Talk:1983: Doomsday

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Thoughts on North Pennsylvania and neighbors

I'm sorry if I'm posting incorrectly or posting too much. But I have some detailed thoughts on my favorite nation that I'd like to put to the group, or at least those interested.

There are three areas that I’d like to work on, for starters.

First, correct some minor errors such as misspelled names and mislocated sites.  I hope I can do that without consulting the board.

Second, reconciling existing canon.  For example, the articles say that Gannon College survived the nuke but don’t mention Penn State Behrend.  They also say that Northwest Harborcreek survived.

Gannon is in downtown Erie, Northwest Harborcreek is a few miles east, and Penn State Behrend is south of Northwest Harborcreek.  If both Gannon and NW Harborcreek survived, Behrend had to unless the missile hit well south of Behrend, in which case Erie would be in much better shape.  

Further, the major worthwhile targets in Erie, much of the port and the GE locomotives factory, are roughly between Gannon and NW Harborcreek.  A properly targeted missile should wipe out the downtown, NW Harborcreek and probably Behrend.

I would propose that the missile was slightly off target and impacted on the west side of Erie, around Rt. 832 and Waldameer Park.  That would save canon, and I’d add Behrend to the list of colleges.  It would also leave the GE plant largely intact, with irradiation abating now, and in turn would add an export product.

Similarly, the canon is ambiguous about Jeep manufacture, some statements indicate it’s happening in Toledo, others in Franklin.  One way to reconcile would be to have the chassis, cab and wheels fabricated in NP and import the engine and drive train from Toledo, with NP sending back chassis, etc. to Toledo to supplement its work.

I assume this kind of thing should be written up as a proposal.

Third, I’d like to pick up the timeline from about 2011, consistent with the few things that have been written with story dates thereafter.  To do that I’m looking first at the economics of NP.

NP’s biggest deficit is electric power.  Other major deficits are food supply, iron ore or metal for use in industry, pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, rubber, copper, nickel and other metals for alloys, and fertilizers (there’s lots of limestone but not other).

Its advantages include oil and natural gas, and refineries (several of which that operated in 1983 have been omitted, the actual refining capacity far away from Erie, Youngstown and Pittsburgh is at least 50,000 bbl/day).  NP would probably need by now to import crude oil to meet that capacity level.  Other advantages include untouched iron and steel mills, machine tooling (especially near Meadville), wood and lumber, coal (strip mining would have to be revived), probably locomotive manufacture as noted above, mining machinery and oil and gas tooling factories at Oil City and Bradford.

Looking at the deficits, State College can supply almost none of them.  Electricity might be available either from Niagara Falls or by adding capacity (if turbines can be obtained) to several other small hydro plants (Piney, Tionesta, Clarion River). Food maybe from Susquehanna/Reading, but Ohio is much easier to access if you can get around Cleveland and Ohio may have fewer demands on its export potential.  Although NP was an iron ore producer in the 1840’s, those mines are pretty much tapped out. But there’s a wealth of scrap southwards toward Pittsburgh and Youngstown, and not all is still irradiated.  Further, there’s a huge synthetic rubber plant west of Monaca in SW Pa. that could be rehabilitated. (Unfortunately, it's on the side of the Ohio nearer Va.) In RL NP refineries imported some oil from W. Va.; presumably that's not going to happen but perhaps some importation from NW Ohio if the pipelines can be fixed.

Thus the logical course for NP is to strengthen its ties to the rest of the United Communities, to push back against Virginia’s incursions into southwest Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio and assure access to scrap, rubber and other big city resources, and to join international trade networks to the extent practicable to obtain medical items, turbines, varied foodstuffs and other imports.  Merging with State College doesn’t do much for any of those unless State College is willing to fight for SW Pennsylvania.

So, my tentative course of action would be for NP to get into a loose confederation, rather than a merger, with State College, hopefully getting a defense guarantee from State College. NP would guard its freedom of action to develop strong economic and diplomatic ties with the UC and remainder Canada.  NP would continue to maintain a relatively large army with training and logistical support from Canada and would push deliberately into Butler, Beaver, north Allegheny, Armstrong and northern Westmoreland counties, Pa., to obtain resources.  A secondary push would be into Trumbull and Mahoning counties, Ohio and possibly westward into Summit (Akron) and Portage counties;  this would intensify if Virginia resisted entry into SW Pa. successfully.  A non-military program to pick up more of Chautauqua and southern Erie counties, NY, would help obtain more arable land.

How does this all sound?

Renaultlouis (talk) 15:57, 6 July 2021 (UTC)Renaultlouis

Based on previous conversations that were had regarding strikes on Erie, I believe the general consensus was the nuke would have hit the eastern side of the city, towards the manufacturing plants, as the EMP and blast would ruin the rest of the city.

Allegheny, Clarion, Edinboro, and Titusville are the major universities in North Pennsylvania. Gannon was founded by surviving assets of Mercyhurst and Gannon that formed a small private college post Doomsday. Given that Berhend is public and the region around Erie likely have a substantially lower population than OTL, I don’t think it would be reformed.

I would imagine the situation regarding the Jeep is likely along the lines of: the company is headquartered and design is done in North Pennsylvania, but a bulk of the manufacturing and assembly is done in Toledo.

A major error that needs corrected is regarding the capital of North Pennsylvania. Various sources (including the nation’s page) indicate both Franklin and Warren as the capital city. I would suggest Warren, given its closer proximity to Edinboro, Meadville, and Oil City which are likely the major population centers.

For largest cities, New Castle, OTL is the largest city in Pennsylvania that falls within NP borders (33,621 as of 1980 Census). Based on their expansion into New York, Jamestown is the largest city (35,755 as of the 1980 Census). However it is distinctly possible that both cities were depopulated after Doomsday due to proximity to nuked cities and refugees overwhelming the local governments.

Deep within its borders, the largest cities would be Hermitage (16,365: 1980 Census), Meadville (15,544: 1980 Census), Oil City (13,881: 1980 Census), and Warren (12,146: 1980 Census). I would nominate Meadville or Oil City due to proximity to Erie.

Also, I would suggest completely redoing the section regarding regions. I think the most likely scenario is that it would continue using the county system. Right now with the regions they are, each has a wildly different in area and population. One region (Pennstate) composed of OTL Crawford, McKean, and Warren counties is 2,921 square miles with 230,000 people, while the neighboring region (Forest) is only 430 square miles with a population of 3,000 people.

I do think low population counties would be grouped together, but this absolutely needs to be reviewed.

Regarding port cities, unfortunately I don’t think Erie could be rebuilt as a port for a few decades still due to the direct impact on the city irradiating the area. Barring Erie, none of the other towns in Erie County, PA have natural ports and even to present day OTL only have rocky shores or very small moveable docks for pleasure craft. The two likely replacements I found are Dunkirk, New York or Ashtabula, Ohio.

They are both roughly the same distance, but Ashtabula has a more developed port area. However, I am not sure how it would be affected by the strikes (possibly multiple) on Cleveland.

North Pennsylvania is in the best position given its location, it can trade via Lake Erie with other industrialized nations that survived like Niagara Falls and Toledo. It additionally, can acquire parts to repair and rebuilt existing factories. Around Erie, there is plastic and metal fabrications as well as bearing production, rubber, steel, and minor oil production.

Just to note, while the borders haven’t been nailed down, Virginia has been creeping into southwestern Pennsylvania for the last few years. So I don’t think anything in the Pittsburg metro will be in NP territory at the moment. Given Virginia’s territorial…aggression, this could set up a major conflict.

The general consensus has been that Pennsylvania is falling into four major power blocs:

• Gettysburg (proxy state for Virginia, albeit less militant) and Virginia to a small extent (probably the last 10-15 years or so)
• North Pennsylvania (proxy state for Canada)
• Reading (along with Lehigh and Susquehanna)
• State College (Independent)

Right now, Reading, Susquehanna, and State College have been squabbling over reunification for the last 5 years or so. Basically, Reading and State College disagree over the capital city and which government is the “legitimate” successor state, while Susquehanna wants to guarantees to maintain autonomy in its economy, internal affairs, and defense (Lehigh is a protectorate technically speaking of Reading and Susquehanna, so it really doesn’t have a voice). North Pennsylvania has been somewhat off doing its own thing aligning more towards Canada.

Economically, North Pennsylvania is doing the best out of all the PA survivor states as it has access to the lake and easier access to markets in Canada as well as strong ties with Toledo, Niagara Falls, London (Ontario), and Superior. In part due to this, it hasn’t really been involved in reunification discussions and doesn’t have as much impetus to do so.

North Pennsylvania has been focusing on expansion into New York and Ohio, likely to get secured land routes to Toledo and Niagara Falls (and Canada). Expanding south towards Virginia doesn't give as much economic benefit. Even though Virginia is a military powerhouse and economic power in that area, that is relative to neighboring states that are significantly smaller or underdeveloped.

Electricity has been a bit of a sticking point for Pennsylvania as a lot of plants in the state at Doomsday were coal fired or were nuke plants that didn’t survive. In NP controlled territory, there are the following power plants:

New York

• Coal
  • Dunkirk Generating Station (Chautauqua County): 505 MW (Decommissioned in 2016 OTL)

Pennsylvania

• Coal
  • Bruce Mansfield Power Plant (Beaver County): 2,490 MW (Decommissioned in 2019 OTL)
  • Franklin Phillips Power Station (Beaver County): Unknown MW (Decommissioned in 1990’s OTL)
  • George F. Wheaton Power Station (Beaver County): 110 MW (Decommissioned in 2012 OTL)
• Energy Storage
  • Seneca Pump Storage Energy Station (Warren County): 435 MW
• Hydroelectric
  • Piney Hydroelectric (Clarion County): 27 MW
• Natural Gas
  • New Castle (Franklin County): Unknown MW
• Nuclear
  • Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station (Beaver County): 960 MW (just to note: part of the plant wasn’t online until 1987)

I think most likely the hydroelectric plant was restored. I don’t think the energy storage plant could be repaired, it is very parts intensive, but I could be wrong. While there are vast amounts of natural gas in Pennsylvania, in OTL, it has only been in the past decade an a half that fracking has become popular and used which helped reduce the price of extraction. Due to this, I don’t think in ATL, the natural gas would be an available resource. Additionally, there are no active coal mines in NWPA. In OTL, the majority of anthracite mining in Pennsylvania is in NEPA (ATL: Susquehanna and partially in Reading) and bituminous coal mining mainly occurs in SWPA (ATL: Virginia or unconfirmed/uncontrolled). In ATL, there could possibly be trade increasing to bring coal from Susquehanna to NP, but Susquehanna does not have the capacity to mine enough coal to feed all the power plants in NP.

There are two oil refineries in the territory that NP encompasses. The larger of the two is in Warren, PA (under NP control in Warren County) and the smaller is in Bradford, PA (under NP control in McKean County).

The Warren refinery was founded in 1902 and is currently operated by the United Refining Company and has a capacity to process up to 65,000 barrels of oil per day (it was not upgraded to 70,000 barrels per day until 2007). It produces gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum products (probably things like motor oil).

The Bradford refinery is currently operated by the American Refining Group and has a refinery capacity of processing 11,000 barrels of oil a day. The plant was founded over 125 years ago (as of 2021 OTL). It produces lubricants, extracts for rubber manufacturing, resins, solvents, and waxes.

Obviously the pre-strike EMP would devastate the plants but their isolation from the areas struck since as Erie, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Cleveland would leave them intact, albeit damaged from the EMP. However, they would really only need new electrical and rewiring to reboot. With support from Toledo and Niagara Falls, they could be restored and would be an important asset to the United Communities.

Regarding the armed forces, right now NP has an active force of around 25,000 personnel and 15,000 reservists. The majority are likely in the Army. I was unable to find proof of any military aircraft in territory under NP control, the PAANG units were stationed in Pittsburgh, Willow Grove (near Philly), Middletown, and Fort Indiantown Gap. Obviously it would have access to private aircraft, but they would not be useful in combat. The Coast Guard in the region was a small contingent of water rescue and light patrol boats (RHIBs with machine guns) on Presque Isle, and were likely lost on Doomsday. Again, it could probably commandeer civilian vessels but these would be non combat capable or only able to stop unarmed vessels.

That said, I could see NP acquiring combat and transport aircraft from other nations and I would imagine it has the capacity to maintain them. And it likely can manufacture its own light patrol boats and coastal patrol ships domestically.

Daeseunglim (talk) 12:36, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Response to Daesunglim 8 July 2021 post

Daesunglim:  Thank you for your extensive and well-thought-out comments.    Here are my thoughts, set off from your comments with ***:

Based on previous conversations that were had regarding strikes on Erie, I believe the general consensus was the nuke would have hit the eastern side of the city, towards the manufacturing plants, as the EMP and blast would ruin the rest of the city.

• • • While I think that my theory works better, I’ll treat the east side hit as QSS and work from there.***

Allegheny, Clarion, Edinboro, and Titusville are the major universities in North Pennsylvania. Gannon was founded by surviving assets of Mercyhurst and Gannon that formed a small private college post Doomsday. Given that Berhend is public and the region around Erie likely have a substantially lower population than OTL, I don’t think it would be reformed.

• • • My proposal was to move the remaining personnel and assets of Behrend to Edinboro, which dovetails well with your statements.

• • • However, you didn’t address several of the other higher education institutions in NP.  U. Pittsburgh at Bradford was bigger than Titusville (and unlike Titusville is still viable).  It should have survived, Bradford being 90 miles from everywhere. I think under QAA I can develop its role.  Also, Bradford/McKean County has been neglected in the NP stories and I want to correct that. 

• • • Thiel and Westminster Colleges in Mercer County should have physically survived, but almost certainly would be unable to continue given losses of students and faculty. Penn State Shenango was close to Youngstown and would similarly be likely to close because of fallout and losses. I’m going to suggest that their assets were moved to Allegheny.*** 

I would imagine the situation regarding the Jeep is likely along the lines of: the company is headquartered and design is done in North Pennsylvania, but a bulk of the manufacturing and assembly is done in Toledo.

• • • Your suggestion is possible, but I think mine is more plausible.  Although there were and are a lot of machine shops and metal fabrication in the Franklin area, there was nobody with automobile design and engineering experience in the area.  The staff at Joy is fully occupied.  Snagging the HQ and design functions without that advantage would probably require that the NP investors provide most of the capital – an unlikely event.  In my proposal I’ve suggested that Toledo do the difficult things for Jeeps – power train and steering, and probably lights, and Franklin can do the chassis, body, radiator and interior.  Obviously this division of labor can be tweaked, but I think it works.***

A major error that needs corrected is regarding the capital of North Pennsylvania. Various sources (including the nation’s page) indicate both Franklin and Warren as the capital city. I would suggest Warren, given its closer proximity to Edinboro, Meadville, and Oil City which are likely the major population centers.

• • • I think your statement is counterfactual.  First, I didn’t see anything naming Warren as the capital, but there are plenty of references to Franklin.  Note that the NP main page says “Capital: Franklin,” shows the Venango County courthouse as the “Venango House,” the center of NP government (frankly, the next door Galena building is a much better HQ – maybe it houses departments), and there are repeated references to the governor and others being in Franklin.

• • • The NP page does say that Warren is the capital of “Penn State,” the somewhat odd mashup of Crawford, Warren and McKean counties.  Warren is a somewhat logical capital of that mashup, being somewhat equidistant from Meadville and Bradford.  But as a capital of NP it’s terribly isolated, being 58 miles and 1 hour 20 minutes drive from Meadville in our times, 58 miles and 1 hour 20 from Franklin (50 from Oil City) and 59 miles from Edinboro.  Franklin is 27 miles from Meadville and 49 miles from Edinboro.  And with auto travel still impaired and the roads having reverted to gravel, distances are important. 

• • • QSS definitely applies here.  Accordingly, I’m not going to move the capital to Warren.*** 

Also, I would suggest completely redoing the section regarding regions. I think the most likely scenario is that it would continue using the county system. Right now with the regions they are, each has a wildly different in area and population. One region (Pennstate) composed of OTL Crawford, McKean, and Warren counties is 2,921 square miles with 230,000 people, while the neighboring region (Forest) is only 430 square miles with a population of 3,000 people.

• • • Agreed.  In my proposal I picked up on the existing statements on the NP page and NP history page that there was a constitutional revision (unspecified provisions) in 2011.  That’s a convenient, canon-consistent way to split up “PennState,” as shown in my proposal.  Crawford stands on its own after the 2011 constitutional revision and Warren and McKean are merged, pending growth. 

