Talk:2009 WCRB report on the southern United States (1983: Doomsday)/Archive

Coca-Cola
Since Coca-Cola is canon in the Cuba article, I figured I would include it in the report and give some additional background. The formula probably was locked up in the Atlanta HQ; to ensure that the formula is found by a Cuban soldier or scout in central/southern Georgia, my theory is someone in Atlanta gave the formula to an associate by phone almost as soon as the TV networks began to report the incoming missiles, so that the company's core product would survive even if Atlanta was destroyed. The formula was deemed legit after Cubans who remembered drinking Coke pre-DD said it tasted like Coca-Cola. Does this work or is it too out there?--BrianD 22:33, November 5, 2009 (UTC)

No, not at all. I personally love the idea of Coca-cola surviving, even if it is produced by Cuba. I am also glad that Pepsi is dead. Anyway, I think someone should write articles for some of these states the found. I especially want to see an article on the African-American states. One should be named New Africa. --Yankovic270 23:22, November 5, 2009 (UTC)

So this brings the population of the deeep south to how much? --Yankovic270 21:23, November 6, 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll have to figure it up later on tonight. Off the top of my head, maybe 50,000?--BrianD 23:22, November 6, 2009 (UTC)

Obviously, more than that :)BrianD 15:24, January 17, 2010 (UTC)

Everglades
I'm glad you brought up the everglades. As I lived in South Florida before I would like to work on that survivor community. I am specifically interested on what the park rangers and the Seminoles who live in there would do. Mind if I start working on it?--ShutUpNavi 03:42, November 7, 2009 (UTC)
 * Not at all; knock yourself out!--BrianD 05:21, November 7, 2009 (UTC)

Cape Girardeau
I would be interested in making an article on this city state. Would you mind if I go ahead and make one? --GOPZACK 19:36, November 8, 2009 (UTC)
 * Not at all. The only ideas I have are that Southeast Missouri State University has been important to the development of the city-state, and that they are mindful of the nearby New Madrid fault, almost as mindful of it as the people who lived near the Minuteman silos in the midwest must have been of any possible missile launches. And, if they have electricity, they would have gotten it going very recently and on a limited basis (and therefore much of the city lives at a 19th-century standard of living).--BrianD 19:57, November 8, 2009 (UTC)

Upstate South Carolina
I was excited to see that western NC survived around Asheville. Having seen the strike and fallout maps, I had seen that much of SC had apparently survived. The fuller report of this article helps me reduce the size of my proposed article to just the upstate of SC, just south of Asheville.

The fact that survivors found their way to Anderson, SC, confirms that the Oconee Nuclear Plant, on the border of Oconee and Pickens Counties, most likely did not receive a major hit. It may have been hit by a conventional warhead, however, if we want to keep the survivors "in the dark" (so to speak). Seeing that Blue Ridge has risen, and Anderson is an isolated African-American city-state, it seems that the power plant probably was put out with a conventional warhead. Otherwise, the new "Piedmont Republic" would have a huge advantage and have established communications much sooner with Asheville. Without power, the Greenville and Spartanburg TV and radio stations (accessible in Western NC) would be useless.

So I propose that as the nukes were taking out Columbia and Charlotte, a conventional weapon was able to effectively neutralize the Oconee Nuclear Facility. Power went out in most of the upstate, though some of the northernmost citizens still received some power from coal-fired plants in what would become Blue Ridge. Within months, though, that energy was redirected to the efforts in Asheville, causing some of those in SC much grief. Meanwhile, the officials in the upstate counties, working out of Greenville, begin to build a provisional SC government after survivors fleeing into the area from the southeast confirm that Columbia was targeted.

I will begin research this afternoon on what the upstate counties looked like in 1983. I lived here then, but my personal memories of the time are not that good. --SouthWriter 19:14, January 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Southwriter, looking forward to it!--BrianD 19:48, January 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * I was glad to see the addition on January 6th that Blue Ridge and LoN scouts had discovered evidence of the Republic of Piedmont. I am going on the assumption that with a base of surviving college students of over 15,000, the Republic will be reaching out to the people of Asheville sooner than the ATL now has it. My scenario may be a bit too optimistic, given the canonical histories so far (such as the deplorable state of nearby Anderson and Taccoa), so I may have to revise it down a little. But I think that the schools being in session on Doomsday do add an advantage of an educated - and healthy - citizenry.


 * By the way, how do I get on the "fast track" to "canonization"? --SouthWriter 19:06, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

Provisional State Government in Auburn, Alabama
In drawing up a map of the "deep south" (excluding South Florida) from the reported bombed cities and bases, it appears to me that Auburn was just too close to Columbus and Ft. Benning to survive. It is understandable that the survivors there, maybe even state government offices there, would have wanted to try.

