Frozen Peaches: 2020 Georgia ISOT to 20,000 BCE

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What if Georgia in 2020 was thrown into the Ice Age?
Intro & ISOT
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Hello everyone! This has been in the works for a long time, mostly because of real-life obligations and me feeling like I needed to revise it many times, but I finally got around to posting it. I have a few posts already written, but after them I can't promise a consistent release schedule due to the aforementioned real-life obligations, but my goal is to end this project around a century or century and a half after the ISOT.
Thanks to @EBR and the other people in the Alt-History ideas thread for helping with the development of the idea.



Georgia, United States, June 12 2020 AD (or CE, if you prefer). A state in the throes of the chaotic combination of COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, police attempts to suppress the BLM protests, clashes with counter-protesters, and the most contentious election campaign in modern American history. In one timeline, ours, the state would flip Democratic in both the presidential and senatorial elections, in a major shock to most political commentators. In another, perhaps it would stay Republican like the rest of the Deep South.
However, this is neither of those timelines. Through some massive quirk in quantum mechanics, Georgia's 10.5 Million people and all the human constructions and contraptions extant in 21st century Georgia, were flung across time and space to another place and time.
20,000 years ago. The Last Glacial Maximum to scientists, the Ice Age to most. A time of mammoths and giant ground sloths, a place still free from humans. Now, the virgin lands of pre-human Georgia were replaced by the thoroughly transformed Georgia of the 21st century.

The first reactions were confusion. Suddenly, the Barrier Islands were sandy mountains and the ports along the coast were left high-and-dry, with freighters and other ships left permanently grounded, miles from any coast. The Savanna River, of course, changed course, partially flooding parts of Augusta, Savanna, and other communities along the river. Similar events happened along the Chattahoochee though the damage was more extensive, as the river flows through the Atlanta metro area and Columbus. These shifts in the rivers left the Buford Dam high and dry, with Lake Lanier non-existent. Similar dam lakes were gone, and changes in smaller rivers and creeks created floods in smaller towns across the state.

Outside the rivers and coast, the biggest change was immediate to all once they stepped out of their homes. Georgia, as a rule, is humid and hot during the summers. 2020 was no exception, and due to the effects of climate change, was on average, hotter. When everyone stepped outside, they immediately felt a cooler temperature more reminiscent of early spring. And of course, one could not ignore the mammoth in the front yard. After feeling the nice cooler temperature and admiring (or fighting) the new wildlife, people naturally sought to find out what was happening on the internet, only to find that most sites could not be accessed. Though there had been some movement towards building new IT infrastructure in Georgia, the vast majority of servers were out of state. With how important the internet was to 21st century life, its loss was felt by almost all, even the print news. Those in Columbus, Augusta, Savanna, and other towns on the borders of the state found that the land outside of the boundaries of the state was wilderness. Roads led directly into wilderness, or stopped midway over rivers. Word spread quickly as people spread word via vehicle rather than over the wire. The loss of the internet and the awareness that the world outside was gone were a one-two punch to the psyche of society. Protests over 2020 politics still occurred, and most people tried to continue their normal lives, if they weren't disturbed by the loss of 21st century technology and contact with the outside world. This, as you can imagine, was a lot of people, however most were still trying to comprehend what happened, and so tried to stay within the system that had existed their entire lives, however disturbed it may be.

The true death knell of the old Georgia system, politically, socially, and economically, occurred within two weeks.
 
All Falls Down
Subscribed! I look forward to seeing where this goes.
Thanks, hope it lives up to expectations!

Georgia, while its soil is rich, contains little in the way of the raw materials needed for 21st century society. Crucially, Georgia has no oil or natural gas within its confines. It has a few refineries, but once their stocks of crude oil ran out, Georgian society was on borrowed time. When long lines at gas stations turned to stations without gas, the protest movements, on ice due to the shock of the jump to the Ice Age, revived. The government, foreseeing further - non-COVID - problems in the supply chain should all diesel be divided between private companies and individuals, announced it would be purchasing all diesel remaining, stockpiling it, and rationing it until a solution, such as biodiesel, could enter the market at a large enough volume that it could make up for shortfalls.

While this seemed a rational idea, all biodiesel requires some regular diesel as part of the mixture, with even the most efficient biodiesel still requiring some part of the real thing. In truth, diesel rationing was giving the state a longer plank to walk off of. While this ensured that trucks could keep bringing food and goods to shelves in the short term, there was no long term plan for ensuring the survival of a 21st century society. When the trucks stopped running, the collapse could not be avoided. Some in government, aware of this problem, took measures to ensure their safety in the coming societal collapse, squirreling away anything that wouldn't be missed but would still be useful. As the diesel stock ran dry over the course of June and July, governmental theft became more and more blatant. This was leaked and triggered protests, but there was little that most could do to stop it. Instead, the state turned inward, with people stockpiling whatever they could as store shelves grew emptier and emptier, and prepared for the worst.

Unfortunately for those looking for an explosive end to society, collapses rarely happen all at once. While the state government had stopped working, those who still had jobs and could make it to them continued to work, stopping by as many stores as they could to increase their stockpiles as much as possible. When local store shelves ran out, they starting living off their stockpiles, with most still not willing to move or risk raiding their neighbors. Only when stockpiles became light did the reward of raiding start to outweigh the risks. Even then, raiding was localized, and did not become the state's pastime. This is not to say raiding was entirely absent - Georgia was an armed state and when things got desperate, conflict was inevitable. But for those with weapons, there was a bigger target in the room - herds of fluffy elephants and other Ice Age beasts. While most megafauna had cleared out of Atlanta and many of its suburbs, scared off by the noise and light of the city when the lights shut off and the noise of the city disappeared, herds returned to the outskirts, in range of now hungry - or starving - people. Unfortunately for the megafauna, they would not face hunters with armed with fire and spears, but desperate people with firearms.
 
interesting.
in this situation those in charge of food are the most important people in the state.
I can see militias and communities form around farmers, they protect the farm and in return they get fed.

