xa na xa
A.E.I.O.U. - Antarticae est imperare orbi universo
- Location
- σ Octantis
A Monument to Man's Arrogance: Arizona to Virgin Earth
- Thread starter ScottishMongol
- Start date
- Original Timeline Supernatural
Burning Baron
This position needs more entrenching.
- Location
- In here, not out there.
All of those workers will be dead in short order due to cancer.
The fumes alone would be bad. Wading through that much oil will slowly kill you.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It will kill you slowly.
Other things, like not having fuel, will kill you well beforw the cancer does...
- Location
- United States
I just read through this whole thing, and I think this is one of the best IOST's I've ever read. Neat concept, pulled off excellently. The use of the World War Z style exposition works perfectly for stories like this, and you do it particularly well. Just an amazing read overall, and I can't wait to see where you're going to take this.
There were literal thousands of small distilleries, some nothing more than a barrel on bricks along roads. It was reportedly the main reason for ISIS ability to maintain its cars, and rapid cash collection.
It makes sense that 'raiders' could employ such a system, although in a 'scary' kind of way.
And they could have an endless stream of ready to use workers.
Chapter 4.6
- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Russel Begaye stands on the back of his beaten-up pickup truck and looks across the plain, his hands tucked in the pockets of his jacket. A few oil pumps move up and down, piping natural gas out of the ground. Between us and the oil field is the end of the road, cut perfectly through as if with a razor.
It's a bit strange, I'll admit, thinking about how many times I've driven down this road to visit the people up...
He nods towards the east.
They're gone now, of course. Along with the road, but the land...the land was the same. And so were the deposits.
He grins.
Back in the Old World this never would've flown. We were against drilling on tribal land, mainly because it was going to be the feds leasing out the rights to drill to corporations. Now, though...
[Is this still tribal land?]
Oh, land ownership, what a snarl that was. I mean hell, nearly all tribal land was held in trust by the federal government. Ain't no federal government now! So then, who owned it? Well, whoever was living on it at the time, bein' honest. You had the same problem all over the state - who held the deed didn't matter so much to the people squatting on it with their guns. We - meaning the Flagstaff Government - tried to settle the most egregious cases, where people'd been run off their land, but mostly it didn't matter.
Now, here's the thing. The feds may have held the land in trust, but the tribal government administered it. We had our own courts, and police, and seeing as the Navajo Nation was the most populous of all the reservations in the Old World we had a government worth talking about. Of course then most of our government goes and joins the new one in Flagstaff!
Ah...this isn't boring you, isn't it?
[Not at all.]
Right. So the long and short of it is that you had a situation where there were two governments operating side-by-side. Couldn't have that! Well, since we controlled the Flagstaff legislature we merged the remaining tribal administrations into the new state government. Complicated, and I'm sure you don't have the time to interview a judge, but take my word for it when I say that legal precedent was a real bitch to establish.
So, what happens to tribal land? Well at that point we decided to run it as a legal entity, almost like a publicly-owned company where the stockholders are registered members of the Navajo Nation. So in short, the land is owned in common. There's an elected board that decides where to drill and where to farm and graze, and negotiates with Flagstaff to put in roads and schools...and we also have the right to claim new land. Lake Mead, the whites can have that, and old Phoenix too, but all this untouched land, this Virgin Earth? That's ours again.
He takes a deep breath.
Things are getting better. We're still dealing with some of the same old problems, true. Corruption, that never went away, and sometimes money doesn't get where it's supposed to go. We try and hold people accountable, but...yeah.
If we're still getting by on scrap and second-hand gear, well, so is everyone else, and if running water and electricity are still spotty then we're used to that too. But things are getting better a little bit at a time, and we've got room to grow, out there.
So, you're heading down to Safford next?
[Yes.]
I'll give you the name of a buddy of mine to look up, lives on the Apache reservation. Might tell you a thing or two.
We look out at the Virgin Land. It really is surreal.
Why do you think it happened? Sorry, I know you're asking the questions, but...you remember Ghost Dance? That belief that one day the spirits would make all the white men go away? Well, it never caught on with the Navajo. I don't think anyone here believes it. But sometimes I think...there's a lot fewer white men in the world, and a lot of our people are still here. That might be sort of close.
He steps down from the bed of his pickup and offers me a hand.
Alright, miss, let's get you back to town.
It's a bit strange, I'll admit, thinking about how many times I've driven down this road to visit the people up...
He nods towards the east.
They're gone now, of course. Along with the road, but the land...the land was the same. And so were the deposits.
He grins.
Back in the Old World this never would've flown. We were against drilling on tribal land, mainly because it was going to be the feds leasing out the rights to drill to corporations. Now, though...
[Is this still tribal land?]
