility has created
urban fragility on a massive scale.
The COVID-19 pandemic gave us a glimpse of how quickly urban
systems can become vulnerable.
Supply chain disruptions, infrastructure failures, and social unrest
revealed that our most impressive cities are also our most fragile.
The same complexity that makes them efficient, makes them brittle, but some
cities are more vulnerable than others.
Some are built in locations that can't sustain human life without
constant ecological intervention.
Some have geographic constraints that make evacuation impossible.
Some have infrastructure so complex that a single point of failure
could cascade into total collapse.
Understanding which cities are death traps isn't about fearmongering.
It's about recognizing that location choices are survival choices.
The most expensive real estate might also be the most dangerous.
The most impressive skylines might also be the most unsustainable.
When millions of people choose to live in places that become uninhabitable,
the moment the lights go out.
That's not just urban planning, that's a massive experiment in human
vulnerability disguised as progress.
So with that, let me walk you through the seven cities where millions of
Americans have unknowingly chosen to live in potential death traps.
First on the list, Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Desert Mirage, that shouldn't exist.
I've been to Vegas enough times to understand what it really is.
A monument to human arrogance, completely sustained by a power grid
that pumps water uphill from Lake Mead.
It creates nothing, grows nothing, and imports everything, including
the water in your toilet.
The moment the grid goes down, the pumps stop.
Within three days, the taps run dry.
You have 2 million residents and 40 million annual tourists trapped
in a valley surrounded by hundreds of miles of absolutely nothing.
There's no foraging in the Mojave Desert.
Yeah, you cannot hunt scorpions for sustenance.
The heat isn't just uncomfortable.
It's a weapon that kills without air conditioning.
I've experienced 115 degree days in Vegas.
That's not just hot.
That's crazy.
Scalding hot.
And without climate control, the interior of buildings becomes lethal within hours.
And let's not forget that the architecture of all those beautiful
buildings are specifically designed to keep tourists inside casinos not to
provide natural cooling or ventilation.
So, um, good luck finding that exit easily, let alone wanting
to use it next on the list.
Miami, Florida, the Peninsula Prison.
If you look at a map of Florida, it looks like a gun pointing at the Caribbean.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
I know some of you think that Florida looks like something
else, but let's remember.
This is a PG show.
Okay?
Anyway, Miami is right at the tip of the barrel.
The problem is simple geometry.
Florida is a peninsula.
Miami is at the bottom to the east.
You have the Atlantic Ocean to the south and west.
You have the Everglades, a swamp filled with alligators and
mosquitoes the size of drones.
That leaves exactly one direction to run north.
Uh, there are 6 million people in South Florida with essentially one
major escape route, interstate 95.
Even on a good day without major issues, I 95 is a bit of a parking
lot, but in a collapse scenario.
It becomes the world's longest, hottest traffic jam.
On top of all of that, Miami is built on porous limestone, so you can't dig
wells for fresh water because salt water intrudes into the fresh water table.
So that means when the municipal pumps fail, you're still surrounded by lots of
water, but not by any that you can drink.
Next, we move north to Chi Town, Chicago, Illinois.
Frozen fortress Chicago is a marvel of engineering that defies the brutal
winters of the Midwest through constant injection of natural gas and electricity.
I've been in Chicago in the winter, and it's not just cold.
It's weapons grade cold that kills exposed skin in minutes.
In a winter grid down scenario, Chicago turns into a glass and steel tomb.
We're not talking about putting on an extra sweater.
Nope.
We're talking about modern high-rise apartments that
become thermal death traps.
Because without active heating, the temperature inside a glass tower matches
the outside temperature within 24 hours.
So if it's 10 below zero outside, which let's be honest, is not unusual in that
region, well then your lovely penthouse quickly becomes a walk-in freezer.
Water pipes will freeze and burst, causing flooding on the lower floors
and effectively creating ice cascades in stairwells, making them unusable.
And as we all know, Chicago is known as the windy city.
That wind coming off Lake Michigan will cut through most
tactical gear like a laser.
Next, let's head west to Los Angeles, California.
The Tinderbox Basin Los Angeles has about the most unholy trinity of
survival, failures, isolation, drought.
Fire.
The city is a basin surrounded by mountains and ocean.
A city that imports 85% of its water from hundreds of miles away via aqueduct that
need electricity in order to function.
When the Santa Ana winds kick up and they always kick up, they turn the
entire landscape into a blowtorch.
I lived in Southern California for many years and I have
seen these fires firsthand.
Let me tell you, they're not just normal.
Pour some water on it.
Fires, Nope, they're atmospheric Flame throwers that can move
faster than you can drive.
So.
And a grid down scenario.
When there are no fire trucks, when there is no water pressure in hydrants, one
spark and bam, the fires will burn until they hit the ocean to surf Redondo Beach.