I can see the Amish doing the best out of all the groups.

only after enough farms are started or enough people die that their is enough food to go arround can people worry about how much of their civilation and technology will survive.
 
America is in nearly unique situation of being developed with car in mind with no other transport anywhere close.
That said, with cars inoperational those with bicycles now are the most mobile and maybe a start of new delivery system if rioting doesn't prevent it.
Also, there is probably no medicine factories, China being cheaper, so they are fucked anyway.
 
Conditions Worsen (0-10 years post ISOT)
interesting.
in this situation those in charge of food are the most important people in the state.
I can see militias and communities form around farmers, they protect the farm and in return they get fed.

I can see the Amish doing the best out of all the groups.

only after enough farms are started or enough people die that their is enough food to go arround can people worry about how much of their civilation and technology will survive.
You're pretty much spot on, though the farmers' pre-existing communities will form most of the defense and labor, though some towns have a place for outsiders.

As for the food supply, in the planning discussions on the Alt-hist thread, I think EBR calculated that Georgia could more or less feed itself, though I don't think there was a breakdown in the supply chain calculated, so it's more of a situation of who gets what more than if there's enough for everyone.

Unfortunately, I don't think there are enough Amish in Georgia to fill a church, let alone be significant in Ice Age Georgia. Some of their way of life may get resurrected due to the fuel situation, though.

America is in nearly unique situation of being developed with car in mind with no other transport anywhere close.
That said, with cars inoperational those with bicycles now are the most mobile and maybe a start of new delivery system if rioting doesn't prevent it.
Also, there is probably no medicine factories, China being cheaper, so they are fucked anyway.
Yeah, living here you don't really recognize how close you are to your way of life not existing. I did ponder having the state government send out surveyors to the now high-and-dry parts of the Gulf of Mexico that have oil reserves, but the process of setting up a rig, let alone getting the get fuel refined and distributed, was longer than most gas stations have stored in their tanks.

As for bicycles, admittedly I hadn't thought about them. They do provide a decent supplement to horse-back travel, but the only problem I can see is making new parts. They'd have to be scavenged or jury-rigged until someone gets production started again, which is a little ways away


Early collapse-era hunting saw its fair share of casualties, Mammoths, mastodons, and other megafauna still were massive and took more than a few bullets to fall and could fight back once they closed the distance. The hunters also had to defend their kills from the wide variety of Ice Age predators who had no qualms about stealing a kill or ambushing successful parties. However, once techniques of ambush and tracking developed and spread amongst the communities of Georgia, hunting became one of the standard occupations in collapse and post-collapse communities.


Hunting alone could not feed the mouths of all Georgians, but luckily the state, outside of Atlanta and the other cities, was an agricultural one. Unluckily, it was a modern agricultural state. Artificial pesticides, fertilizers, and even common vehicles such as tractors were stockpiled and used sparingly. While the pre-collapse government did allocate some diesel for agriculture, it was not enough to sustain the whole state, which didn't only grow food - cotton was still a cash crop at the time of the jump, and in the new environment it could not adapt. Other crops, such as the ubiquitous maize and peanut, could survive into the former harvest season which was now much shorter. Further problems came with the harvest itself. Being fully modernized, most fields were much too vast for farmers to harvest as they had in previous years. Raiding and theft - human and animal - took their toll on the harvests themselves as well. The communities the farmers lived in or near were quick to supply their labor and arms in exchange for food, but even this could not save the entire harvest. Later harvests would be plagued with failure, as farmers and crops had to adapt to a much different and shorter growing season. Compounding these problems was the collapse continued was the depletion of stocks of pesticides and artificial fertilizers. The latter could be substituted organically, though not to the same efficiency, but the former could not. Farmers would have to adapt to an environment where pests could once again destroy who harvests. Animals raised for meat suffered the least during the collapse, though the rancher's old foe - the wolf - returned, with feline and ursine friends.

All of this farmed food was not distributed as it was in the past. 21st century capitalism was dead, the farms no longer fed into long supply chains that ended on supermarket shelves. This became most apparent in the first winter post-jump. By this time, the old supply chains had broken down and most who lived in the cities and suburbs were scraping by on the remains of stockpiles, whatever they could have gardened in the short time between summer and frost, and what hunted meat that could be bartered for. Raiding became endemic in the cities and suburbs, but did little but waste or redistribute what little food and medicine there was. With the state government fully defunct as well and local governments being of little use to those barely surviving, an exodus from the cities and suburbs began. Following the highways and interstates, bands of urban and suburbanites sought refuge in the rural areas. Their fates were mixed. Some areas, either altruistic, seeking more workers, or a mix of both, allowed in some on the promise that they would work the land, hunt for the community, and protect it if they could. Naturally, these communities filled up quickly, and began to turn away those they felt they had no room for, sometimes violently. Other communities were fully hostile, turning away all for reasons based on equal measures practical and prejudicial. Many died walking the roads, from exposure, starvation or dehydration, or from the ice age predators man had not feared for millenia. Those that survived on the roads for longer than a season became hardened survivalists, and many bands chose to not settle down, becoming hunter-gatherers, like their kin a world away. Other nomadic bands took full-time to raiding, though as communities formed and fortified they quickly dwindled into a minor threat.

Even with a somewhat stable food supply, the half-decade that made up the collapse of pre-jump Georgia was, naturally, catastrophic. The old predators of pre modern civilization returned with a vengeance. Famine was a constant fear and reality, but plague took its pound of flesh as well. When the fuel ran out, the healthcare system of Georgia fell apart. Doctors and nurses did what they could, but what they could do quickly became preventative in nature. COVID-19 was one of the biggest killers, as the flight from the cities and suburbs spread the disease and weakening of immune systems that accompanies malnutrition opened up more opportunities for the virus to kill. Other diseases made their mark, with influenza in particular making a big impact.

