Arg. I just spent a few days working on a reply and it got destroyed in a crash. Anyway, it doesn't matter that much.
What's important is the data you refer to is old and stuff happens fast in the Falklands, and arguing with people from the place you are arguing about with old data you don't necessarily know the context for is something that can cause a great deal of damage in the right circumstances, so maybe learn to not do it?
Didn't know you were from the Falklands.
I bow to local knowledge. Do you have any Net-accessible citations?
From the data I could find (from the CIA world factbook), exports go to: Spain 74.4%, Namibia 10.4%, US 5% (data from 2017). East Asia doesn't even rate a mention nowadays.
Spain mostly imports Falklands squid to process and export to the rest of Europe (1/3rd of all squid eaten in Europe comes from the Falklands apparently). I have no idea what the heck is being exported to Namibia and the US. But what I do know is that people in Europe aren't importing Falklands squid as a necessity. It is a luxury food item in the Western world. I believe most of the rest of the catch from the Falklands is ground up to make animal feed, and while beef and chicken are incredibly common luxuries in the modern world, they are still luxuries.
I am rather dubious that anyone is going to send trawler fleets to the South Atlantic to urgently strip mine the oceans. Trawler fleets are expensive and high tech and what's being caught in the South Atlantic just isn't a matter of life and death for anyone who doesn't live there.
So I am both convinced that fishing exports AND tourism are going to be devastated during the collapse. Sheep farming is very likely to also be badly impacted, but might just about be able to support an impoverished way of life depending on what happens in Australia. But, you know, sheep are edible and so are potatoes. So I continue to hold to the idea that the Falklands are relatively well placed (relative to the US nuking itself and large well organized states like France and the UK breaking under internal stresses being reduced to abject poverty looks "relatively well placed" to me).
So really the viability of the Falklands on their comes down to one thing: what does Argentina want? And.. Well. We know what we want. The only question is how nasty they'll be about getting it. And considering the things they do in the here and now, I'll bet fairly nasty, if not helicopters over the ocean nasty.
1) It bears noting that the current fishing situation in the Falklands is due to their reportedly excellent management of their fishing resources, and tight control of who is allowed to fish what. In the absence of the policing forces to do this, or the diesel to even fuel the patrol vessels , you are looking at what happened to the fish in a lot of
Africa's coastal waters.
2) Speaking as someone who has personal experience of human-powered subsistence agriculture , I have strong reservations of the Falklands ability to feed itself in that situation. Or to say, have halfway trained medical personnel.
But you have more personal knowledge than I do.
3) I do agree that in the absence of the UK, Argentina can occupy the Falklands Islands anytime they want, and with minimal forces.
If the UK had still been part of the EU when they collapsed, that would be different.
But Brexit happened.
I think you are severely underestimating the negative impact on the world that the US imploding would have. It is the sort of blow that in 2073 will still have the whole of human society ringing like a struck bell. A disaster on par with the implosion of Europe during WW2, only worse because Russia works to exacerbate the disaster, whereas the FDR and Truman administrations worked hard to mitigate the disaster of their era. So if Venezuela survives losing the destination of 40% of its exports (and the entire economy on which the international oil economy depends, because, you know, the US completely dominates the high tech manufacturing, consultancy and financing sectors in the oil industry), it will be in an extremely delicate place by the time that China is blown up.
And I am very dubious that China can neatly splinter without violence - in the here and now, ALL of the important parts of China are very securely in the grip of the Chinese Communist Party. To get Shanghai under a different regime from Beijing something unfathomably awful must have happened there. Just as something unfathomably awful was necessary to allow Victoria to rise from the mutilated corpses of the US and Canada.
1) I really dont think I am.
The fourteen year orgy of violence that was the final collapse of the United States and it's successor states between 2033 and 2047 was preceded by seventeen years of progressive decline after whatsisface defaulted on US debt in 2016 and the Euros kicked the US out of Europe, and progressive internal political dysfunction hit the US.
Major economies and businesses would have hedged their bets. Doesn't mean it wouldnt hurt.
The fall of the US was a shattering cataclysm with earthshaking effects. But it didnt hit people out of the blue.
2) The fact that China merged back together without military conquest suggests that there was no significant internal violence when it schismed, or depletion of their formed military forces. Furthermore, if they'd been occupied with fighting each other, the Imperial Japanese would probably have moved on North Korea as well as South Korea, assuming they didnt decide to jump Taiwan as well.
I mean, look at the timeline.
We know the Chinese splintered sometime around 2045, and were back on the scene in enough strength by the Rainbow Revolt of 2062 that they thought Chinese diplomatic recognition would be decisive.
That does not look like a nation with the internal damage that a civil war would cause.
Note that while Italy may have fought a civil war in this AU(the GM hasn't decided), France splintered in this AU without significant internal violence.
Lots of civil unrest, but no actual fighting.
There seems to be precedent for it.
Sure, El Nino has been a thing for thousands of years, but human action has worsened its effects.
Agreed.
The collapse of North America is also a human and economic disaster for everyone else living on planet Earth, removes much of the capacity TO retool and reduces a big chunk of demand. I think you are really underestimating just how big a deal the collapse is.
No I'm not.
And I think you underestimate the capacity to retool that exists outside the US; North America accounts for about 18% of the world's manufacturing capacity IRL by dollar value. Half of the worlds manufacturing value comes out of Asia right now.
That's RL, in the absence of the sort of prolonged political instability that would incentivizes businesses to move.
Its canon in the background material that Toyota was exporting and selling electric cars in Victoria after they seceded. Its canon in this quest that the Chinese had the expertise and funding to start the Fundy Bay tidal projects in the late 2030s and early 2040s. Its canon that everywhere went greentech, which implies the manufacturing capacity to replace old polluting technology with the new hotness.
Simon already answered this better, so, what Simon says.
I'm no expert on the oil industry, but from what I do know, the loss of US technology, expertise and finance would have enormous disruptive effects on world oil production - even in Russia - that seem likely to lead to a great contraction in output. So... How is that avoided to the degree that Venezuelan output is worth Russia launching an attack on a target half-way across the planet?
fasquardon
Shell is Anglo-Dutch.
Eni is Italian. Total is French. BP is British. Sinopec is Chinese. Petrobras is Brazilian. Gazprom is Russian.
The US is a major player, but large parts of the world have no
direct significant US oil company presence.
Suggestion for South America: French Guiana
If I had to guess, I'd say it just got bundled into the
Overseas Countries and Territories Association of the EU when France schismed.
Its right there next to Aruba, which is a Dutch territory. There's a whole bunch of EU territories there in the Caribbean that would be mutually self-supporting with EU help. And its launch facility, while not critical, is a useful place for them to maintain.