• • • Forest County OTL is too small, but if you’ve ever spent time in Tionesta and Marienville you know that consolidating it is risking death threats.  I punted by suggesting, as in real life, that Venango County provides some governmental services, while Warren County provides judicial support.***

I do think low population counties would be grouped together, but this absolutely needs to be reviewed.

• • • Aside from Forest and the proposed “federal district of Eriesburg” [sic], most counties are large enough to be viable, and given transportation difficulties, there are good reasons not to consolidate.

Regarding port cities, unfortunately I don’t think Erie could be rebuilt as a port for a few decades still due to the direct impact on the city irradiating the area. Barring Erie, none of the other towns in Erie County, PA have natural ports and even to present day OTL only have rocky shores or very small moveable docks for pleasure craft. The two likely replacements I found are Dunkirk, New York or Ashtabula, Ohio.

• • • With ground zero on the east side, you’re right about Erie.  On top of the radiation, an east side hit would clog the harbor mouth.  Ashtabula has large iron ore unloading docks and is by far the better port choice.  It has excellent rail connections to Meadville, Corry, Franklin and Warren. It’s also closer to population centers, although not by much.  Dunkirk hosts pleasure boating only OTL and only has rail connections to Buffalo and Erie, but not southward except by an unused, decrepit line via Jamestown on a somewhat roundabout route.***

They are both roughly the same distance, but Ashtabula has a more developed port area. However, I am not sure how it would be affected by the strikes (possibly multiple) on Cleveland.

• • • Ashtabula is 58 miles from Cleveland downtown and a bit farther from its industrial area. (It’s amazing how everything in NP is 58 miles from somewhere else.) It’s well northeast of Cleveland and prevailing winds at Cleveland on September 19 average 9 mph, while winds from the south and west that could reach Ashtabula do not exceed 25% of the time.  Accordingly, there is a good case that Ashtabula missed almost all of the physical destruction caused by strikes on Cleveland, Erie and Youngstown and is only plagued by the post-Doomsday general radiation plaguing everywhere. ***   

North Pennsylvania is in the best position given its location, it can trade via Lake Erie with other industrialized nations that survived like Niagara Falls and Toledo. It additionally, can acquire parts to repair and rebuilt existing factories. Around Erie, there is plastic and metal fabrications as well as bearing production, rubber, steel, and minor oil production.

Regarding oil, in Bradford, PA (under NP control in McKean County), the American Refining Group has a small refinery capable of processing 11,000 barrels of oil a day, which was founded over 125 years ago (as of 2021 OTL). Obviously the pre-strike EMP would devastate the plant, but it is isolated from cities struck during the nuclear holocaust and would simply need new electrical or be rewired around the computers. With support from Toledo and Niagara Falls, it could likely be restored and operational (likely at reduced capacity, say 8,000 barrels a day?) for a few years by 2021 ATL, and be in the process of expanding.

• • • There are a lot more small refineries in the hills of NP that almost certainly survived than you’ve mentioned, and I’ve listed them in my proposal, including American Refining (which in 1983 was called Kendall).  The limiting factor is probably crude oil supply; in 1983 the supply of Pennsylvania Grade crude (which is what’s produced in NP) was actually slightly lower than refining capacity, and Wolfs Head and Pennzoil were not producing at capacity.  Quaker State’s Emlenton and Farmers Valley refineries had reliable supply.*** 

Just to note, while the borders haven’t been nailed down, Virginia has been creeping into southwestern Pennsylvania for the last few years. So I don’t think anything in the Pittsburg metro will be in NP territory at the moment. Given Virginia’s territorial…aggression, this could set up a major conflict.

• • • That is precisely what I think will be the driving force of NP history in the 2015-2020 period. NP needs the scrap steel, copper and other metals, as well as parts and technology, that it can scavenge from the Pittsburgh and Youngstown areas. The Kobuta synthetic rubber plant on the Ohio river 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh is a prize.  The Kubota tractor plant 25 miles southeast of Pittsburgh near Irwin is another prize. NP and Va. are going to skirmish, with NP aiming not to occupy Allegheny and southern Beaver counties but hoping to negotiate access at a price to those resources.  Best result would be designating the Ohio and Allegheny rivers as the borders of the spheres of influence, but Va. may be too aggressive to allow that. ***

The general consensus has been that Pennsylvania is falling into four major power blocs:

• Gettysburg (proxy state for Virginia, albeit less militant) and Virginia to a small extent (probably the last 10-15 years or so)

• North Pennsylvania (proxy state for Canada)

• Reading (along with Lehigh and Susquehanna)

• State College (Independent)

Right now, Reading, Susquehanna, and State College have been squabbling over reunification for the last 5 years or so. Basically, Reading and State College disagree over the capital city and which government is the “legitimate” successor state, while Susquehanna wants to guarantees to maintain autonomy in its economy, internal affairs, and defense (Lehigh is a protectorate technically speaking of Reading and Susquehanna, so it really doesn’t have a voice). North Pennsylvania has been somewhat off doing its own thing aligning more towards Canada.

• • • And Toledo and Niagara Falls.  Unfortunately, that should mean that it’s on the outs with Superior.  Or perhaps, seeing Va. as the imminent enemy, NP is trying hard to be friends with Canada while courting Superior.  It may end badly.

• • • NP’s interest in State College is pretty much limited to trying to get SC to provide military support for the coming clash with Va.  SC has hinted that reunification is a condition for that, but NP figures that once reunified, SC will take the easy road and let Va. do what it wants in S.W. Pa. in exchange for a non-aggression understanding as to the SC territories and Gettysburg. ***

Economically, North Pennsylvania is doing the best out of all the PA survivor states as it has access to the lake and easier access to markets in Canada as well as strong ties with Toledo, Niagara Falls, London (Ontario), and Superior. In part due to this, it hasn’t really been involved in reunification discussions and doesn’t have as much impetus to do so.

• • • Agreed.  See my proposal.***

North Pennsylvania has been focusing on expansion into New York and Ohio, likely to get secured land routes to Toledo and Niagara Falls (and Canada). Expanding south towards Virginia doesn't give as much economic benefit. Even though Virginia is a military powerhouse and economic power in that area, that is relative to neighboring states that are significantly smaller or underdeveloped.

• • • Well, unless Akron is undamaged, the Kobuta rubber works is essential, and transport from the Pittsburgh area to NP is easier than from Ohio (except for Youngstown).  Note that Virginia now has a port at Sandusky, between NP and Toledo, which jeopardizes a move into Ohio and trade with Toledo. NP may not be able to avoid Va. by moving west. ***

Electricity has been a bit of a sticking point for Pennsylvania as a lot of plants in the state at Doomsday were coal fired or were nuke plants that didn’t survive. In NP controlled territory, there are the following power plants:

New York

• Coal

• • Dunkirk Generating Station (Chautauqua County): 505 MW (Decommissioned in 2016 OTL)

Pennsylvania

• Coal

• • Bruce Mansfield Power Plant (Beaver County): 2,490 MW (Decommissioned in 2019 OTL)

• • Franklin Phillips Power Station (Beaver County): Unknown MW (Decommissioned in 1990’s OTL)

• • George F. Wheaton Power Station (Beaver County): 110 MW (Decommissioned in 2012 OTL)

• Energy Storage

• • Seneca Pump Storage Energy Station (Warren County): 435 MW

• Hydroelectric

• • Piney Hydroelectric (Clarion County): 27 MW

• Natural Gas

• • New Castle (Franklin County): Unknown MW

• Nuclear

• • Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station (Beaver County): 960 MW (just to note: part of the plant wasn’t online until 1987)

I think most likely the hydroelectric plant was restored. I don’t think the energy storage plant could be repaired, it is very parts intensive, but I could be wrong. While there are vast amounts of natural gas in Pennsylvania, in OTL, it has only been in the past decade an a half that fracking has become popular and used which helped reduce the price of extraction. Due to this, I don’t think in ATL, the natural gas would be an available resource. Additionally, there are no active coal mines in NWPA. In OTL, the majority of anthracite mining in Pennsylvania is in NEPA (ATL: Susquehanna and partially in Reading) and bituminous coal mining mainly occurs in SWPA (ATL: Virginia or unconfirmed/uncontrolled). In ATL, there could possibly be trade increasing to bring coal from Susquehanna to NP, but Susquehanna does not have the capacity to mine enough coal to feed all the power plants in NP.

• • • Agreed, the Beaver Valley nuke is kaput.  The prize coal-fired electric plants in 1983 were the omer City  Generating Station, Indiana County (2.0 GW, enough to power 750,000 average homes and probably almost all of NP at full capacity), the Conemaugh Station, Indiana County (1.8 GW), Seward, Indiana County (585 MW) and Keystone, Armstrong County (1.9 GW).   Indiana County is closer to the SC border than NP, but Keystone is not far from the current southern border of NP.  Take Keystone along plus Kinzua, Piney Creek and whatever else NP can put together, and it’s OK.  Priority one is likely to be reopening Keystone before SC or Va. get to it. 

• • • There’s plenty of bituminous coal in NP, there were dozens of strip mines in Venango, Clarion, Jefferson and east Mercer counties in 1983 – my family sold land to them.  And almost unlimited amounts in Armstrong and Indiana counties, which is why those mega coal plants are there OTL.

• • • I’m agnostic about the fate of Seneca Pumped Storage.  There was an 80 MW coal-fired plant in Warren, which shut down in 2002 OTL and which also should be available to NP.

• • • There were hardly any natural gas electric plants in NP in 1983, and in any case, although it produced some natural gas, it wasn’t able to meet all of its winter natural gas heating needs.  (Although presumably those were substantially reduced post-DD.) The flood of natgas didn’t arrive until the Marcellus Shale was fracked after 2000 OTL, and all the natgas electric plants in the NP area were constructed after that date.  Further, natgas plants need either turbines or high pressure steam boilers, which NP is not quite in a position to build itself. Even today OTL there’s only one natgas plant of any size in NP (Venango County, 295 MW)  with a second in Armstrong County just outside NP (688 MW).

• • • BTW, there was no natgas plant in New Castle, Lawrence County in 1983, and in any case, Franklin County is across the state near Gettysburg.***

Regarding the armed forces, right now NP has an active force of around 25,000 personnel and 15,000 reservists. The majority are likely in the Army. I was unable to find proof of any military aircraft in territory under NP control, the PAANG units were stationed in Pittsburgh, Willow Grove (near Philly), Middletown, and Fort Indiantown Gap. Obviously it would have access to private aircraft, but they would not be useful in combat. The Coast Guard in the region was a small contingent of water rescue and light patrol boats (RHIBs with machine guns) on Presque Isle, and were likely lost on Doomsday. Again, it could probably commandeer civilian vessels but these would be non combat capable or only able to stop unarmed vessels.

• • • Agreed as to all points. ***

That said, I could see NP acquiring combat and transport aircraft from other nations and I would imagine it has the capacity to maintain them. And it likely can manufacture its own light patrol boats and coastal patrol ships domestically.

• • • It’s a nice thought, but NP can’t do everything and can’t man everything.  I suspect it hopes that the Norfolk and London governments will take most of the load in securing trans-lake trade and resorts to armed anti-piracy squads on commercial and fishing ships in lieu of warships.  As for aircraft, aside from old Pa. State Police patrol planes based at Franklin and Bradford at the end of their useful lives, I don’t think NP is much concerned with military aircraft.  That may change when the first Va. reconnaissance and fighter planes start mucking about in the S.W. Pa. and even N.W. Pa. airspace.

• • • BTW, NP’s commercial airports were at Erie, Franklin and Bradford. (Meadville always was in a snit that its dinky field didn’t have service.)  Presumably Franklin and Bradford survived, with Franklin being the logical air center.***

Renaultlouis (talk) 07:39, 12 July 2021 (UTC)Renaultlouis 0738 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Follow-up to Renaultlouis

• • • • See below my responses****

Based on previous conversations that were had regarding strikes on Erie, I believe the general consensus was the nuke would have hit the eastern side of the city, towards the manufacturing plants, as the EMP and blast would ruin the rest of the city.

• • • While I think that my theory works better, I’ll treat the east side hit as QSS and work from there.***

****I think we can still discuss this, as no article directly addresses the location of the strike, provided Erie doesn’t survive in a meaningful way. If a strike is on the eastern or western side of the city or over the downtown, basically the whole city will be ruined.****

Allegheny, Clarion, Edinboro, and Titusville are the major universities in North Pennsylvania. Gannon was founded by surviving assets of Mercyhurst and Gannon that formed a small private college post Doomsday. Given that Berhend is public and the region around Erie likely have a substantially lower population than OTL, I don’t think it would be reformed.

• • • My proposal was to move the remaining personnel and assets of Behrend to Edinboro, which dovetails well with your statements.

• • • • I agree with your assessment, that is the most likely outcome. Also, any salvaged material from Behrend would be relocated here.

• • • However, you didn’t address several of the other higher education institutions in NP.  U. Pittsburgh at Bradford was bigger than Titusville (and unlike Titusville is still viable).  It should have survived, Bradford being 90 miles from everywhere. I think under QAA I can develop its role.  Also, Bradford/McKean County has been neglected in the NP stories and I want to correct that. 

• • • • Titusville is somewhat isolated (I drove through that area multiple times), but I am not as familiar with Bradford. And in OTL, Pitt Bradford has about 3x the amount of students as Pitt Titusville, so I concur your opinion.

• • • Thiel and Westminster Colleges in Mercer County should have physically survived, but almost certainly would be unable to continue given losses of students and faculty. Penn State Shenango was close to Youngstown and would similarly be likely to close because of fallout and losses. I’m going to suggest that their assets were moved to Allegheny.*** 

• • • • We should probably assess how many universities is realistic for NP to have functioning given its population. While travel is absolutely more challenging in ATL, I think Penn State in State College would still attract international students, especially from NP, Reading, and Susquehanna. And it’s possible as road travel improves, Susquehanna could attract students due to the extremely low cost of college and cost of living in the nation.

• • • • I think right now, we have NP with four universities: Clarion, Edinboro, Gannon, and New Pittsburg in McKean.

• • • • Also, with NP controlling territory in former NY and OH, people in those regions may be interested in restarting Ohio State and NYU out of regional pride.

I would imagine the situation regarding the Jeep is likely along the lines of: the company is headquartered and design is done in North Pennsylvania, but a bulk of the manufacturing and assembly is done in Toledo.

• • • Your suggestion is possible, but I think mine is more plausible.  Although there were and are a lot of machine shops and metal fabrication in the Franklin area, there was nobody with automobile design and engineering experience in the area.  The staff at Joy is fully occupied.  Snagging the HQ and design functions without that advantage would probably require that the NP investors provide most of the capital – an unlikely event.  In my proposal I’ve suggested that Toledo do the difficult things for Jeeps – power train and steering, and probably lights, and Franklin can do the chassis, body, radiator and interior.  Obviously this division of labor can be tweaked, but I think it works.***

• • • • My main concern with NP manufacturing parts domestically is shipping. Moving parts around is expensive, and lake routes are likely the only safe rout, since NP and Toledo still do not share a safe land connection yet (likely to change by 2030 I suspect). Cargo ships would be expensive (though I can imagine sail power vessels would be a common sight even on the Great Lakes) and the threat of piracy is real. I am not sure how much control nations have of the waters on the Great Lakes, given the spotty control over land that nations have around Lake Erie,

A major error that needs corrected is regarding the capital of North Pennsylvania. Various sources (including the nation’s page) indicate both Franklin and Warren as the capital city. I would suggest Warren, given its closer proximity to Edinboro, Meadville, and Oil City which are likely the major population centers.

• • • I think your statement is counterfactual.  First, I didn’t see anything naming Warren as the capital, but there are plenty of references to Franklin.  Note that the NP main page says “Capital: Franklin,” shows the Venango County courthouse as the “Venango House,” the center of NP government (frankly, the next door Galena building is a much better HQ – maybe it houses departments), and there are repeated references to the governor and others being in Franklin.

• • • • Whoops, you are right, I made an error. Thanks.

• • • The NP page does say that Warren is the capital of “Penn State,” the somewhat odd mashup of Crawford, Warren and McKean counties.  Warren is a somewhat logical capital of that mashup, being somewhat equidistant from Meadville and Bradford.  But as a capital of NP it’s terribly isolated, being 58 miles and 1 hour 20 minutes drive from Meadville in our times, 58 miles and 1 hour 20 from Franklin (50 from Oil City) and 59 miles from Edinboro.  Franklin is 27 miles from Meadville and 49 miles from Edinboro.  And with auto travel still impaired and the roads having reverted to gravel, distances are important. 