The lack of medicine itself killed hundreds of thousands. Particularly hard hit were diabetics who depended on insulin, stock of which quickly vanished both through use and through attrition. Infection of wounds again became a killer, as antibiotics were used up or hoarded. Folk cures were revived and spread, but they were of limited effectiveness.

Feeling left out, War mounted its horse to ride with its kin. While there were no proper wars, in the sense of armies fighting one another, small raids and clashes, in the later years of the collapse, became endemic. While many were simple raids for food, medicine, or valuables, this was also a time when barely contained racial tensions boiled over. Especially during the exodus from Atlanta, the racism underpinning Southern life became much more openly violent. Tit-for-tat attacks between white and minority communities and bands became a fact of life for those on the road and settled down. Many white rural towns resurrected and/or codified "Sundown laws," essentially making minority existence at night iillegal. The emptying suburbs and cities were no safe either, as roaming gangs preyed upon travellers and communities of color. People of color were not helpless, however, and as word of a return to racial violence spread, they armed themselves and fortified their communities. Black communities in the rural areas, especially in the Georgian portion of the "Black Belt, " attracted many migrants of all colors, and served as bastions whose existence proved that the people of color would not be wiped out in this new world.

With three of the horsemen unleashed, it was no surprise that Georgia's population was decimated. When the state jumped, it had a population of roughly 10.5 million. By the start of the first decade in the ice age and the end of the collapse, that population had fallen to roughly 1.5 million. Adaptation of the food supply and diet allowed the state to remain above one million in population but the reforming of governments above the town level and reestablishment of trade networks and some form of order also played a large part at ending the collapse after a decade of chaos.
 
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Yeah, as expected. Although, do they realy have enough ammo and black powder and parts stocked to hunt until replacements are made?
 
Yeah, as expected. Although, do they realy have enough ammo and black powder and parts stocked to hunt until replacements are made?
You know, I'm not really sure. I can find rather confusing stats on the amount of guns, but nothing on ammo. As far as powder, modern smokeless powder has replaced black powder, but it's much harder to acquire the materials for.

I have plans for the topic of guns and ammo though, so I'll exercise author fiat and say there's enough guns and ammo until otherwise mentioned.
 
Doesn't the United States Military have like ten billion rounds of ammo stockpiled in Georgia? Something like 1% of all the people in Georgia are "Fort Benning", either directly as military personnel or their families, or civilian employees. Well like 60% of the state is "Atlanta" by pop.

I guess my point is the person in charge is whoever the military recognizes as President and Commander in Chief of the United States per rules of succession. Unfortunately Kemp was in-state in July of 2022 it looks like (a quick internet search shows he did interviews from gov's mansion then) so I guess you'd be stuck with his stupid ass dragging everybody down.

Two nuclear power plants provide about 20% of the electricity used in Georgia according to their utility's website. Plus a string of hydro plants.

Think you are dramatically underestimating what industrialization means for agriculture. Pre-industrial, about 95% of people had to be directly doing ag work. Post, it's like, 1%? So I would expect one-year population declines more in the neighborhood of 90%+ not merely 40% without a constant supply of industrial goods (esp. fuel, but don't discount chemicals and parts) once reserves of foods are eaten down. ....Ah, Sri Lanka's a good example, their ag productivity has went down 30% after the fertilizer ban only, never even mind other inputs.

Now that I think dates, I was in Georgia in summer of 2020.
 
Doesn't the United States Military have like ten billion rounds of ammo stockpiled in Georgia? Something like 1% of all the people in Georgia are "Fort Benning", either directly as military personnel or their families, or civilian employees. Well like 60% of the state is "Atlanta" by pop.

I guess my point is the person in charge is whoever the military recognizes as President and Commander in Chief of the United States per rules of succession. Unfortunately Kemp was in-state in July of 2022 it looks like (a quick internet search shows he did interviews from gov's mansion then) so I guess you'd be stuck with his stupid ass dragging everybody down.

Yeah, who is de facto President will come up soon, but I don't think everyone with the military will fall in line behind Kemp - or any civilian leader for that matter, considering many would blame them for things getting so bad. It's part of an upcoming post, so I don't want to spoil too much, but when the world's gon to hell and you're the guy commanding the guys with the guns, you may take a different look at the civilian chain of command.

Two nuclear power plants provide about 20% of the electricity used in Georgia according to their utility's website. Plus a string of hydro plants.

Hydro's mostly useless due to changing rivers, but the Nuke plants are something I haven't considered.
Some quick Googling gave me the figure of four years at full consumption, and presumably with people moving around and dying, they'd have both reduced staff and reduced demand, so they could possibly extend their stock for a while, but a decade I think is pushing it.

Think you are dramatically underestimating what industrialization means for agriculture. Pre-industrial, about 95% of people had to be directly doing ag work. Post, it's like, 1%? So I would expect one-year population declines more in the neighborhood of 90%+ not merely 40% without a constant supply of industrial goods (esp. fuel, but don't discount chemicals and parts) once reserves of foods are eaten down. ....Ah, Sri Lanka's a good example, their ag productivity has went down 30% after the fertilizer ban only, never even mind other inputs.

I think you have a point and I'll adjust it down, but 90%+ over one year is more extreme than even the most extreme famines in history. Given, they weren't accompanied by societal collapse, but there is still a limit where you have enough food to feed everyone, enough guns and ammo to protect and hunt, and people rugged enough to survive the endemic diseases. I'd put that number higher than ~1 million.
 
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I think you have a point and I'll adjust it down, but 90%+ over one year is more extreme than ever the most extreme famines in history.
I mean this is a more extreme disruption than any of the famines you're probably thinking of. Once you are cut off from California, you are Extremely Fucked as far as food goes.