Oh, land ownership, what a snarl that was. I mean hell, nearly all tribal land was held in trust by the federal government. Ain't no federal government now! So then, who owned it? Well, whoever was living on it at the time, bein' honest. You had the same problem all over the state - who held the deed didn't matter so much to the people squatting on it with their guns. We - meaning the Flagstaff Government - tried to settle the most egregious cases, where people'd been run off their land, but mostly it didn't matter.
Now, here's the thing. The feds may have held the land in trust, but the tribal government administered it. We had our own courts, and police, and seeing as the Navajo Nation was the most populous of all the reservations in the Old World we had a government worth talking about. Of course then most of our government goes and joins the new one in Flagstaff!
Ah...this isn't boring you, isn't it?
[Not at all.]
Right. So the long and short of it is that you had a situation where there were two governments operating side-by-side. Couldn't have that! Well, since we controlled the Flagstaff legislature we merged the remaining tribal administrations into the new state government. Complicated, and I'm sure you don't have the time to interview a judge, but take my word for it when I say that legal precedent was a real bitch to establish.
So, what happens to tribal land? Well at that point we decided to run it as a legal entity, almost like a publicly-owned company where the stockholders are registered members of the Navajo Nation. So in short, the land is owned in common. There's an elected board that decides where to drill and where to farm and graze, and negotiates with Flagstaff to put in roads and schools...and we also have the right to claim new land. Lake Mead, the whites can have that, and old Phoenix too, but all this untouched land, this Virgin Earth? That's ours again.
He takes a deep breath.
Things are getting better. We're still dealing with some of the same old problems, true. Corruption, that never went away, and sometimes money doesn't get where it's supposed to go. We try and hold people accountable, but...yeah.
If we're still getting by on scrap and second-hand gear, well, so is everyone else, and if running water and electricity are still spotty then we're used to that too. But things are getting better a little bit at a time, and we've got room to grow, out there.
So, you're heading down to Safford next?
[Yes.]
I'll give you the name of a buddy of mine to look up, lives on the Apache reservation. Might tell you a thing or two.
We look out at the Virgin Land. It really is surreal.
Why do you think it happened? Sorry, I know you're asking the questions, but...you remember Ghost Dance? That belief that one day the spirits would make all the white men go away? Well, it never caught on with the Navajo. I don't think anyone here believes it. But sometimes I think...there's a lot fewer white men in the world, and a lot of our people are still here. That might be sort of close.
He steps down from the bed of his pickup and offers me a hand.
Alright, miss, let's get you back to town.
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Baron Steakpuncher
Hopeful Idealist
- Location
- Australia
Four centuries of impact rapidly shifting into virgin soil, highways and all.
...
Actually, since it's virgin earth here, are megafauna around?
- Location
- Philippines
Just finished catching up to the latest chapter.
I really love this kind of stories. This is the third ISOT I read besides "ISOT in Grimdark" and "A Golden Island To the West". I wonder if anyone knows something similar? There is something about the idea of a whole nation being dropped off in a whole new world that I find really interesting.
I really love this kind of stories. This is the third ISOT I read besides "ISOT in Grimdark" and "A Golden Island To the West". I wonder if anyone knows something similar? There is something about the idea of a whole nation being dropped off in a whole new world that I find really interesting.
- Location
- Illinois
I think ScottishMongol said they weren't there, but the ISOT people were not quite sure why.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
This new Navajo Nation Inc, sounds almost like the fuzzy half-state half-proprietor administrations of proto-cartels like the EIC and Virginia Company meeting a peasant commune like a Swiss Canton or a Hellene Kionion. Though it's likely that only a small class of landowners would be able to actually take advantage of the virgin lands for a while, having a sub-class made out of Navajo that can actually tell society to pound sand every once in a while warms the cockles of my heart.
Chapter 5.1
- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Chapter 5: the State of Arizona - Safford Government
"Little" Alex Silversmith is five foot ten and spends most of his time in an outpost in the hills in the northern part of the San Carlos Apache Reservation. He has discarded his jacket in the summer heat and instead the strap of his assault rifle is slung over a black tank top.
Things looked pretty good in this part of the state, at first. You had some farms and ranches, a national guard base, and the university up in Safford. There was only one road leading to Phoenix, and that was through a narrow pass that we were able to bottle up. It's been cleared now, but there's a checkpoint down at Lake Roosevelt. But back then, the mayor of Safford was coordinating local efforts, and he would be recognizing Flagstaff's authority soon enough.
That said, the real problem came from within. The national guard was stretched pretty thin. The mayor was recruiting more, and then you had the cops and the militias, but there was still a lot of unrest. Globe was...a bit too full, just a bit too many mouths to feed, including some refugees who'd been accepted in before we - they - closed the pass.
[How many was too many?]
I dunno, I'm not one of the eggheads at the university. They crunched the numbers and it came out afterwards that...well, you know how some places had to make the choice between everybody starving or half the population being fed? Yeah, that was gonna be us real soon. So yeah, Globe was coming apart at the seams, and the national guard wasn't having an easy time of it keeping everything together. And then, the mayor of Safford decided to arm the folks on the rez -
He hefts the assault rifle slung over his shoulder.