Oh, and let's not forget, you can't just leave.
Why?
Well, because as everyone knows, every day, regular LA traffic is legendary.
So imagine it during a panic.
Those interwoven web of freeways will become linear graveyards, where you will
quite probably run out of gas long before you hit the city limits because you
are crawling at a snail's pace at best.
Next, let's talk about New Orleans, Louisiana.
Yeah, the below sea level bowl, this is an entire city that sits below sea level.
This lower than the water bowl is currently being kept dry by
a massive system of pumps that run on diesel and electricity.
So if all those pumps stop.
Then the water just comes rushing back in to me.
It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
However, unlike a quote unquote clean flood, this water surging back in will
mix with sewage, with industrial runoff, and with the contents of every single
cemetery as they get washed out, all this sludge, stirring, and mixing together to
create a toxic soup of disease and death.
Look, we have all seen what Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans.
Tragic, without a doubt, but.
That my friends was all with partial infrastructure, still functioning.
Imagine a complete failure.
Yeah, no thanks.
And how about the big apple?
Yeah.
New York City, New York.
The vertical prison Manhattan is a very small island with an estimated
1.6 million people connected to the mainland by 21 bridges and 15 tunnels.
In a crisis, authorities will close those choke points to contain chaos.
Or worse yet, those choke points will get clogged with abandoned cars.
But the real enemy is the verticality.
Let's say you live on the 35th floor of any one of those amazing
skyscrapers and the power dies.
Do you have the stamina to haul five gallons of water up 35
flights of stairs every day?
Oh, and remember, water weighs eight pounds.
Per gallon.
Now I can hear you, some of you out there now saying, but Tracy, they
have water towers on the roofs.
Okay, well, you have to remember those water towers on the
roofs rely on electric pumps.
Just saying, oh, and I haven't even talked about you having to haul your
food up those same 35 flights of stairs.
I mean, that is, if you can even find any.
As 1.6 million people all scramble for that last slice of pizza
and a bagel at the same time.
And last but certainly not least on my list, is Phoenix,
Arizona, the solar oven of cities.
If Las Vegas is a monument to arrogance, well then Phoenix
is a monument to a death wish.
This has to be about the least sustainable city in North America,
located in the Salt River Valley, where summer temperatures regularly and
easily exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
What we are talking about here is wet bulb conditions where your body
physically cannot cool itself down, no matter how much water you drink.
So without air conditioning, the interior of a house in Phoenix will hit
lethal temperatures within 48 hours.
Think you'll just drive away.
Well, the pavement gets so hot, it melts tires so effectively this
becomes a city where you can't drive away, you can't walk away, and you
can't even stay inside to hide away.
You see my friends, these aren't just cities, they're machines complex,
beautiful and expensive machines that, like any machine could just stop working.
And when they do, millions of people who thought they were living
the American dream will discover that they were actually living
in overly engineered death traps.
Look, this pattern of building cities in unsustainable locations isn't new, but
the scale and technological dependency we are seeing now is 100% unprecedented.
In all of human history, ancient civilizations built cities near
water sources, fertile land and natural resources that could
sustain their populations without technological intervention.
For example, Rome was built on seven hills with access to fresh water from
springs and aqueducts that functioned through gravity, not electric pumps.
Egyptian cities were built along the Nile fertile floodplains.
You have to take note as to how these ancient cities worked with their
environment rather than against it.
When they were built in challenging locations, they were designed
with sustainability in mind.
Another example is Petra, which was carved into rock formations that provided natural
cooling and water collection systems.
Machu Picchu was built with agricultural terraces that could
feed its entire population.
I think it was the industrial revolution that began the pattern of building
cities based on economic opportunity rather than environmental sustainability.
Coal mining towns, steel cities and manufacturing centers were built
wherever resources or transportation networks made economic sense.
Regardless of whether the locations could sustain human life without constant
technological support, company towns again represented early experiments
in total technological dependency.
Mining communities in remote locations depended entirely on company
provided infrastructure for water, power, food, and transportation.
When the companies left or the resources were exhausted, these towns
became ghost towns almost overnight.
Many still standing today as eerie reminders of their true nature.
The dust Bowl of the 1930s demonstrated what happens when human
settlements exceed the carrying capacity of their environment.
Farming communities that had thrived during favorable weather
conditions became uninhabitable when environmental conditions changed.
Entire populations were forced to abandon their homes and migrate
to more sustainable locations in order to just survive.
World War ii.
Urban bombing campaigns revealed the vulnerability of concentrated populations
dependent on centralized infrastructure.
Cities like Dresden, London and Hiroshima showed how quickly urban
centers could become death traps when their life support systems were
disrupted or completely knocked out.
The pattern accelerated during the post-war suburban boom when
cities expanded into areas that couldn't sustain populations without
massive infrastructure investments.