Went and looked up some numbers:
Georgia produces 70 million bushels of maize a year (on 420,000 acres). At 56 lbs/bushel, that's 3.93E9 lbs of of corn. Divide by 1.05E7 people in Georgia, that's 374.4 lbs of corn per capita. Another 3.3E9 pounds of peanuts, that's another 314 lbs per capita. There are 1 million head of cattle in Georgia. Immediately kill all of them (so they are not also eating maize), and say you get 500 lbs of beef out of each one, that's another ~48 lbs of food/person. So the Last Good Harvest the fall after the event, assume you slaughter all the cows, that would yield 737 lbs of food for each Georgian.

Assume a person eats 4 lbs of food a day, then of the 1,460 lbs of food a person needs in a year, then right now, with full industrial support for the Last Good Harvest, Georgia produces ~50% of the food needed to support the population of Georgia.

But oh yeah, peanuts require ~3 gallons of water per oz of nut. Screw up the climate there? That much less rain? I dunno if you can even hit 20% of those numbers.

Maize without an exogenous ammonia source, no potash; and no pesticides? Good luck hitting 40% productivity there. And only 10% of maize is cultivars for human consumption; ~30% is cattle corn and 30% is whatever freakish breed they grow to make into fuel ethanol. These are not tasty kinds of corn. Where the hell are you even milling it?

So the second harvest season after The Event you're looking at Georgia producing what, 30% of 50% of the calories needed to sustain the population? That's 15%. So we are looking at an 85% dieoff to reduce down to some theoretical carrying capacity here.

There are like a third of the tools needed even for industrial farming, but it doesn't matter because there's no fuel for them anyway. There are no labor animals, and there are, statistically, no hand-tools for non-industrial planting. You have a population that has basically no idea how to do pre-industrial agriculture, and what farmers there are, they are going to be Actively Wrong in their climate expectations.
 
I mean this is a more extreme disruption than any of the famines you're probably thinking of. Once you are cut off from California, you are Extremely Fucked as far as food goes.

Went and looked up some numbers:
Georgia produces 70 million bushels of maize a year (on 420,000 acres). At 56 lbs/bushel, that's 3.93E9 lbs of of corn. Divide by 1.05E7 people in Georgia, that's 374.4 lbs of corn per capita. Another 3.3E9 pounds of peanuts, that's another 314 lbs per capita. There are 1 million head of cattle in Georgia. Immediately kill all of them (so they are not also eating maize), and say you get 500 lbs of beef out of each one, that's another ~48 lbs of food/person. So the Last Good Harvest the fall after the event, assume you slaughter all the cows, that would yield 737 lbs of food for each Georgian.

Assume a person eats 4 lbs of food a day, then of the 1,460 lbs of food a person needs in a year, then right now, with full industrial support for the Last Good Harvest, Georgia produces ~50% of the food needed to support the population of Georgia.

But oh yeah, peanuts require ~3 gallons of water per oz of nut. Screw up the climate there? That much less rain? I dunno if you can even hit 20% of those numbers.

Maize without an exogenous ammonia source, no potash; and no pesticides? Good luck hitting 40% productivity there. And only 10% of maize is cultivars for human consumption; ~30% is cattle corn and 30% is whatever freakish breed they grow to make into fuel ethanol. These are not tasty kinds of corn. Where the hell are you even milling it?

So the second harvest season after The Event you're looking at Georgia producing what, 30% of 50% of the calories needed to sustain the population? That's 15%. So we are looking at an 85% dieoff to reduce down to some theoretical carrying capacity here.

There are like a third of the tools needed even for industrial farming, but it doesn't matter because there's no fuel for them anyway. There are no labor animals, and there are, statistically, no hand-tools for non-industrial planting. You have a population that has basically no idea how to do pre-industrial agriculture, and what farmers there are, they are going to be Actively Wrong in their climate expectations.

Good points, I honestly wanted to avoid giving precise (or really any) numbers because I am very not good with them, especially estimating them, but I was more concerned that people would ask exactly how many people lived and died. I'm a bit more interested in what comes after, but having an idea of how many people are around will affect what develops where.
 
Why would the rivers change course? I get that the waterways entering the state would do so at different locations, but they would quickly reenter the existing pathways for exactly the reasons that water flows through them now. Until they get to the former coast or border with Florida, that is.

Really you have two choices there.
A) The topography of 2020 Georgia is included in the ISOT, and thus rivers retain their modern courses because that's where the riverbeds are.
B) Georgia arrives to the topography of 20,000 BC, and thus the infrastructure, all of it everywhere, is thoroughly fucked on arrival.

Geological change is slow, but it does happen. It goes much faster when earthmoving equipment gets involved. Like roadbuilding.

The flora and fauna should have the same calculation. What went back in time? The humans and the changes they have wrought, or the state of Georgia and everything in it? What was displaced? That which would have caused telefragging when the humans and buildings appeared, or the native forests, all the inhabitants, and everything else occupying the area that would one day be known as Georgia?

Is everything a confusing mess of both time periods, or do must things cross the state line before interacting?

Also, there are temporally native humans in the area. They just got there, like, 5-10,000 years prior.
And while many will work on rebuilding and making the system self-sufficient, you know some people will colonize or migrate. I hear Mexico City is a good place to start a civilization; should be a more familiar climate at this point.
 
Why would the rivers change course? I get that the waterways entering the state would do so at different locations, but they would quickly reenter the existing pathways for exactly the reasons that water flows through them now. Until they get to the former coast or border with Florida, that is.

Really you have two choices there.
A) The topography of 2020 Georgia is included in the ISOT, and thus rivers retain their modern courses because that's where the riverbeds are.
B) Georgia arrives to the topography of 20,000 BC, and thus the infrastructure, all of it everywhere, is thoroughly fucked on arrival.

Geological change is slow, but it does happen. It goes much faster when earthmoving equipment gets involved. Like roadbuilding.

