Don't cry for me Argentina, the truth is I never left you...
Victoria Falls Worldbuilding Thread
- Thread starter PoptartProdigy
- Start date
- Worldbuilding
Random Member
Gardener of Human Happiness
- Location
- Behind You
What utter nonsense.
Argentina was obviously taken over by the ultimate ideology of Marxism-Peronism!
Banshee Eva Peron. Possibly a AI controlling a hologram if you wanted to be boring about it. She floats things around with like... magnents. And nanonites. For any other question about how it works, nanonites.
- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"Peronism is when an Argentine does politics. The more Argentinian they are the more Peronist it is." - Juan Peron
Oh god, please no I BEG OF YOU. They already unofficially canonized her as a godamn saint down here, I fear the day she returns to life by russian hands!
Eh, Peronism is pretty much Corporativism with a bunch of bells and whistles and a cult of leadership. Peron actually killed and attacked the left wing of his own party on many ocassions. He even created a secret police, just for them!
I assume that was joke, that the ideology is a contradiction, like Anarcho-capitalism. As such I approve it for this new Argentina. Which is already planning to move on Europe. Soon, Spain will fall to the(sonic mind control) charms of Evita.
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- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh, there are definitely self-proclaimed left-Peronists. It's a totally incomprehensible excuse for an ideology.
- Location
- United States
The best analogy would probably be Fascism - and I mean that as in the actual political ideology, not a derogatory term for every vaguely rightwing authoritarian you want to insult. Benito Mussolini invented the term "Third-Positionism" - the idea that there was another alternative between Capitalism and Socialism. Corporatism is referring to the latin word for body, not corporations, as in an ideal fascist society businesses would not serve the 'selfish whims of the bourgeoisie' but the State, acting as extensions of the governments will, just as the people did for the good of the nation.
The state's ideology is Peron-Musicalism. Which states that the most musical are clearly the superior form of a human, and as such all positions are determined by it. Court cases are determined by sing-offs/dance between the respective sides, though nominally fair, as everyone must perform directly, the rich are known to hire elaborate back-up singers/dancers and stage sets, which some softly hum gives them an unfair advantage. Corporations are required to prove their ability to coordinate by having all employees engage in musical numbers when a state inspector comes by.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Sara Goldblum:
"We cannot allow a dance-off gap!"
"We cannot allow a dance-off gap!"
Do we have any info on what the 2070s internet looks like? And how hard it would be for us to start getting at least basic connection to it?
Suggestion for South America: French Guiana
When the Collapse hit, so did it at least double for French Guiana. Heavily dependent on the French mainland for subsidies, food and other goods, the small French Departément was hit hard. The specter of starvation was heavy and always looming over the small colony, there was few ways out. Of course, except for the big elephant in the room to the South, with a large agricultural economy, a big thing called the Amazon that made it near-impervious to the manipulations of the Czar of Russia and the rest of the Merry Band of Meddlers. That wasn't the problem. The problem was the still-remaining units that were vehemently against the very idea of trying to reach out, and possibly having to submit to Brazilian demands.
But soldiers need to eat too somehow. And people do too. And boy, did Brazil and later the MERCOSUR tempt them. Fishing worked for about three months with barter, before they had to begin to look into the rockets that were left with the ESA once the collapse happened. Push come to shove, the Russian Atlantic Fleet could probably have struck the place and destroyed it. But if there was one thing that the French never disagreed on, even as the factions took Russian aid, it was that open Russian aggression was a big no. And the nukes may have been old, but they could still put a mushroom or two on the map.
In the end, they gave in, and let the Brazilians handle their foreign affairs for now while they jealously guarded the Guiana Space Centre. The Brazilians wanted it, but on the far and wide, just sitting on it was good enough. After all, with the EU in the doldrums and likely going to be that for a good time, maybe even forever, having de facto sovereignty over the GSC wasn't that bad. Once the dust settled, everything could be settled later. And it looked like that for a good long time, as the EU was busy first in France, then in Italy, then in Britain and then looked like it would have to spend the rest of the 21st Century putting itself back together before it could look outwards again. Maybe, preferably by that time, they could have flooded the place with sufficient enough people that they could get it permanently into Brazil with the EU maybe leasing a couple of the launch ramps.
Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men…
The EU had clambered back onto its feet by 2070 and, ultimately, once the initial Balkan and Western European housecleaning was completed, set its sight on the former overseas possessions that had to fend for themselves. And for many (like in the Caribbean), EU aid was a tempting out from the twin influences of Russia and South America. The Russians could probably have taken them by force, but once more, nuclear mushrooms in Moscow is an immensely unpleasant risk to take.
The necessities of linking up with Brazil aside, the EU did see French Guiana (rightfully or not) as a vital part. Not only did it symbolize the return of the Union to the world stage after several decades of missing out, but it also contained the one thing that made the small corner of South America so valuable - The Guiana Space Centre at Kourou. While not having been used, the people trapped there had kept it in pristine condition, fully knowing that it was the one thing in the area that made them and the land so valuable and keeping the Brazilians out.