- while at the same time pulling back some of the guard to Safford. Well, people started talking real quick. I don't know what he planned, but there was one road between Globe and Safford, and it led right through Apache land. If Globe collapsed, the refugees'd hit us first. So it sure looked like he was putting us between him and the city. Well, not much we could do about that, but by this point Globe had some shit-stirrers. Maybe you didn't need to be an egghead to know that if you got rid of enough people then at some point there'd be enough food for the rest of us. And the locals figured it might as well be all those refugees...
Then El Presidente came to talk to us. He wasn't El Presidente then of course, just some national guard officer. I think he was one of the people who joined up after, and he just got promoted real fast. Never found out. But he pitched us this plan...pretty damn ballsy, but he needed some outside guns.
I don't know if he woulda gone through with it if it hadn't been for Globe. The city finally went blew up, it was local cops and the city militia against the national guard mostly, but there was something like five factions. National guard only controlled part of the city, and bandit and refugees - no real difference at this point - were spilling east into Apache land. We'd had some firefights but the real storm was still comin'.
So, around sundown, about four months after Phoenix had collapsed, the boss gathered up the Safford garrison, marched into city hall, and hey presto, you got another place calling itself the State of Arizona. Now, our guy didn't call himself the president, but the name got around somehow, so, El Presidente is what most people on the street'll call him.
[Why do you think he did it?]
Probably because he wanted to be the little tinpot dictator of a couple backwoods towns. Shit yeah, I can say that, why do you think we're up in the hills? Anyway, he's welcome to it.
[But he did stop Globe from collapsing.]
Maybe so. True, lots of people weren't pleased with how the old mayor handled things, El Presidente spread the word around afterwards that he saved the day. That's probably why so many folks fell in line behind him, at first anyway. But hey, maybe the national guard could've restored order, or maybe the old mayor would've been able to handle it. Who knows?
[What happened after the coup?]
After that? He split the Safford Garrison, half was sent to sort out Globe. We joined up with them and rolled into town, backup for the national guard. By the time that was over...yeah, too many mouths wasn't a going concern anymore. There's all sorts of conspiracy theories - that the old mayor was gonna let Globe collapse on purpose, that the fighting in Globe was a false flag or some shit, that El Presidente was behind it, or that we were behind it somehow...most way you'll hear it, either he wanted us to be his private army, or he was planning to wipe out the pure white race and put us in charge. Shit, I wish. Maybe we'd have gotten something better out of it than the guns and a cut of the salvage.
[So things haven't been that great since then?]
Things haven't ever been that great. But nah, after El Presidente had Globe sorted we got a pat on the back and we went back to the reservation. At least we got to keep the guns and stuff. But well, you see those mountains?
He points to the peaks north of us.
White Mountain Rez is right over there. There's some trails through there, and we do a bit of trade with our relations out there. Out of the way of any government officials, their side or ours, and word goes back and forth all the time. We know what kinda deal they get on their side of the mountains, and we'd like a slice. Don't forget, we were almost part of the Flagstaff Government before the coup.
[How did he last this long?]
Cooperation. He's not some nutcase, he's got trade agreements and open borders, and he let one of their salvage companies put an office in Globe, and its not like we shot any of theirs so they're not mad at us breaking off or anything. They've got enough on their plate, from what I hear, so as long as he doesn't cause problems for them, they'll leave him be.
[What about internal trouble?]
He winks at me.
Like I said, why do you think we're in this outpost up in the hills?
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Burning Baron
This position needs more entrenching.
- Location
- In here, not out there.
I imagine the fighting in the quarry was particularly awful.
For those who don't know, Miami/Globe is a series of valleys with a giant strip mine in it. And I mean a giant mine. Miles long.
,
For those who don't know, Miami/Globe is a series of valleys with a giant strip mine in it. And I mean a giant mine. Miles long.
,
Chapter 5.2
- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Linda Glenn, like many, shows signs of stress - hair graying before her time, dark circles around her eyes, a lined face. However, Linda works in the Safford University Library, one of the highest concentrations of knowledge in the world outside of Flagstaff.
People might not understand just how much knowledge was lost, all at once. The moment the...Event, the Translocation, the...whatever. In the instant it happened, we lost access to the sum total of all human knowledge in the form of the Internet. An incalculable amount of collected learning that we will never get back, poof, gone.
We have to make due with what we had left. And that knowledge pool is rapidly shrinking. The chaos of Phoenix burnt up...so many libraries. So many private and public collections, even just things like government records that could have been useful in studying the 21st Century. It's possible that the Government-in-Exile squirreled some of those records away, but it's doubtful.
