A Monument to Man's Arrogance: Arizona to Virgin Earth

I think this is the first chapter that really drives home how desperate and depressed a lot of people became after the dislocation. Mostly due to how simplistic and "I don't care" way its introduced.
People died, we killed people, our guys committed suicide... and its all covered with this inevitable, slowly creeping second collapse. And that's right after the very positive chapter of a man looking forward to life!
Good job @ScottishMongol .Good Job.

. Of course, they will probably never have boots on the Pacific, and as for pinning down the neo-nomads...yeah, ask China how that went.
Remember the Xiongnu? No many people do. But they were the proto-mongols. And everyone in then Mongolia was labeled with that name as a step barbarian by the Chinese. Of course that was a name of an actual large Tribe that ruled there.
But then one day that Tribe made that "one ride too many". Han China consequently came to rule those lands.
And the Xiongnu tribe? They ran west, across the steppes, never to be heard from again.
 
Remember the Xiongnu? No many people do. But they were the proto-mongols. And everyone in then Mongolia was labeled with that name as a step barbarian by the Chinese. Of course that was a name of an actual large Tribe that ruled there.
But then one day that Tribe made that "one ride too many". Han China consequently came to rule those lands.
And the Xiongnu tribe? They ran west, across the steppes, never to be heard from again.

Like I said, the house always wins in the end. And yeah, people tend to forget the countless also-ran nomads who the Chinese slapped around.

Or that the Mongols after ruling over China for less than a century got kicked out and spent the next two centuries pretending they were still emperors and having the Ming wipe the floor with them whenever they got too obnoxious.
 
I actually think it's worse for McMullin than for the rest of his fellow soldiers, because he can see the rot setting in and not only knows how far he's fallen but that this is only the beginning and there's further to fall still. Poor guy.
 
I actually think it's worse for McMullin than for the rest of his fellow soldiers, because he can see the rot setting in and not only knows how far he's fallen but that this is only the beginning and there's further to fall still. Poor guy.

Oh certainly. In Yuma or the Pacific Redoubt, you can fool yourself that you did your best. In Cochise?

You hope the liquor you have waiting for you back at home is the good stuff.
 
So wait.

What happened to David-Monthan? AKA home of the Brrrrt of the A-10 and a massive aircraft boneyard?
 
Yuma probably really wants to go there to start taking apart the planes for spare parts, though.
The craft that arrive there are already stripped of electronics and most useful components though? Since a lot of that stuff can be still used domestically, sold to other operating nations, or needs to be destroyed due to secrecy.
Though easy source of steel, aluminium and titanium-aluminium alloys and miles of copper wire.
 
There's also multiple solar fields, which would be worth their weight in capital expended to retrieve them.
 
There's also multiple solar fields, which would be worth their weight in capital expended to retrieve them.
Wouldn't those have deteriorated hard after 10 or so years from the event? (I don't remember how much time passed)
I think the prop engines on old planes there would serve better simply as improvised wind turbines when coupled with remaining wiring.
Or placed them on rivers to act as water generators.
 
This is great and interesting stuff. I've been meaning to comment for a while now but living in Tucson and being quite aware I would die in this situation has kind of made that hard for me for some reason.
 
This is a really interesting world you created. It would be really interesting to see what the states have become in 50, 100 and 500 years.

There are so many subtle hints about the slow decay that I really love.

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.)

Imho this sums it up perfectly. All of the little statelets are on borrowed time. Sure, when the last computer breaks it will be bad but the real problems start when your last syringe isn't usable anymore.

The Northern Government has a chance to retain something above the level of feudalism. If they truly understand their situation, they have a shoot at stopping the technological decline around mid/late 18th century level of tech.

The cattle barons of Cochise are happily sliding into their feudalist (or nomadic) future. Sure, it seems bad but they are cut out to be winners for a while. Depending on how the Northern Government fares, they could be powerplayers for a few centuries.
50 years later you wouldn't see bikes on a cattle market and the Senate has become hereditary. 100 years later you might see the occasional musket.

The army-with-a-state is doomed. Their form of organization is not viable when the tech declines below a certain level.

The Legitimists are...interesting. Something resembling their oligarchy is going to survive but I wouldn't bet my money on continuity of personal. A lot of people who are rich and powerful now might be dead or serfs in a few decades.
 
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I wonder what would happen if they found out that somewhere else, perhaps pretty damn far from them, was also transported?