• • • • This may be where I got Warren from. I suspect that, given the state of State College’s page, that it was one of the early pages made. Likely NP’s Capital got moved at some point in the discussions.

• • • QSS definitely applies here.  Accordingly, I’m not going to move the capital to Warren.*** 

• • • • Fair.

Also, I would suggest completely redoing the section regarding regions. I think the most likely scenario is that it would continue using the county system. Right now with the regions they are, each has a wildly different in area and population. One region (Pennstate) composed of OTL Crawford, McKean, and Warren counties is 2,921 square miles with 230,000 people, while the neighboring region (Forest) is only 430 square miles with a population of 3,000 people.

• • • Agreed.  In my proposal I picked up on the existing statements on the NP page and NP history page that there was a constitutional revision (unspecified provisions) in 2011.  That’s a convenient, canon-consistent way to split up “PennState,” as shown in my proposal.  Crawford stands on its own after the 2011 constitutional revision and Warren and McKean are merged, pending growth. 

• • • • That seems reasonable. I guess too, as long as representation in the General Assembly isn’t based off the regions, people shouldn’t grumble too much. If Senators were, I would be concerned we would end up with a situation like how OTL Wyoming and California get equal representation in the Senate while having wildly different populations.

• • • Forest County OTL is too small, but if you’ve ever spent time in Tionesta and Marienville you know that consolidating it is risking death threats.  I punted by suggesting, as in real life, that Venango County provides some governmental services, while Warren County provides judicial support.***

• • • • I like this. I would suggest one of two things: either merge/split Forest County into the two other counties. Or Forest County remains a territory with government support from surrounding counties and the federal government.

I do think low population counties would be grouped together, but this absolutely needs to be reviewed.

• • • Aside from Forest and the proposed “federal district of Eriesburg” [sic], most counties are large enough to be viable, and given transportation difficulties, there are good reasons not to consolidate.

• • • • Agreed. Also, I forgot to mention: the population needs to be corrected as they do not align between the existing- Population box on the top and the total sum of populations in the- Regions section. Population box indicates 320,255 people. Total of regions adds up to 570,530 people. My suspicion is that the total hasn’t been updated since before Ohio and NY were canonized as being part of NP, since the territory it controls only in modern PA adds up to 390,530 based on adding the regions section up.

Regarding port cities, unfortunately I don’t think Erie could be rebuilt as a port for a few decades still due to the direct impact on the city irradiating the area. Barring Erie, none of the other towns in Erie County, PA have natural ports and even to present day OTL only have rocky shores or very small moveable docks for pleasure craft. The two likely replacements I found are Dunkirk, New York or Ashtabula, Ohio.

• • • With ground zero on the east side, you’re right about Erie.  On top of the radiation, an east side hit would clog the harbor mouth.  Ashtabula has large iron ore unloading docks and is by far the better port choice.  It has excellent rail connections to Meadville, Corry, Franklin and Warren. It’s also closer to population centers, although not by much.  Dunkirk hosts pleasure boating only OTL and only has rail connections to Buffalo and Erie, but not southward except by an unused, decrepit line via Jamestown on a somewhat roundabout route.***

They are both roughly the same distance, but Ashtabula has a more developed port area. However, I am not sure how it would be affected by the strikes (possibly multiple) on Cleveland.

• • • Ashtabula is 58 miles from Cleveland downtown and a bit farther from its industrial area. (It’s amazing how everything in NP is 58 miles from somewhere else.) It’s well northeast of Cleveland and prevailing winds at Cleveland on September 19 average 9 mph, while winds from the south and west that could reach Ashtabula do not exceed 25% of the time.  Accordingly, there is a good case that Ashtabula missed almost all of the physical destruction caused by strikes on Cleveland, Erie and Youngstown and is only plagued by the post-Doomsday general radiation plaguing everywhere. ***   

• • • • And being that DD occurred almost 40 years ago now and Lake Erie has some pretty nasty rain and wind, it is plausible that Ashtabula, even if irritated by the strike on Cleveland, has been completely cleaned out by the rain.

North Pennsylvania is in the best position given its location, it can trade via Lake Erie with other industrialized nations that survived like Niagara Falls and Toledo. It additionally, can acquire parts to repair and rebuilt existing factories. Around Erie, there is plastic and metal fabrications as well as bearing production, rubber, steel, and minor oil production.

Regarding oil, in Bradford, PA (under NP control in McKean County), the American Refining Group has a small refinery capable of processing 11,000 barrels of oil a day, which was founded over 125 years ago (as of 2021 OTL). Obviously the pre-strike EMP would devastate the plant, but it is isolated from cities struck during the nuclear holocaust and would simply need new electrical or be rewired around the computers. With support from Toledo and Niagara Falls, it could likely be restored and operational (likely at reduced capacity, say 8,000 barrels a day?) for a few years by 2021 ATL, and be in the process of expanding.

• • • There are a lot more small refineries in the hills of NP that almost certainly survived than you’ve mentioned, and I’ve listed them in my proposal, including American Refining (which in 1983 was called Kendall).  The limiting factor is probably crude oil supply; in 1983 the supply of Pennsylvania Grade crude (which is what’s produced in NP) was actually slightly lower than refining capacity, and Wolfs Head and Pennzoil were not producing at capacity.  Quaker State’s Emlenton and Farmers Valley refineries had reliable supply.*** 

• • • • One of my edits didn’t go through apparently. I found two larger refineries in the region: Bradford Refinery, operated by the American Refining Group; and Warren Refinery, operated by United Refining Group. Bradford had the capacity to handle 11,000 bb/day and Warren 65,000 bb/day. These were the only two large refineries I found, but I am sure other smaller ones exist or would have sprouted up.

Just to note, while the borders haven’t been nailed down, Virginia has been creeping into southwestern Pennsylvania for the last few years. So I don’t think anything in the Pittsburg metro will be in NP territory at the moment. Given Virginia’s territorial…aggression, this could set up a major conflict.

• • • That is precisely what I think will be the driving force of NP history in the 2015-2020 period. NP needs the scrap steel, copper and other metals, as well as parts and technology, that it can scavenge from the Pittsburgh and Youngstown areas. The Kobuta synthetic rubber plant on the Ohio river 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh is a prize.  The Kubota tractor plant 25 miles southeast of Pittsburgh near Irwin is another prize. NP and Va. are going to skirmish, with NP aiming not to occupy Allegheny and southern Beaver counties but hoping to negotiate access at a price to those resources.  Best result would be designating the Ohio and Allegheny rivers as the borders of the spheres of influence, but Va. may be too aggressive to allow that. ***

• • • • NP will likely need the support of other PA states, given that Virginia has an almost implausibly large military.

The general consensus has been that Pennsylvania is falling into four major power blocs:

• Gettysburg (proxy state for Virginia, albeit less militant) and Virginia to a small extent (probably the last 10-15 years or so)

• North Pennsylvania (proxy state for Canada)

• Reading (along with Lehigh and Susquehanna)

• State College (Independent)

Right now, Reading, Susquehanna, and State College have been squabbling over reunification for the last 5 years or so. Basically, Reading and State College disagree over the capital city and which government is the “legitimate” successor state, while Susquehanna wants to guarantees to maintain autonomy in its economy, internal affairs, and defense (Lehigh is a protectorate technically speaking of Reading and Susquehanna, so it really doesn’t have a voice). North Pennsylvania has been somewhat off doing its own thing aligning more towards Canada.

• • • And Toledo and Niagara Falls.  Unfortunately, that should mean that it’s on the outs with Superior.  Or perhaps, seeing Va. as the imminent enemy, NP is trying hard to be friends with Canada while courting Superior.  It may end badly.

• • • • Toledo and Niagara Falls don’t have territory in Pennsylvania at the moment. NP seems to take a stance towards Superior of tolerance but not being allies. They didn’t directly fight Superior in the Saegunay War, only the raiders. They made it clear that, while they were pro-Canada, they were more concerned about stopping attacks on friendly territory. It may not be a great analogy, but I would view their relationship similar to OTL USA and Russia. We aren’t friends by any means, but collaborate if necessary and confront when needed.

• • • NP’s interest in State College is pretty much limited to trying to get SC to provide military support for the coming clash with Va.  SC has hinted that reunification is a condition for that, but NP figures that once reunified, SC will take the easy road and let Va. do what it wants in S.W. Pa. in exchange for a non-aggression understanding as to the SC territories and Gettysburg. ***

• • • • I like this take. As for Susquehanna and Lehigh (the only two nations I can speak to: Susquehanna needs to be cautious as it procures military hardware from Virginia and it’s armed forces would be more or less useless against Virginian tanks. Lehigh is along the lines of Costa Rica where it doesn’t have a standing army, but rather a security force. I also don’t know if Reading would get involved given their position near Gettysburg, but they might.

Economically, North Pennsylvania is doing the best out of all the PA survivor states as it has access to the lake and easier access to markets in Canada as well as strong ties with Toledo, Niagara Falls, London (Ontario), and Superior. In part due to this, it hasn’t really been involved in reunification discussions and doesn’t have as much impetus to do so.

• • • Agreed.  See my proposal.***

North Pennsylvania has been focusing on expansion into New York and Ohio, likely to get secured land routes to Toledo and Niagara Falls (and Canada). Expanding south towards Virginia doesn't give as much economic benefit. Even though Virginia is a military powerhouse and economic power in that area, that is relative to neighboring states that are significantly smaller or underdeveloped.

• • • Well, unless Akron is undamaged, the Kobuta rubber works is essential, and transport from the Pittsburgh area to NP is easier than from Ohio (except for Youngstown).  Note that Virginia now has a port at Sandusky, between NP and Toledo, which jeopardizes a move into Ohio and trade with Toledo. NP may not be able to avoid Va. by moving west. ***

• • • • I believe Akron is gone. The port in Sandusky is still legally Toledo territory to my understanding. Also, Toledo controls the territory around it, which is substantial. I do agree that NP and Virginia are likely headed for a clash.

Electricity has been a bit of a sticking point for Pennsylvania as a lot of plants in the state at Doomsday were coal fired or were nuke plants that didn’t survive. In NP controlled territory, there are the following power plants:

New York

• Coal

• • Dunkirk Generating Station (Chautauqua County): 505 MW (Decommissioned in 2016 OTL)

Pennsylvania

• Coal

• • Bruce Mansfield Power Plant (Beaver County): 2,490 MW (Decommissioned in 2019 OTL)

• • Franklin Phillips Power Station (Beaver County): Unknown MW (Decommissioned in 1990’s OTL)

• • George F. Wheaton Power Station (Beaver County): 110 MW (Decommissioned in 2012 OTL)

• Energy Storage

• • Seneca Pump Storage Energy Station (Warren County): 435 MW

• Hydroelectric

• • Piney Hydroelectric (Clarion County): 27 MW

• Natural Gas

• • New Castle (Franklin County): Unknown MW

• Nuclear

• • Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station (Beaver County): 960 MW (just to note: part of the plant wasn’t online until 1987)

I think most likely the hydroelectric plant was restored. I don’t think the energy storage plant could be repaired, it is very parts intensive, but I could be wrong. While there are vast amounts of natural gas in Pennsylvania, in OTL, it has only been in the past decade an a half that fracking has become popular and used which helped reduce the price of extraction. Due to this, I don’t think in ATL, the natural gas would be an available resource. Additionally, there are no active coal mines in NWPA. In OTL, the majority of anthracite mining in Pennsylvania is in NEPA (ATL: Susquehanna and partially in Reading) and bituminous coal mining mainly occurs in SWPA (ATL: Virginia or unconfirmed/uncontrolled). In ATL, there could possibly be trade increasing to bring coal from Susquehanna to NP, but Susquehanna does not have the capacity to mine enough coal to feed all the power plants in NP.

• • • Agreed, the Beaver Valley nuke is kaput.  The prize coal-fired electric plants in 1983 were the omer City  Generating Station, Indiana County (2.0 GW, enough to power 750,000 average homes and probably almost all of NP at full capacity), the Conemaugh Station, Indiana County (1.8 GW), Seward, Indiana County (585 MW) and Keystone, Armstrong County (1.9 GW).   Indiana County is closer to the SC border than NP, but Keystone is not far from the current southern border of NP.  Take Keystone along plus Kinzua, Piney Creek and whatever else NP can put together, and it’s OK.  Priority one is likely to be reopening Keystone before SC or Va. get to it.

• • • • Indiana County right now isn’t under anyone’s control, but I think it is logical for NP to expand into it.

• • • There’s plenty of bituminous coal in NP, there were dozens of strip mines in Venango, Clarion, Jefferson and east Mercer counties in 1983 – my family sold land to them.  And almost unlimited amounts in Armstrong and Indiana counties, which is why those mega coal plants are there OTL.

• • • • I wasn’t as aware of those coal plants. Thanks for pointing this out.

• • • I’m agnostic about the fate of Seneca Pumped Storage.  There was an 80 MW coal-fired plant in Warren, which shut down in 2002 OTL and which also should be available to NP.

• • • • On the page, I missed it, apparently it is active (Seneca is part of the Kinzua Dam system). I’m still a bit uncertain of this plausibility, but as contact with Canada continues to improve getting parts to restore the plant may be in the cards.

• • • There were hardly any natural gas electric plants in NP in 1983, and in any case, although it produced some natural gas, it wasn’t able to meet all of its winter natural gas heating needs.  (Although presumably those were substantially reduced post-DD.) The flood of natgas didn’t arrive until the Marcellus Shale was fracked after 2000 OTL, and all the natgas electric plants in the NP area were constructed after that date.  Further, natgas plants need either turbines or high pressure steam boilers, which NP is not quite in a position to build itself. Even today OTL there’s only one natgas plant of any size in NP (Venango County, 295 MW)  with a second in Armstrong County just outside NP (688 MW).

• • • • Agreed. Long term, I think NG could become a factor, but not for the foreseeable future.

• • • BTW, there was no natgas plant in New Castle, Lawrence County in 1983, and in any case, Franklin County is across the state near Gettysburg.***

****Whoops. Error on my part regarding the Lawrence County. Not sure how I got that, haha. So I did more digging, and the plant was converted from coal to LNG in 2016. It had three boilers: Unit 3: 98.0 MW (1952), Unit 4: 114.0 MW (1958), Unit 5: 136.0 MW (1964)

Regarding the armed forces, right now NP has an active force of around 25,000 personnel and 15,000 reservists. The majority are likely in the Army. I was unable to find proof of any military aircraft in territory under NP control, the PAANG units were stationed in Pittsburgh, Willow Grove (near Philly), Middletown, and Fort Indiantown Gap. Obviously it would have access to private aircraft, but they would not be useful in combat. The Coast Guard in the region was a small contingent of water rescue and light patrol boats (RHIBs with machine guns) on Presque Isle, and were likely lost on Doomsday. Again, it could probably commandeer civilian vessels but these would be non combat capable or only able to stop unarmed vessels.

• • • Agreed as to all points. ***

That said, I could see NP acquiring combat and transport aircraft from other nations and I would imagine it has the capacity to maintain them. And it likely can manufacture its own light patrol boats and coastal patrol ships domestically.

• • • It’s a nice thought, but NP can’t do everything and can’t man everything.  I suspect it hopes that the Norfolk and London governments will take most of the load in securing trans-lake trade and resorts to armed anti-piracy squads on commercial and fishing ships in lieu of warships.  As for aircraft, aside from old Pa. State Police patrol planes based at Franklin and Bradford at the end of their useful lives, I don’t think NP is much concerned with military aircraft.  That may change when the first Va. reconnaissance and fighter planes start mucking about in the S.W. Pa. and even N.W. Pa. airspace.

• • • • Just something to consider: NP is in the best shape economically and has access to Canadian markets. While it wouldn’t have a large Air Force, the military would recognize that the Air Force could provide better logistics to isolated bases and air support to ground formations. It would have access to the best aircraft money could buy, through Canada it could get Embrair, Pilatus, or Saab aircraft. Especially after support in the Saegunay War, I would imagine Canada would be willing to support NP in getting a powerful enough force to challenge Superior and Virginia need be until Canada can secure territory on the Great Lakes.

• • • BTW, NP’s commercial airports were at Erie, Franklin and Bradford. (Meadville always was in a snit that its dinky field didn’t have service.)  Presumably Franklin and Bradford survived, with Franklin being the logical air center.***

• • • • Agreed.

Daeseunglim (talk) 10:48, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

North Pennsylvania Editing

I'm a newbie. I'd like to do some editing of North Pennsylvania with a view to start adding to canon and collaborating with nearby owners after I get some experience. I've been advised that no one is currently bupdating North Pa. Is there a problem with my going ahead after say July 20?