Still, even with the damages done by fire, there was still a monumental amount of information hidden around, in books and other forms of media. Ever since then, it's been a race against the elements. Fires tear through Phoenix yearly, and the rain - the yearly monsoons are starting to tear down buildings that have been structurally weakened. This is, admittedly, primarily a concern for the salvage teams, but my department has been begging and borrowing for every expedition to bring back salvaged books, and I mean good reference books, so that maybe we can preserve something.
We've had...mixed results. Usually the salvage teams can be counted on to bring back something good - every book is precious, in my opinion - but some hauls are better than others. And that's not even to mention digital media...we gave up on that as a bad job, reluctantly in my case.
[Was it not worth the effort?]
God, wasn't that the big debate? At first we thought that maybe searching through hard drives from select, targeted expeditions would turn up something, but the results were way into diminishing returns, and the higher-ups scrapped any further attempts to bring those back. Our computer hardware isn't going to last outside a generation, anyway, and we...probably won't have the technology base to build more for a long time.
That's basically the problem with all forms of digital media, though to a lesser extent. We just don't have the capabilities to build more cameras, DVD players, or even VCRs, and when those break down...they're gone for good, that's it. I know in some places you get like, movie theaters doing re-runs of classic films, and yeah we've got a few of those stored away in the vaults, but you can only find replacement parts out of Phoenix for so long.
This isn't to say that we don't know how. If we wanted to, we could probably re-invent primitive photography and film. The chemical processes would be difficult, and might require trial and error. But well...it comes down to the will and the resource base.
Oh, and, I'm not trying to denigrate the people who have made new films these days. I know a lot of people don't like watching the footage shot by people who made it out of Phoenix...too real, I can sympathize. But I-17 is one of my favorite films. So beautifully edited. Then there are some of the amateur films written and shot in Flagstaff...it'll be a damn shame to see that little industry disappear.
[You think that's a foregone conclusion?]
It is, in my opinion. Everything breaks down eventually, you hear about this problem in Yuma, their beloved military hardware breaks down and they can't fix it, for want of basic replacement parts that they can't build without the tools to make the tools...that's going to happen all over, in the next couple decades, and who knows where it'll stop?
I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle most days, tossing little messages in bottles into seas of time, hoping they reach someone in the future...
Because, now that you understand how hard it is to preserve this knowledge, understand that some people, people in places of power, don't even think we should bother. They ask why we're spending resources trying to remember how to build spaceships, or computers, or record what happened a hundred years ago in some part of the world that doesn't "matter" anymore. Like we can't learn anything from the history of Rome or the British Empire, like it's not worth knowing about the ecology of the Amazon or Australia!
Why can't our children's children's children know that men walked on the Moon and know how they did it and dream to do the same?
And then you have - ugh, fundamentalist groups who see an opportunity to rewrite history, to erase the work of decades to support a literal interpretation of...sorry. There's a sizable Mormon contingent in Safford, and they've been agitating here, and in Flagstaff, for schools to teach the "controversy" of the Book of Mormon's...let's say, unorthodox claims about New World archaeology. There are also some people, and I won't name names, who have actively campaigned for wiping out records of "dangerous" political or philosophical movements, which I'm sure you can understand is extremely dangerous.
It's...endlessly frustrating. The worst part of it is, they're right, in a way. Most people just don't care anymore. People aren't going to be teaching their kids about real history, about real science, just about whatever it is that will help them survive. The majority of people are probably some form of subsistence farmer or pastoralist right now, and that's not going to change any time soon. There are maybe three real metropolitan areas in the world right now, and Safford isn't one of them.
Which comes back to what I said about the will and the resource base. When most of your effort is spent just staying alive, just getting a functional economy, you're not going to have people around to innovate, to research, to learn. The people running things right now aren't anti-science, not most of them anyway, but they're short-sighted. They do want knowledge. "Practical" knowledge. Information on steam and diesel power, natural gas and mineral deposits, those they want. Military R&D, there's always something in the budget for that. Agricultural knowledge, we can all agree that's a priority. But putting money into history courses? Political science? Anything that's, oh what did he tell me, "pie tomorrow, never pie today".
And even while we're trying to preserve what we know - we're copying books, sharing them with other collections, looking for more, writing new sources that compile and comment on Old World knowledge - there's so much more we could be learning!
She waves at the east-facing windows, beyond which lie, eventually, the Arizona state border.
We don't even know what the rest of the world looks like! We think we're alone, but what if there are people on the East Coast, or Eurasia? Why are there no megafauna?
If there are no people in this world, the megafauna should never have been hunted to extinction. So why are there no Columbian Mammoths, no Sabre-tooths, no Giant Sloths? Maybe there were humans and they died out in the Americas. Maybe it was something else, something that could completely change the way we see the world! We've explored a radius of maybe 500 miles around Arizona, and that only very, very lightly. We haven't scratched the surface out there - for all we know a single archaeological dig could turn our understanding of this - this New World on its head!