Suburbs were built in deserts, swamps, and other challenging environments
because technology made it temporarily feasible, not because it was sustainable.
Modern urban planning has prioritized economic efficiency over environmental
sustainability, creating cities that function as long as complex
technological systems continue operating, but become uninhabitable the moment
when those systems sputter and fail.
The historical precedent shows that cities built in unsustainable locations
eventually face a reckoning when their technological life support systems
fail and utter their final flat lining.
Beep.
The difference today is the scale.
Yeah.
Millions upon millions of people now live in locations that couldn't
support human life without constant technological intervention.
Let's examine the recurring mechanisms that create urban death traps and see
how they apply to these seven cities.
The pattern always begins with economic opportunity, overriding environmental
sustainability, and let's be honest, overriding environmental intelligence too.
Cities get built where money can be made, period, hard stop.
They do not get built just where human life can be sustained.
Las Vegas exists because of gambling revenue, not because the Mojave
Desert can support 2 million people.
Phoenix grew because of air conditioning and cheap land, not because the
Sonoran Desert is, you know, habitable.
I've watched the same logic in corporate settings.
Short-term profits winning over long-term sustainability, which is all well and gone
until, of course, the system collapses.
Technological solutions create dependency rather than sustainability.
So instead of working within natural systems, death trap cities use technology
to override environmental limitations.
This creates a literal house of cards where the failure of any
single critical system can easily cascade into a total collapse.
Geographic constraints that seem manageable during normal times
become death sentences during crises.
Miami's Peninsula location is convenient for tourism, but creates
a single escape route for 6 million people in times of emergency.
Manhattan's Island geography is perfect for commerce, but
creates a trap when bridges and tunnels close for whatever reason.
Infrastructure complexity increases vulnerability rather than reduces it.
The more sophisticated the systems required to keep a city functioning,
the more points of failure that exist.
New York's vertical infrastructure, Chicago's heating systems, and Los
Angeles's water importation networks all represent single points of failure that
could disable entire cities, and that's just pointing out one issue per city.
There are others at risk for each.
Trust me, and the population density amplifies every one of
those problems exponentially.
When millions upon millionaires of people compete for the same limited resources.
During a crisis, the mathematics of survival become impossible.
There simply aren't enough resources.
Escape route or alternatives to sustain massive populations when
the primary systems fail, the most insidious pattern is how death trap
cities hide their vulnerability behind prosperity and convenience.
The same features that make these cities attractive.
Climate control, imported resources, high density living, are exactly
what makes them uninhabitable.
When those same systems stumble, bumble, fall, and fail.
Economic incentives ensure that death trap cities continue growing
despite increasing vulnerability.
Real estate developers, city planners, and businesses, profit
from urban growth, regardless of its long-term sustainability, the
people making money from these cities don't have to live with the
consequences of their unsustainability.
Oh, and many of them don't live within those cities either.
I curious, right.
The pattern extends out to how vulnerability gets ignored or even
outright denied by authorities who have political and economic interests
in maintaining the urban growth, acknowledging that major cities
are death traps, would crash real estate values, destroy municipal
budgets, and create panic that the authorities don't want and can't manage.
Climate control creates populations that can't survive without
technological intervention.
People living in Phoenix have never learned to survive desert conditions.
New Yorkers living in high rises have never learned to function without
elevators and central heating.
The most concerning pattern is how death trap cities create
psychological dependency that prevents people from recognizing or
even addressing their vulnerability.
Residents become so accustomed to technological solutions that they
can't imagine life without them making evacuation or adaptation
psychologically impossible, even when it's 100% physically necessary.
Now as always, not everyone has chosen to live in death
trap cities around the country.
Individuals and communities have recognized the vulnerability of
technologically dependent urban centers and made different choices.
Some people, like my family, have consciously moved away from death
trap cities to locations that can sustain human life without
constant technological intervention.
They've chosen smaller communities near water sources.
Fertile land and moderate climates where survival doesn't depend on
complex infrastructure systems.
I've met families who've made these choices deliberately.
They understood that trading convenience for vulnerability
wasn't worth the risk, especially when they had children to consider.
Preppers and survivalists have long recognized the vulnerability of major
urban centers and have developed strategies for either escaping these
cities quickly or avoiding them entirely.
Their preparations often focus on the specific vulnerabilities of death
trap cities, water storage for desert cities, heating alternatives for
cold cities, evacuation routes for geographically constrained cities.
Some families have maintained rural properties or retreat locations that
provide alternatives to urban living.
When city systems fail, they understand that having options outside
death trap cities is essential for long-term security and survival.
Intentional communities have developed sustainable living models that don't
depend on complex technological systems or resource importation.
These communities demonstrate that human settlements can be designed to work with
natural systems rather than against them.
Even some businesses and organizations have relocated operations away from death
trap cities, recognizing that geographic vulnerability creates business risk.