The flora and fauna should have the same calculation. What went back in time? The humans and the changes they have wrought, or the state of Georgia and everything in it? What was displaced? That which would have caused telefragging when the humans and buildings appeared, or the native forests, all the inhabitants, and everything else occupying the area that would one day be known as Georgia?

Is everything a confusing mess of both time periods, or do must things cross the state line before interacting?

Also, there are temporally native humans in the area. They just got there, like, 5-10,000 years prior.
And while many will work on rebuilding and making the system self-sufficient, you know some people will colonize or migrate. I hear Mexico City is a good place to start a civilization; should be a more familiar climate at this point.

I imagined the ISOT more or less picking up 2020 Georgia and then placing it on top of 20,000 BC topography, with ISOT stuff replacing or conforming to topography where needed. The environment is Ice Age, however, with wilderness transforming from modern subtropical deciduous forests into cool forests, and the natural wildlife from the ice age being retained. Human-owned animals (cats, dogs, horses, livestock, etc) come along with the ISOT as well.

You do seem to be right about downtime humans in the area, I'll be sure to include them soon. As will people ranging far from Georgia.

What about the military bases in Georgia? There are a total of 13, including fort Benning. What's the plan there?
Will be covered in the next TL posts, which are about about governments of the years 10 - 20. Currently rewriting and expanding them, though.
 
You do seem to be right about downtime humans in the area, I'll be sure to include them soon. As will people ranging far from Georgia.
Most people as of now would be in the west coast, so an uptime may find is suddenly being meet with a Native with a flint tipped spear staring at them before leaving.

With such an event being extremely rare the farther east you go. Huh that reminds me, the native groups of Georgia for sure will take this moment to gtfo, as who the Hell's going to both stop them and later even find them.

Better then waiting for all the crazy gun nuts to come for what little they had left to begin with. They can only go up from there, same with minority communities. Survival becomes more likely the farther one gets from Georgia, as less competition equals more food for yourself and family. And with the size of the USA you can have the majority of people who can go nomadic or settle elsewhere to escape the chaos of the state.

For context theirs 42,316 people who are natives in the state, more then enough to spread out into tribes or form new nations far from the oppression of the population who stole their home and sent their families along a trail of tears. They are for sure the first group who flees the state seeing the writing on the wall.

Oh dear this might result in a new wave of such Trail of tears, this time more done out of necessity then at gun point of the government.
stacker.com

See the size of the Native American population in Georgia

Stacker investigated the size of the Native American population in Georgia using data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
 
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Societies of Ice Age Georgia, One Decade On (South Georgia)
In the years after population leveled out, it quickly became clear that there was no singular Georgian - or even American - identity left. With the population cratered and dispersed over both the former area of the state and some of the areas around it, politics and identity became more local. Politics became driven around survival and defense, though social and cultural issues never truly vanished from conversations. They were simply marginalized until the questions could not be avoided anymore. The thorny issues of race, gender, and sexuality were raised in every community, and while each response was unique in its particulars, they could largely be grouped into three categories - tolerance, ambivalence, and hostility. Generally, the parts of the states farther from old population centers were more hostile to the non-WASPs and LGBTQ, but the rural areas had pockets of tolerance and the remains of the cities had neighborhoods that were effectively sundown towns. Such is life in a purple state - not that that phrase held much meaning a decade after the breakdown of society.

With the rise of local surplus in the decade post-jump came the rise of non-local government again. In southern Georgia, where the mass disruption of the collapse was softened somewhat due to the low population density and distance from Atlanta preventing all but the most determined refugees from reaching the surviving settlements, some measure of pre-jump order remained in the towns that made it through the collapse decade. These towns became fortified to keep out raiders and the predators of the Ice Age, though they usually consisted of a few families of farmers. These outposts of civilization formed shifting alliances and loose confederacies with one another with the goal of securing their positions or countering a rising power. The bigger towns themselves had some democracy, with multi-candidate elections, but the choice was effectively which local powerbroker - sheriff, landowner, pastor, etc. - would hold power until they lost legitimacy. The power they held was only limited by what the townspeople would put up with, so while they were effectively elected dictators, their true power depended on their personal charisma or the loyalty of the militia. Smaller towns were usually directly democratic, given that they usually consisted of a few farming families.

However, south Georgian politics in the second decade of the ice age were defined by exceptions to the general small-scale, local nature of civilization in southern Georgia in the form of the cities of Macon, Columbus, Albany, and Savannah. These cities' large populations relative to the rest of south Georgia allowed them to weather the collapse and still remain prominent when the famines ended. In the decade after the collapse, these four cities competed to control south Georgia and the areas immediately beyond old state boundaries, creating a situation not dissimilar to the city-states of ancient Greece or renaissance Italy, with borders and local allegiances shifting frequently and clashes between the city-states being frequent, though none had the resources to fully conquer the others and unite south Georgia.

Macon, while geographically in middle Georgia, depended upon and interacted with the farmers of the south much more than it did the people north of the Fall Line it sat upon. The city government of Macon, reformed by traders, ex-military from Robbins AFB, and former citizens of the city that organized to control the vital interstates that still linked Macon to much of the state after the city government fell into chaos during the harshest famine years of the collapse, was a plutocratic-stratocratic republic - all citizens had the right to vote, but citizenship was only gained through purchase or service to the city, the latter condition being given out to those who served a few consecutive tours in the semi-professional Macon Guard. Purchases of citizenship were done in kind, but reckoned in old dollar amounts. Though the greenback had lost all purchasing power to useful things or luxuries, the ability to put an objective-sounding price on something was too important for the post-collapse economy to fully commit to barter, because reckoning in mammoth tusks or bags of peanuts becomes overly complicated very quickly. Also important was the ability to calculate debts, something near impossible in pure barter, but easily done with a monetary value.