Renaultlouis (talk) 04:18, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Rebuilding/Reclaiming Destroyed Cities

It has been around 38 years since Doomsday, would radiation levels be dropping to a point where cities could begin being cleaned up and rebuilt? I know uranium and plutonium have long half lives, but weather would wash or blow the radioactive materials away over time. I think some cities would begin to be able to be cleaned up and rebuilt. Obviously this will depend on how large and resource heavy the surrounding nations are.

Alternatively, would some nations (Like the ANZC, USSR, USA, etc) turn the abandoned cities into nature preserves? Especially as newer cities replace the destroyed cities and rebuilding major infrastructure is both expensive and time consuming.

Thanks!

Daeseunglim (talk) 16:54, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Conflict in Britain

I'm making this section to discuss the ongoing development of Great British Civil War and Edward Poll, and the giant set of events being planned around them. This was begun by MrWoodward, but he's stepped away from the wiki. SigmaHero045 plans to revise and finish all this. For now I've archived the enormous yearlong discussion at Talk:1983: Doomsday/Politics6#Great British Civil War and Talk:1983: Doomsday/Politics6#Edward Poll. False Dmitri (talk) 17:44, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

The following is copied from the archived section. - False Dmitri (talk)

I have some thoughts about how this project could proceed further. I agree with the consensus from others about the reunification of England (or most of it, anyway) being inevitable for geographic and historical/cultural reasons, and the angle of New Britain playing a decisive role in that makes for an interesting story. However, I think this would work better if Queen Zara of Cleveland becomes head of state rather than Andrew, since Zara has remained in England with her mother since Doomsday and cannot be accused of "abandoning the homeland." Here's one way it could happen: the New British fleet arrives in England, as suggested by the previous editors, to put down Lord Protector Poll's claim to power. King Andrew goes along with them, thinking it would be good publicity for him to be seen leading his troops in the field. However, at some point during the conflict, Andrew is hit by a Pollist rifleman's bullet on the battlefield, and eventually succumbs to his wounds. This makes Queen Zara the next Windsor in line for the throne in a reunified England and also makes her the nearest claimant for the throne in New Britain, thus unifying the crowns. (It also works as a nice shout out to that other famous post-apocalyptic story, V for Vendetta, where Zara is on the throne as well, at least nominally).

There are two possibilities for how Zara's ascension might affect England-NB governmental structure afterwards: 1. England and New Britain could theoretically remain technically separate nation-states that share the same monarch (like the UK and Canada in real life), or 2. we could follow Mr.Woodward's suggestion of formally consolidating them into a United Kingdom of England and South Africa (or UK of England and New Britain), as he suggested. Personally, I think the second possibility is a bit more fascinating storywise. A United Kingdom of England and New Britain would be an interesting "1983DD twist" I think.

I also have a couple questions: If and when this reunion happens, should it use the pre-Doomsday version of the Union Jack, or perhaps one of the new suggestions by SigmaHero045 back in March 2020? I'd also suggest the possibility of maybe some fusion of the old Union Jack and the modified one that New Britain uses.

EDIT: I've created a proposal for how a combined version of the old and new Union Jack could look in the proposed United Kingdom of England and New Britain. I think it looks pretty nifty!

Also, does anyone have any ideas where the new English capital should be? New London is under CA control, I believe, otherwise I would've suggested it. Cleveland's capital Middlesbrough is one possibility, since Zara is already based there. But somewhere more central or in the south of England could work too. Anyway, I'm fascinated by the places this storyline could go. Let me know what you think. GryffindorKrypton (talk) 03:11, 4 March 2021 (UTC)GryffindorKrypton

Still can't really buy this. The amount of hoops to go through alone is just a bit much. As some sort of internal Newholland crisis, maybe but more... eh.

I actually have to disagree with the idea that England unifying being inevitable. Smaller territories in Europe and elsewhere didn't otl, or didn't for a long time. Much of the unification of England was dynastic/political, not conquest, as well.

Atm, at least, its more of a Northumbria/Anglia/Celtic spilt. That does go along at least somewhat with the occasional call for various parts of England to have their own assemblies, like Wales and the other states.

At the very least, it's not happening right now. As we noted before, the Windsors aren't all that popular in much of atl England. In at least Southern England, its not impossible that they even join the Celts still.

It's basically impossible for New Britain to intervene in anything in the UK. Not only are their resources tied up in African matters, but they've sold off or scrapped most of their fleet in past years, so they really can't get any aid that would mean anything that far. That'd be like having otl Eritrea intervene in any kind of unrest in Europe today.

We've never really elaborated on it, but King Andrew does have a wife and children, married/born in SA. Zara's not his heir. Not that he'd be anywhere near a battlefield anyway.

Lordganon (talk) 10:27, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree - nobody in England would have much interest in Andrew. He left on his wacky scheme. Zara, on the other hand, has great potential as a unifying figure. And I've come down as being in favor of MrWoodward and Sigma's storyline where a strongman leader gains popularity in some of the English states. But I agree that the South African exiles won't be able to play any kind of role in it.

Regarding Andrew's family, I've actually done some preliminary things to flesh that out a bit more. At some point I'd like to write a separate page on the heir and probably have him/her be the reigning monarch by now. For now though, I did update Andy's page with a TTL wife. As the one who initially created that page, I didn't feel the need to list it here, but it's definitely a point open for discussion. She is Louisa Gordon-Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond. I think that a marriage to a fellow exile from an aristocratic background would make the most sense. And the Gordon-Lennox family lives in Sussex, so they would be in a good position to join the exiles on Wight and then South Africa. Their kids, by the way, I was going to marry to local royalty - Zulu, Sotho, Swati, along those lines.

In general England still needs a lot of attention right now. We have a number of ideas still up in the air. False Dmitri (talk) 19:14, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Graphics / Visualization /Cartography

Section Archives:Page 1 | Page 2

Flag of the League of Nations

This is flag that i and several other are proposing to use.

Current flag used by the LoN.

So guys, you all know the infamous LoN flag of this universe and vexilologivally speaking is a bad example on how a flag should be created, especially for an international organization that need to encompass every survior government or country. That's why i propose to change the flag with this one;

As you can see, in the other flag there are both components of the LoN and UN flag, mainly the blue background and the logo of the League. In my opinion we should consider to do it. Mal3ssio97 01:00, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

The LoN flag is a weak design, I agree. And we've recently made updates to some of the other early flags that needed some attention. I'd be in favor of a change. What would that new design look like with the same dark blue of the original? False Dmitri (talk) 02:36, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

This is what I meant. It's here only for comparison, I'm not saying that I prefer one or the other. False Dmitri (talk) 21:47, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Vectorising Flags and Heraldry

Hi, I've been coming and going to this Alt History for some time. I was wondering if I could perhaps start making flags of nations into vectors for the wiki, and if I could would you have a preference to the order in which these would be created? I've attached an example of my work here (its a propsed redesign of the Portuguese Interim government Flag

Trainor90 (talk) 21:00, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Please do. Mal3ssio97 has already done some of that, so this kind of work would be welcome. I would say to start with the ones that you feel most motivated to make, either because you like them or because the current files are messy. False Dmitri (talk) 02:08, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Wiki/Timeline/Article Technicals

Section archives: Page 1 | Page 2

Culture / Society

Archives: Page 1 • Page 2 • Page 3

Miscellaneous discussion

Archives: Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5

CURRENT ARTICLE PROPOSALS

Please list any and all current article proposals and their discussion here. If the proposals only involves a specific section of the article, please state that. Also remember to use {{ddprop}} when reviewing new articles. To graduate an article, move to have the article graduated and if no one objects the article will be considered canon (see the Editorial Guidelines for more information on this process).

Archived Proposals: Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27

North Pennsylvania

I'm uploading a proposed rewrite of NP to the Category:Proposals page.

Renaultlouis (talk) 05:44, 7 July 2021 (UTC)Renaultlouis

North Pennsylvania

I'm a newbie. I'd like to do some editing of North Pennsylvania with a view to start adding to canon and collaborating with nearby owners after I get some experience. I've been advised that no one is currently bupdating North Pa. Is there a problem with my going ahead after say July 20? Renaultlouis (talk) 04:16, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I am willing to provide Renaultlouis support in this, I have had extensive communication with User talk:Arstarpool and User talk:Godfrey Raphael regarding North Penn, State College, Reading, and Susquehanna. Additionally, I grew up in NEPA and lived near Erie for four years. Daeseunglim (talk) 15:34, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Rajneeshistan

Proposal for a new small-state, located in the PNW of the former United States. Area was unoccupied by any other Doomsday nation (according to my search of the map and existing successor nations in North America), which was the catalyst of creating the nation (a fill-in-the-blank thing basically).

I'm not super attached to Rajneeshistan so any edits, changes, adjustments, or just nixing the idea are all fine by me, I have no great dedication to the project. Dieua-Artio (talk) 23:15, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

It's a really clever idea and is something that works in a post-apocalypse setting. It seems too big, however, in both area and population. Simply because it seems really really difficult to maintain cult discipline among a population of 200,000 people like that. Maybe I'm wrong, though; I'm definitely willing to hear the justification for it. And area too, filling in all the unclaimed land of Washington just strikes me as too much for a state like this. But again, maybe I'm missing an important rationale for it. False Dmitri (talk) 23:44, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Are there that many survivors left in Washington? I also agree with False Dimitri, I don’t think a cult would be able to have that many members and stay intact. Additionally, it would have shared borders with what became Lincoln immediately after Doomsday, the region which was run by white supremacists, so there would absolutely be major conflict there. Eastern Washington outside of Spokane is very conservative in OTL and I don’t even think a large nation of this nature could gain a foothold like this let alone survive.

The economy would not be that successful, it would be very small and focused on survival such as blacksmithing, farming, security, etc. not yoga. If it did focus on aspects like spirituality and yoga, you can almost guarantee there would be massive upheaval as people starved. They say we are only 3 meals away from anarchy.

Additionally, if it was a cult, I cannot see the United States, Victoria, or Astoria (even though it is a dictatorship) permitting this nation to survive long term, and would likely seek to either overthrow the government or outright invade.

I would recommend scaling this down to a single county at most, and make it very rural to avoid catching the eye of other countries.

The OTL 1989 population of the region encompasses by your proposed nation (Yakima, Klickitat, and Western Benton counties) is in the neighborhood of 220,000 people. If we assume 25% losses due to fighting and starvation and another 15% loss due to diseases, we get to around 140,000 people.

The area voted heavily conservative (in the 1980 Presidential Election, Yakima voted 55.2% Republican, Klickitat voted 49.5% Republican, and Benton voted 64.7% Republican) so there would likely be an exodus of conservatives into Idaho, Oregon, or Lincoln if this nation gained traction, as well as any non-religious or liberal individuals as the nation imposed religion on people. Assume another 40% loss due to exodus, which I think is realistic. We are left with 84,000 people approximately in 1983 and assuming a 5% population growth per decade leaves us with 102,103 people today.

According to Wikipedia, at it’s height Rajneeshpuram had 7,000 people and it was a self sufficient community in north-central Oregon. Having to relocate and fight off bandits and raiders would take a toll on that population, even 7,000 people isn’t enough to take on and control 84,000 people.

Given the US controls Wasco County, Oregon (where Rajneeshpuram started), I would suggest the following:

• The community remains neutral between 1983 and the Oregon Civil War and only involves itself to drive out raiders and state investigators. State officials investigate the community as a means to distract against their own bad behavior and point the finger at Rajneeshpuram.
• In the civil war, the government that would become Astoria tries to drive the people out, but are unsuccessful due to other important military operations and troops defecting to Oregon.
• When Oregon stabilized and splits between Oregon and Astoria, Oregon state authorities begin to investigate Rajneeshpuram due to complaints by citizens of Wasco County, and this forces the believers to flee into Washington State in 2007.
• The community finds the Yakama Indian Reservation somewhat intact but largely depopulated due to fighting with Spokane through the 1980’s and 1990’s with only a few thousand survivors left.
• It forms an independent nation with the new capital being Toppenish, renamed Rajneeshpuram, the nation has a population of around 30,000 people circa 2010, 31,500 circa 2020.
• From survivors, the leadership of Rajneeshpuram find out about the United States and Victoria.
• The nation fortifies its borders and takes steps for self sufficiency as it knows that the United States or Victoria are likely to attack it.
• Present day, it is still an independent nation, but US interests are beginning to look towards arresting the nation’s leadership due to alleged crimes against humanity and dictatorial practices. Additionally, it is a destabilizing force on the border of the US state of Cascadia.

Daeseunglim (talk) 12:30, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Natalie Hershlag

I have already written up an article about Natalie Hershlag, the 1983: Doomsday version of OTL's Israeli-American Jewish actress. Since her parents, Avner and Shelley, were living in Jerusalem in 1983 just one year before moving to the States this mean that they alongside their daughter survived the nuclear catastrophe that shook the world since the city was spared from bombardment thanks to the IDF shooting down missiles intended to blow up the place. Since her Hollywood stardom path is obviously butterflied, she would likely become politician and leader of Da'am (a joint Jewish-Arab party) since national unity would be very prevalent amongst most Israeli ethnic groups after Doomsday aside from some exceptions such as terrorist organizations like the Hamas Caliphate or ultranationalists like Likud (which I hope to outline much later).

Right now, I'm trying to place a photo of her at Columbia University on the article as if she were speaking at a political meeting but I can't properly make it upload. Ficboy

This seems fine to me. Israel in general is heinously under-developed. Basically no history written after 1983, just the implication that it annexed Sinai and the Palestinian Territories, without ever saying how. (And honestly that needs to be looked at: how did a nation smashed by nuclear weapons manage to take territory from a nation that was never targeted??) So is this the start of a more complete exploration of Israel's history? If so, that's exciting. But either way this article seems OK to make canon. False Dmitri (talk) 21:28, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

All of that is covered in Egypt's History. Suffice to say, the Muslim Brotherhood took over the government there, picked a fight with desperate Israelis, who nuked them in response. Lordganon (talk) 03:39, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

That's pretty ridiculous for a number of reasons, though probably it's too long a conversation to go into here... But actually it's not clearly written anywhere how Israel managed to survive as a coherent nation - plenty of countries in TTL had a lower density of targets but still collapsed, either temporarily or permanently. I don't know, as for Natalie, maybe this proposal has to wait until we know more of that background history. The proposal implies a more or less normally-functioning society for most of Natalie's life, something that to me seems very far from certain, and actually quite implausible.

(edit) One solution may be to hold some of the details in this article in abeyance - either comment them out or move them to the talk page - until we know more about Israel's history. The main thrust of the proposal is certainly fine: that Natalie survived in Israel, became a politician, emphasized unity and reconciliation between Israel and Palestine. In fact that's another thing that's hinted but never explained: that Israel and Palestine merged or something. It may turn out that Natalie played a role in that process. False Dmitri (talk) 19:55, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

(edit) I hope someone can really edit Israel's 1983: Doomsday page to add more information about the political and social history of Israel. Considering the after-effects of Doomsday, Israel and Palestine would unite for the sake of survival even if they have some differences. The setup for Natalie is solid and can work as you said. In fact, why not have her play a role in the Israel-Palestine peace process like you suggested. As far as her life is concerned, let's be honest it isn't stable since she and her family were confined to their bunker not to mention the steady stream of Arab refugees into Jerusalem. Ficboy (talk), 20:09, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

I meant the stability implied by having Natalie graduate from Walworth Barbour American International School. There's no reason to assume that something like that would still be functioning in 1985 - the country had just been hit by thirteen nuclear warheads. Normal life was not going to just carry on after that, it would take a generation at least. And by details about the unwritten history of Israel, I mean "the War on Terror against the Hamas Caliphate from 1999 to 2003", as well as the mention of Benjamin Netanyahu. Both of those things strike me as overly convergent, even cliche. "War on Terror" is a George Bush catchphrase from the early 2000s. Hamas didn't exist in 1983, and anyway its OTL goals do not include the establishment of a caliphate. And we don't know whether Netanyahu became a prominent politician in TTL - and for me, it's always more interesting to use lesser-known figures. And anyway, it would be much better if all that were worked out as part of a more intentional plan to write Israel's history - not just casually mentioned like this, thereby becoming canon that would constrain future writers.