So thus it was that the EU and Brazil had to sit over some very awkward and some very tense negotiations elsewhere. Marathon sessions day in and day out. And much for nought in the end as the people there came down on a referendum with a margin so thin it was really a big question mark.
What was, in 2000 French Guiana has become a wierd post-Westphalian creature, where Kourou, Sinnamary, Tonnamate and the GSC is "French" (More European than anything), the small corner of the Amazon is Brazilian territory, along with the places west of Sinnamary, Cayenne is a weird condominium administered by both powers in a strange melt (loopholes has also made it a hot spot for shady dealings) and you can opt for living in either zone regardless of where you are born.
It is messy, it is sloppy, and it works better than anyone had expected (Which is to say that it is still a backwater known for its space centre and 'naff else, but people have enough to eat and enough to drink. More than can be said for other parts of the Americas)
When the Collapse hit, so did it at least double for French Guiana. Heavily dependent on the French mainland for subsidies, food and other goods, the small French Departément was hit hard. The specter of starvation was heavy and always looming over the small colony, there was few ways out. Of course, except for the big elephant in the room to the South, with a large agricultural economy, a big thing called the Amazon that made it near-impervious to the manipulations of the Czar of Russia and the rest of the Merry Band of Meddlers. That wasn't the problem. The problem was the still-remaining units that were vehemently against the very idea of trying to reach out, and possibly having to submit to Brazilian demands.
But soldiers need to eat too somehow. And people do too. And boy, did Brazil and later the MERCOSUR tempt them. Fishing worked for about three months with barter, before they had to begin to look into the rockets that were left with the ESA once the collapse happened. Push come to shove, the Russian Atlantic Fleet could probably have struck the place and destroyed it. But if there was one thing that the French never disagreed on, even as the factions took Russian aid, it was that open Russian aggression was a big no. And the nukes may have been old, but they could still put a mushroom or two on the map.
In the end, they gave in, and let the Brazilians handle their foreign affairs for now while they jealously guarded the Guiana Space Centre. The Brazilians wanted it, but on the far and wide, just sitting on it was good enough. After all, with the EU in the doldrums and likely going to be that for a good time, maybe even forever, having de facto sovereignty over the GSC wasn't that bad. Once the dust settled, everything could be settled later. And it looked like that for a good long time, as the EU was busy first in France, then in Italy, then in Britain and then looked like it would have to spend the rest of the 21st Century putting itself back together before it could look outwards again. Maybe, preferably by that time, they could have flooded the place with sufficient enough people that they could get it permanently into Brazil with the EU maybe leasing a couple of the launch ramps.
Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men…
The EU had clambered back onto its feet by 2070 and, ultimately, once the initial Balkan and Western European housecleaning was completed, set its sight on the former overseas possessions that had to fend for themselves. And for many (like in the Caribbean), EU aid was a tempting out from the twin influences of Russia and South America. The Russians could probably have taken them by force, but once more, nuclear mushrooms in Moscow is an immensely unpleasant risk to take.
The necessities of linking up with Brazil aside, the EU did see French Guiana (rightfully or not) as a vital part. Not only did it symbolize the return of the Union to the world stage after several decades of missing out, but it also contained the one thing that made the small corner of South America so valuable - The Guiana Space Centre at Kourou. While not having been used, the people trapped there had kept it in pristine condition, fully knowing that it was the one thing in the area that made them and the land so valuable and keeping the Brazilians out.
So thus it was that the EU and Brazil had to sit over some very awkward and some very tense negotiations elsewhere. Marathon sessions day in and day out. And much for nought in the end as the people there came down on a referendum with a margin so thin it was really a big question mark.
What was, in 2000 French Guiana has become a wierd post-Westphalian creature, where Kourou, Sinnamary, Tonnamate and the GSC is "French" (More European than anything), the small corner of the Amazon is Brazilian territory, along with the places west of Sinnamary, Cayenne is a weird condominium administered by both powers in a strange melt (loopholes has also made it a hot spot for shady dealings) and you can opt for living in either zone regardless of where you are born.
It is messy, it is sloppy, and it works better than anyone had expected (Which is to say that it is still a backwater known for its space centre and 'naff else, but people have enough to eat and enough to drink. More than can be said for other parts of the Americas)
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, the big question is whether the space center can be maintained at all, you see.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
If that suggestion ends up winning, I'd say it's far from fully functional. And it's very kitbashed and you wouldn't want to have a modern OSHA team, environmental protection agency or the like look at it. But it can regularly launch rockets from one or two pads. You just might have a rather bad failure rate for the first little while until things get repaired, missing parts replaced and old parts receive a thorough clean-room maintenance for the first time in decades. But it can operate as a launch complex and we're only talking a bad attrition rate by modern standards.
Of course, if you want more than one and a half launch pads operational you'd be better off demolishing the rest of the site and rebuilding because they are likely just hollow husks held up by rust because everything useful was stripped to keep the operational pad and a half running.
Of course, if you want more than one and a half launch pads operational you'd be better off demolishing the rest of the site and rebuilding because they are likely just hollow husks held up by rust because everything useful was stripped to keep the operational pad and a half running.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'm honestly not sure what the facilities are like now, but I have to question whether there'd even be enough demand to sustain the launch facilities through the worst decade or two. You can't keep up a launch site if no one is paying to launch rockets.
