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Lake Placid
Timeline: 1983: Doomsday

OTL equivalent: Lake Placid, New York
Location of Lake Placid
Location of Lake Placid
Capital Lake Placid
Largest city Saranac Lake, Tupper Lake
Language
  official
 
English
  others French
Area 70 km²
Population 10,000 approx. 
Independence 1983 (de facto)
Currency American dollar, barter

Lake Placid is a small survivor community in New York State. It lies in the Adirondack Mountains along with dozens of other small survivor communities such as Keene, Elizabeth Town, Altamont, North Elba, and others.

History[]

Pre-Doomsday[]

Lake Placid was founded in the early 1800s to develop a mining operation based on iron ore discovered nearby. By 1840, the population of "North Elba" consisted of six families. In 1845, Gerrit Smith arrived in North Elba and not only bought a great deal of land around the village, but granted large tracts to former slaves, reforming the land law and reflecting his support of Abolitionism.

As leisure time increased in the late 19th century, Lake Placid was discovered by the rich and famous, who were drawn to the fashionable Lake Placid Club. Melvil Dewey, who invented the Dewey Decimal System, designed what was then called "Placid Park Club" in 1895 and inspired the village to change its name to Lake Placid. Dewey kept the club open through the winter in 1905, which aided the development of winter sports in the area (although nearby Saranac Lake had hosted an international winter sporting event as early as 1889). By 1921, the area could boast a ski jump, speed skating venue and ski association, and in 1929, Dr. Godfrey Dewey, Melvil's son, was able to convince the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that Lake Placid had the best winter sports facilities in the nation. The Lake Placid Club was the headquarters for the IOC for the 1932 and the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.

Lake Placid became an incorporated village in 1900.

Lake Placid is also located near a United States SM-65 Atlas, or Atlas-F, nuclear missile silo-home. The silo home sits on top of a 1350' mountain overlooking the Saranac River Valley in the northern portion of New York's Adirondack State Park

Doomsday and After[]

The area avoided most problems of Doomsday other than power outages caused by the Plattsburg strike. A very small amount of refugees was absorbed into North Elba or Saranac Lake but they managed to remain well-fed, due to the abundance of animals such as deer, birds, raccoons, and the abundance of fresh water in Lake Placid. However, many problems would soon arise.

The largest problem during the immediate aftermath was the collapse of the nearby prison, the Adirondack Correctional Facility. During a (staged) prison fight three days after Doomsday the members of an African American gang had managed to capture (and kill) three of the guards, stealing the keys, and all gangs of the jail called a truce in order to escape the prison, killing many of the 250 guards in the process. Upon escaping, the local police and surviving guards tried to detain the convicts, and after a humongous firefight which claimed 200 convict lives and 104 law enforcement officers, the surviving criminals fled the area, heading into the wilderness for years to come.

The villages of Saranac, Altamont, and Placid, North Elba, Elizabethtown, Ray Brook, as well as nearby Malone formed a simple confederation simply known as Adirondack Mountain Association as a common ground for the meantime, and since Placid was the smallest, it was chosen as the capital. small towns, but they were eventually raided or abandoned, and only around 6 or 7 of them lasted to 1990. The ones that survived and were not victims of raiders became extremely tight-knit and always, and always kept to themselves. The residents adopted a sort of isolationist policy eventually. The only active members of the confederation by 1991 were North Alba, Altamont, Saranac, and Placid and several hamlets in between. Malone became self-contained after increasing gang attacks, Elizabeth became semi-abandoned, and Keene was left to the wilderness.

The Next Decade[]

For the surviving towns, it was relatively easy to maintain the confederation at first, as the populace was rather small and the abundance of deer, fish, and birds within the Adirondack allowed them to surplus. However, defense was the main problem. By 1995, the Lake Placid-Lake Saranac-North Elba area was the only element of the confederation not frequent to raids. Contact was lost finally with Malone completely. The AMA devolved into a sort of city-state which was essentially restricted to the greater North Elba area. The residents were constantly terrified that they would be subject to raids next, so they formed the Placid Peace Force. The PPF was a militia of basically almost all men aged 25-45. They would be called on by the sound of a horn when trouble was near by.

Eventually, a contigent of raiders, around 40-60, depending on the source, neared the village in the dead of the winter of 1995. Around a hundred members of the PPF were mobilized, and killed 27 raiders, wounding 5, leaving the rest to scatter. The Peace Force, however, suffered 19 casualties, and 8 injuries, but the rest celebrated their first "victory".

After capturing two of the raiders, they interrogated them on what their location was. The two, named LJ Gutierrez and Carlos Armando, who had been part of the Adirondack Prison Break three days after Doomsday, told them the story of the surviving criminals and the empire they had created. The criminals had fled into the wilderness and had established an underground society, until racial and gang tensions led to the fragmentation of the dubbed "Murder Nation". The survivors split into factions that began sieging local hamlets and towns, and had failed on multiple attempts to take Malone. They discovered, however, that the headquarters of the Latin Kings/Crips-led "King Empire" was based in nearby Altamont. As a thanks for the information, the Placidians freed the two, on the exception they never commit even the slightest crime again. Gutierrez was shot in 2002 for breaking and entering.