Non-citizens of Macon were not permitted suffrage, but those who chose to live within its borders were permitted to be "inhabitants," which guaranteed their and their family's safety and rights to property and defense, but required service in the Guard. Inhabitant farmers were spared the draft if they gave part of their harvest as tax to the city, and were given preferred treatment within the city-organized farmer's markets. Those outside the city and its immediate area but still within the ever shifting territory and sphere of influence of Macon were dealt with on a community-by-community basis - those that willingly submitted were taxed in kind, but protection was given in the form of Macon Guards, whose training usually ensured victory over most local threats, while those who resisted were deported to Macon's core territory to serve as serfs and laborers.

Equally important to the Macon Chamber of Commerce and Defense (as the government of the city-state called itself) as securing a food and labor supply for the city was the security of trade. Macon lay upon three interstates and while the car was long gone at this point, the interstate system still provided a pre-made path for travel within the pre-jump boundaries of the state. As population and society stabilized, people began travel and trade, first locally, and then as the banditry died down - quite literally - regionally. What was swapped varied with location, but the most important trade was in knowledge. Initially this took the form of communities swapping books, but as conditions stabilized, those who'd either learned from a tradesperson or, more often, had taken an interest in a skill and learned enough that they knew more than the average survivor began to market their skills to surrounding communities - traveling armed and in groups of course, as one did not want to find themselves forcibly recruited or shot on the road. Many of the nomad groups that had remained within the state took on the role of wandering traders and tradespeople, exchanging a life spent hunting and scavenging for one of haggling. With Macon being a natural nexus for trade, the Chamber of Commerce made sure to guard their roads and caravans dearly. Banditry was rooted out early and harshly, with a bounty system in place for especially elusive or dangerous people. The interstates near Macon itself were patrolled, lined with checkpoints, and any travelers or traders were directed to the city. In the periphery, Guard garrisons were instructed to keep eyes peeled for banditry and to direct traders to the interstates that led to Macon.

While Macon focused on profits, Columbus pursued a different route. With Fort Benning being so close to the city, when the collapse hit the region, people turned to the commanders of the men with the guns for safety. Martial law was maintained for as long as possible, and kept the raiding down for a while, but even the discipline of the military eventually broke in the face of abject starvation. Soldiers began to go AWOL, disappearing into the chaos of the collapse. Here, the commanders that remained at Fort Benning made a crucial choice - to survive, they would have to expand. Communities were brought under the heel of Columbus and expected to pay taxes in kind, in exchange for garrisons, of course. When this proved insufficient to keep famine at bay, the junta that had taken over at Fort Benning organized official hunting and gathering parties and sent them across the Chattahoochee. These parties made contact with both those from 2020 who left the state, and with a few bands of paleo-Indians. Contact with the latter was tense and difficult, as they spoke languages far removed from English, Spanish, or any tongue spoken in 2020 and both sides were armed and hunting the same prey. Theft and small-scale clashes were common and only became more so after the Fort Benning junta claimed the opposing bank of the Chattahoochee and opened it up to anyone who thought they could farm the land or otherwise pay a tax in kind. Eventually, the paleo-Indians were driven off, history rhyming thousands of years early.

As the situation stabilized and famine became less common, the junta of Columbus solidified their rule. They merged the remaining functions of the city government of Columbus into the command structure of the army, and threw out the pretenses of democracy. Now, the renamed state of Columbus-Benning recognized two classes - soldier and civilian - and one value - order. The ideal of order was preserved through military rule and class collaboration - soldiers protected and preserved order through military service, civilians supplied the soldiers with food and new recruits and were expected to give deference and abide by the dictates of the military. Dissenters and those who ran afoul of the military were purged through exile or forced labor. This ideology underpinning military rule was seemingly proved by the lack of banditry within Columbus-Benning and the outward politeness of citizens, but anyone who lived under the rule of junta knew that corruption was rife - the self-appointed generals always had the best of what was on offer - and for those seeking to climb the social ladder if you were out maneuvered or fell out of favor with a patron, it was easy to be put into a chain gang. But, corrupt though it may have been, banditry was stamped out or co-opted into soldiery and Columbus-Benning controlled access to the wilds of what-would-be-Alabama, something that would be increasingly valuable as society and technology recovered.

Albany, while also host to a military base, would evolve much differently than either Macon or Columbus-Benning. Albany was home to the east coast logistics base for the Marines, and home to a much smaller military presence. During the collapse, the base was effectively converted into a local supply hub subordinate to the civilian government, with the soldiers serving as guards for the stockpiles and officers as organizers. While the lack of fuel limited efforts and supply, their actions were not in vain - when population stabilized, Albany and its immediate environment was noticeably more populated than other parts of south Georgia. Owing to the stronger ties to the communities they helped and the higher population of those communities, that proto-state of Albany deviated significantly from the other south Georgian proto-states, in that Albany the city was the center of a federation of communities rather than a centralized center of power. While the city government - still organized like a pre-jump American city - took charge to face serious threats from outside and organized distribution of resources within, the communities within Albany's orbit had a lot of autonomy. While they were expected to provide taxes in kind and help support the militia with soldiers and gear, the day-to-day happenings in towns were left to the locals.

The decentralized federation centered on Albany expanded quickly in the early post-collapse years, especially as the junta of Columbus-Benning solidified its rule and ideology. The two cities would come to blows in skirmishes over border towns, but neither possessed a force that could both conquer the other city and retain cohesion long enough to cement their rule. In the case of Albany, it was because the militia was fundamentally defensive in nature, called up in times of need, and not committed to an extended campaign away from the homesteads. Columbus-Benning did possess a standing army, but the corruption and in-fighting rife within the ranks made expeditions intended to conquer and hold a rival city-state dangerous for those in power, as the conqueror could easily make a play to rule Columbus-Benning as well from their new powerbase. The rank-and-file also contributed to the city-state's inability to end its rival, as many were former bandits or so used to civilian deference that their looting or "requisitioning" made it so that newly conquered communities would revolt as soon as the bulk of the army left.