- Location
- United States
It's best to lump Columbia, Venezuela, and the rest of 'northern' South America in with Central America from a geopolitical standpoint, and I've been operating under the assumption that Central America has been subjected to Russia's vicious idea of a sphere of influence. I believe it's been stated that due to being horrendously overstretched even on the best of days the Russians don't bother trying to run puppet states and just maintain a deliberate state of anarchy. To what extent this applies, or if that's being revised, I'm not certain ... but it certainly seems like the Tsar wouldn't have much difficulty sending in some deniable forces to raze the space center to the ground - if not the entire country - and let the wilderness devour what's left.
So, i've seen proposals for Venezuela, Brasil, Argentina, Chile, French Guiana and Bolivia. But there is a country that is missing does anyone have any good ideas on Peru? I can't imagine that dealing with "El Niño" In a Post-Collapse world be fun. Id say giant corruption isn't enjoyable either but that's pretty much the standard for South America.
My thoughts when I wrote it was that they kept the buildings in running condition (ie. basically doing gardening and cleaning with the occasional computer and antenna cleanup) - The pads are clean, but the launch towers have mostly been stripped for steel and the equipment they couldn't strip put in a storage of sorts
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
If the towers have been stripped for steel, the launch site can't operate without extensive construction work. At which point you've already lost the "maintain launch capability" battle and it becomes a lot harder to justify the resources spent to keep everything else tidy.
I mean, at the end of the day it still has the same advantages it did originally to be chosen as a site, so if you wanted to start rebuilding...
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Oh, you would!
But you'd need to, is my point. There's only a limited point in keeping the lawn mowed at the command center if the launch gantries themselves have been torn apart, is what I'm saying.
But you'd need to, is my point. There's only a limited point in keeping the lawn mowed at the command center if the launch gantries themselves have been torn apart, is what I'm saying.
Huh... That makes me think.
Imagine a scenario, it is the collapse, the US is in the midst of civil war. The collapse of trust in the dollar-based economy has utterly fragged the international finance system. Any company with international reach is likely to be in critical condition (and most are likely to fail) - so might we see entire fleets worth of ships being seized by port authorities in lieu of debts? Unpaid and starving crews mutinying and capturing their ships to sell them off to local operators? The formation of pirate trawler and merchant fleets of negotiable virtue as port cities that have decent oil stocks and parts inventories end up turning into pirate free cities?
Hmmm. I wonder... If we go with the proposed Brazilian collapse, might the parts of Brazil most integrated with the La Plata region form a separate Argentine-aligned entity?
Well... Oil in the ground is one thing. But at this point, extracting oil from anywhere is extremely capital/technology-intensive. Slurping the last tarry residues out of mature oil fields isn't so different from fracking or exploiting tar sands. Last I read into this, US-based companies are a key players in maintaining the output every oil field still in production - US sanctions on Russia, Venezuela and Iran have basically destroyed the output of all 3, and the implosion of the US during the collapse is basically going to mean that all the world gets to experience the practical ramifications of that sort of sanctions regime.
Especially since Western Europe, Japan and China, which are the likely players who could fill the gap, are all very connected to the US oil industry and oil finance sector, so will lose much capability when the US is busy destroying itself.
And while I am sure Western Europe and China could rebuild capabilities and add new capabilities to their oil industries in time, do they have time to fill the gaps left by destroyed US firms? Both are scheduled to experience their own existential crises and so much is going to be on fire after the US implodes that they will probably be busy with more important challenges to their existence than keeping oil flowing at anything near the rates of today. What's really key is bunker oil for ships and gasoline and diesel for logistical transport. Oil we now use for electrical generation, moving personal vehicles around, plastic production and asphalt production is likely to be very far down the list of priorities.
So practically, that leaves Japan, whose oil industry in the here-and-now is struggling to reach targets for developing overseas resources that can then be imported to Japan (and a big chunk of Japanese developments are in North America), so even though Japan is one of the powers that did well during the collapse, it has no-where near the scale for their oil service industry to support all the fields and refineries and transport infrastructure that currently relies on US oil service firms.
(I don't mention Russia at all, because their oil industry isn't even up to maintaining domestic production.)
I expect that the collapse will see simultaneous contractions in BOTH supply and demand - likely very large contractions. And after things stop being on fire all the time, will rebuilding of the 20th Century way of doing things be desirable? I am doubtful, given both the large capital costs of rebuilding the high-intensity oil economies of the here-and-now and that alternative technologies and infrastructures are likely to have continued to develop, at least in places like Russia and Japan, where the collapse doesn't hit as hard.
Maybe the whole reason why Russia and Japan are allies in this future is that Russia had secure oil fields and Japan had the ability to help them maintain production? And the reason for their military power is because they've been the only powers for 40 years who had enough oil to invest in military logistics and mobility?
fasquardon
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'd like a bit of speculation on Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, the Caribbean, and Central America, please. We've got enough on the biggest players for a first draft.