Verdigris (1983: Doomsday)

Etymology
During the founding of Verdigris, several names were put forth for the new republic such as Montgomery, the former county that the largest city was located in and Independence, the name of the city itself. These ideas were quickly abandoned, due to possible confusion with other areas in the former United States. In the end, Verdigris, a local river's name was decided upon because of the proximity of the river to most of the major towns in the nation such as Independence, Coffeyville, Nowasha, and Neodensha. Indeed, almost the entire nation was to lay within the watershed of the river making the name an obvious choice.

The word "Verdigris" itself is derived from the French words vert, meaning "green" and gris, meaning "gray". The name is almost certainly a reference to the river's green-gray coloration.

Pre-Doomsday
Before the arrival of Europeans to the area, the region that would later become home to Verdigris housed the Osage tribe of Native Americans. The Osage were driven to this place from their ancestral home in the Ohio River Valley due to wars with the expansionist Iroquois. French explorers and fur traders later explored and founded trading posts in the region in the 1700s. This region was secured in the Louisiana Purchase by the young United States in 1803. However, it took a while before the area was more than a backwater wilderness in the Missouri territory.

In the 1850s, when Kansas became a territory, the northeastern part of what would become Verdigris was torn apart by "Bleeding Kansas", conflicts between pro and anti-slavery settlers. Kansas was admitted as a free state in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, while the southern reaches of future Verdigris were under the control of the Cherokee and Osage tribes in the Indian Territory, which would later become Oklahoma. Indeed, most of the region remained territory of the Osage until after the Civil War, when large-scale homesteading in the area began, spurred on by war veterans and freedmen from the south. The Osage were forced to abandon their lands in Kansas east of the Verdigris River, and a border between Osage territory and land open to settlers was established there until 1869, when large-scale settling west of the river began.

Towns built on cattle ranching and later, mining of coal, clay, and eventually, oil and natural gas drilling began to spring up on both sides of the state border. The Shawnee Cattle Trail stretched through the area which would become Verdigris, kick starting the "Wild West" era of the history of the region in the 1870s, with a major shootout happening in 1892 in Coffeyville. Various industries based around petroleum refining grew the towns of the region until the 1950s-1960s, when changes in the oil industry drove many industrial workers to leave the towns to find work. Even the farmers in the region began to move to larger cities such as Kansas City, Tulsa, and Wichita with the general decline in small farming during this period.

All of this changed on September 25, 1983.

Doomsday
Around 7:00 PM local time, most people in rural southeastern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma were eating dinner, finishing their harvest for the day, preparing for the upcoming work week, or watching television, namely the 1983 Emmy Awards. This was interrupted when emergency radio broadcasts stated that the Soviets had launched a nuclear barrage against the United States. There was very little time for preparation, and only a few managed to duck into a storm or fallout shelter before the first nukes began to fall, mere minutes after everyone heard of the attack. Over the next two hours, Soviet ICBMs rained upon major urban centers and military bases across the region. Residents of the towns of Independence, Coffeyville, Fredonia and Neodensha were treated to the sight of the neighboring town of Parsons destroyed in an atomic fireball. Over the course of approximately two hours, nuclear missiles detonated over various locales throughout Kansas and Oklahoma surrounding, but never quite reaching the plains directly east of the Flint Hills. When the dust settled, all in all, the following places surrounding the area were destroyed:
 * Wichita, Kansas Nukeblast.gif
 * Kansas Army Ammunition Plant (Located in Parsons, Kansas)
 * Tulsa, Oklahoma
 * Ponca City, Oklahoma
 * Vance Air Force Base (Located in Enid, Oklahoma)

Humble Beginnings
In the days following Doomsday, many people in the Verdigris Basin stayed underground in basements or storm shelters, or at least indoors due to fears over fallout. In the end, fallout exposure was minimal compared to the rest of the US due to the presence of the Flint Hills to the west of the towns of Independence, Coffeyville, and their smaller neighbors, which blocked most of the fallout carried on the eastbound winds, and the storm shelters that were almost ubiquitous due to the frequency of tornadoes in the region. When most people emerged from their hideaways, they entered a world forever changed by the destructive power of the atom.