As Macon's bourgeois elite established themselves as rulers of middle Georgia and Columbus-Benning and Albany sparred, the town of Savannah, eldest of the colonial-era settlements in Georgia, was keeping the past alive. After Atlanta fell into chaos and most of the politicians either bugged-out or were obscure enough to blend into the crowds, a few sought to preserve the old Georgian government. Gathering what troops that were still loyal, - a blend of National Guard, American Armed Forces, and Georgian State Defense Force - their families, and whatever they could grab, the Georgia government under Governor Brian Kemp made a march for Savannah. This march would take a massive toll on both the marchers and the communities they passed through. The government-in-exile lived off the land, writing off most of Georgia as a lost cause, winning them nothing but enemies as they marched to what many believed was the sea. The parallels to Sherman's March were not lost on the higher-ups who ordered the march, but survival came first.

When they reached Savannah, they found what was once one of Georgia's biggest ports high and dry. The sea, they were told by locals, was now many, many miles away. The city itself was under martial law and in an uneasy peace as people sought to stretch rations as far as they could. The addition of around a thousand more people did nothing to help the situation, but the ruling military junta ceded political power to the Georgian government-in-exile soon after its arrival, happy to hand responsibility for the situation over to someone else. The government-in-exile quickly took up the mantle of leadership, taking charge of rationing and food acquisition, though to actually get rations, one need to prove they had do some sort of productive work, as shown by a work-ticket that was printed by the government and handed to what employers there were and to workers directly employed by the government. Expeditions were launched both internally, to "restore order" to the farming towns near Savannah, and externally, following the now extended course of the Savannah River and into what was South Carolina to find more food. As things stabilized and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse were sated, the government-in-exile began to function as it had pre-jump, with the old electoral system in place and the old parties reorganizing themselves. Kemp, leader of the emergency government and the only person in executive power for almost a decade, won the first election, though he promised to not seek another term after this. The legislature was made of mostly independents, as both parties were illegitimate in most people's eyes, though there were some, usually older representatives, that still followed the elephant or the donkey. They got to work quickly, mostly affirming Kemp's proposals to "restore order" to portions of the state or expand across and down the Savannah River. Few of the concerns from the pre-jump era made it to the Savannah Government's halls, though there were provisions against rioting that mentioned the BLM protests of 2020 and an outlawing of gay marriage, supported by many who once would call themselves Republican.



Hey folks, sorry for being radio silent for a while, but things IRL have gotten busy and I haven't had much time to write. I also caught Covid (Which, thankfully, is mild for me), which inadvertently allowed me to finish up this post. I was going to tackle all of Georgia's governments in the post-collapse decade in one post, but the ideas started flowing and made me have to split them up by region.
 
Covid sucks, nice to see you back! And take your time - this is an important part of setting the stage for future stories, so elaborate as much as you need to!
 
You know, something struck me. With gas/diesel supplies basically being exhausted and new production most likely being decades away, but most places likely being able to produce at least some electricity, the most practical type of transportation people in Georgia could do would most likely be something like trolleybuses and probably trains with overhead electrification. They should more than be able to build them with the resources and skills they have available to them, being extremely simple. They also don't need the advanced battery technology that makes battery electric vehicles practical but would be probably impossible for people in Georgia to make.

Steam trains might also make sense as they can use coal and wood from Georgia but honestly they're probably more complicated than just going electric. Especially since there are almost certainly more people with experience with electricity than with steam in Georgia. Maybe steam power would make sense for farming equipment where you can't really put up overhead wires.
 
1. I have heard that the level of education in the USA is very low, but I strongly doubt that none of the residents of Georgia remembered about gas generators. In the Soviet Union, cars on firewood/cones/straw were used in Siberia until the end of the 1970s. The gasoline engine is easy to convert to gas. Yes, a gas generator takes up space, but when fuel can be cut in the nearest forest, it is irrelevant.
No stupid biodiesel - a wood-burning car is the technology of the future.
2. Ancient Indians - who are not Indians at all, 20,000 years ago there should be very few (if they penetrated into the
Eastern States) . According to the maps, 20,000 glaciers were located near the northern border of Georgia. and the transferred territory will be surrounded by a dense forest from the south and north (the Appalachians will delay precipitation), and to the west there will be a glacial steppe. No or very few mammoths and bison. Georgia's agricultural crops cannot be grown near the glacier.
Georgia may have some seeds from Canada or Russia, but it will take years before they can be used for food. In general, are there stations in Georgia for the production of hybrid seeds?! Gentle farm animals will die very quickly from the cold.
3. It is strange that there are no migrants to the south from a territory with a climate like Siberia or Canada. Large ships turned out to be on land, but yachts, barges and river ships can be brought out into the ocean.
 
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1. I have heard that the level of education in the USA is very low, but I strongly doubt that none of the residents of Georgia remembered about gas generators. In the Soviet Union, cars on firewood/cones/straw were used in Siberia until the end of the 1970s. The gasoline engine is easy to convert to gas. Yes, a gas generator takes up space, but when fuel can be cut in the nearest forest, it is irrelevant.
No stupid biodiesel - a wood-burning car is the technology of the future.

Yeah, this is literally the first time I've ever heard of converting gasoline engines to wood-fired ones. It seems it is possible, but to convert a large portion of the cars and trucks in Georgia would take more time and resources that could otherwise be used getting or securing food. There may be a few running around, but most people don't have access to the knowledge to do so post-jump and are more concerned with the food situation than with cars and trucks.

