Blue Ridge (1983: Doomsday)

The Blue Ridge Provisional Republic is the name of a group of survivor communities discovered in the Blue Ridge Mountains region of former North Carolina by World Census and Reclamation Bureau scouts in 2009.



The capital is Asheville, a community of 134,000 people that served as a regional relief center right after Doomsday, and for years was thought by locals to be the biggest community not just in the region, but in the entire world. The government of Asheville has long had good relations with Morristown, in eastern Tennessee.

The area's political future contains several possibilities, including a political union with East Tennessee, and closer ties with Piedmont. More recently government leaders have softened their stance on membership in Virginia's Dixie Alliance.

The League of Nations insists that whatever entity ultimately controls the area, do so as the former United States governed the area pre-Doomsday, respecting the "traditional American values of liberty and justice".

History
Frantic announcements on network television were the first sign in the Asheville region of the impending nuclear attack on the United States, on the evening of September 25, 1983. Electric power flickered, and went out, and then flashes were seen off in the distance in all directions. In the mountains, locals went to confirm their suspicions of a nuclear attack, including an astronomy student from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The student took his telescope and pointed it in the direction of one of the flashes, and in the distance saw something bone-chilling - a small, distant, but unmistakable mushroom cloud. He took several pictures, then hiked back down into the city, showing his film to photographers from the Asheville Citizen newspaper.

The city became a haven for people in the region looking for shelter, with refugees pouring in from throughout western and central North Carolina, swelling the region's population to an estimated 400,000, more than twice its normal size.

With scouts and refugees confirming the destruction of major North Carolina cities such as Charlotte, Raleigh and Winston-Salem, as well as major state military bases, and no contact from the federal government nor any other state having come since Doomsday, Asheville leaders decided they were for all practical purposes alone.

Locals, Christians and non-Christians alike, got a significant morale boost when it was learned that the Rev. Billy Graham - a major American cultural and religious figure - was at his home in nearby Montreat on Sept. 25. Graham, mourning the loss of some of his children who were in presumably attacked areas, gave a series of sermons throughout Asheville and Montreat in the fall of 1983, both preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ that he traditionally had in his crusades, as well as an urging for everyone who heard him to persevere in the face of the crisis and to look to God for hope. Graham reportedly resisted every opportunity given him to run for political office and attain political power, instead opting to serve as a spiritual advisor for Asheville's political leaders (as he had for U.S. Presidents) and to continue his ministry in some fashion.

On May 8, 1984, Asheville declared itself a sovereign state, still a part of the U.S. but for all practical purposes independent politically and in every other conceivable way. Asheville leaders met with leaders of surrounding towns and villages, leading to the formation of a union with the seat of political, police and economic power (such as it was) in Asheville proper.

With refugees having dwindled to a trickle by 1985, and older citizens and many refugees having died of radiation-related causes, the population went down to less than 200,000. Leaders decided to encourage a baby boom and even discussed making it unlawful for women who could have children not to be pregnant. That proposal was not necessary, as couples eagerly had as many children as they could; the "baby boom" that lasted from 1989 to 1997 is credited for producing up to 30 percent of the present Blue Ridge population. With the situation in and around Asheville secure and settled, leaders decided to send out parties in all directions to explore the region and see who else had survived.

"First contact" with anyone outside the region post-Doomsday came March 21, 1986, as patrolmen exploring the abandoned town of Ravensford met explorers from Knoxville traveling into town by horseback on U.S. 441. Some of the Knoxville explorers went back to Asheville; the people were overjoyed to hear that Knoxville - which had the Oak Ridge National Laboratory outside city limits - and other eastern Tennessee towns had survived.

In April 1985, scouts from Johnson City, Tennessee were spotted going south on Interstate 26, northeast of Mars Hill, North Carolina. Another group of Asheville scouts returned in September with a large group of refugees - 9,417 - from Charlotte and Hickory who had taken refuge outside Pisgah National Forest. A group going south returned in October with news of a large survivor community based in Greenville, South Carolina. An expedition into Nantahala National Forest met survivors who wished to be left alone (though a few survivors ended up going to Asheville). The border between North Carolina and the fledgling republic of Tennessee came under increasing attack from snipers and guerrillas in 1985; Tennessee state patrolmen and National Guardsmen, and the North Carolina National Guard stopped a group in October from launching an attack on the town of Mars Hill. Asheville officials thought it was the end of the threat; they couldn't have been more wrong.

On May 5, 1986, the Tennessee state government was effectively overthrown with the assassination of Governor Randy Tyree, almost all of his cabinet and the legislature, as well as most government officials.

While the new regime wrote up plans to invade North Carolina and occupy Asheville, its threat to Blue Ridge was limited only to the rogue agents working on the new government behalf along the Tennessee/North Carolina border.