It's become common to refer to the pre-Translocation era as "the Old World". It's a way of separating themselves from the United States, from another civilization and another culture. We're too different now, we've been too changed by what we went through. People don't like to talk about it, or even think about it. It's only a few people who really bother to ask why this happened. Why it happened to us, to our state. They're usually insane theories - like the Fundamentalists north of the Grand Canyon, or the raiders out beyond Phoenix - or they're just...extremely unpleasant to think about. Some god or alien's laboratory test, some research experiment.
That's why there's no common name for the Event. The Translocation...I was the first to write an actual research paper on it, and it's only been picked up on by a handful of academics in Flagstaff.
I worry that...if I fail, people will forget the Old World entirely. It will fade into myth, and people won't understand what's really important about those days, and about why we are the way we are. Someone will come up with a creation myth, and "explain" how this all came to be, and we'll lose something extremely vital to our species' success - the ability to learn from our past and build on it.
She shakes her head.
I wonder what we're going to look like in a few generations.
People might not understand just how much knowledge was lost, all at once. The moment the...Event, the Translocation, the...whatever. In the instant it happened, we lost access to the sum total of all human knowledge in the form of the Internet. An incalculable amount of collected learning that we will never get back, poof, gone.
We have to make due with what we had left. And that knowledge pool is rapidly shrinking. The chaos of Phoenix burnt up...so many libraries. So many private and public collections, even just things like government records that could have been useful in studying the 21st Century. It's possible that the Government-in-Exile squirreled some of those records away, but it's doubtful.
Still, even with the damages done by fire, there was still a monumental amount of information hidden around, in books and other forms of media. Ever since then, it's been a race against the elements. Fires tear through Phoenix yearly, and the rain - the yearly monsoons are starting to tear down buildings that have been structurally weakened. This is, admittedly, primarily a concern for the salvage teams, but my department has been begging and borrowing for every expedition to bring back salvaged books, and I mean good reference books, so that maybe we can preserve something.
We've had...mixed results. Usually the salvage teams can be counted on to bring back something good - every book is precious, in my opinion - but some hauls are better than others. And that's not even to mention digital media...we gave up on that as a bad job, reluctantly in my case.
[Was it not worth the effort?]
God, wasn't that the big debate? At first we thought that maybe searching through hard drives from select, targeted expeditions would turn up something, but the results were way into diminishing returns, and the higher-ups scrapped any further attempts to bring those back. Our computer hardware isn't going to last outside a generation, anyway, and we...probably won't have the technology base to build more for a long time.
That's basically the problem with all forms of digital media, though to a lesser extent. We just don't have the capabilities to build more cameras, DVD players, or even VCRs, and when those break down...they're gone for good, that's it. I know in some places you get like, movie theaters doing re-runs of classic films, and yeah we've got a few of those stored away in the vaults, but you can only find replacement parts out of Phoenix for so long.
This isn't to say that we don't know how. If we wanted to, we could probably re-invent primitive photography and film. The chemical processes would be difficult, and might require trial and error. But well...it comes down to the will and the resource base.
Oh, and, I'm not trying to denigrate the people who have made new films these days. I know a lot of people don't like watching the footage shot by people who made it out of Phoenix...too real, I can sympathize. But I-17 is one of my favorite films. So beautifully edited. Then there are some of the amateur films written and shot in Flagstaff...it'll be a damn shame to see that little industry disappear.
[You think that's a foregone conclusion?]
It is, in my opinion. Everything breaks down eventually, you hear about this problem in Yuma, their beloved military hardware breaks down and they can't fix it, for want of basic replacement parts that they can't build without the tools to make the tools...that's going to happen all over, in the next couple decades, and who knows where it'll stop?
I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle most days, tossing little messages in bottles into seas of time, hoping they reach someone in the future...
Because, now that you understand how hard it is to preserve this knowledge, understand that some people, people in places of power, don't even think we should bother. They ask why we're spending resources trying to remember how to build spaceships, or computers, or record what happened a hundred years ago in some part of the world that doesn't "matter" anymore. Like we can't learn anything from the history of Rome or the British Empire, like it's not worth knowing about the ecology of the Amazon or Australia!
Why can't our children's children's children know that men walked on the Moon and know how they did it and dream to do the same?
And then you have - ugh, fundamentalist groups who see an opportunity to rewrite history, to erase the work of decades to support a literal interpretation of...sorry. There's a sizable Mormon contingent in Safford, and they've been agitating here, and in Flagstaff, for schools to teach the "controversy" of the Book of Mormon's...let's say, unorthodox claims about New World archaeology. There are also some people, and I won't name names, who have actively campaigned for wiping out records of "dangerous" political or philosophical movements, which I'm sure you can understand is extremely dangerous.
