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What if three portals in Fallout, Handmaid's Tale, and Hunger Games appear in OTL 2018 United States?

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    • The Great Khan

    The Great Khan

    Lets set the scene its January 1st 2018, 9:00 pm and portals to the worlds of Republic of Gilead, New California Republic (NCR), and Panem just appear. The portals would be permanent and won't fade in or out of existence. The portals are circles and there size is 2,500 square feet. There is total of 3 portals connecting OTL 2018 United States to these worlds. The portals would appear appear on land, one portal would be appear in OTL Las Angeles and Shady Sands from Fallout around the year 2189. The next portal would be appear in OTL Chicago and Chicago from Handmaid's Tale around Season 1. The final portal would be appear in OTL New York and District 12 around a week before the 74th Hunger Games.

    How would everyone react?
     
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    • The Hunger Games and Fallout portals would be very valuable for US scouts and explorers due to the advanced technology. The Handmaid's Tale portal, not so much and will just be secured. I see America overtly or covertly enacting regime change on the main players of those universes.
     
    Rhymehouse said:
    The Hunger Games and Fallout portals would be very valuable for US scouts and explorers due to the advanced technology. The Handmaid's Tale portal, not so much and will just be secured. I see America overtly or covertly enacting regime change on the main players of those universes.
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    Y'know Handmaid's Tale is basically 80s or 90s America, right? It's pretty much the same nation with the same capabilities, it just has a different regime. They're as likely to do the whole CIA exploding cigars thing as OTL America is.
     
    TriassicDino said:
    How would everyone react?
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    Everyone would like to get themselves a piece of shizotech from the worlds of Fallout and Hunger Games. Both are going to be invaded, because these are too poor and spacely populated to resist even with all those technical wonders.

    The world of Handmaid's Tale Is probably just walled off for a while, because it's just a corrupt dystopian copy of USA.
     
    Kurush said:
    The world of Handmaid's Tale Is probably just walled off for a while, because it's just a corrupt dystopian copy of USA.
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    And its world building is the weakest of the three while making Bethesda plot writing look like genius. The main character can't even remember things from 5 years before from what I recall of the book.

    Had Atwood actually taken some time in basic world building Handmaid's Tale could have been readable scifi, but the backdrop is so thin that it requires the reader to assume that either everyone is basically amnesiac or implausibly stupid. It's been a long time since I've read that piece of drek, but I remember when I finished slogging through it thinking that Dan Brown could have written it better and still hit the themes.
     
    TriassicDino said:
    and Panem just appear.
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    Sadly shallow worldbuilding, something pretty usual in worlds designed for teenage audience. Simplified caricature of a world, starting with the fact that outside of Panem everything looks like virgin forest without even hunter-gatherers.

    Combined with the fact that their armed forces lack basic understanding of tactics, you could pretty much coup them with a few hundred of soldiers.
     
    Sterr said:
    Y'know Handmaid's Tale is basically 80s or 90s America, right?
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    AFAIC the point of divergence lies in 2014, so it's still the USA, only unbeliveable polluted, weakened by wars both internal and external, and hard trade sanctions, and on top of all populated by batshit insane Gorean lifestyle practitioners.

    But still the USA, with multi-million manpower and some serious toys.
     
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    As I only really know fallout, I'll stick with that.
    Its gonna end up with trading water purification tech, food stuff and actual manufacturing ability for all that retro future tech, just the fusion batteries/microfusion cells alone could kickstart a new tech revolution.
    Meanwhile NCR gains even greater stability and an actual ally.
    Win/Win as long as both sides play nice.
     
    Kurush said:
    AFAIC the point of divergence lies in 2014, so it's still the USA, only unbeliveable polluted, weakened by wars both internal and external, and hard trade sanctions, and on top of all populated by batshit insane Gorean lifestyle practitioners.

    But still the USA, with multi-million manpower and some serious toys.
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    The Handmaid's Tale was realeased in 1985... it's somewhat plausible in those terms, obviously not something that would happen today, but back then the rest of the world didn't have a mandate to intervene, unlike in the modern day.

    Also it's not really the USA any more, there's still a rump "United States of America" state, but it's also highly irradiated and massively depopulated from emigration and death. Without even considering the effects of massively decreased birth rates. Not sure what the population was in '85, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were halved as a result of everything.
     
    Sterr said:
    Y'know Handmaid's Tale is basically 80s or 90s America, right? It's pretty much the same nation with the same capabilities, it just has a different regime. They're as likely to do the whole CIA exploding cigars thing as OTL America is.
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    Did you read the book or see the show?

