Geospatial tools like the buffer, commonly used in environmental modeling, made it easier for mapmakers to analyze geographic features in close proximity to one another. This 1988 map from the geographer William Bunge applies buffer zones for a more overtly political message about nuclear fallout. Bright red circles indicate “Zones of destruction” after a simulated nuclear attack of major cities in New England.
Buffer zones are often intermediary steps in a longer geospatial analysis; sometimes, the buffers that a mapmaker created during their analysis don’t even need to be included in the final map product. In this map, however, the buffers are precisely the point: as Bunge writes in the caption, they give the earth’s surface the appearance of “what is left of a piece of flattened dough after being cut up by a cookie cutter.”