After the bombs, the skies were dark and people panicked. Many left the towns in a fit of fear and most didn't return. After the hysteria were the riots. Riots were frequent and stores all across the Basin were looted by panicking civilians and though the few military members and the town governments desperately tried to keep order, little could be done to prevent the rampant shooting and looting and even some police and military were found threatening others at gunpoint, abandoning their duties to preserve themselves. The mobs and raiders eventually became more violent and the remaining towns in Southeastern Kansas devolved into violence with neighbor against neighbor in a desperate battle for supplies and safe ground. Very small towns such as Sycamore and Altoona were able to avoid this fate due to a strong sense of community and Neodensha managed to remain stable due to the town government forming a militia of loyalists and standardized rations for those that didn't leave in the first wave. Vigilante groups, fearing for their safety and the future of the communities took order into their own hands and motley groups of armed civilians, police, former officials, and military fought for the small towns and shot and expelled troublemakers and rioters. The towns of Fredonia and Independence were stabilized this way.

In response to Doomsday and its immediate after affects, a scouting party was sent out on October 3 by the government of Independence and reported near-total destruction to the immediate east and a wide swathe of fallout and ruins surrounding the Verdigris Basin from the areas south of Bartlesville in Oklahoma up through the farm communities between the Flint Hills and the ruins of Wichita. Indeed, only three of the original six scouts returned. Some surviving farms were found north of the Wilson County line, though they were scattered and devastated.

Preparations were made for refugees, and the worst was feared by the governments of the small towns, as the small medical facilities were extremely under equipped to handle the full brunt of refugees that were expected to arrive. In the weeks following Doomsday, refugees began to flow in from areas devastated by destruction and fallout and though the surviving town of Joplin and the fallout-filled area where Parsons once stood protected the Verdigris Basin from the full brunt of desperate refugees from the east, Independence, Coffeyville, Neodensha and Fredonia were exposed to the full brunt of desperate refugees from the environs of Wichita and Tulsa, located to the west and south, respectively.

In the end, the refugee crisis was not as bad as expected, as most southern refugees headed toward the city of Bartlesville, south of the Kansas-Oklahoma border. Most of the refugees came from the north, and though as many as possible were accommodated at first, the decision was eventually made to adopt a policy valuing the lives of those already within two counties over those fleeing from others. One of the worst chapters in the history of what would become Verdigris ensued, with bridges over rivers destroyed, families separated and desperate refugees shot as the few surviving towns shut themselves off from the remnants of the outside world. Indeed, many hated the government for what they did and riots returned ensued in the weeks following Doomsday. Many refugees, though found refuge in the Flint Hills in neighboring Elk and Greenwood County and became semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, yet most fared little better than the first wave.

As the refugee crisis died down, a new one began to emerge. Food levels had been dangerously low ever since Doomsday, and the stockpiles that the stable towns had created were beginning to run out. Winter was coming fast and on November 24, 1983, coincidentally the day of Thanksgiving in the United States, the town governments of Fredonia, Independence, and the surrounding small towns met and agreed to unify as a measure to consolidate resources and establish a larger military force. The chaos in Coffeyville began to die down at this point with most residents fleeing north to the more stable town of Independence. These refugees finally pushed the tiny provisional nation almost to its breaking point, and draconian emergency measures were enacted to preserve the nation and its populace. Food was to be rationed heavily and guarded in stockpiles. To earn one's food share, you had to work for the good of the nation, doing such jobs as hunting and fishing for food, or chopping firewood. Parents were given slightly more food to feed very young children, but most parents either had to work extra or force their children to work to prevent them  As expected these laws were heavily disliked, especially after a nuclear exchange that most believed was caused by a Communist nation. In fact, grumblings of Communism were heard amongst many residents, especially ones that were better-off before Doomsday.

The measure, in fact, was what preserved the nation as a whole. Though many died over the first winter, especially the old, young, and disabled, the unexpectedly warm weather caused by the nuclear exchange helped prevent deaths by extreme cold and allowed citizens to devote more time to gathering food and construction. Decent hunting was also had in the areas surrounding the nation, such as the Flint Hills, and fishing in the newly constructed Elk City Reservoir At the end of the winter of 1983-84, the population of the areas claimed by the Provisional Government of Southeastern Kansas (Montgomery and Independence Counties) stood around 25,000, approximately half of the pre-Doomsday population.

Military
Verdigris has no standing army, instead relying on a heavily armed police and security force. The government lacks the funding to support a military, so the police are utilized in the law enforcement role and security forces as more of a military force.

There are 70 police officers and 50 security members. Most use weapons scavenged from police stations in the region and SWAT units. Typically, police officers are armed with either the Browning Hi-Power handgun, or the S&W Model 15, a nightstick, and equipped with handcuffs. The security officers have an assortment of weapons including M16 assault rifles, Remington Model 870 shotguns, H&K MP5 submachine guns.