So my point is the same: I think this can work, but without some of those details, until we know more. False Dmitri (talk)

To be fair, life is far from stable in Israel since her family in this timeline had to stay in their bunker for a while and that's not getting into the massive Palestinian refugee surge in Jerusalem. Also, I checked up the Walworth Barbour International School and it was located in Even Yehuda which is near Tel Aviv and not Jerusalem, so that detail has to be changed. Also, if there is a Hamas or at least an alternate timeline equivalent they would have different goals due to the chaos and destruction caused by Doomsday (I took the idea of Hamas wanting to establish a caliphate from The Eagle Down Under timeline by LouisTheGreyFox). As for Benjamin Netanyahu, he was Deputy Chief of Staff for the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC and since it was nuked in the Doomsday-verse, he's pretty much toast unless he is able to escape just in time. Overall, I agree that the basic premise can work but we really need to rework the details. Ficboy (talk).

I 100% agree with that. For now, with the history of Israel still mostly unwritten, I would still recommend trying to create the character of Natalie without all that many details about that bigger history. Telling her life story, creating this political career and personality for her, but in a way that doesn't commit you to all that many details about Israel and Palestine in general. False Dmitri (talk) 18:37, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

As far as Netanyahu is concerned, since he would be an adult at this point, he may or may not survive this timeline and might enter politics but regardless his career as an MP would certainly not be the same as OTL. Hell, he might not even become Prime Minister. Ficboy (talk) 03:35, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Also, I am looking for a photo of her as if she were a politician in this timeline instead of a Democratic actress of our world. I've checked up the photo thread for 1983: Doomsday in Alternate History Discussion. At page 33, it has a few photos of her from OTL that can be used for her Doomsday character page. I can't upload a photo properly onto this website so I suggest False Dimitri that you should post one of the three photos on that thread from AHD, please. Ficboy (talk) 04:27, 4 April 2021 (UTC).

Oh man, this is still being discussed over there? Could you link to that? I'm not even sure which forum to look in. False Dmitri (talk) 11:33, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Here it is. https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/photos-from-1983-doomsday.431280/page-33 Ficboy (talk) 11:54, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Hello, what's happening with this article? It still has the Hamas Caliphate in several places. I'll try to contact you, but will archive the discussion if I don't hear back. False Dmitri (talk) 06:14, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Subalpine Federation

I have revived the page about the Subalpine Republic, it has been agreed also by Thewolvesden and by Benkarnell that this page does fit into the lore of 1983: Doomsday and so it can be added again as a proposal Col. James Hsu 23:01, 28th September 2020.

I'm moving this to the Proposals section, since that's what it is. And I. must point out that the conversation on Discord was between James Hsu and Thewolvesden - I wasn't actually involved and haven't had time to read this yet. Benkarnell (talk) 20:55, September 29, 2020 (UTC)

How can it even coexist with the Alpine Federation? And do you imagine all the wars and geopolitic that would have to be rewritten to make it work?

17:55, October 3, 2020 (UTC)SigmaHero045 (talk)

What do you mean by that ? And the Alpine Confederation is one of the most important allied of the federation, also not that much articles need to be rewritten in order to be fit into the lore. Only a couple since it change only Italy Mal3ssio97 03/10/2020

I think this could work, but it needs some significant changes. In general, it's too big, too prosperous, and emerges too early. This does create conflicts with canonical information about the region.

The central change that needs to happen is the description of how the federation came to be in 1991. A peaceful referendum of all the communities of the area. If this became canon, the whole history of the region would not make sense. If this alliance were capable of good civil administration over such a big area at this time, why wouldn't they simply unite with Genoa and Tuscany too? A state like that, with its affairs clearly in order, would have become the driver of Italian reunification. But we know that Italy is not united. That means that the pockets of control in the 80s and 90s were small, struggling, and most of all non-contiguous. So 1991 could be when some surviving villages and refugee camps in the area entered into some kind of alliance. Later they could establish a more regular government, using the 1848 republic as a model. But even then, I don't think it would be the sedate referendum portrayed here.

In terms of geopolitics, what has been known about this area until now was that it's part of the Alpine Confederation's sphere of influence. That should not change with this new discovery. All existing maps show that Alpine troops have a presence here; that means at least a base and a guarantee of free passage through the territory.

A few other issues that need to be addressed:

• The population: I doubt there is a single spot in Europe that has a higher population now than in 1983. It was not just the deaths from war. It was also the subsequent decades of worse diet, worse health care, and low birth rates. If you adjust the chronology and the size of the communities, you should get to a more realistic number.
• The economy: At some points it makes sense, for example noting that the economy relies on agriculture and receives significant foreign aid, and some recent foreign investment. But this picture is contradicted by the rest of the proposal. It presents a nation with an industrialized economy and a modern, first-world standard of living. Again, if a small federation in Italy were able to achieve this, the rest of Italy would make no sense. Industry can be going through some revival. Nutella can be happening. But not at the scale now implied. The modern capitalist economy has not reappeared in places that were heavily attacked like Europe - simply because there is not much capital anymore.
• Globalization: Many parts of the world are less isolated now than they were in 2010, but this is still not a world where companies in northern Italy are going to be opening up offices around the world. And I have not seen any suggestion at all that international commercial air traffic has come back. I would expect goods, recorded media, and possibly some investment from South America to have reached the Subalpine region by now; but the robust global economy implied here does not exist. And certainly there are no European companies with enough capital to start investing overseas. This also applies to the media companies.
• Energy: I'm uncertain on the possibility of a pre-war nuclear power plant surviving and functioning all the way down through the years. The best possible scenario, I think, would be that a competent crew working within a stable town could shut the plant down safely, avoid meltdown, and contain the radioactive materials. And I do not think that anyone in Italy would want to consider bringing it back online in later years. Most people would be understandably terrified of nuclear power.
• Foreign relations: I'm not sure that it has the resources to operate embassies in so many countries. A few overseas, sure, but not so many. And the Alpine Confederation no doubt is empowered to represent its interests in some other countries.

On the other hand, I really like the vision of the French newcomers changing the culture of the region. Most 1983dd pages portray refugees solely as a threat, and don't think about their influence on the host country in the long term. This actually inspires me to write about similar changes in some of my countries for this timeline.

I also think that the form of government is reasonable. Except that, again, it should be presented as emerging later. Maybe even post-2010. Most of the written history of Italy stops around 2010, so if we say that this Federation reached its complete form after that, it would avoid interfering with canon.

I also really like the flag, arms, map, photos, and political graphics. Visually it's a good addition to the timeline.

I'm willing to help proofread the English, but I'll wait until the content is revised.

- Benkarnell (talk) 16:00, October 11, 2020 (UTC)

Basic idea good, but the region is part of the territories controlled by the Alpines. Lordganon (talk) 02:54, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Alessio, I know you've been occupied with the review of Sicily - but is anything going to happen with this? Should we archive this discussion while you work out some of these regional details? It's been about eight months since anything was done with this page. False Dmitri (talk) 06:17, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Virginian-Delmarvan War

Here we go again. I've got the basic idea, but I need help in ending it. As we speak, the war would have been ongoing for three months now. A poll suggests that Virginia would win, but I'm not sure how to conclude this. Any help? Firestarthegodcat (talk) 03:53, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Welcome back. The main thing to come out of the previous discussion is that you'll need to spend some time developing the causes behind the war. The written history for Virginia only goes to 2010 or so, that of Delmarva is pretty sketchy from start to finish. That provides a lot of time in-universe to develop conflicts between the two, and decisions by individual leaders, that could lead to a conflict.

One part of the bigger context is that both states are pretty firmly committed to being independent states, or at least they were as of c. 2010, both of them being members of the League of Nations. Neither one seems likely to be pro-Union, and as members, each presumably recognizes the existence of the other. That's something to keep in mind.

I think that a war like this would be worth writing about. It could provide an interesting set of news items. But it will need some more deep development so that it doesn't come out of nowhere. False Dmitri (talk) 13:39, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

I noticed how Virginian President-Generals rely on loopholes in a vague constitution to stay in power and abuse people. The locals don't seem very smart. Their government also seems to have an obsession with being feared.(key point) Delmarva also hasn't had a notable leader since 1998, though that could change if Joe Biden gets canonized.

Back to the issue at hand, Virginia likes annexing neighboring states that are too weak to stand up to it, but Delmarva seems strong enough to protect itself, at least in the short term. Perhaps it might start with small border clashes, then grow in size, IDK. Firestarthegodcat (talk) 02:11, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

...I see a poll at 50/50.

Really, these are two states that are both internationally recognized, and have different goals in mind. Virginia's expansion goals, after the port, are more north(ish) than not. They may not be happy with the presence of Delmarva in the east, but there's also nothing they can really do about it, especially since the regions in question have been part of Delmarva through peaceful means for a long time. Remember, too, that the Delmarva map is from 2009.

Delmarva's overall neutral stance means that this would go over badly, too. Think Switzerland.

Virginia has a lot of commitments elsewhere, too. While the actions in Tennessee may mostly be by Kentucky, they are involved there too... in addition to all of their other frontiers. We also know they were starting in the direction of some sort of relations/alliance with Gettysburg.

The Virginian government has started to reform itself in recent times as of the last history in the Virginia article, and years have passed since then.

...Don't know where you got the annexing part from. They've gotten involved outside their borders at local request, or in retaliation for attacks on them, but not much more. Kentucky's more the one guilty of that, imo.

Remember, the two are more or less equal in strength.

Something else, though... last time it was discussed, Delmarva was a state we talked about ADC membership for. Even if it hasn't occurred by now (the thought was something like the successor to the USA, or something similar, if I recall) the mere consideration of it would have to come into play. If they are in the ADC, no way Virginia even thinks about this.

Now, I'm not saying this can't happen - with the right story, it could - I just don't see it working out. Ben's right about it making interesting news, but maybe somewhere else would work better?

Lordganon (talk) 03:00, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

History of ideas (1983: Doomsday)

I started this article recently. I'm trying to think about how Ideas would develop around the world post-1983: philosophy, the humanities, religion, science, political theory - intellectual life in general. It's marked as a Work in Progress rather than a Proposal because it's really unfinished. Right now it's mostly just my own musings and speculations, maybe not very well focused. But I think this is an article that would benefit from more than one person's point of view. So anyone is invited to add to it - especially the section "by Region", but really to any of it. False Dmitri (talk) 21:07, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Hey Dmitri! Sounds like a fascinating article! I had some ideas about adding to it. For instance, I remember writing a while back in the religion section of the Caribbean Federation article how Rastafarianism sees a boom in growth after Doomsday. The reasons being that 1970's-80's era Rastafarianism tended to be very critical of the outside world and believed that the modern world at that time was on a destructive course. I could imagine many people in the Caribbean, whether rightly or wrongly, seeing Doomsday as a vindication of that idea, and many of them embracing that belief system in the aftermath. I could also imagine many in-universe Christian denominations believing that the events of the Book of Revelation had finally occurred, and having various responses on what to do next. GryffindorKrypton (talk) 00:51, 31 March 2021 (UTC)GryffindorKrypton

Yes, please add to it! There's a separate section for the West Indies now, so you can add a paragraph or two about Rastafari. And for North America and Europe, the places probably most likely to see apocalyptic preaching, there's very little on religion so far. Actually in general there's not enough religion on that page, though there is also a separate Religion (1983: Doomsday). False Dmitri (talk) 17:25, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! I also added a bit about a resurgence of Deism in North America as well, and tied it into your idea about American survivors embraced a lot of older, pre-Cold War ideologies. Deism had been popular and influential among the American Founding Fathers, and I could imagine people embracing some of its viewpoints on the universe in the aftermath of Doomsday. GryffindorKrypton (talk) 01:49, 7 April 2021 (UTC)GryffindorKrypton

I expanded your religion sections a bit, mostly to connect them to the rest of the article. I hope that's OK. False Dmitri (talk) 22:29, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

No problem at all! I like the stuff you added about how literature was affected by these attitudes! I've also adjusted my New Jersey Skylands article to include several references to the population being one of the smaller ones in North America, as well as discussing political effects of this, such as adding the point that the Skylands was very loosely-connected for several years, as well as adding an idea that most local officials would serve for rather long periods of time due to their being a smaller pool of candidates to draw from. Let me know if you think it's ready for graduation or not! GryffindorKrypton (talk) 23:51, 21 April 2021 (UTC)GryffindorKrypton

The page is in a pretty stable state right now, so I think it can be discussed as a proposal so that we can approve or modify what's there. It's not totally finished - but really it will always be expandable. So I'd like to propose approving the description of general trends, as well as some regional content. I have moved this section from Culture/Society to Current Proposals. False Dmitri (talk) 14:24, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

I let this proposal sit out for a while because it's so complex. But it's many months later, many people have added to it, and I think it's ready to move on from proposal status. I put the following note on top of Nuclear power, and it may be appropriate for this one as well. Maybe it would work as a standard template?

Editors welcome

This 1983: Doomsday article is considered canon, but experts on particular regions are still welcome to make changes or additions as appropriate.

False Dmitri (talk) 16:28, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

William V

I've never been involved in making content for South Africa, beyond participating in some discussions. But I did create the page for Andrew Windsor, largely by compiling info from other articles. So I'd like to move his story up to the present, and I'd like that story to kill him off.

Yes, real-life events have absolutely motivated this. Scrolling through the page Monarchies in the Commonwealth and seeing his rapey grin leering out again and again is jarring. In my opinion it's much better for the timeline and the wiki as a whole to sideline and replace him now, knowing what we know about the kind of man he is. However, I also am interested in exploring how this explicitly imperialist realm-in-exile adjusts to its African context, as well as the generational gap between the British exiles and their children - and the character of William can help us do that.

I'm using this page to also tell the history of Andrew's marriage, which I've been writing in my head for a while now. Earlier, his article still had him marrying Sarah and having the same daughters as OTL, which was out of the question. Instead I found a woman from an aristocratic family who was a likely survivor, and she fits the bill. Of course nobody who marries Andrew would be able to look forward to a happy marriage, but in this case duty to the realm outweighed personal happiness.

In addition I have tried to write this proposal in a way that leaves room for the rest of New Britain's history to develop in almost any direction, not to mention the other countries that had acknowledged Andrew. Months ago Murph adopted NB in the proper way and wrote quite a lot of new content: this section here. But despite being done properly, I don't know that anyone has checked that history yet, and Murph has communicated that he is no longer interested in contributing. Maybe I should create a template saying "This section is still a proposal" and put it there. My point is that the wider history is still uncertain, but I tried to keep these details vague so that there's plenty of room to write and/or change it. This of course applies even more to the recent history in Britain itself, which has multiple detailed proposals but no clear consensus yet. I think that having NB ruled by an African-born king with a Zulu wife can add an interesting layer to those events, however they end up.

This explanation has gotten almost as long as the article itself, sorry for that. It's a complicated topic. False Dmitri (talk) 15:17, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

new chicago

proposal for new a nation in and around the area of what was chicago. groups of survivors in various communities in the area began forming in mid to late 1984 and a number of city states such as the state of rockford and greater naperville along with the original city state of new chicago form in mid 1985. sentiment from a number of radicals calling for one unified state would be on the rise by december of 1985 but would be met by heavy resistance at first. by spring of 1986 the unification movement would have one sole figure head in Damien White. Damien was just 21 years old when doomsday hit in 1983, he grew up in southern chicago. Damien was the son of a black mother and white father, which was illegal at the time of his birth, as this was the case his parents put him up for adoption shortly after he was born and he was eventually adopted into a black family. Damien learned that he was adopted and biracial by the time he was twelve. Damiens biracial background made him a popular choice for pro unity leadership. Damien was particualrly renowned for how firey and radical he was, not just in his calling for the chicago region to unity but also for his emphasis on being ahead of the game in rebuilding post doomsday and wanting to make the area a leader and force in the rebulding of america. by december of 1986 talks began for what would officialy become the peoples republic of new chicago on march 11th 1987 with damien white as president.

i am new as a contributer but i have followed 1983 for some time. i finally decided to come out with a story of my own and am curious to hear thoughts on this, i know it is just a beginning and needs a lot of work but i thought this would be a good start

(Posted by $tormerator00 (talk)

Chicago and it’s metropolitan area were struck by multiple air and ground burst nuclear warheads. Radiation levels in and around the city are high enough that Kentucky and Superior are just beginning to investigate the area in the last 5 years or so. I don’t think any survivor state is realistic within dozens of miles of the former city.

Daeseunglim (talk) 15:55, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Second Anglo-Xhosa War

Murph adopted New Britain several months ago and wrote the section History of New Britain (1983: Doomsday)#Conflict with KwaXhosa. The changes are large enough that I feel they ought to be discussed here, so I've labelled the section as a proposal for now. False Dmitri (talk) 16:55, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Confederation of Pennsylvanian States

Proposal for a supranational economic and military alliance between Lehigh, Reading, and Susquehanna. I think given the proximity of the nations and the fact that the raiders in the region have largely been expelled or arrested, it is reasonable that they would form some sort of economic union, especially given their relative isolation, this would help the nations try to keep their economies functioning and give them more clout in the United Communities. There is the possibility for State College, North Pennsylvania, and Gettysburg joining, but at the moment, based on how they are written, I don't think any of these nations would be interested.