They've chosen locations that provide access to markets without
the systemic risks of operating in unsustainable urban environments.
International observers from countries with different urban planning
philosophies have noted the vulnerability of American death trap cities.
Their outside perspective helps reveal patterns that might be invisible to
those living within these systems.
Emergency management professionals have quietly acknowledged the vulnerability
of death trap cities, while being unable to address the fundamental problems due
to political and economic constraints.
Their private assessments often contradict their public assurances
about urban preparedness.
The most important outliers are the ordinary people like you and
me who've learned to recognize the difference between sustainable and
unsustainable living situations.
We understand that location choices are survival choices, and that
the most expensive real estate might also be the most dangerous.
These outliers demonstrate that living in death trap cities isn't inevitable or even
necessary, that every person who chooses sustainable locations helps preserve
human resilience and provides examples of alternatives to technological dependency.
I did this particular episode because I think that understanding urban death
traps should change how you evaluate your location choices, real estate
decisions, and your relationship between convenience and survival.
Every city becomes a question worth examining more carefully.
When you're considering where to live, work, or invest.
You should start asking whether the location can sustain human life without
constant technological intervention.
The most expensive real estate might also be the most dangerous
and come with the most risk.
Geographic constraints become more important than amenities
when evaluating locations.
A city's escape routes, water sources, food production capacity,
and climate resilience matter more than its cultural attractions,
job opportunities or lifestyle benefits when systems begin to fail.
Infrastructure dependency becomes a liability rather than a convenience.
When you understand how complex systems create vulnerability, cities that require
massive technological intervention to remain habitable are inherently less
secure than locations that work within the natural systems where they reside.
Population density becomes a risk factor rather than a benefit.
When you recognize how competition for resources intensifies
during times of crises.
High density living that seems efficient during normal times becomes
dangerous when systems fail and millions upon millions of people begin
to compete for limited resources.
The importance of self-sufficiency increases when you really understand
how urban systems can fail.
Catastrophically having skills, resources, and capabilities that
provide independence from complex infrastructure become far more valuable
than access to those urban conveniences.
Climate and environmental factors become primary considerations
rather than secondary ones when choosing where to live.
Locations that can sustain human life naturally are inherently more
secure than those that require constant technological intervention.
Alternative locations become more attractive when you understand
the vulnerability of death.
Trap cities, smaller communities, rural areas and regions with sustainable
resource base offer security that major urban centers can't provide.
Most importantly, you realize that survival isn't just
about individual preparedness.
It's about location choices that determine whether preparedness is
even possible in the first place because no amount of individual
preparation can overcome the fundamental unsustainability of death trap cities.
Look, my goal here isn't to create fear or panic about urban living.
Rather to help you make informed decisions about location choices based
on long-term sustainability, rather than short-term convenience or economic
opportunity, they built monuments to human arrogance and called them cities.
Las Vegas in the desert, Phoenix in the oven, Miami on the peninsula,
new Orleans below sea level.
Millions of people paying thousands in rent every single month just to
live in concrete tombs that transform from metropolitan dreams into survival
nightmares, the moment the lights go out.
I've walked through these cities, lived in some of them, watched how
completely they depend on systems that could fail at any moment.
These aren't cities.
They're machines, beautiful, complex, expensive machines that import
everything, create nothing and could stop working without warning.
Las Vegas exists as a hallucination that pumps water uphill from a dying lake.
Miami sits trapped on a peninsula with one escape route for 6 million people.
Chicago becomes a glass tomb.
When the heating fails, Los Angeles burns until it hits the ocean.
New Orleans drowns in toxic soup.
New York becomes a vertical prison.
Phoenix cooks everything alive.
The same engineering marvels that make these cities possible
also make them vulnerable.
The same technological solutions that override environmental limitations
also create dependencies that could kill millions when they fail.
Here's what they don't want you to realize.
Location choices are, in fact, survival choices.
The most expensive real estate might also be the most dangerous.
The most impressive cities might also be the most unsustainable.
The most convenient locations might also be the most vulnerable.
You don't have to live in a death trap.
You don't have to pay thousands in rent for a concrete tomb.
You don't have to depend on systems, you don't control in places that
can't sustain life naturally.
The official story is that these cities represent human achievement, technological
triumph, and economic opportunity.
The real story is that they represent human arrogance, technological
dependency, and survival, vulnerability on a scale never before attempted.
In human history, when survival depends on systems, you don't control in places
that can't sustain life naturally.
You're not living in a city.
You're living in a machine that could stop working.
Choose your machine carefully or better yet, choose not to live in one at all.
Tracy out
if this story didn't sit right with you.
Good.
You are not here to be comforted.
You are here to see what others overlook.
Thanks for exploring some unapproved thinking.
Learn more@someunapprovedthinking.com.
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And next time we're going deeper.