Of course, a vehicle can still go around those road blocks, currently — a car _can_ drive across grass or dirt, just not terribly well. That's very different from an area-denial killswitch.

One of the reasons it is plausible is that so many people disregard the risk because they see it as implausible.

Talk to people from Turkey, ask if they would have thought that their country would descent into dictatorship 10 years ago. Talk to my parents, ask if they would have thought that there would be martial law in Poland when they were growing up. Ask people in Iran, if they could even conceive at the time of major modernisation of their country, that they would turn into a religious dictatorship within 20 years of being super progressive.

The major reason why history repeats itself is that people dismiss the possibility of it repeating itself. The reason why Nazi Germany was able to murder millions of people is that no one thought it would happen.