It's...endlessly frustrating. The worst part of it is, they're right, in a way. Most people just don't care anymore. People aren't going to be teaching their kids about real history, about real science, just about whatever it is that will help them survive. The majority of people are probably some form of subsistence farmer or pastoralist right now, and that's not going to change any time soon. There are maybe three real metropolitan areas in the world right now, and Safford isn't one of them.
Which comes back to what I said about the will and the resource base. When most of your effort is spent just staying alive, just getting a functional economy, you're not going to have people around to innovate, to research, to learn. The people running things right now aren't anti-science, not most of them anyway, but they're short-sighted. They do want knowledge. "Practical" knowledge. Information on steam and diesel power, natural gas and mineral deposits, those they want. Military R&D, there's always something in the budget for that. Agricultural knowledge, we can all agree that's a priority. But putting money into history courses? Political science? Anything that's, oh what did he tell me, "pie tomorrow, never pie today".
And even while we're trying to preserve what we know - we're copying books, sharing them with other collections, looking for more, writing new sources that compile and comment on Old World knowledge - there's so much more we could be learning!
She waves at the east-facing windows, beyond which lie, eventually, the Arizona state border.
We don't even know what the rest of the world looks like! We think we're alone, but what if there are people on the East Coast, or Eurasia? Why are there no megafauna?
If there are no people in this world, the megafauna should never have been hunted to extinction. So why are there no Columbian Mammoths, no Sabre-tooths, no Giant Sloths? Maybe there were humans and they died out in the Americas. Maybe it was something else, something that could completely change the way we see the world! We've explored a radius of maybe 500 miles around Arizona, and that only very, very lightly. We haven't scratched the surface out there - for all we know a single archaeological dig could turn our understanding of this - this New World on its head!
It's become common to refer to the pre-Translocation era as "the Old World". It's a way of separating themselves from the United States, from another civilization and another culture. We're too different now, we've been too changed by what we went through. People don't like to talk about it, or even think about it. It's only a few people who really bother to ask why this happened. Why it happened to us, to our state. They're usually insane theories - like the Fundamentalists north of the Grand Canyon, or the raiders out beyond Phoenix - or they're just...extremely unpleasant to think about. Some god or alien's laboratory test, some research experiment.
That's why there's no common name for the Event. The Translocation...I was the first to write an actual research paper on it, and it's only been picked up on by a handful of academics in Flagstaff.
I worry that...if I fail, people will forget the Old World entirely. It will fade into myth, and people won't understand what's really important about those days, and about why we are the way we are. Someone will come up with a creation myth, and "explain" how this all came to be, and we'll lose something extremely vital to our species' success - the ability to learn from our past and build on it.
She shakes her head.
I wonder what we're going to look like in a few generations.
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- Location
- East Coast
It's nice to see someone in universe who has realized (as I keep noting) that the various Arizona societies haven't so much stopped falling as hit terminal velocity. All of this--even the crazy raiders lurking out in the desert--is a temporary construct that's going to fall apart when too much of the tech breaks down. Some of the societies seem to be building things that can survive this--others really haven't. (Yuma and the Government-in-Exile in particular both strike me as ticking time bombs.)
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
Arizona looks like it really needs a monastic movement or some court poets or something that has a societal incentive to preserve and propagate what knowledge remains; perhaps the warriors in a future de-militarized Yuma push back against the new mercantile power by morphing into a scholastic and cultural aristocracy like Ancien Regime gentry or Ero period court Samurai glorifying the Old World through the American military? Or Flagstaff creating it's national identity and the justification for it's national liberation by the DPP as those new party power blocs entrench themselves (New Zion seems to to be almost a third party in the DPP's one-party government like a Democrat ticket losing to the almighty post-Civil War Republican political machine)?
- Location
- Illinois
I just hope that bicycle hordes are a thing in their future.
I wonder if the Yuma government will eventually conquer most of old Arizona only for their empire to collapse after a decade or two as tech decline destroys any advantage they had.
I wonder if the Yuma government will eventually conquer most of old Arizona only for their empire to collapse after a decade or two as tech decline destroys any advantage they had.
- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Thanks for the comments, everyone! I've been looking forward to writing this chapter since the beginning, probably.
Flagstaff will probably have the highest tech level once everything is said and done. Yuma is making do on Old World military equipment which means any failures represent a crippling blow to their would-be superiority.
Yuma and the Pacific Redoubt are actually pretty similar, since Yuma is run by the military and the Redoubt is run by an entrenched oligarchy backed up by the military. It wouldn't take much for either state to transition into full neo-feudalism (complete with their own mercantile classes!).
Bicycle cavalry will definitely be a thing, especially in urban areas like Phoenix.
Yuma probably won't make it that far, mainly because I don't think their tech will last all that long. A lot of the really complicated stuff will go first, and they've already lost a lot of their air force, and they don't have the industrial base to even downgrade to say, biplanes or airships. Neither does Flagstaff, come to that, but Yuma is definitely going to run up against a wall eventually and then they'll really be in it.
