Let’s say there is some big catastrophe like a nuclear war and the end of the world, for the US at least is in a de facto state of being. There is Anarchy everywhere and what national government is left is ignored. Assuming the citizens of any city USA, pretty much work together for their survival and don’t fight, which city would have the resources to last the longest? Jericho the TV show, is a fictional place but has a fresh water supply and a huge salt mine, as well as being a farming town. Are their any cities that come close to that? What else would a City need, in theory? I want to say it would be some place in California because of the vast resources. For sake of the argument lets say that the city in question is out of range of any fallout.
To me, “city” and “farming town” are mutually exclusive. Thus there would not be any cities such as you describe. But there are probably lots of large towns.
Detroit, because it has practice.
Especially once they get Delta City up and running.
Salt Lake city has the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville salt flats and there used to be much orchard/farmland in the valley until they sold it to developers and built suburbs on it. In fact, there used to be durum wheat growing in the median strips and shoulders of all the highways until just a few years ago. In my part of suburbia there are still a few pastures with horses & cattle grazing on them, but not nearly enough to provide food & transport to any but the fewest people in the valley.
We have a coal power plant and electric light rail north/south and one line east/west from downtown to the University. The major problems I can see are:
[ul]getting the coal for the main power plant (I’m not sure where most of it comes from today)[/ul]
[ul]fuel for transport to the north/south commuter rail line. [/ul]
So gasoline would get very expensive very quickly before running out completely. Much of the year I ride a bicycle from the suburbs to my office downtown, but the bike trail wouldn’t serve more than a few hundred people at any one time. I guess that wouldn’t mater so much with no gasoline as the streets would fill with bicycles and a few horses and even fewer horse-drawn wagons.
[ul]water supply. [/ul]I assume we could build windmills to pump the water for irrigation as they were very common in the late 19th & most of the 20th centuries.
My guess is that a smaller city/town in some remote location, maybe southern Canada, where the locals are used to providing for themselves most of the year.
Now, that’s not counting zombies. If there are zombies or a bio-plague like The Stand then I don’t hae a clue where would be the best place to survive.