As I am gathering from the articles of North America, it seems that high altitude nukes were probably used in an largely successful attempt to cause large communication failure with well-placed EMP's (electro-magnetic pulses). That would explain a lot of the confusion. The best sources of information would have been from travelers in older model cars heading away from targeted areas. Newer models would have lost power dew to the EMP's in space. I say this to explain the almost universal breakup in communication everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. --SouthWriter 20:14, January 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * That wasn't quite foremost on my mind when I wrote the scenario for Auburn, but it certainly makes sense. I actually considered putting a city state in Auburn; I didn't obviously, and I believe fallout was one of the reasons. I also wanted to establish that not all attempts at rebuilding civilization had happy endings (re: Athens).--BrianD 22:42, January 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not a fan of the EMP bursts, though I understand that Russia would have used them in a war with the U.S. I suppose my reservations come from the origin of the war in TTL, which basically was a colossal accident on the part of the Russians. If it was an accident, would the Soviets bother to attempt EMP attacks? Short answer: probably, especially given the US would do the same over the USSR. But 26 years on, it's likely that survivors would have the means to reestablish electricity, radio, television and perhaps (with much help from the most powerful and advanced nations TTL) some satellite capabilities, at a 1970s/early 1980s level.--BrianD 22:49, January 6, 2010 (UTC)

Baby boom
Why would there be a baby boom? Wouldn't the infant mortality rate skyrocket with the increased radiation, climate change and general lawlessness of the area? Mitro 16:00, January 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Good point. But I believe they would have tried, if for no other reason than to keep the human race going. I also contend that 1) any nation states that have lasted to 2010 would have solved the lawlessness problem early on and 2) a baby boom would have begun sometime after Doomsday. I gave them six years; if radiation and lawlessness is still a problem in any region by 1989, there is no chance of anything other than the St. Lawrence River gangs surviving long-term. --BrianD 16:16, January 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * This doesn't mean I am right, though...I'll revise the section, and numbers, if/whenever necessary.--BrianD 18:14, January 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Indeed, in the Piedmont -- especially in the BJU community -- there would be first a rush to marriage among available mates. The effects of radiation, especially on those suffering from "fallout" seem to be largely guess work any way. So many different things can determine the amount of exposure, much less its effects. But I may be wrong. I want to write about what I know -- and that is the upstate of South Carolina.
 * There could be a baby boom in that the number of pregnancies and births increase. Birth control would likely be hard to come by and there wouldn't be much in the way of entertainment.--Oerwinde 04:15, January 10, 2010 (UTC)

Race Relations

 * I grew up in Southwest Georgia (southwest of Columbus and Ft. Benning) in the area around Albany. That area would more likely than Anderson, SC, become a site for African-American city-states. Check out Dawson, GA (I lived there while going to high school) at wikipedia if you want a picture of that. Albany is much the same, though more developed. It may be worth building up an article as well.--SouthWriter 20:01, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

Albany is now, and was in 1983, the home of the Marine Corps Logistics Base. It was listed as a target on the FEMA map I googled. That leads me to believe Albany would be targeted. I don't think one could rebuild a city in a nuked area; even one city being targeted would have been a massive undertaking for the federal government, and would have taken quite some time. I chose Anderson because of its proximity to Toccoa, and because of months-old conversations on the main talk page inferring race-oriented conflicts in the South. I needed a place where survivors could reasonably flee to and survive, while segregating themselves. Racism is an ugly thing, and I'm afraid that Doomsday would make it much uglier in some places.--BrianD 20:19, January 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * I was going on the assumption that the WCRB report of the sites destroyed as being complete. I remember your referencing the FEMA list as well when first discussing my Piedmont site. It shows hits at the Oconee Nuclear Plant and some site east of Spartanburg. When the WCRB report came out, though, Spartanburg was still standing. And as I said, the ONP had to escape nuclear attack to allow Toccoa and Anderson to remain. I was ready to respond that there was no military presence since Turner Air Force Base (turned over to the Navy in 1967) had been abandoned in 1974. But alas, I had forgotten the Marines. They had set up across town from the Air Force in the midst of the cold war, that "ended" with Doomsday. The Air Force/Naval Air Base was gone, but the Marines stayed around.