Flagstaff will probably have the highest tech level once everything is said and done. Yuma is making do on Old World military equipment which means any failures represent a crippling blow to their would-be superiority.
Yuma and the Pacific Redoubt are actually pretty similar, since Yuma is run by the military and the Redoubt is run by an entrenched oligarchy backed up by the military. It wouldn't take much for either state to transition into full neo-feudalism (complete with their own mercantile classes!).
Bicycle cavalry will definitely be a thing, especially in urban areas like Phoenix.
Yuma probably won't make it that far, mainly because I don't think their tech will last all that long. A lot of the really complicated stuff will go first, and they've already lost a lot of their air force, and they don't have the industrial base to even downgrade to say, biplanes or airships. Neither does Flagstaff, come to that, but Yuma is definitely going to run up against a wall eventually and then they'll really be in it.
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- Location
- East Coast
The Redoubt's pretty much ALREADY in neo-feudalism, and are just waiting for their tech to degrade as much as their society has. The dangerous thing for both them and Yuma is that when that tech advantage falls apart, how are they going to make their case for "let us continue to oppress you!" to a populace that may very well be quite tired of it...?
5.3
- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I sit in a cozy house on the edge of Safford. There are warm woolen blankets draped over the couch and armchairs, waiting for the autumn chill. My host brings me a tray of cornbread biscuits and fresh milk. Shirley Evans is a housewife and mother of three who is renting out her guest room while I stay in the city.
There you go, made from scratch. And the milk came from the farmer's market this morning.
I eat appreciatively as she talks.
They're a little rough, but leagues better than what we had in the...the bad days.
[I think they're excellent.]
Thank you. Back then, we had breadlines, actual bread lines, handing out rough loaves made from whatever flour the government could confiscate, and later cornmeal. Goodness, we do eat a lot of corn these days, don't we? Later we got the potato farms bringing produce in, and the vegetable gardens.
Oh, and the soup. It was mostly broth, mutton or beef. A lot of ranchers were pretty mad about the meager compensation, but after El Presidente came to power, he broke up the big ranches. By that point we'd eaten all the steers and most of the dairy cows, and we were down to breeding stock. I had no idea how most farms worked in those days! Almost makes you glad to see them gone.
[Is there enough food to go around?]
Enough, but not as much variety. Our family eats mostly the same meals every day. We didn't starve, though I know things got pretty bad over in Globe, to say nothing of all those poor folks in Phoenix!
And you know, everything is local and "organic".
She snorts.
Never really cared for that sort of thing in the past, but now it's a struggle to keep up standards. There was an outbreak of cholera last year and it was traced back to one of the vegetable farms, and El Presidente started sending out "government inspectors" to make sure it didn't happen again.
[What do you do with your time these days?]
These days? I keep house. It's so much more work these days, because we have the chickens and the vegetable garden out back, and there's the youngest to take care of. The other two, bless them, get school or the youth group activities. Me, I've had to learn a lot of new skills. My husband works at the mill and gets us our ration cards, but that means he's not around to fix things when they go wrong, and these days it seems like everything has to be replaced. I churned that butter you're spreading right now.
There's music and things, community gatherings, the farmer's market. It's important to know your neighbors these days, help each other out, because sometimes there's something you can't handle yourself and you need neighbors you can count on. Oh, and of course I go to the Mormon temple on Sunday every week.
[Were you always Mormon?]
No, we were Baptists. But well, during the bad old days, the Mormons shared the food they all had...God bless them, I bet we all wish we'd been Mormons just for that. And well, they were part of the community, we all talked a lot more than we did before, on account of there being nobody else to talk to outside of town, and they started talking about the scriptures...
[And you were open to it?]
A lot of things seemed...uncertain in those days. What they said made sense. And Joseph Smith lived here in America. I know it's silly, but there's no Jerusalem, no Rome, so it's hard to have that...connection. I never visited any of those places of course, but they were more real back then.
As I learned more, they also started welcoming us to their community events. I told you how important that is now. There were a lot of new attendees in those days, I got to meet people for the first time that've shared a street with me for years!
And well, I'm incredibly grateful to everyone. I go to the Relief Society functions, that's the women's circle of sorts. It's a good way to keep in touch with everyone, and we host potluck dinners which are, just, always such a treat. And we have our Visiting Teaching, too.
[What's that?]
Just, every once in a while someone stops by and checks in, asks how we're doing, if anyone's sick, do you need anything. It makes the congregation feel like a family, really.
[Is everyone in these parts a Mormon?]
Everyone? No, not at all. More than in the old days, but there are a few Protestant congregations in Safford that I know of, and some others. There's a Muslim family in Globe who made it out of Phoenix, and a Japanese restaurant where you can get some really decent noodles. But, those are just one or two, and like I said there's always new faces at Sunday services.
[What do you think about the Safford Government?]