It would function very similar to OTL European Union, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Daeseunglim (talk) 00:21, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Eastern Pennsylvania Baseball League

Proposal for a baseball league between Lehigh, Reading, and Susquehanna. Due to proximity, if an economic union does occur, I think this is plausible that it would be an extension from this.

Daeseunglim (talk) 00:21, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

State College and Gettysburg

With North Pennsylvania undergoing major revisions, I would like permission to jointly adopt both State College and Gettysburg with support from Renaultlouis. I will not change the basic history, but both nations are not well fleshed out and seem to have been created during the very early stages of this collaboration.

I would like to work with Renaultlouis especially on State College, given discussions I had with Lordganon, Arstar, and Godfrey Raphael on the future of Pennsylvania.

Daeseunglim (talk) 13:25, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

CURRENT REVIEWS

Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3

We place content under Review if someone thinks it contradicts canon or is so improbable that it's damaging to the timeline. To begin a Review, mark the relevant article(s) with the {{ddreview}} template and give your reasons why on the article's talk page and here. Just as with proposals, group consensus will decide if the article should be kept, modified, or marked obsolete.

Prussia

I asked User:Oerwinde if I could adopt the Prussia page little over a week ago, and I've yet to receive a response. Unlike Mal3ssio's Sicily article, I don't intend to rewrite the entire page from scratch, I just wish to add more nuance to Prussia's history, culture and political scene - though I will alter some events that have dubious canon (at least when compared to the main TL), mostly the nuclear strikes in the northern half of the DDR and how the Hohenzollerns manage to get into power.

Lemme know if I can get the go-ahead to re-write or not.

Cheers.

DeviouslyDeviant (talk) 11:44, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

No, there is no way the Hohenzollerns can get back into power, hello? It was East Germany here, think of the mentality towards monarchy in such place, number one. Number two, who could survive DD AND inspire leadership across the country? Sorry, it just doesn't work, germans are tired of monarchy at this point. Remember, this timeline must be realistic.

Also you should detail more about your projects, I just can't get a good grasp of what you want to change and especially WHY you want to change those parts.

SigmaHero045 (talk) 02:01, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Well Prussia is an old established part of the timeline, and changing that would be a lot of work and be a very big project. Benkarnell (talk) 00:05, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Sigma, you miss entirely that presence of West Berlin, and that this state is primarily based from there. Not the east.

The royals are turned to, eventually, following a large amount of aid and goodwill on their part, as more or less a compromise for a government between all parties (West Berlin, East Berlin, the NATO garrison)

The Soviet forces, overall, mostly end up toast with the hits on their headquarters outside the city.

Really, the only issue with the monarchy is that they have the wrong descendant for the throne, as noted on the talk page.

Tired of monarchy.... even in Germany today, a large number poll in favor of the crown.

DD, tell more of your plans.

Lordganon (talk) 03:43, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Are you sure Lordganon ? https://www.dw.com/en/majority-of-germans-do-not-want-their-monarchy-back/a-6265897 Mal3ssio97 Mal3ssio97 12:24, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

That poll has 33%, or a third, in favor, which is in line with a "large number." Not that I'm going to buy the poll, mind - not only does it not mention where, how, or when it was polled, and it from more than a decade ago, but....

One of the key ways to identify information that is made up, or embellished, or the like, is to look at the number. Quoted rough figures, are, of course, something to be leery about. But so are things like even thirds, and figures that end in 0 or 5. Not saying that this is the case here, but it does not help it.

Beyond that, the opposed person they discuss still knows that the defense minister of the time, for example, is of the nobility. The minister in question doesn't seem like a braggart, so its interesting that she knows that. It also notes that she is from Berlin.... which has its own questions. As noted, Berlin was in two halves, and following 1989, and the collapse of industry in the east, the city had movement from the rest of the former East to it.

More interesting is the level of interest the at the time soon to be royal wedding. They're more aware of the British royals than their own, for a variety of reasons.

More importantly, though, that is from 2011ish. 25 years is a long time.

Lordganon (talk) 12:46, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I spoken with some germans yesterday and some even members of this wiki, they said that Germans as well us Italians, French and other nations that are a republic for more then 50 years have said to me that Germans don't miss the monarchy and only neo nazi or kaiserboo have this fetish towards the monarchy, so yeah i agree with Sigma that if the original writers wanted Prussia so much then a "Prussian State" or a "Prussian Republic" would had work so much better in my opinion, but here we are.

Thou i still think that if you want a monarchy then it has to be democratic as possible, on the level of the United Kingdom, no way semi authoritarian monarchies are gonna work in 21th century Europe were all of the monarchies are constitutional and parliamentaries one. Alex - Mal3ssio97 13:06, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Calling it a "fetish" is rather insulting, fyi.

Much as I think the poll is bogus (as noted why, plus I suspect, and exit polling tends to support this in other fields, that "social pressure" and other factors mean the number is actually higher, especially if you use specifics) you quoted it so we'll use it. A third of Germans are in favor, according to it. At most, and that is in the last election, your "neo-nazis" (who don't support a crown, fyi), just a bit over 10% of the vote. That's the most they've gotten in decades, since long before DD. Now, I'm aware that a certain portion of the "tent" conservative parties are going to agree with them on some level, but not a majority or even a plurality of their members will be. So your statement isn't true.

That current upswing is more about the EU than anything, as a note. You see a similar increase on the more communist side of things.

You see about the same patterns in place in the other western republics. There is a reason why, in France for example, they legally care about who the claimants are, and even today, two of the three general political patterns there are "Bonapartism" and "Bourbonism," even if the overall monarchial ties are shorted out right now. As an example, Du Gualle is someone from the more Bonaparte school, with regards to policies and attitudes.

But that is today - we're talking about 1983-1990. Different picture. You know your older relatives, the ones that want a return to the "good old days"? Ignoring a lot of the more bigoted parts (not saying there is with yours, but you get the idea) it is about the world as they knew it when they were young, and/or the stories they were told growing up. A lot of the politicians, and the like, of the era are those who were born in the WWII era, or just before. Meaning that their parents were that generation for WWI. So that "drawback" to the past here would have been for those glory days, in their minds. Ahh, Nostalgia.

Now, republicanism in Germany has never been a strong thing by itself. Kind of a this is what works thing, if that makes sense. There's a reason why there was at least two (Hanover and Bavaria) moves for crowns/independence after WWII, which failed largely due to US pressures. And the Easterners have been under dictators since the 1930s by this point - they'll want a strong leadership of some sort, which the westerners won't go for on near the same level. About the only in between there is a crown, so... Add to that the "foreign" garrisons of West Berlin.... Presto! If nothing else, call it the king an independent arbiter.

Prussia is mostly a constitutional state, but, as noted, you've got to have a stronger monarchy than others to satisfy things, especially given the trying times of DD.

Western Monarchies, btw, have a lot more power than you think. It's just that by practice and culture, they don't do it.

Lordganon (talk) 14:29, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Eh, it's more than fair to call the giant list of restored monarchies in this TL a "fetish". I'm guilty of it too and regret doing it for Hawaii (quite possibly the earliest example of the trope in this timeline). Any individual case might be justified, but it's happened in well over a dozen countries. I suspect this has much to do with the typical alternate history enthusiast's interest in dynasties and genealogy, very little to do with a real assessment of what people in the different communities would look for if society ever collapsed. And Prussia's one of the sillier ones, in my opinion. Like Alex says, it's a pretty obvious case of Kaiserreich fanboyism with a story written around it.

Now it happens that said story has developed into something that's not that bad. It's been through an extensive Review process and fitted pretty well into the overall setting, with enough there to justify some of the more outlandish turns of events. I wouldn't support a total rewrite of the canon unless there was a very strong desire to do it by everyone involved. (And honestly I'd be willing to do the same for Hawaii, I'm sort of annoyed to be part of the problem like that.) False Dmitri (talk) 02:12, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

<Freely admits to being guilty of that "trope" by virtue of being a monarchist>

Not a "fetish." that's insulting. There's a lot of better terms for the idea you mean.

Funny enough, with the loss of the capital/Oahu and the larger bases, the "haole" population of Hawaii would have taken as massive hit. Add that the "locals" are far more inclined to be in favor of independence... bet that one makes sense more than almost anywhere else globally, lol.

Lordganon (talk) 19:07, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

That's what I had thought too, but some reading since then shows that Maui and the Big Island's ethnic demographics aren't all that different from the state as a whole. But again my point is that any one restoration might be understandable. It becomes almost humorously absurd when the same thing happens absolutely everywhere. I count twelve thirteen states in Europe alone that are governed by royals today that were not in 1982. Add four or five more in Central Asia. Individually any might have a reason. In the aggregate it's ridiculous. Like everyone looked out the window and said, "On my! Nuclear war! We'd better call up the nearest heir to a deposed dynasty." I am strongly in favor of reducing this crowd of restaurados and I'm more than willing to start with the page that I created. Prussia too - if there's a strong community will to do it, and a credible and well-written alternative. False Dmitri (talk) 18:03, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

<waggles hands> Depends on how you count the "ethnicity" and who is doing the counting - varies from a hundred thousand "pure" natives, to more than 500k that can claim descent (and often do) in the islands alone. One of those things, you know? As for the idea... restorations, maybe, but we don't see enough states that have people declare themselves such and control areas, so it probably somewhat evens out. Lordganon (talk) 12:35, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

"DD, tell more of your plans."

Apologies for not seeing all this until April, real life stuff and procrastination got in the way. What I want to add to the Prussia page is some extra history and nuance to waht I see as a rather contrived even:, mostly on how the monarchy came to be, Prussia's history post-2011, some additions to its culture, economy, and political structure.

I wrote a pretty good summmation of what I want on the AH Wikia Discord, so I'll just repost it here.

Obligatory wall of text warning. Also, some stuff is from my personal headcanon, so disregard anything about surviving cities and the like. About 90% of it is what I actually want.

The former DDR is dominated by Prussia, which got off lucky thanks to the Soviet first strike crippling much of NATO's short-range ability to respond, sparing a handful of cities in the north (most major Berzik capitals north of the Elbe river, the south got screwed over thanks to population density and its industrial areas). Honecker and much of the higher-level officials were found dead from suicide, imprisoned or were outright lynched in some cases. As for the NATO and WP forces stationed in the city, cooler heads prevailed as they set about stabilising Berlin, bringing both sides of the capital and some of the surrounding cities (Postdam, Bernau) into a loose military government. Sounds contrived, I know, but I had to justify why the DDR and Soviet troops just didn't massacre their NATO counterparts.

Much of the northern DDR is reclaimed in the ensuing months and years, clearing out much of the de-facto Stasi and Volksarmee warlords that controlled the surviving northern towns and cities. After almost a decade (1991-92-ish), the Interim Administration for a United Germany is replaced with a revived Prussian state (mostly after they find out that much of the old East and West is unsalvageable for the time being), led by a surviving Hohenzollern (it can be Christian-Sigismund, but I like to think that Louis Ferdinand was in Berlin at the time of DD). Much of the already established lore for Prussia (war with Poland, the Treaty of Wolfsburg) takes place, but I felt like the backstory needed some polishing and nuance.

Modern Prussia is stuck somewhere between a semi-absolute monarchy (effectively a replacement for the General Secretary - though the King rarely exercises his power), a military dictatorship (the military largely stays out of politics as well) and a mildly corrupt - if functioning - democracy (the 'Socialist Royalists' are a pretty weird idea, if I'm honest. If anything, a market-friendly CDU-type would be in charge, thanks to the DDR's high degree of social conservatism and Prussia's need to distance itself from any form of socialism). Think Thailand, mixed with the Weimar Republic and the German Empire under Frederich III.

The Prussians idolize many of the anti-fascist and communist resistance members (the White Rose movement, July 20 Plotters, the Freikorps and the hundreds of dissidents who were targeted by the Stasi by the DDR) from German history, while also standing in firm opposition to the 'Americanised' democracy of the old West, claiming to be the heirs to the Weimar Republic, the Frankfurt Parliament and the Kaiserreich. Any fascist/natsoc and communist parties are banned, while those that associate with the movements are put under a great amount of social pressure and surveillance (ironic, I know, but the Prussians had to work with what they had...).

Regular street battles between the police, neo-Nazis, a revived Antifaschistische Aktion/Red Army Faction/Kampfgruppen LARPers are a regular feature in Berlin. Prussia is one of Europe's major industrial powers, having recovered what they could from the nuked cities (Halle Neustadt has taken over much of the old nuked, neighbouring city) built much of their heavy industry from scratch and an unlikely source of consumer electronics, thanks to the survival of factories in Strassfurt, Berlin and Teltow. Its relations with the southern states of Saxony and Weimar are cordial, thanks to the surviving universities in the latter and surviving industry (even if Karl Marx Stadt is still outwardly socialist - think of Saxony as the Belarus to Prussia's Russia) in the former.

I'm running with the theory that most regimes tend to use the state systems that came before them. Like how Russia merely replaced the Tsar with an all powerful General-Secretary, only to be replaced with an oligarch in turn. So Prussia would be a flawed democracy at best. Years of martial law and military rule would only make restoring a liberal democracy harder. Because the public remember the atrocities committed by the Nazis and East German regime, the government doesn't overextend itself that often.

West Berlin gets this reputation of being a progressive mecca and a thorn in the side of the mostly-conservative establishment. Conscription's still on the books, though there is an option for civil service. Said civil service no longer comes with the government-backed discrimination that it did in the East, but the stigma might still be there on a social level.

TL;DR the basic theme I want to have for the Prussia page is "the more things change, the more they stay the same".

I also threw together a strike map some months back, which may help with figuring out what cities survive in the DDR and what doesn't. I used both the canon Prussia article with whatever other Cold War-era resources I could find.

DeviouslyDeviant (talk) 02:00, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Considering how long it takes me to research and reply to things and be relatively calm about it, can't judge you.

DD, that is more or less the idea of a review - adding to an article to make it better/more plausible, or removing parts that aren't, changing as little as possible. Your goal is sound.

I would say that the GDR leadership mostly ends up dead in riots, by Soviet forces, etc. Not so much suicide or imprisoned. Maybe have some stuck in their bunkers for a few months, might be funny.

Neubrandenburg would likely be ok, I think, though it looks like we should add Schwerin and Cottbus to the strikes. Doesn't really change much.

Louis Ferdinand was probably in Bremen at DD, where his grandson was attending school.

Truthfully, we can't place any of the family for sure in Berlin, though it is likely that one was.

Can't see the two sides getting together, at least right away. WB is designed, somewhat, by 1983 to last in a siege - and they are walled in, so relatively secure with little reason to come out. They'll get together eventually, mind.

About right on the government, I think, though the Royal Socialist party is more possible than you think. Same logic as the socialist parties in Scandinavia. See no reason for them to want anything to do with the old Weimar Republic, mind.

No way there is battles in the street. Anyone trying that would get shut down right away by soldiers.

About right on the liberal democracy and West Berlin.

Have a look at the map on the Germany article for strikes, etc.

Lordganon (talk) 12:19, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Just about anywhere that a base is hit, the city it is beside/in/against is gone. I would say combine the two strike lists, and remove the surviving city part.

Stendal would explain some things - that area is where we really lack anything organized near the border, compared to other parts. A near-intact division would explain that well.

Poznan isn't the only major city to survive in Poland.

I would adjust the part about Christian-Sigismund changed to having him survive in West Berlin, and rest assumed dead in the West. There's no record of them being imprisoned anywhere.

Radio transmissions should be made "directed" as well, at least in the early years.

Probably should adjust a lot of the first contact things, too.

Lordganon (talk) 11:56, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

A lot of East German military bases aren't like American ones, with them being so dangerously close to cities. I 'did the math' for all these bases and cities in nukemap, assuming that the former were hit one or two low-yield nukes (anything below between a 100-200 kt, as is seemingly standard for both NATO/WP military bases). The city of Cottbus is arguably the safest bet, as the airbase of the same name lies some distance (approx. 25 km - roughly the same distance between Berlin and Strausberg) away from the city proper. The other cities would either be outright destroyed (Strausberg) or would suffer minor-to-substantial (but not enough to wipe out the city) damage from shockwaves and fires (Zossen).

If it weren't for Wunsdorf (erroneously labelled as Zossen, which is just the nearby town) getting nuked, I planned to have it become some sort of 'Little Moscow', a hub for Prussia's substantial Russian-speaking community outside of Stendal or Berlin.