2. Ancient Indians - who are not Indians at all, 20,000 years ago there should be very few (if they penetrated into the
Eastern States) . According to the maps, 20,000 glaciers were located near the northern border of Georgia. and the transferred territory will be surrounded by a dense forest from the south and north (the Appalachians will delay precipitation), and to the west there will be a glacial steppe. No or very few mammoths and bison. Georgia's agricultural crops cannot be grown near the glacier.
Georgia may have some seeds from Canada or Russia, but it will take years before they can be used for food. In general, are there stations in Georgia for the production of hybrid seeds?! Gentle farm animals will die very quickly from the cold.

The -6 setting on this map is the one used for this TL. It shows that Georgia is far from being Siberia, and is much closer in climate to Minnesota, which actually does have counties that produce a not insignificant amount of corn, and in the planning thread I found out that most staple crops could be grown in Minnesota-like conditions, and even things like peanuts. Also, the Mammoth Steppe was remarkably productive with numerous megafauna all coexisting more or less.

The paleo-Indians (I know they aren't Indians, but it's the term used for them) are indeed sparse, but they were still there.
 
Yeah, this is literally the first time I've ever heard of converting gasoline engines to wood-fired ones. It seems it is possible, but to convert a large portion of the cars and trucks in Georgia would take more time and resources that could otherwise be used getting or securing food. There may be a few running around, but most people don't have access to the knowledge to do so post-jump and are more concerned with the food situation than with cars and trucks.

Without fuel for agricultural machinery, Georgia will starve to death. 99.9% of residents do not have the skills, tools and physical capabilities of manual labor in agriculture. Mammoths and bison are great, but how to transport meat from the frontier to consumers?! Self-propelled barges where there are navigable rivers, but on land it is absolutely off-road. Therefore, in the place of the authorities, I would organize mass artisanal production of gas generators for cars and the collection of cylinders for compressed gas. Car engines can be very easily tuned from gasoline to gas, and the technology of generators is very primitive. Diesel fuel is needed by fishing and cargo ships.
 
Without fuel for agricultural machinery, Georgia will starve to death. 99.9% of residents do not have the skills, tools and physical capabilities of manual labor in agriculture. Mammoths and bison are great, but how to transport meat from the frontier to consumers?! Self-propelled barges where there are navigable rivers, but on land it is absolutely off-road. Therefore, in the place of the authorities, I would organize mass artisanal production of gas generators for cars and the collection of cylinders for compressed gas. Car engines can be very easily tuned from gasoline to gas, and the technology of generators is very primitive. Diesel fuel is needed by fishing and cargo ships.
Most people did die, I amended the collapse post down from a majority surviving to ~10%, which I think is fair given that people will spread out and have to adapt or die. A full 99.9% reduction is completely unrealistic given that people will adapt to their environment and exploit any resources in a do-or-die scenario. New knowledge can be gained, tools made, and physical bodies can be adapted to manual labor.

As for transport, carts exist, pulled by animals. This is a lot more intuitive than trying rig wood powered cars up, which most people wouldn't think to do, know how to do, have the resources to do, or reason to do so when the world is collapsing around them. It's an interesting idea, but it's not gonna make it into the story.
 
Most people did die, I amended the collapse post down from a majority surviving to ~10%, which I think is fair given that people will spread out and have to adapt or die. A full 99.9% reduction is completely unrealistic given that people will adapt to their environment and exploit any resources in a do-or-die scenario. New knowledge can be gained, tools made, and physical bodies can be adapted to manual labor.

As for transport, carts exist, pulled by animals. This is a lot more intuitive than trying rig wood powered cars up, which most people wouldn't think to do, know how to do, have the resources to do, or reason to do so when the world is collapsing around them. It's an interesting idea, but it's not gonna make it into the story.

I meant that 99.9% do not have the skills of physical labor in the zone of risky farming. Even a real farmer, faced with a situation where part of the work needs to be done manually, may lose part of the crop or the entire crop. Seeds, toxic chemicals, fuel, oil, agricultural machinery, lack of weather forecasts, bandit raids... Yes, 10% is a real figure if the authorities turn out to be incompetent and do not keep the situation under control (I don't know much about Governor Kemp, but from a distance he looks like a man capable of leading in a crisis). There are freaks who are preparing for the apocalypse, old engineers with libraries or just paper libraries with a description of the necessary technologies, but to use the knowledge you need to organize people. As for horses, we need, for example, harness production technologies. I doubt there are many domestic horses in Georgia - hungry people will try to eat them, and in pastures they will have to be guarded by jeeps with a machine gun from predators.

On the territory of North America there was a giant horse that surpasses all modern heavy trucks.
If it can be domesticated, it will easily compensate for the loss of vehicles. It is possible to predict the emergence of nomadic tribes of natives and feral marginal refugees who will graze cattle and hunt wild animals outside the frontier. Question - will the enclaves be able to establish the production of black or brown gunpowder? This is a very complex multi-stage process, much more complicated than a gas generator.

An interesting point - what happens to airplanes in the air?! Some of the planes will lose their orientation (even the magnetic poles of the planet have changed) and land outside Georgia, perhaps even in the Old World or South America. Those passengers who survive an emergency landing will create pockets of civilization.
 
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Question - will the enclaves be able to establish the production of black or brown gunpowder? This is a very complex multi-stage process, much more complicated than a gas generator.

Gunpowder is going to come, but it's going to take some time and resources not immediately available in the state and the ammo stocks running low, which they currently aren't. There are probably some people that are looking into the process of making backyard gunpowder, but they'll more than likely blow themselves up than have working black power, let alone the smokeless powder in most modern weapons. I have some ideas for a later period when modern guns, replacement parts, and ammo start running low, though.

An interesting point - what happens to airplanes in the air?! Some of the planes will lose their orientation (even the magnetic poles of the planet have changed) and land outside Georgia, perhaps even in the Old World or South America. Those passengers who survive an emergency landing will create pockets of civilization.

Just so I can stay focused on Georgia and its environs, I'm gonna use author fiat to say that most planes landed in or near Georgia or didn't have enough people to have a lasting community.
 
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