Considering they haven't gone farther than the Rio Grande or the Pacific, this is entirely possible. Shit, there could be someone on the East Coast and they might not know about it. I've toyed around with multiple different theories but even I don't know for sure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Considering they haven't gone farther than the Rio Grande or the Pacific, this is entirely possible. Shit, there could be someone on the East Coast and they might not know about it. I've toyed around with multiple different theories but even I don't know for sure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Clearly it is Scotland, with a certain Mongol present. :p
 
The cattle barons of Cochise are happily sliding into their feudalist (or nomadic) future. Sure, it seems bad but they are cut out to be winners for a while. Depending on how the Northern Government fares, they could be powerplayers for a few centuries.

I disagree. Cochise is a lot like what I imagine most of the crazy nomads to be--it's prospering now while playing at a high-tech version of an older society, but it's not laying much away for the inevitable fall, just mumbling "hard men making hard choices" and "free man uh the land" bullshit. Individuals associated with Cochise might do okay, but Cochise is going to fall apart like Yuma and the Pacific Redoubt once the tech collapse really hits, because it's just not ready as an entity to handle an actual regression. (As noted, they are surviving right now off trade with the Northern Government.)
 
6.3
Nova Cruces is a wretched town of about two hundred people. It is made of whitewashed adobe buildings and is surrounded by fields of irrigated crops. The largest buildings are the church and the "Sheriff's Office", a combination fort, barracks, and administrative center. Nova Cruces would be unremarkable compared to any other small town in the southern part of the state, save that it is located south of what was, in the Old World, the Mexican-American border. I find Father Thomas Gonzalez Gonzalez in the church's hospital wing, completing his checkup on a convalescent.

Our conversation is translated from the good Father's native Spanish.


In the Old World, as they say, I was just a lay priest. Then everything went very, very badly. For everyone, I mean, not only the Church.

The faith has barely survived, but the same cannot be said for the Catholic Church. There were no Cardinals in the state, and both the Bishops of Phoenix and Tucson chose to stay at their posts until the very end, God rest their souls. The Church hierarchy was shattered. There have been...many angry letters, I understand, regarding the new authority, sent between the surviving priests in the north and in the east.

It seems that we will each have to tend to our own flocks, doing what we can, for the time being. Perhaps one day a new Pope will be selected...or he will appoint himself. We can only pray. And in the meantime, we fret and worry as to how far we are straying from Catholic doctrine. I understand that in these dark times, many pray to Santa Muerte, and others insist that this is not to be done. What were once decried as mere "folk saints" are now worshiped openly in congregations. Who is to say which is the right way to ask for intercession? I only serve my flock in the way that is best for them.

[How do you serve your congregation?]

It seems that I must help them with both their spiritual and physical ailments. I take confession and give communion, and christen infants, and do all other things that a priest must, but in this town we have no village doctor, and as it happens I still know a little of medicine and such things. There are also midwives, and not so many of our newborns die as they would without them, so it seems that God blesses their work.

He fidgets.

And of course, we must work to eat, and labor under the eye of our Sheriff. It is...good, that he and his Deputies have elected to attend our services. He is...a good patron of my church.

[How did you come to be here?]


A pause.

After the Lord...well. After Phoenix and Tucson burned, many fled to this part of the state. There were...many people. In the border cities of Nogales and Douglas, there were many who...well, they were not from the state.

Not just the undocumented, you understand, but travelers, people here on work, that sort of thing. Many people crossed the border legally, every day, simply to do their jobs.

But...to many, the cities had too many mouths. And when it came time to decide who went to the farms...

He fidgets again.

It was a...difficult first year. We were not completely helpless, as we had been able to gather a number of supplies before we were forced out, some of them given to us by the authorities. We had some tools and seeds, goats and donkeys...and even a few weapons.

This land has never been tended by the hand of man, so it was lush with birds and beasts and edible plants. But our little shelters, which were all we could build between trying to dig and plant and water the fields, were not always enough to get all of through that first. And many were sick, from improper diets and other things. Some of them died. A band of men, perhaps they had been criminals, took over. They were...cruel.

Still, our town survived for a year, and then for two. We had a larger harvest that second year...and fewer mouths. There were other towns nearby, and we marked out paths, and a few craftsmen and other such men worked a circuit, and we tried to help each other.

Then...

He stops, fidgeting.

[It's alright, I won't tell anyone about this.]