The Tennessee regime soon found itself embroiled in a war with resistance forces headquartered in Seiverville and Morristown; that conflict, along with a lack of resources and manpower necessary to fight a two-front war, kept the rogue government from posing a serious threat to the Asheville region. The lone exception was an attack by Knoxville-supplied survivalists on a group of families near Lake Junaluska on March 12, 1987; 33 people eventually died either in the early morning attack or from injuries suffered in the attack. The survivalists were defeated by the National Guard outside Clyde on April 18.

Asheville threw its full support behind the Tennessee resistance, sending food, medicine and other supplies to aid Tennessee troops in the ongoing war. Asheville recommended Tennessee use the services of two Vietnam War veterans who had retired to North Carolina - Captain Christopher Crews and Lieutenant Robert G. Morgan - and both proved valuable to helping the resistance form a war strategy to defeat the rogues.

Asheville officials oversaw the signing of the Treaty of Morristown in Morristown, Tennessee, in 1989 between the resistance forces and the defeated rogues. When it was determined that Knoxville was so devastated by years of fighting that it could not soon be repopulated, Asheville sent aid to the new government of Tennessee to reestablish its capital in Morristown. Asheville signed a 20-year trade and mutual defense pact with Morristown on October 9, 1989 (which was extended another 25 years on October 16, 2009).

In 1993, Asheville fought a brief war with the newly declared "Confederate Empire of America", which amounted to an occupation of the town of Mount Airy, North Carolina and various "safe houses" heading into Martinsville, Virginia. Three skirmishes with the Confederate fighters left one Asheville soldier dead, and while the "Empire" posed no real threat, Asheville decided to end the threat once and for all. Troops were sent into Mount Airy on March 19 to liberate the town; fighting lasted over the next week, with the Confederate forces surrendering formally on the 23rd and the last holdouts surrendering at 11:03 a.m. on the 26th.

With peace in the region, Asheville decided to begin formally exploring the remainder of the Carolinas, not knowing that it was days away from a historic contact.

Having nationalized several private planes and helicopters, Mayor Brian Buchanan authorized the Asheville Army to begin limited flyovers of the area around Traveler's Rest, in South Carolina. It had been known for years that there was a government based out of Greenville, and local residents had traded with local residents from nearby Hendersonville since after Doomsday. The flyovers were the first step towards some sort of formal contact.

On March 30, Army scouts saw a Cessna twin engine plane flying north towards Henderson and Buncombe counties. Through telegraph lines that had recently been set up, Asheville Army got two of its planes in the air early enough out of Asheville Municipal Airport to intercept the unknown plane before it could get to the airport - if not Asheville itself.

The Asheville planes - bearing the seal of the Buncombe County government, as did all other military and government aircraft - were retrofitted with a series of guns on each wing, individually loaded, but triggered by the pilot. While they would be no match for an F-16, they could hold their own against a similar aircraft - like the twin-engine Cessna heading toward them.

As the Cessna approached Asheville Municipal Airport, the Asheville planes converged alongside one another in front of the Cessna, then bank into a descent towards the airport. The Cessna followed the two planes and landed at the airport; the two passengers - Piedmont Lieutenant Governor Knox White and pilot Rick Shaw - were escorted by Asheville Army officers into the terminal. Fifty minutes later, Mayor Buchanan arrived and welcomed White to Asheville.

White and Shaw talked for four hours about their respective "states" and histories since Doomsday in a private meeting. That evening Buchanan accompanied Lieutenant Markus Shaw aboard an Asheville craft and flew back with Knox's Cessna into Greenville. In June, a series of meetings were held in Hendersonville in which the governments of both Piedmont and Asheville expanded on the informal trade agreements that had been going on for a decade between that town and rural residents of Piedmont.

By 1996, everyone in Asheville and in its region, as well as the Tennessee government, accepted Asheville's city government as the region's governing authority. Talk began to turn towards formalizing Asheville's authority over the rest of North Carolina (many had continued to call the region North Carolina, though that state government ceased to exist on Doomsday).

A proposal to call the new formalized state Blue Ridge - reflecting the Blue Ridge Mountains - began to prevail over the North Carolina proposal. On October 18, 1998, 79 percent of voters chose to rename the region the Republic of Blue Ridge. A constitutional convention was held at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, with 79 signers onto a constitution based on those of the United States and of North Carolina; included was a somewhat controversial provision for the Asheville mayor - then Leni Sitnick - to be elevated to the position of governor, with formal elections slated to begin in 2001. Proponents argued that the young nation needed to have stability from the beginning, and Sitnick had enough respect and popularity amongst citizens and those in government to be successful in the position.