Upon hearing the fate of the other towns, the PPF decided that they would not hide within their little city-state any longer. While making a costly decision to attempt to rescue the survivors at Altamont, they would re-assemble the militia in an attempt to clear the raider threat in their area. This time, 300 members would depart, nicknamed the "Spartans". Those who had wives had sired children during the planning era for the attack in order to have "hope for the future". Finally, in 1996, the militia departed for Altamont.

The scene was horrible for the civilians. The population had shrunk to around 1,500, and the Latin Kings-Crips coalition established ordena supreme. The Peace Force would clear out the ruins over the course of a one-week siege. Towards the last two days, they were joined by civilians in Tupper armed with meat cleavers, knives, or an occasional dropped gun. Finally, they surrounded the last of the thugs, which numbered a mere eighteen. Their disorganization was their downfall. The Peace force themselves had suffered a staggering amount of casualties, around 89 killed in battle, and 40 dead later as well as 12 surviving injured. A town council was established by twelve men and women within the following weeks, and the first course of action was that they re-established the Adirondack Mountain Association.

In 1998 the area suffered from a natural disaster known as the 1998 Ice Storms, killing off roughly a fifth of the population due to hypothermia and decline in local animal population. At its peak the temperature reached -50 Degrees Farenheit. The recovery process was very slow afterwards.

When New Hampshire pioneers founded the city-state of Keene in March 2009 between the old ruins of Keene and Jay, the people of Lake Placid saw it as an invasion of their territory. They attacked the settlement in August but failed to dislodge the newcomers, who had arrived well provisioned from within the borders of the Vermont Republic. Lake Placid begrudgingly agreed to allow them to stay, but the two settlements have not drawn an official border. Relations between the new neighbors remain very tense.

The Next Millennia[]

The AMA continued rescuing very small villages and hamlets around the area until 2009, when contact with Vermont was made.

Outside contact is one-timed at best, as there is not much of interest in Lake Placid. Other than its immediate neighbors in the AMA, much of the Adirondacks themselves are unaccounted for. Several hundred settlements are scattered in the forests and several cave-societies, but to this day there are entire villages that have gone unaccounted for with their entire populations missing.

Economy[]

The economy is essentially around what the Adirondacks mountains can provide, such as dried meats, furs, timber, and clothes, resembling the "fur trappers" of old. Agriculture is ruled out due to long winters and unsuitable terrain, although potatoes and various fruit-bearing bushes are grown to a degree.

One of the few things going for Placid is the re-discovery of iron in the area, which was banned after the Adirondack Park was created. The iron is primarily used to create tools and weapons such as steel-tipped arrows which are much more effective in hunting than live ammunition.

Government[]

The government of Lake Placid as itself exists as a semi-gobernal democracy, with the Mayor being the head of state and the Town Council acting as the legislature.

Culture[]

Lake Placid is the cultural hub of the Adirondacks, being the center of activities, music, trade, and sports events.

Sports[]

Like before Doomsday, when the Winter Olympics were hosted in Lake Placid in 1980, skiing and hockey remain the most favored sports. Hockey games are hosted often in the Olympic Center, and the resident Lake Placid Champions are currently undefeated in the Adirondack Hockey League. Golf is also a very common sport in Lake Placid, due to the many golf courses left over from Doomsday.

Music[]

Lake Placid is home to multiple musical groups, such as the Classical Lake Placid Sinofietta. Classical music, however, is in decline as Lake Placid's common form of music as more popular music such as rock and country music begin to take the stage both literally and metaphorically.

Communications[]

Radio[]

Lake Placid operates a lone amateur radio station, Radio Lake Placid as its source of broadcasting information to the populace. The station plays only on weekends for weather reports and music while most of the people tune in to Adirondack Public Radio based out of Saranac Lake on the weekdays for news. Radios themselves, however, are extremely expensive, as they are considered antiques and are for the upper-class or those who inherited them.

Newspaper[]

The Adirondack News (formerly the Lake Placid News) is printed out of Lake Placid on a mid 19th-century style printing press. Costing around $3 for weekdays and $5 on weekends, the newspaper sells over 10,000 copies weekly throughout all of the Adirondacks.

International Relations[]

Unlike their southern cousins who distance themselves from each other, these northern New Yorkers work closely together in mutual relationships and through the Adirondack Mountain Association to facilitate trade. By around 2011, the towns hope to evolve the AMA into a united government, in order to become independent of aid from Vermont and to further strengthen the region. They are trying to repair relations with the citizens of the newly-rebuiltKeene, and hope to have them accepted back into the AMA soon before the regime unites, though this will likely not happen as Keene's Libertarian nature condemns giving power to a higher power.

Relations with Niagara Falls and Rock Hill are positive, as the Placidians were glad to see their fellow New Yorkers survive and in some cases thrive after Doomsday. Lake Placid and the AMA continue to receive aid from Vermont as of late 2010.

Lake Placid has recently sent an ambassador to Niagara Falls in order to learn on politics as an official United Communities ambassador.

Military[]

There is a small militia of former policemen, and a scant handful of people trained by the old New York National Guardsmen. The Placid Peace Force remains active as an emergency militia only active during times of besiegement or war, but since neither of those are relevant any more there is talk of disbanding the PPF and uniting the militaries of the Adirondacks into the Adirondack Minutemen Force.

Transportation[]

The Adirondack Highway serves most of the region, although since there are little to no cars on the road most prefer horseback or even hiking to the nearest village. Lake Placid Airport sits empty due to the extinction of gas, but discovery of small oil deposits in Keene hopes to relieve this.

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