 * Is it okay if we assume that the two upstate targets in the upstate were not hit? I am on the verge of asking to graduate into the big leagues (the "canon") and Greenville is smack in between the FEMA targets. Besides, Clemson University (close to Anderson) figures into my storyline ALMOST as much as do Bob Jones University and Furman University. --SouthWriter 21:39, January 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * SouthWriter, I use the FEMA maps as guides, but don't consider them absolutely to be canon. I'm fine with the two upstate targets not being hit. Re: Clemson, I need to review what I had for Anderson to figure how it could fit in with your proposal and not contradict anything. Re: Albany, I wouldn't think the Russians would throw a 50-megaton bomb at the Marine base. My greater issue is that Albany is in a part of the state that I thought to have been more affected by fallout and hits. But given that Albany is a small town of 56 square miles, even a Hiroshima-type hit would probably wipe it out. --BrianD 21:57, January 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Brian. A tactical nuke of a few megatons would certainly be enough. The Marine base there is quite strategic, actually. Perhaps even a conventional TNT bomb would do the trick without much collateral damage. The weather coming up from the gulf, where a whole lot of bases would be targeted (but not particularly "big" cities (PC is probably no bigger than Albany, for instance). Tallahassee is just about due south, and probably the most obvious hit in the panhandle. Ft. Benning and nearby Columbus are about 90 miles NE of Albany -- probably the big boys over them! But that is upwind. Anyway, thanks for all your research.

HAD edited SouthWriter's comment to kilotons from megatons, which makes sense to me too. One would think the Russians (and Americans) had their limits on how badly they wanted to blast a place to hell.BrianD 20:15, January 17, 2010 (UTC)

Take Cyprus for example, Lord that was a mess for me to sort out. The only way to quiet it down was the bombs. If anything rascism and prejudices would be hundredfold worse, after all, scapegoats seem to be a rather disturbing part of human mindsets. Mr.Xeight 20:31, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

Discrepancies between profiles and 2009 WCRB report
There will be some discrepancies between the southern city profiles and the WCRB report. That's intentional on my part and on others, including SouthWriter and GOPZACK, to reflect that the report is a historical document written with information that the LoN knew of at the time it was written in late 2009. BrianD 15:24, January 17, 2010 (UTC)


 * It now becomes a matter of explaining how the LoN may have missed so much which should have been evident at such a late date. Of course, if we use the United Nation "fact-finding" missions as a guide, then it is clear that they would have missed quite a bit anyway. In writing about a war that that was "settled" by 1990, I have to show that the continuing conflict between racists at the borders of the Piedmont Republic is enough to keep the government of the Republic occupied to the extent that contact with the nearby Republic of Blue Ridge was not a priority.


 * On the other hand, the search teams seem to have been only along the coasts and up the rivers. In and around South Carolina, they found the small groups of survivors on the coast (Georgetown), and near the rivers forming logical geographic boundaries of the state (a little research would probably show some disagreements when establishing the eastern ("north-eastern") boundary between North and South Carolina) - Florence in the east and Anderson in the west. Nearby Toccoa, and from there, Athens, could have been part of this same trip up the Savannah River. I suppose, then that a team found Florence following the Great Pee Dee River to it's headwaters. A third team, following the Santee and Cawtamba Rivers up the center of the state, had to look go all the way to the headwaters of the Cawtawba to find the eastern counties of the Republic of Blue Ridge.




 * Here is a map of the what I suppose the three teams would have found.LoN_2008_in_SC.png I chose to put it here as a thumbnail (so as not to crowd the page), but you can see the three paths they would have taken. Funds and time were probably a factor, and subsequent trips will provide more information. As you can see if you enlarge the map, I mark where they would have examined the bombed cities as they were in the areas.SouthWriter 22:01, January 17, 2010 (UTC)

A few things come to mind: SouthWriter, great job on the map! That needs to go on the Maps page.BrianD 22:14, January 17, 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Scouts would have been preoccupied with finding out about the people they ran into; it stands to reason that some of those leaders might have given them incomplete information (I THOUGHT there were, like, 900 people in the other towns, not thousands more) or the people they met didn't know as much about what was going on as others did. Does the mayor of your town know how many people the last census had living in neighboring towns and nearby cities?
 * 2) For the LoN to cover every square inch of the south, would have meant for them to send a lot more people than they had the means to. The idea anyway was to get a feel for the region: was there life there or not? One could fill in the details during subsequent missions. The relatively few scouts the LoN sent in the last few years did a pretty good job of getting the essence of the region. The coasts made sense to me as they were the most accessible by boat. I initially didn't think of it in terms of the teams sticking to the rivers, but that makes sense (whether you're a community or a scout, you need water to survive).
 * 3) I wrote the scenario in such a way as to allow for other writers, like yourself, to create their own scenarios. I didn't want to so exactly define the region as to prevent this from happening. That meant leaving large areas of the region as unknown, both to the LoN and to the people living there. BrianD 22:13, January 17, 2010 (UTC)