    The Republic of Gilead is a shadow of what even the 1980s America really was. That said, I doubt a full-blown invasion will happen just because of size. Even just the continental United States is over 8 million square kilometers and you really expect the current United States of America or even NATO to fully occupy 3 different United States, two of which are irradiated? The most you will see is annexing and securing the immediate region around the portals and using trade and soft power for America to get what it wants from the other worlds.
     
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    An Sionnach Rua said:
    The Handmaid's Tale was realeased in 1985... it's somewhat plausible in those terms, obviously not something that would happen today, but back then the rest of the world didn't have a mandate to intervene, unlike in the modern day.
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    Having lived through the 80s (and aware of things beyond my nose), no Handmaid's Tale wasn't even remotely plausible in 1985. Not even in the most fevered dreams if you used the 1950's as a point of divergence. You might be able to sell it if you put the point of divergence sometime with the 'Great Awakening' roughly at the start of the 20th century and then made the Great Depression and WW2 a whole lot worse but as is Tale is not really scifi unless you just put it in the 'an ASB did it' category given the flimsy backdrop and characters who forget important details about their own lives prior.
     
    Evilutionary said:
    Having lived through the 80s (and aware of things beyond my nose), no Handmaid's Tale wasn't even remotely plausible in 1985. Not even in the most fevered dreams if you used the 1950's as a point of divergence. You might be able to sell it if you put the point of divergence sometime with the 'Great Awakening' roughly at the start of the 20th century and then made the Great Depression and WW2 a whole lot worse but as is Tale is not really scifi unless you just put it in the 'an ASB did it' category given the flimsy backdrop and characters who forget important details about their own lives prior.
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    I mean, I would also consider myself reasonably aware of things beyond my nose as well, what with eyes and ears being a thing, as well as having a brain to process the information coming in. That being said, considering the state of the US currently, I can reasonably imagine a US being capable of doing something like this, keep in mind that the start date of this whole revolution wasn't given as far as I'm aware, so it could well have started at any of those points. It's only stated that the year was sometime in the near future. Considering attitudes towards women when Atwood was growing up and even nowadays, if fringe groups had made it into power with a strong enough military behind them, it's definitely not out of the question that they could have done something like this. Especially following nuclear weapons having been launched all over the USA.

    Now as to the premise, I can definitely see the US intervening and possibly even the UN, I mean the mandate of intervention stands even if it's a region of another Earth entirely. Economic aid is certain in any case, especially with the economic boom of all the new technologies being introduced from the other two Earths aside from that. Also the USA wouldn't accept a beligerrent neighbour right at their border, I would imagine.
     
    I believe the correct answer is, we all die to FEV and radiation, the waste landers settle these suddenly amazing new worlds that are shockingly empty except for a few ghouls.

    Now suddenly having access to entire unspoiled worlds is huge for the people in fallout. The NCR is already at the boiling point for how much they can control their own society. Unchallenged settlers would pour out of the settled zones into the actually relatively less dangerous unsettled areas. Most likely after a decade of expansion there would be a massive series of civil wars and balkanization of the republic.

    For the handmaids tale people though, this actually might ironically be a great positive change. They already live in an irradiated hell scape and are slowly dying out due to it. The introduction of FEV might actually allow them to overcome the population plummet that is the basis of their societies grim totalitarianism. FEV might just allow the re-democratization of fertility, which would undermine their society pretty quickly.

    Now if neither group manages to boil over into horrific interal murder, the war between the NCR and the Giliead over our and the Panem's corpses would be pretty interesting.

    On one hand we have an intact industrial base, on the other we have schizotech and more super weapons than anyone cares to recall. My bet would be on the one true ending of all Fallout crossovers.

    Sentient Invisible Deathclaws settle the waste after the last human murders the last other human and in the warm remains of the wasteland of our hubris, war finally changes.
     
    I_S said:
    I believe the correct answer is, we all die to FEV and radiation, the waste landers settle these suddenly amazing new worlds that are shockingly empty except for a few ghouls.
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    Radiation isn't magic, and while significantly higher than background would be for us the irradiated dust would be the biggest problem but not even an insurmountable one. Humans live in Shady Sands, hell its a capital so barring significant fuckups there isn't even any sort of immediate threat. No the problem is FEV. That shit is magic, straight up. Not magically contagious, people get turned into super mutants in direct exposure vats usually and again the capital of the NCR is probably not going to be host to a legion of super mutants. Not that a legion of super mutants are a serious threat to say a modern mechanized division. Life on OTL earth goes on except our awareness of the strange possibilities of the universe is greatly expanded.

    And to boot there is something we have to keep in mind. The United States is now connected to three much worse off states through massive portals. We don't know how the gates are configured but we can say that within most reasonably imaginings IRBM and ICBMS are off the table as weapons. Which leaves the United States effectively untouchable to both Gilead and Panem who in Panem's case are shown to have deeply deeply deeply mediocre capacity for state on state violence given how eye wateringly bad their performance was (then again YA romance book with an emphasis on the Y.) and Gilead, which by all accounts is implied to be a gutted United States with less in the way of technical development, no allies and a populace it can't trust.