Sitnick's administration was marked by competent governing from a liberal perspective. Her politics made rural, more conservative residents uncomfortable, but pundits believe she would have probably won a second term had she not bungled first contact with Mexico in 1999. The appearance of a Mexican Air Force jet over Asheville drew everyone's attention and caused much confusion; rumors of the survival of Cuba, and the USSR, led several of Sitnick's advisors to believe the plane could be Soviet in origin. Sitnick ordered the plane to be taken down if possible (a decision she later admitted as one of the hastiest and unrational she ever made). Blue Ridge's Piper planes were no match for the Mexican jet plane, which attempted to signal peaceful intentions to the BRAF pilots. After reaching the Asheville airport tower, MAF Captain Miguel Montroy - who was born and raised as a child outside Tucson, Arizona - landed his jet and willingly turned himself over to Blue Ridge authorities...but not before radioing MAF support at its provisional base at the airport in former Elkin.

More jets flew over Asheville the next day, and Sitnick's advisors began convincing her that this was the prelude to a Soviet/Cuban invasion. It took the willful landing of a MAF helicopter at the airport - and for MAF Captain Robert Hall (who grew up in Hickory and was on holiday in Monterrey, Mexico on Doomsday) to willingly surrender himself to authorities, and to subsequently be positively identified by his aunt and uncle - to get Blue Ridge military, and then its civilian leaders, to believe the Mexicans that they were, in fact, from Mexico and not Cubans and Soviets preparing to invade America.

Mexico did send an ambassador - Captain Hall, given leave to perform his duties as a representative of his adopted country and of its American refugee community - to Asheville in the spring of 2000.

Republicans pounced on the controversial series of events, accusing the Democrats of bungling first contact with a potentially important and helpful ally, and began grooming Asheville attorney Charles Worley to challenge Sitnick for her gubernatorial seat. Throughout 2001, Sitnick appealed not just to her domestic record but her smoothing over of things with Hall and other Mexican officials, and that benefits of having Mexico as an ally hadn't yet manifested themselves not because of her administration's incompetency, but simply because such things took time.

Voters disagreed when the first Blue Ridge elections were held in the fall of 2001, choosing Worley over Sitnick. Worley presided over Blue Ridge's first formal contact with delegates from other American survivor states other than Piedmont and East Tennessee, meeting with West Texas President Mike Conaway; Louisiana governor Walter Comeaux; and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, mayor Charles White in Lafayette in 2002.

In 2005, Blue Ridge elected its first African-American governor when Terry Bellamy won the election with 58 percent of the vote; she won reelection to a second term in 2009.

In 2009, after League of Nations scouts entered the Asheville region, Bellamy formally welcomed them and gave them a key to the city. The event was treated by citizens and government alike as one of the region's biggest events in its post-Doomsday history, linking the region to the rest of the world. Ashevillians were overjoyed to hear that civilization had continued in the rest of the world, and looked forward to what the future might bring.

Government and politics
The nation's governmental structure was influenced mainly by that of the former state of North Carolina. The governor is the head of state, and along with the lieutenant governor and nine department heads forms the Council of State (nine other department heads fill out the state cabinet). The General Assembly consists of two houses: a Senate (currently consisting of 24 members) and a House of Representatives (consisting of 60 members). The highest court of the land is the Blue Ridge Supreme Court, numbering seven justices.

Economy
More to come

Demographics
The current population is estimated by Asheville officials and the League of Nations to be 257,000.

The population for the Asheville Metropolitan Statistical Area in 1982, the last available year for population statistics, was 180,612.

Religion
More to come

Culture
More to come

Education
More to come

Sports
More to come

Communications
The Citizen-Times, formed as a result of a merger between the morning Asheville Citizen and the afternoon Asheville Times in late 1983, is the nation's newspaper of record. It publishes on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

Until recent months, the Citizen-Times was the main venue for news and information in the region, although various newsletters and newspapers intended to compete with the Citizen-Times and/or provide a voice for alternate viewpoints have come and gone over the years.

The EMP burst on Doomsday effectively shut down radio and television communications, as well as telephone service. Limited telephone service was restored by 1995; the telegraph made a major comeback of sorts, as well.

In late 2009, with help from the League of Nations and engineers from Mexico and the East Caribbean Federation, work on reconstruction of television and radio transmitters and studios began. Work on fully restoring telephone service is well under way and is anticipated to be complete by May 2010. Blue Ridge officials also anticipate that the area's first post-Doomsday radio stations - which will initially feature a mix of local programming and programming via satellite from RTE in the Celtic Alliance and League of Nations radio - will begin broadcasting no later than June 2010. Television service is planned to begin in November 2010.

Production of radios and televisions for the region, at a plant east of Morristown, began in February 2010.

Transportation
More to come

International relations
Blue Ridge is not a member of the League of Nations, although it has status as a LoN protectorate. Asheville is one of the LoN headquarters in the former American Southeast.

Blue Ridge has had partnerships with East Tennessee and Piedmont dating back to the late 1980s, and formal relations with West Texas, Louisiana, Hattiesburg, Natchez, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the East Caribbean Federation since the early 2000s. In more recent years it has begun receiving representatives from, and sending representatives to, Portland; the Virginian Republic; Vermont; Superior; Lincoln; Canada; Kentucky; and the ANZC.