Life in a small town - Los Alamos

The folks at Atomic Nerds have posted a wonderful story about life in Los Alamos:

Mayberry, With Extra Pu238
Peter, the Bayou Renaissance Man, along with a fairly good sized chunk of the rest of the nation, has noticed that Los Alamos National Labs has once again done screwed up (article courtesy of him). To people outside the town, and frankly to a good number here too, these ongoing security problems boggle the mind. How could we go from developing the bomb in near total secrecy to this current shoddy state of affairs where classified material can be found in meth labs?

If you�re one of the people asking those questions, I think the most accurate response is another question: Mister, you�re not from around here, are you?

I suppose it�s probably best to start with the basics. Los Alamos, and its detached suburb White Rock, holds around 20,000 people, give or take a few thousand. Roughly eight or nine thou live in White Rock, with the rest �on the hill.� That�s not the smallest small town in America by any stretch, but I think it�s a safe bet to say it�s the smallest small town that could manufacture the capacity to destroy all life on this planet. We have more PhDs per square mile than any other place on earth, including MIT. The town itself is very small, roughly 100 square miles, much of which is mountain-goat steep. Locals joke that the only way our high school football team can advance the ball is to put it on the field and just let it roll end over end towards the goal post. There isn�t a whole lot of land that�s suitable to build housing on, and that�s reflected in the local market for such. Surrounded by federal land such as Bandelier National Monument, the huge tracts of acreage that LANL occupies, and the Indian Reservations, we don�t have much in the way of expansion options either. That means you have to actually want to live here to find a place and stay in it.

Heh...