I'm yet to touch the history section, as that'll require some time to plan. I'll integrate the surviving cities/bases things into whatever section might deserve a mention of them (i.e. Halle-Neustad for its industry and clean-up of the old city, Stendal being a major army base, Wolgast for its shipyards).

First contact will be cleaned out, and will probably be done some years before the original article. Contact with North Germany and the other ex-DDR statelets (Thuringia, Saxony) will probably happen in the late 1980s, especially for the latter two.

Also, while I'm here, I checked the talk page for Weimar/Thuringia and the author said that he intended to have Weimar and Berlin unify under the Prussian banner at some point in the 'near future'. Can I get the go-ahead on that? Thuringia has major universities, some leftover tech hubs (much of the DDR's non-heavy industry - namely chemicals, electronics, vehicle production - were very much 'in the sticks' and wouldn't get hit at all. Nuking a village that just so happens to contain a TV factory is a bit of a waste). Saxony probably wouldn't want to unify due to it being effectively a hold-out of the old DDR.

Once I've sorted out RL stuff, I'll get to working on the rest of the page ASAP.

Cheers.

DeviouslyDeviant (talk) 13:18, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Salento LoN Protectorate

Hi guys, since i intend to review the article of Sicily, me and othe others had agree that the Lecce mandate was too much bias towards the Italians, so i rewrite it in my sandbox. Basically here after the initial 5 - 6 years of Greek administration both the LoN and the ADC agreed that the mandate should be over by now and in the same year Greece is forced to create a joint administration with Sicily, while at the same time removing Greek troops, LoN peacekeepers would take their place. I expanded the history of the mandate, his administration, defence and others.

Salento

Lecce Mal3ssio97 23:12, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Scotland

No idea where to begin. The whole premise is pretty ridiculous. No sense of history or the political conditions were taken into account. Neither was the fact that a blast at the Leith Docks (which likely would hit off the coast and not on top of it) would also at a maximum lead to 100,000 casualties and 10,000 deaths and not lead to any more damage to the central govt buildings than broken windows and potential third degree burns for those unfortunate enough to be outside at the point (IF it hits Leith itself). It also fails to take into account the lack of a nuke to Glencorse Barracks or the fact that a 15kt bomb would struggle to destroy the various dockyards hit, let alone cause less than light damage to the surrounding towns. The only plausible thing here would be that the airbases would all be destroyed... but not all the aircraft.

Add to the fact that the HMS Dalriada, the naval reserve in Glasgow, and HMS Scotia both survive and Scotland descending into... whatever it is that has been written is frankly implausible.

The lack of any mention of the cities of Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee or Perth compounds this problem, with Aberdeen very easily able to take the lead in matters to the north, and an easy source of fuel for the struggling nation in the early days post-DD. Thankfully, after speaking with Ben, I am committed to preserving as much of the shape of Britain - so the Celtic Alliance will still exist, but frankly this would be the start of a major overhaul of the British Isles to add some realism to everything. Impishly yours, Imp ^{(Say Hi?!)} 20:30, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

I still feel that part of the solution, if Scotland seems to have fared too badly given the list of strikes, is to simply add more strikes. 15kt won't do the job? Make it bigger. Add a few more cities, if they're justifiable. That list of targets is always being expanded as we add more fiery deaths to our dystopian hellscape.

That said, I can definitely get behind making changes to correct the often-haphazard way that the Britain content was put together. You might want to explore the contributions of Todetode. They had ideas similar to yours. Last year they submitted a huge amount of updated content, but when people didn't read it immediately they got angry, withdrew their proposals, and essentially vandalized all of their own work. But some of their ideas are still lying around, potentially useful.

You also ought to communicate these ideas with SigmaHero045, who is planning to write a lot of recent history for Britain, and whose plans would definitely be affected by any change to the lore.

Good luck with this. I probably won't be able to help much, it's really outside my areas of expertise (as Todetode learned to their frustration). False Dmitri (talk) 20:40, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Thing is the current list of strikes matches up pretty well with the expected nuclear strikes that were both anticipated by Britain and were planned for by the Soviets. The Soviets had no plans to nuke any of the cities above the central belt of Scotland, so the current list of strikes does make sense. Adding more strikes would have the same effect of having no strikes in the sense that it would make it harder for the region to become part of the Celtic Alliance. With decent changes, and changing the reasoning behind the origins of the Celtic Alliance, we can still have some sort of alignment with what has currently been written. But again, Ireland does need to be looked at as Northern Ireland was dealt with pretty badly and that region would be a definite hotspot for chaos and ugliness. However, if spun right, it could be the impetus for closer relations between Ireland and Scotland and lead to the creation of the Celtic Alliance. And not to fear, adding chaos in Ireland will add with the whole dystopian hellscape vibe.

I'll have a look at Todetode's ideas, and have already messaged SigmaHero, hopefully he gets in touch with me and shares his thoughts and ideas on the situation. Thank you for the good wishes, there is going to be a lot of ground to cover. Impishly yours, Imp ^{(Say Hi?!)} 23:02, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Have a look at TheSmartPenguin23 (edits from 2019 in the history) for ideas too.

I have to say, though - Aberdeen and Dundee aren't listed on the CA page as cities, and I think they'd be targets. The oil industry at Aberdeen was up and running by DD, and the shipbuilders in Dundee aren't insignificant - they made Carrier sized ships at one point, and frigates more recently (compared to 1983), and could be used to repair a navy comparatively easily if left alone.

As Ben said, the bombs aren't that strong - make them bigger and you solve most of the problem - adjust Glasgow/Edinburgh as needed. For that matter, the UK is probably out of range of tactical warheads anyway, so it would be needed anyways.

With most of the NI leadership on both sides and their more radical supporters wiped out (and, given fallout from Belfast and the wind patterns, probably a lot more Protestant dead) I suspect you'd have less trouble there than you think there would be.

More things to remark on, but that can wait until things are fleshed out more, though I will say - the capital of Northumbria is at Alnwick because that is where the county seat of Northumberland is, where its Dukes live, and where they'd base themselves out of.

Lordganon (talk) 06:46, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Some good points raised there LG. Also good to see you back. So I did actually think about Aberdeen and Dundee not being targeted and looked up information on that front. Both Soviet and British planning avoided the cities being nuked, with Soviet planning actually highlighting the dock capability you mentioned as this would be used for a potential landing site for Soviet troops (a depressing thought, personally). As the nukes were launched most likely at targets pre-planned it would make sense for the cities of the north to avoid nuclear bombs. Along with this, I think the bombs that hit Edinburgh and Glasgow would be realistic, and what instead is probably a better move is that the 200kt nuke on Glasgow hits more to the west where major RN installations are located which would make sense as they would knock out naval capability.

I also understand that these docks in Aberdeen could be used for repairs, but realistically Scotland would not much be able to pull off anything of the sort as their main issue just becomes survival and the like. Belfast also only has the one nuke hitting it, so will need to look into the positioning of the military bases which would likely be priority number one. Derry was also a major hub for the British while the troubles were going on and thus they would likely remain alive. Probably add to the matter that Belfast would probably still have survivors and you have a decent recipe for utter chaos. Food shortages and problems will likely only add to flare up tensions and would likely radicalise a good chunk of the population and give us further chaos and a chance for organisations such as the UVF to capitalise upon.

Ah, now Alnwick makes sense, I was left pretty confused by it tbh. Impishly yours, Imp ^{(Say Hi?!)} 20:58, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

OK, Southern Scotland has been through hell, but 23,000 is way to low because:

1. None of the wars ended it it being geocoded.
2. Unscathed Borders Region had a population of about 95,000 (55,000 by 2015 in Doomsday 1983?). The remnants of Lothian would OTL number 200,000ish (125,000 by 2015 in Doomsday 1983?). Unscathed Dumfries and Galloway had a population of about 105,000 (66,000 by 2015 in Doomsday 1983?). The remnants of Central Region would OTL number about 100,000 (65,000 by 2015 in Doomsday 1983?).
3. Borders Region has good farmland in it's valleys.
4. Lothian got more lightly hit than it should have been.
5. Central Region (Less Falkirk) and Dumfries & Galloway were lightly populated places to. A hit on the port of Grangemouth (plus any military bases, if any) would be all that would be hit. There would be radiation blowing in from elsewhere.

Politics would run as follows:

1. Conservative zones- Dumfries and Galloway, Borders Region, Mid Lothian, East Lothian, Edinburgh and Steiring.
2. Labour zones- West Lothian, Edinburgh, Clackmannan and Falkirik
3. Liberal\SDP zones- Edinburgh and all of Borders Region
4. SNP zones- West Lothian, Galloway and Steiring
5. Indpendent\residents associations- All of Dumfries and Galloway, Stirling, East Lothian and all of Borders Region

~ Didcot1a (talk) ~ (talk) 23:36, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you are exactly talking about but I'll try to answer anyway. First of all I am not quite sure what or why you are referencing the numbers for but long story short Soviet planning indicated Scotland as a potential target for invasion and, after talking to Kuupik on the matter, the current hits of canon on most military bases along with the two city nukes make sense in that regard as it would make any potential future invasion all that much easier, allowing them to use Scotland as a base to control the UK - as well as having non-irradiated lands to base this invasion/subjugation from.

If those numbers reference current canon, then all I can say is all that is subject to change.

As for politics, there will likely be no comparison with OTL apart from broad strokes. The SNP are also likely finished as a party - their cause doesn't matter anymore. There will also be a very large number of refugees from the south which will further complicate the political makeup of the nation. Impishly yours, Imp ^{(Say Hi?!)} 23:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Egypt

In a large-scale follow up to the review of Greece, I'm putting forward a plan for Egypt and Kemet. I think it's fair to say that I came up with most of the broad outlines; Imperium Guy did most of the actual research and will write most of the details; ForsakenPear did even more fine-grained research and will contribute even more fine-grained details; and Mal3ssio97 produced multiple versions of the maps. For this Gothic cathedral of a proposal, it's Mal's blueprint, my block of stone, Imp's gargoyle, and FP's grotesquely carved facial features.

As ever, the goal is to keep as much the same as possible, while correcting things that were truly implausible. In Egypt's case, the biggest problems were the giant Greek colony, an overly-ambitious irrigation project, and more than a hint of the anti-Muslim bias that affects many of the earlier pages of the timeline. The following chart shows the plans for what to keep and what to change.

There's still...	... but now...
a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in 1984	there will more exploration around the motives for their actions, so they aren't just cartoon villains.
an Israeli attack against Cairo in 1987	the prelude to war, with lots of climate and agricultural factors, will be explained in the complexity that such an event deserves.
Greek support for survivors near the coast	they're supporting the remnants of Egypt's navy, the only national institution to survive, rather than Copts who congregate in the Delta. For its efforts, Greece will reap close ties to Egypt and influence over its development, rather than an enormous colony.
a Coptic-dominated state called Kemet that forms in the aftermath	it'll be in the south, not the north, where the Copts actually are concentrated. (Putting the Coptic state in the Delta seems to have mostly been a plot device made to facilitate a Greek takeover.) And there's going to be a more complete explanation as to why the Copts gather, why they take the step of forming a state, and how they maintain their independence from Egypt.
Greek presence in a zone in Suez supervised by the League of Nations	it's an international zone rather than a Greek colony. Greek forces cooperate with contingents from Egypt, Kemet, Israel, and the Gulf.
a large hydrology and irrigation project in the Western Desert	an enormous amount of geological and climatological research has produced a plan for a hopefully more realistic project. It will be a series of canals that feed oases, but rather than an entire second Eonile, the water not absorbed or evaporated will return to the Nile along a more feasible course, which is not yet complete. Also, it began under the Muslim Brotherhood and today is a joint project of the Arab Republic and Kemet.
peaceful coexistence between the Arab Republic and Kemet, and between Egypt and Israel	it will be a peace based on mutual interests, strategic cooperation, and realpolitik, rather than one enforced by Greek colonizers.

- False Dmitri (talk) 00:26, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh and PS, having the Prince of the Muhammad Ali dynasty fly over from Monaco to universal acclaim will also be removed. I missed that detail when I first wrote up this chart. Enough is enough. False Dmitri (talk) 04:10, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Sicily

Hello to everyone, i'm Alessio, caretaker of the article about Sicily, i will expain down here in a handy and simple, table with a comparison of both versions.

Argument	Old version	New version
Formation of the republic	Establishment of the state with a possible coup d'etat, not specified in the old article.	Creation of an agreement between the Clans of Palermo, the Stidda (Clans of Eastern Sicily, independent from Cosa Nostra) and the regional government, alongside military officers present in the island.
Causes of the formation	Decision of Cosa Nostra to control Sicily	Managing the post-apocalyptic scenario and minimize any damage done by it, as well avoid any possible famine or rioting thanks to the influence of the Mafia, in return, the clans asked the drop of any former criminal charge against them and their associates and the capture of Totò Riina and his Corleonesi.
What happen to the Mafia?	Consolidation of their power and via Fascist actions.	With the drop of any charges against them, many will enter into politics, or turn their old illegal activities (Depending on what) into legal companies or corporations that are approved by the state, generating a small amount of economical revival alongside.
Form of government	A fascist dictatorship run by the Mafia	The government here will hold its first elections in 1986, after the creation of a new constitution, inspired from that of the old Italian Republic, the new form of the state will be a semi-presidential republic, deemed necessary because the parliamentary system is seen as too much expensive and too much consuming time.
Between 1984 and 1988	Period of relative peace, economical stability and martial law.	The first decade after the war would see near to zero or zero economical growth or even stability, the main goal of the regional government is to survive and avoid any starvation or the possibility of revolts or riots, by 1985, Sicily had restored their electrical generating capabilities and continued to stabilise further. Food rationing, however, was still in place and people were advised to try to start producing food for themselves, this until 1998. In this, the mafia would come in handy by giving the government the resources necessary for a successful farming industry such as: fertilizers, seeds, terrains and other resources needed for the region to survive better than other nations. The confiscation of Corleonesi properties also helped, providing housing for refugees to the island.
Reunification of the peninsula	The military operations, done with the help of neo-fascist militias will be done in just over a year, from March of 1987 to December of 1988.	The government in 1986 would hold various meetings with the Cheif of Staff (Army, Navy, Air Force and US forces) about a possible invasion of the peninsula for the reclamation of the land for the Italian provisional government, from 1987 to 1988 the armed forces would conduct exercises and operations simulating land invasions and long marches across dangerous terrains. The military operations would start February-March of 1988 and ending in May of 1990 with the capture of the Peninsula up until the ex-regions of Marche and Umbria and up until the Arno river. Seeing the limited resources that the government would have, and acquire during the reconquest the invasion by sea of Genoa and Venice (is literally a fortress) would be scrapped in favour of land operations that would have passed via Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany by the year 1992 or after it.
Afterwards	Cold peace between themselves and his neighbours, with economical developments and industrializations.	On the 17th of March of 1991 the government would end to saw itself as the provisional government of the Italian Republic and declare the reformation of the Italian Republic, and declaring the current government the 46th national government; succeeding the 45th government of Bettino Craxi and entering the 10th Legislature of the Italian Republic. With the stability in the reconquered areas of the peninsula, the government would start a process of economical reintegration and of investments in the poorest areas of the republic, also here, seeing how bad did the specified interventions of the pre-war government in motivating the local economy with industries (they were called "Oasis in a desert" for a reason), the government here instead would give funds to local authorities and local companies for let them choose what to invest and in what sectors. And also it will be in this period that limited trade relations with surviving governments and post-apocalyptic entities would commence, the most profitable trade partners for Italy during the 90s would be the Alpine Confederation, the ex-Yugoslavian states, the Hellenic Republic, the countries of North Africa, Israel and Turkey.
Foreign relations	Not recognized by the international community until 2010	Italy would maintain radio signals with Malta, Tunisia, Libya and other Italian survivor states like Sardinia, after the reunification Italy would conduct two individuals operations in the Mediterranean Sea in 1991 for report how badly were affected the countries in Southern Europe and North Africa, as well as Asia. Always in 1991 relations will be reestablished between Australia and Portugal during the expedition of the USS Benjamin Franklin and the submarine Albacora, both crews would stay in Palermo for a week until returning to their voyage, providing the Italian government with useful information about the status of the world and what did it happen in other nations, the Italian Navy will send two corvettes with the two submarines up until the Suez Canal, where the Albacora and the USS B. Franklin would split up. After 2002 the relationship with Europe would change drastically, especially with the countries that are in the Mediterranean area, this didn't mean that Italy will be isolated from everyone like it is North Korea today, simply it will still maintain good relationships with other countries like Argentina, Australia, Mexico, Canada, USSR, Turkey, Israel, Scotland, Denmark, Colombia, Japan and so on.
Swift to authoritarianism	Present since 1983 as it seems in the article.	From 1985 to 2002 the provisional republic and after the establishment of the Italian Republic the state can be described as a dominant-party system democracy, like it was in Italy from 1946 to 1983 with the domination of the Christian Democracy in every aspect of the government. From 2002 up until 2011 the Italian nationalist politician Paolo De Stefano would win the general elections after a series of attacks on Sicilians and an aggressive propaganda campaign to give to Italy his right place in the world and also to make Italy great again from the ashes of the war, he would gradually dismantle the democratic system that existed before gradually becoming an authoritarian dictatorship with inspiration from Mussolini's Italy and Pinochet's Chile in 2004/05, with time he would outlaw trade unions, various freedoms given by the constitution, banning every party that was against the current form of the state and the institution of a secret police and the set up of various penal colonies in remote islands for political dissidents and Libyan rebels, alongside common criminals and bandits.