The Sheriff and his Deputies came. They said this village was under his "jurisdiction". And that meant he was in charge, and the crops were his.

There was a fight. The boss of our village and his men, and some supporters, they tried to force the Sheriff out, but he had horses, and guns, and more men. By the end of that third year he was in charge, and now the part of the harvest that we did not eat were being sold, and there were cattle coming in, but to graze on the Sheriff's land.

Now, we hear the Sheriff has signed the Cochise Treaty, and there are laws and such things decided by the Senate. Other times, we have other ranchers come in, and talk to our Sheriff.

[Is the Sheriff as cruel as your first boss?]

...no. He tells his men to keep of the village girls, and we never have more food taken from us than we can bear. As I said, he is a patron of this church.

[But who gave him the authority to rule here?]


When he came to town he had a paper from the Senate placing this village and the land within ten miles of it under his "jurisdiction". I read it myself, when he nailed it to the door of the church. On its face, Cochise wanted to secure its borderlands. In practice, it soon came out that the Sheriff was the brother of a prominent rancher.

[Has this happened to the other villages?]

Oh, yes. There were some half a thousand of us scattered across this land - it's decently watered, most people decided to set up home here rather than go another step further. We are still only a short journey from the old border.

[What do you think the future holds?]

I cannot say. I hear there has been fighting in other parts of the state, between ranchers fighting over land and water. That hasn't happened here. Not yet. But maybe the fighting will not need to come here - I hear that our Sheriff's brother has fought a skirmish with his neighbor, and since he came here the Sheriff has been training some of our young men to be "guardsmen". One day he may need to march off to war.

He sighs and runs a hand through his thinning hair.

Who can say what the future holds? War, peace, freedom, servitude? Only God knows for sure.

***

This has been the chapter on the Cochise Treaty, tanks for reading! I hope to complete this TL very soon, perhaps by the end of the month - from here, we only have one place left to go.

The Wasteland, the Monument to Man's Arrogance itself, the Corpse City.

Phoenix.
 
Nova Cruces is a wretched town of about two hundred people. It is made of whitewashed adobe buildings and is surrounded by fields of irrigated crops. The largest buildings are the church and the "Sheriff's Office", a combination fort, barracks, and administrative center.


In a generation or two feudalism will seem natural to the serfs...ehhm I mean indentured farmers.

First Estate:
The church is rapidly returning towards their medieval role. I would wager that the priests soon will hold a monopoly on knowledge and education. It would be interesting to see, if a unified church would emerge in time. The religious diversity of North America might prevent that. This could weaken the clergy considerably when compared to OTLs middle ages.

Second Estate:
Our benevolent Lords and Knights...eh Senators and Sheriffs (dank titles for neo-nobility btw) have the additional bonus of being able to hoard pre-ISOT technology. Instead of plate armour and war horses, they will have assault rifles, kevlar and trucks. At least for a while.

Third Estate:
Its an interesting question, how fast the knowledge base would degrade from generation to generation.
I think the grandkids of the current serfs might still learn to read, for their grandkids I am not so sure.

Some general questions/ideas:

- How hard is it to manufacture "Wild West" level firearms? A regression to swords and primitive muskets might be prevented.

- Imho this update shows why neo-feudalism is sustainable. The Senators have already created a system that can perfectly work without technology. The pre-ISOT tech is just a nice bonus really.

- The situation is not as mega fucked up as it seems, even when feudalism returns full force. Knowledge about stuff like the printing press, efficient agricultural methods and even rudimental pharmaceutical skills will be preserved. These neo middle ages will end much sooner than their OTL predecessor.
Once things have reached the bottom things will get better quickly.
 
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Time to see the rotting corpse of a body once 1.6 million strong.

Given the dry desert air, I'd imagine there's an uncomfortable amount of bones left behind
 
Given the dry desert air, I'd imagine there's an uncomfortable amount of bones left behind
Sand, dust, and building decay might have covered many corpses causing them to be mummified.
- How hard is it to manufacture "Wild West" level firearms? A regression to swords and primitive muskets might be prevented.
Pakistani and Afgan smiths can make anything from a musket to an AK using basic hand tools.
A very simple handgun can be made of poured metal and then worked on even a small lathe (that can be made by hand). Powder is the issue. As collecting and harvesting materials for propellant, regardless of method, requires a lot of work to set up.
But then, for any of this, you need someone who actually knows what he's doing.
 
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