What if Godzilla came to Kenya?

This question has been bothering me for a while. While it’s obvious that Godzilla would only visit Japan and the US given that the US and Japan are the only countries which make Godzilla movies, I’ve long been puzzled as to why Godzilla would visit those two exclusively. Specifically, why doesn’t Godzilla visit poor countries? (Note: I realize that Godzilla is a good guy, but ask readers to remember that he didn’t start out that way)

Certainly, the environmental devastation in poor countries is as extensive as in wealthy countries (and perhaps moreso, given the lack of financial and political resources to measure it, let alone do anything about it), making Tanzania, for example, just as much a candidate for kaiju destruction as any other.

But what would happen? First, were Godzilla appear on the shores of the coast of Kenya, he’d (is it male?) have to plow through the port of Mombasa. Godzilla may be destructive, but he’s known to follow standard immigration procedures. He’d meet little resistance, given Kenya’s lax border protection. At the worst, he’d be asked to pay $50 to stay for three months.

Mombasa isn’t a big town, so he’d be over the island and into the country in a matter a seconds, though he might consider a pleasant break on the beach. After finally eradicating Kenya’s terror problem and quashing any ideas of Mombasan separatism, he’d stroll to the Mombasa highway and lumber up to Nairobi, where the real action could start.

In contrast to Japan and the US, Godzilla would find the response by the local military to be tepid at best. A few planes might buzz around aimlessly and a couple of tanks might lob some rounds at his legs, but the military, lacking any incentive to loot cell phones or liquor would probably simply slink away in short order. Response from the African Union or the UN would be slow coming, as they’d have to wait to see if the media reacted with sufficient outrage to warrant action. The US would most certainly refuse to be involved in anything other than a support role.

Godzilla would plod through Nairobi and lay waste to the City Centre in a matter of seconds. It would be like a child stepping through a grandmothers flower garden. He’d probably quickly become bored, lacking much to topple over outside of a few unfinished apartment buildings and maybe a mall here and there. If he were after human destruction, he might take a few steps through Kibera, where he’d certainly kill a half a million people in the space of a single Godzilla breath.

After an anti-climactic fight in Nairobi, he’d have to take a break in Karen to consider what to do next. Maybe he’d move on to Kampala? Or regret his decision and move back to India? It’s hard to say.

The human costs would be incredible. A couple of million people would likely die immediately, the majority of which would be poor given the incredible density in slums like Kibera and their inability to properly evacuate from the city. The sleep inducing traffic jams are unavoidable even under normal circumstances. A manic run for the countryside by all of Nairobi would only make things worse but squatter settlements and slums would reappear within days.

In the long term, however, Godzilla’s destruction of Kenya might pay off. Massive amounts of funding would appear from a number of international sources to rebuild Nairobi’s devastated infrastructure. The Chinese would appear and immediately start rebuilding the highway system from scratch using cheap imported labor. The Americans would set about reconstructing Kenya’s likely devastated military and ports. The British would dump money into overhauling Nairobi’s failing sanitation system, long due for replacement. Kenya would get an infrastructural reboot.

On the other hand, real estate speculators would flow in like flies on roadkill, hoping for a payoff once Kenya’s economy got back on track. Where real estate prices would have crashed immediately following the destruction of Nairobi, leading to a cheap scramble for land, the current real estate boom soon again be underway. Domestic investors would now have even less incentive to develop Kenya’s manufacturing sector and the economy would hobble along as it did before.

Given the political chaos following Godzilla’s destruction of the central government, Chinese investors would grab as much agricultural land as possible, citing “gifts” of highways and football stadiums further entrenching China’s increasingly overbearing presence in the country.

In essence, Kenya, as independent state, would cease to exist.

It might be the case, however, that the destruction of Kenya’s cities might finally sway the Kenyan citizenry away from tribal politics and toward a truly democratic state. People can, and do, often surprise us, but this would be a hard, hard road given that most of the reconstruction would not be democratically determined, but rather orchestrated by World Bank and UN technocrats and Chinese land grabs. It’s clear that Kenya’s self interested leaders would do nothing to stop it.

So, conclusion? Kenya would win big in improved infrastructure, but lose big given the resultant political weakness. In the long term, Kenya might regain some of it’s political footing given improvements in the domestic economy, but it would take decades and a lot of political will to make this happen.