Saudi Arabia's Mirrored City

A walled city that's 105 miles long, just over 2 football fields wide, as tall as the Empire State Building, under the rule of an oppressive government, housing 9 million people...

What could go wrong?

​Welcome to The Line aka Neom. 

Construction is already underway. So, if everything goes as planned, there could be 1.5 million people living in The Line by 2030. They'll be citizens but, I prefer to call them prisoners. Look at the thing, it's basically one giant prison.

All of these promotional 3D renders for The Line remind me of Chinese communist propaganda. 

I love flipping through my book on Chinese propaganda posters. And, when I do, I get the same feeling as when I look through these Neom renders. Everything looks so ideal. Everyone's healthy, happy, well-fed, and free. The landscapes are clean, lush, and abundant. It can almost make you think, "that doesn't look so bad". But, we all know these marketing ploys are nowhere near reality. Not even close. Like, what about all the people that have to live on the lower levels? Do they ever get to smell fresh air or feel and see sunlight? Would they ever be allowed to visit the upper levels? What about all of us who make it a full time job to avoid most people? In The Line, you're trapped in a giant wall with them. ​Nightmare fuel.

Just watching this teaser makes my MCS flare.

The first thing I thought about when I saw Neom was all the smells. Think of all the perfume and cigarette smoke you would encounter and not be able to escape. I get aggravated just walking the dogs to the front of our neighborhood where there is a mini neighborhood of town homes all stacked on top of each other. I'm often hit with laundry detergent, perfume, and cigarette fumes daily walking through there. Those town homes, shit, even living 

in a regular neighborhood feels too dense for my health ​condition. The Line makes those spaces look excessively spacious. Every day, I think about how I can't wait to buy land where there are no neighbors. I'm tired of smelling everyone. But in The Line, I would be fucked. 

​Speaking of being fucked, I think suffering from MCS would be the least of ones problems. As, off the top of my head, I can think of an array of nightmare scenarios that could easily be reality in The Line. 

• Shutting off or severely limiting your power to "conserve energy"
• Shutting off or severely limiting your water usage for "conservation reasons"
• Shutting off or severely limiting your internet access
• Limiting you to your 5 minute walkable radius
• Restricting or completely denying access to certain levels of the structure
• Restricting or completely denying access to the outside
• Restricting or completely denying access to the train
• Restricting or completely denying access to where you can shop
• Restricting or completely denying access to where you can go if you have an elevated body temperature
• Complete control over the food chain and distribution
• Complete control over any goods sold and pricing
• ​Fires inside and out
• Pump antibiotics and perfume through the vents
• Smart locks that can be controlled and lock you in your apartment
• 24/7 government surveillance = Zero privacy
• Social credit system like China
• Spraying chemicals and pesticides whenever and wherever they choose
• Hackers take over and cause chaos
• North Korean style self-criticism sessions

That list is only what I could come up with off the top of my head.

I'm sure there are situations that could occur beyond my wildest nightmares. And, I also think of scenarios that aren't malicious but unfortunate. Like, what if the trains malfunctioned and food couldn't be distributed along the line? Planes could crash into it. Or, a pandemic could hit. Are there earthquakes in that region? I know, natural disasters can hit anywhere and do damage, it just seems like those events would be a hell of a lot scarier being trapped in a giant glass prison. 

The positives?

Well, aside from all the ways this could disturbingly go wrong, I love the idea of creating more comfortable housing in land that is fairly inhospitable. It could be giving people a chance to have a home that otherwise possibly couldn't. Although there are tribal people currently living there and they're being displaced, sometimes even murdered for this project. That part is pretty messed up. But, the Saudi leaders don't seem to care much about that...

Moving on, it does look cool. Like a giant art installation piece. I can't help but wonder how they'll keep it clean. And, what about the glare from the sun? Could this thing start a giant fire? There I go again, back to the worst-case scenarios.

The other thing I like about it is how insanely dystopian, bizarre, and enormous this undertaking is and well, as long as I don't have to live there, I'm utterly fascinated to see how this all plays out. It almost feels so surreal that it seems like reality has become a dark sci-fi movie. The part of me that loves mind blowing weirdness is here for the spectacle. Like, there very easily could be people born in The Line that die there after living inside it their whole lives, never once leaving and touching the Earth with their own two feet. 

I don't want to wish anything bad on the 9 million future residents of Neom, but I can't see much good in their future.