    In short while thoughtless military adventurism alone is likely the least effective way to get things done if anyone was capable of it It'd be the United States and it's allies. The NCR has no reason to fight the US unless someone fucks up majorly. Panem is just fucking weird as shit, massively underpopulated, districts massively overspecialized, and it's leadership military and civilian seem to be lacking two brain cells to rub together (seriously does anyone remember if Snow even had a game plan beyond watch things fall apart? because I don't.) and Gilead is literally just the US but worse at everything including common human decency in a way that will almost certainly incense people, even more damning they don't even have niche shit to pull out of their ass.

    Anyways, I wonder how Fallout-verse tech, casual micro-fusion, and robots interact with modern electronics and transistors.
     
    UponALotusBlosom said:
    Radiation isn't magic, and while significantly higher than background would be for us the irradiated dust would be the biggest problem but not even an insurmountable one. <snip>
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    I was thinking the same thing reading that post;-). Though radiation might as well be magic given what most people actually know about it.

    I'd agree that tech raiding would be the best initial benefit but even running trains through the portals might make ambitions amount to more than an outpost in those worlds perhaps a bit too far. They are still copies of the US though so the geography is the best chunk of territory on the globe (even if the Mississippi is dry in the Fallout verse....that would be all sorts of crazy given the watershed however).

    Granted the economics for any of them don't make a lick of sense (Fallout's pre-war the most sensible of the bunch but it is still stupid, just not glaringly so considered they Year-Zero'd it). Panem would have to be knocked down to 'get the goodies' and protect the gate. Gilead's backdrop (considering it is not YA fiction) is so stupid it burns, but it also would be logical to at least do some regime change there as well to build something function for a stable trading relationship.

    The Fallout-verse would probably be more of a long term settlement and rehabilitation project. There's a number of assumptions in it's backstory (like geology and 'peak oil') that are flat out wrong. They could've just let the story be at 'Apocalypse caused by Great Power Competition' and it still would've worked. But it is a lot of wide open land that would have to be resettled to maximize the benefit.
     
    Kurush said:
    Panem is far better for this. Both Wasteland and Gilead are to polluted to be of use.
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    It's more the fact that to access (dig up etc) all the ragnorak tech in Fallout you're going to need a large number of outposts. Building the infrastructure to protect and supply them basically means settlement of a lot of folks to support. As mentioned the Rads situation as presented in the game is pretty much magic so would have to assume some realism applies if it existed outside a crpg. And you don't actually see much of fallout disease and if it was that deadly it would have entirely wiped out humanity (I think nukes, early post-war rads, and starvation took care of most of the population) and doesn't have much of a population to exist in so any biogeneered stuff likely burned itself out long ago (FEV a forceable exposure in game iirc). Not to mention all the vault dwellers who pop up have no resistance if supposedly all existing fallout humans\mutants\ghouls are carriers.

    Gilead, god I hate thinking about how this world can possibly make sense, has Canada. Granted even a smaller chunk of a broken up US could roll over Canada (and no reason for a state like Gilead not to) given how indefensible it is to the US. Most Canada's population lives on the border to the US, It has roughly 3 choke-points to shut the entire country down from external support\trade (that even Gilead can screw with), and it just doesn't have the population. And it has something virtually any 'polluted' US would want....uncontaminated land (and fertile females to claim).

    Granted that particular I just chalked up to a unreliable narrator just to slog through the book and that something else was at work in the US that would leave Canada alone (because if infertility was any environmental cause it wouldn't skip Canada).

    Panem is YA so its economy is somewhat allowed to be a fairy tale. That the narration is unreliable here as well and they really didn't just hyper-specialize their economics in the districts the way they did (nor is the population that tiny). If it was.....well yeah game, set, match. It would be worth the effort to claim a virtually empty virgin America territory and just absorb the remaining population.
     
    Rhymehouse said:
    Did you read the book or see the show?
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    I read the book, it doesn't give details. Those maps are from the show. AFAIK they aren't based on book text.

    In fact, I'm pretty sure it's wrong in novel canon because Chapter 5 mentioned "oranges from Florida" being unreliable due to rebel activity, so presumably Florida is occupied by Gilead but also has guerilla warfare, whereas the show map suggests it's entirely occupied by rebels in the parts of the state where orange cultivation happens.
     
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    HOw much/how quickly can goods/material pass between then, or even people?

    I could see some folks wanting to enter the alternate worlds, or leave to this USA.

    Gilead might turn some folks against Trump even harder.
     
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