Well, we try not to think much, if I'm being honest. Things are hard enough, we just keep our heads down and that's enough. El Presidente, he's done some tyrannical things, but only when he decides to step in at all.
[But how does the congregation feel?]
We're just normal folks. We want to be safe and fed. We want Safford to be open to the rest of the world. We want democracy again.
[I see. Thank you for answering my questions.]
It's been a pleasure to have you, honey. Another biscuit?
There you go, made from scratch. And the milk came from the farmer's market this morning.
I eat appreciatively as she talks.
They're a little rough, but leagues better than what we had in the...the bad days.
[I think they're excellent.]
Thank you. Back then, we had breadlines, actual bread lines, handing out rough loaves made from whatever flour the government could confiscate, and later cornmeal. Goodness, we do eat a lot of corn these days, don't we? Later we got the potato farms bringing produce in, and the vegetable gardens.
Oh, and the soup. It was mostly broth, mutton or beef. A lot of ranchers were pretty mad about the meager compensation, but after El Presidente came to power, he broke up the big ranches. By that point we'd eaten all the steers and most of the dairy cows, and we were down to breeding stock. I had no idea how most farms worked in those days! Almost makes you glad to see them gone.
[Is there enough food to go around?]
Enough, but not as much variety. Our family eats mostly the same meals every day. We didn't starve, though I know things got pretty bad over in Globe, to say nothing of all those poor folks in Phoenix!
And you know, everything is local and "organic".
She snorts.
Never really cared for that sort of thing in the past, but now it's a struggle to keep up standards. There was an outbreak of cholera last year and it was traced back to one of the vegetable farms, and El Presidente started sending out "government inspectors" to make sure it didn't happen again.
[What do you do with your time these days?]
These days? I keep house. It's so much more work these days, because we have the chickens and the vegetable garden out back, and there's the youngest to take care of. The other two, bless them, get school or the youth group activities. Me, I've had to learn a lot of new skills. My husband works at the mill and gets us our ration cards, but that means he's not around to fix things when they go wrong, and these days it seems like everything has to be replaced. I churned that butter you're spreading right now.
There's music and things, community gatherings, the farmer's market. It's important to know your neighbors these days, help each other out, because sometimes there's something you can't handle yourself and you need neighbors you can count on. Oh, and of course I go to the Mormon temple on Sunday every week.
[Were you always Mormon?]
No, we were Baptists. But well, during the bad old days, the Mormons shared the food they all had...God bless them, I bet we all wish we'd been Mormons just for that. And well, they were part of the community, we all talked a lot more than we did before, on account of there being nobody else to talk to outside of town, and they started talking about the scriptures...
[And you were open to it?]
A lot of things seemed...uncertain in those days. What they said made sense. And Joseph Smith lived here in America. I know it's silly, but there's no Jerusalem, no Rome, so it's hard to have that...connection. I never visited any of those places of course, but they were more real back then.
As I learned more, they also started welcoming us to their community events. I told you how important that is now. There were a lot of new attendees in those days, I got to meet people for the first time that've shared a street with me for years!
And well, I'm incredibly grateful to everyone. I go to the Relief Society functions, that's the women's circle of sorts. It's a good way to keep in touch with everyone, and we host potluck dinners which are, just, always such a treat. And we have our Visiting Teaching, too.
[What's that?]
Just, every once in a while someone stops by and checks in, asks how we're doing, if anyone's sick, do you need anything. It makes the congregation feel like a family, really.
[Is everyone in these parts a Mormon?]
Everyone? No, not at all. More than in the old days, but there are a few Protestant congregations in Safford that I know of, and some others. There's a Muslim family in Globe who made it out of Phoenix, and a Japanese restaurant where you can get some really decent noodles. But, those are just one or two, and like I said there's always new faces at Sunday services.
[What do you think about the Safford Government?]
Well, we try not to think much, if I'm being honest. Things are hard enough, we just keep our heads down and that's enough. El Presidente, he's done some tyrannical things, but only when he decides to step in at all.
[But how does the congregation feel?]
We're just normal folks. We want to be safe and fed. We want Safford to be open to the rest of the world. We want democracy again.
[I see. Thank you for answering my questions.]
It's been a pleasure to have you, honey. Another biscuit?
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- Location
- United States
I think the fact that he calls himself 'El Presidente' speaks of a great deal of self-honesty and humor, both of which make many a flaw much more palatable - as well as by all reports being competent at his job. People aren't happy about living under a dictator and want a democracy back, but they're not lining the streets in protest.
EBR
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Khazaria
I imagine if he had been a pre-Enlightenment ruler- say a Roman Emperor or a king of some kind- he'd be remembered and written of well. It's with out modern attitudes that anything done by a dictator is automatically tainted.
Not to endorse dictators, just to comment on the changing cultural standards.
It does make sense that most successful dictators will be the most competent.