On November 22, 2009, when our blog was still in its first year, we did a post called Domed Cities. In a nutshell, it’s about an hypnotic progression that our friend, Renie Wiley, conducted on Rob and me in the late 1980s. In that progression, I saw myself at some point in the distant future, a tall, bald woman living in a domed city. Not long after this progression, we ran across Helen Wambaugh’s book Mass Dreams of the Future. It was based on “progressions” she had conducted on more than 2,500 participants and one of the possible future scenarios these participants had seen was humanity living in domed cities.
The comments on this post intrigued me. Other people had dreamed or written about life in these domed cities. They put forth various theories and speculations. I definitely wasn’t alone in what I’d seen. But the more I thought it as a possible future life, the more spooked I got. First, there was the very notion of being cooped up in a dome, which implies artificial air and sunlight, rather like what the marine mammals at Epcot experience.
Then there was the sense that the domes were necessary because the air outside was toxic to humans. And I sure didn’t like this idea of being bald. Always, I felt an unsettling certainty that life in the domes was oppressive, tightly controlled by a government with nothing good on its agenda. I tried several times to write a novel based on the dome life, but it was too depressing and I abandoned the idea.
In October 2011, tropical storm Sandy happened, devastating entire neighborhoods and sections in New York and New Jersey and other states. And in Sandy’s aftermath, one repercussion caught my attention. In Texas, a state that has experienced its share of devastating hurricanes, 28 domes are being built that will double as high school gymnasiums and emergency shelters during the hurricane season.
The Edna dome in Edna, Texas, is nearly complete and its design is impressive. The double layer cinder block walls are reinforced by heavy duty steel bars and cement piers that plunge 30 feet into the ground. The doorways are covered by awnings of heavy gauge metal and supported by concrete girders that go 15 feet into the ground. It’s believed that the dome should be able to withstand winds up to 200 mph.
“There is nothing standard about the building,” said Bob Wells, superintendent of the Edna school district, “The only standard stuff is going to be the stuff we do inside.”
The cost? $2.5 million. Funding from FEMA – nearly $35 million for the 28 Texas domes– pays for 75 percent of the cost. Nationwide, more than $683 has been awarded by FEMA in 18 states.
So, is the construction of these domes the beginning of what I saw during that progression so many years ago? Or is it just a fluke, a random coincidence? Since I’ve never believed that much of anything in the universe is random chaos, I’m left with a weird taste in my mouth.
I think about those dolphins and manatees at Epcot, trapped forever in a world without natural air or sunlight, where even the water in which they swim is carefully controlled and regulated. Several times a day, these creatures are required to do stuff that will entertain the humans who are on the outside, looking in. Who or what is looking in on these domes? Who or what is inside the domes is looking out?
The Texas domes are about 20,000 square feet apiece, enough to accommodate refugees in a storm, but hardly enough space for a city, a country. It seems that what I saw 25 years ago in an altered state that lasted, at most, about 20 minutes, is starting to happen. If this dome concept expands, who knows how large these suckers could become?
In my lifetime, I probably won’t see the kinds of domes I saw during that progression, massive things that enclosed entire continents. But my daughter or grandchildren might experience it. Yet, if we live in a multidimensional universe, if the Many Worlds Theory of quantum physics is correct, then there are other paths that will unfold simultaneously.
Let’s dream those alternate paths into existence – universal peace, good will, a stable, sustainable environment, a place where all people truly are equal and are entitled to the same basic rights. Let’s dream that dream until we see evidence of its manifestation, then let’s fine tune it and make it even better.