I will also provide you of some informative links that can be useful for understanding cold war Italy:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Italian_Republic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Mafia_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_%27Ndrangheta_war

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piersanti_Mattarella

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corleonesi_Mafia_clan

https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy/Economy#ref318073

https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy/The-economic-miracle#ref319102

Alex, Mal3ssio97 02:05, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES

Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3

This subsection is for decisive and vital issues concerning the 1983: Doomsday Timeline. Due to the complexity level we have reached with 1983: Doomsday now, each of these issues might have world-spanning consequences that affect dozens of articles. Please treat this section with the necessary respect and do not place discussions that do not belong here.

Air Forces

Something I have been considering is Air Forces in North America by survivor states. Obviously nations that would have had aircraft within their borders and major infrastructure survive as well as contact with other nations, such as Mexico, Canada, Victoria, Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, possibly the United States, and possibly Provisional Canada could have fairly substantial air forces comparatively given its involvement in the ADC and trade with the Nordic Union and Celtic Alliance. Mexico and Victoria would have a domestic industry that they could heavily rely on as well as trade with South America and Oceania respectively. Alaska and Hawaii were in somewhat decent contact with Australia and New Zealand immediately after DD and are both protectorates of the CANZ, so they likely would be well equip (especially given Alaska’s bordering of Siberian held Alaska), Texas was in contact with Mexico and they both seem to be on friendly terms, and the USA/Provisional Canada likely had enough surviving industry and oil fields they could keep some aircraft operational, though time would absolutely take its toll and replacing aircraft would become increasingly difficult until trade with Canada, Mexico, and Oceania increased.

Nations like Vermont, Deseret, Florida, and possibly some of the countries located around Lake Ontario could keep small air forces through trade with friendly nations (namely Canada, the NAU, and SAC) as well.

But the more I think about it, I feel that most survivor states in North America couldn’t support an Air Force of any meaningful size or capabilities or at a minimum would be utilizing almost exclusively piston driven aircraft. Nations like Superior, Kentucky, and Virginia all seem to operate jet fighters and turbo propeller driven bombers and transports from their pages and I wonder if this would actually be unlikely.

The nation I worked on, the Commonwealth of Susquehanna, I have been debating if I should get rid of the Air Force all together because I’m not sure if it could actually support aircraft given its relative isolation and lack of fuel.

Converting planes to LNG, biofuels, etc. is extremely difficult and time consuming and in OTL, the technology has been slow and difficult to adapt. Heavily damaged nations that likely are economically on par with Eastern Europe or parts of Africa equivalently in OTL would absolutely struggle with accessing the technology required to make these adjustments.

Military aircraft are notoriously parts and time intensive and large scale air combat is much less likely in the former USA, especially given the Balkanization and that there are other superpowers. The only major war I can think of that involved significant air power in North America was the Saegunay War. Even Virginian and Kentucky attacks on gangs that used air strikes could have easily been performed by artillery.

I am not saying these nations shouldn’t have air forces, I’m just wondering if there isn’t too much leeway being given, especially considering the severe damage to information and infrastructure the US mainland sustained.

Daeseunglim (talk) 13:45, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Update: I got rid of Susquehanna’s Air Force. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it was unlikely given its location in rural Pennsylvania far from nations that would produce enough parts to maintain them. Ground vehicles are a lot easier to maintain, so I left those and increased the number of cargo trucks and added an air defense company (radar and surface to air missile launchers) to the Army National Guard (I do think that is plausible).

Daeseunglim (talk) 15:23, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

ADOPTIONS

Archive 1

Adopting every Italian state

Hi, i'm Alex, a long time contributor of 1983: Doomsday, and i would ask if i can adopt every article about the Italian survivor states; Genoa, Tuscany, Venetia, Sardinia and Lecce too.

I intend to expand this article and add a bit of fresh to Italy, also to expand and correct some of the errors written 10 years about about Lecce, Venice, Genoa, Tuscany and Sicily too. I hope that you will agree with me that Italy need a refreshment and some adjustments. Mal3ssio97 23:15, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

...What you view as errors are not. Answer overall is "no" and "ask the authors" Lordganon (talk) 15:25, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Planning on a scale beyond the individual city-state is obviously necessary to clean things up, and not just for Italy. But we ought to wait til there's consensus on your current Review of Sicily, which is still in a very unfinished state. Once the new version of Sicily is confirmed, we can move on to planning the rest of Italy. One thing at a time. False Dmitri (talk) 16:57, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the Sicily page needs to be completely revamped. The history violates well established canon on the Second Sicily War and the ADC, as well as the Saguenay War page.

Daeseunglim (talk) 15:17, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Wyoming

Does anyone have any ideas to help flesh out Wyoming's history, politics, and culture? 2020ckeevert (talk) 02:48, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Is there any way to justify adopting the improved, no-seal version of the flag, or is that just wishful thinking? False Dmitri (talk) 19:06, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there is a reason to remove the seal from the flag. But we need to get to work on the history of Wyoming. 2020ckeevert (talk) 21:27, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Adopting Indonesia (1983: Doomsday)

Hi, I'm Khalif, a native Indonesian. And i would like to ask, if i can adopt the Indonesia articles. It hasn't been worked on for some time, and i would like to rework parts of it.

Khalif Ali Husain2 (talk) 14:15, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

...Follow the guidelines. You need to ask around and wait first. Lordganon (talk) 15:27, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Adopting Malaysia

Hi, I'm here with the request permission in adopting fandom wiki althistory 1983 doomsday Malaysia as I have took interest over in South East Asian Region. I would love to add more detail and adding stuff about Malaysia to make the it less bland and stale for viewers. I would also apologize for the edit of Malaysia without doing this adoption request as I'm fairly new and joined in the Fandom Althistory Community so please forgive my misbehave action once more.

IndividualYouHateSoMuch (talk). 20:22, May 21, 2021 (UTC)

Adopting the Sicilian Mafia

Hi to everyone, i'm Alessio, the owner of the page about Italy, i formally request to adopt this page too, as is connected to Italy and viceversa.

My intent is to maintain the feeling and the ideas of the page, as they make sense and they are realistic, what i want to do is expanding on some topics, like how the Mafie changes after the war and become companies and corporations, legal in the eye of the state and of the world, how this companies are using front operations for still practice illegal activities like the smuggling of drugs or weapons.

As well helping and supporting outside mafie and giving them funds, for example in France, Delmarva, Texas, Canada and also reviving support by the clans located in Australia and South America, i would also as well extend the operations of the mafia in places like Atlantic City or Toledo and Victoria.

Alessio (talk) 07/07/2021 16:39 UTC+1

==

This 1983: Doomsday page is a Proposal. It has not been ratified and is therefore not yet a part of the 1983: Doomsday Timeline. You are welcome to correct errors and/or comment at the Talk Page. If you add this label to an article, please do not forget to make mention of it on the main Discussion page for the Timeline.

Proposal for North Pennsylvania Jul. 7 2021 ==



North Pennsylvania (1983: Doomsday)

althistory.fandom.com

The Commonwealth of North Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania Dutch (German): Noord Pennsilfaani) is an American successor state. Aside from Pennsylvanian lands, it also controls Chautauqua and Cattaraugus Counties, New York, as well as Ashtabula County, Ohio. To the north, it borders London and Norfolk-Haldimand across Lake Erie, to the north-east it borders the Republic of New York, to the south-east State College. Close by are Virginia to the south, Toledo to the west, and Kentucky to the south-west.

History

See main article: History of North Pennsylvania

Government

The government of North Pennsylvania is very similar that of pre-Doomsday Pennsylvania state government. In fact, it only holds de facto independence, as it yet to declare independence from the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is divided into an executive office, a judicial office, and a legislative office.

Executive

The governor heads the executive branch and has considerable control over government budgeting, the power of appointment of many officials, and a considerable role in legislation. The governor holds other roles, such as that of commander-in-chief of the Commonwealth of North Pennsylvania National Guard, the governor has absolute power to commute or pardon a criminal sentence. All governors run for a four-year term. The governor is directly elected and has considerable practical powers, though this may be moderated by the state legislature and in some cases by other elected executive officials.

Governors can veto state bills. In some cases the legislature can override a gubernatorial veto by a two-thirds vote. The governor also gives an bi-annual State of the State address in order to satisfy a constitutional stipulation that a governor must report annually on the state or condition. The governor also performs ceremonial roles, such as greeting dignitaries, conferring state decorations, issuing symbolic proclamations or attending the state fair. The governor’s official residence-of-work is the Venango House.but starting March 13th, 2011 the governor was expected to move to the proposed Federal District of Eriesburg constructed on the coasts of Lake Erie near North East.  However, disagreements over funding and the safety of the chosen site have indefinitely postponed the move.

The current governor is Oliver Lobaugh, 5th Governor of the Commonwealth of North Pennsylvania and the 45th Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. North Pennsylvania honors the governors of the defunct Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as its prior government and refers to its governor as the "Honorary Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Governor of the Commonwealth of North Pennsylvania".

The Lieutenant Governor presides over the Senate. In the case the Governor dies or becomes unable to hold office he is to finish the Governor's term. Should both the Lieutenant Governor and Governor die the Supreme Court creates an interim government made up of members of the state legislature and/or experienced military leaders.

The current Lieutenant Governor is Mary Veon, fourth Lieutenant Governor of North Pennsylvania. Unlike the Governor Lieutenant Governors do not have an Honorary Commonwealth title.

Legislative

The legislature of North Pennsylvania is the General Assembly, whose two houses are the Senate and the House of Representatives. The, the Senate has 50 members, elected from each county in proportion to its population. The House of Representatives has 61 members, elected from single-member districts. The North Pennsylvania general elections are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in every even-numbered year. A vacancy for a seat must be filled by special election. The presiding officer of the respective house sets the date for such elections. Senators must be at least 25 years old and Representatives at least 21 years old. They must also be citizens and inhabitants of the state for a minimum of four years, living in their respective districts for at least one year. Individuals who have been convicted of various felonies, including embezzlement, bribery, rape, murder, and perjury, are ineligible for election.

Legislative districts are drawn every five years following the N.P Census. Districts are drawn by a five-member commission, of which four members are the majority and minority leaders of both houses. The fifth member is appointed by the other four and may not be an elected or appointed official. If the leadership cannot decide upon a fifth member, the State Supreme Court may appoint the chairperson.

Judicial

The North Pennsylvania Supreme Court is modeled after its pre-Doomsday counterpart. It consists of seven justices each elected to 10 year terms. The justice with the longest continuous service on the Supreme Court automatically becomes Chief Justice. Justices must step down from the Supreme Court when they reach the age of 70, although they may continue to serve part-time as "senior justices" on panels of the Commonwealth's lower appellate courts until they reach the age of 78, the age of mandatory retirement.

Judicial candidates are prohibited from expressing their views on disputed legal or political issues. Elections for a new justice occur when one resigns, dies, or is impeached and justice candidates may run as nominees of their political party. If they win their elections, they are given a ten year term. After the ten year term expires, a statewide YES/NO vote for retention is conducted without competition or party identification. If the judge is retained, he or she serves for an additional 10-year term. If the judge is not retained, the governor, subject to the approval of the State Senate, appoints a temporary replacement until a special election can be held.

The Venango House Add a photo to this gallery

Political Parties

The Democratic Party has existed since the fight between Andrew Jackson and John Q. Adams over the results of the 1828 American Presidential Election, born from the Jacksonian Democrats. During the 1990-1999 Rule, the Government became increasingly Liberal, especially on the stances of abortion and redistribution of wealth. Today, the Democrat Party's members are primarily in the northern half of North Penn,. Crawford County, the largest, is a swing district,while everything south and east of Crawford County has gone under solid Republican control. Considered to be heavily liberal, the newly founded social-democratic Lake Party has taken many Democratic voters into its numbers.

The Republican Party has existed since Anti-Slavery and Abolitionist groups in the north, alienated by the Whig party’s failure to take a position on slavery, created it in 1854. Its ideology is considered by some to be heavily conservative, though not to the extent of the minor Pennsylvania Dutch Party.

The Socialist Party is not a relatively new creation, being based off of earlier Socialist parties of the last century. Many former Democrats, upset with the moderate positions in the Democrat Party’s platform, developed the Socialist Party, which was popular among many refugees who had since become citizens. Following American Socialism as its ideology, the Socialist Party is often decried as being no different in its proposed policies than the former Soviet Union, though this has not prevented their rise. The Party is seeing a dangerous rise in local politics, and they are fighting with the Democrats over control of western Erie county.

The Lake Party is a relatively new creation loosely based off of pre-Doomsday Ecological movements such as Greenpeace, the Pro-Choice Movements and beliefs of social democracy. Formed in 2007 by John Evans and other politicians in Crawford and Erie, the party has shown to be a thorn in the Democrats side.

The Party of the Holy and Simple Life, also known as the Amish Party, is a party that was formed following the 2012 Destruction of the Kinzua Dam that left over half of the nation without electricity. The Amish and Mennonites in the region preached that in order to truly survive in such a harsh world, they must work the land and lead simpler lives. The party is based on Christian Communalism and Conservative social ideologies. The party briefly gained a considerable sway in the legislative branch as well as in the Executive branch during their 2012-2014 rule before being ousted from power by popular opinion.

Minor Political Parties

These are parties which have less representation in the Senate or House of Representatives.

Regions

North Penn exerts its control most in north-west Pennsylvania. However, it has acquired Cattaraugus and Chautauqua Counties, New York, and after Project Road to Ohio, North-east Ohio as well. The Commonwealth of North Pennsylvania is divided into several regions, which until the 2011 constitutional revision were designated as “states,” districts or counties.   After 2011, all the first-level subdivisions were named as counties.

dth=10%|Population

County name

County seat

Date organized

Pre-Doomsday territory covered

Population (2012 census)

Senators

Notes

Cattaraugus

Little Valley

2011

Cattaraugus County, New York and adjacent Allegany County

50,238

4

Annexed 2004, erected as county 2011

Chautauqua

Westfield

2011

Chautauqua County and adjacent Erie County, New York

71,198

5

Annexed 2000; erected as county 2011

Clarion

Clarion

1984

Clarion County and adjacent Jefferson County, Pa.

28,330

2

Founding member

Crawford

Meadville

1984

Crawford County

195,411

14

Formerly “Pennstate”, its name before joining North Penn. Founding member

Erie

Edinboro

2005

Erie County

74,226

5

Split from Pennstate

Forest

Tionesta

1990

Forest County and adjacent Elk County

3,381

0 (combined with Venango)

Unorganized prior to 1990, primitive economy.  Many functions handled by Venango County

Mercer

Mercer

2007

Mercer and Lawrence Counties, Pa.

52,122

4

Northeast (provisional county, final name to be determined)

Temporarily North East, pending decision on new capital

2011

Northern portion of North East Township, Erie County, Pa.

1,207

0 (combined with Erie)

Most functions handled by Erie County.

Ohio

Jefferson

2011

Ashtabula County and northern Trumbull County, Ohio

62,485

4

Annexed 2008-2010 in Project “Road to Ohio.” County erected 2011.

Venango

Franklin

1984

Venango County

55,000 (too small, if Oil City has absorbed 22,000 refugees)  Probably at least 108,573

8

Founding member

Warren-McKean

Warren and Smethport

2011

Warren and McKean Counties plus adjacent Elk County (St. Mary’s area).

49,972

4

Separated from Pennstate 2011. Population rapidly growing, separation of McKean County expected by 2022.

Geography

Demographics

At the 2012 census, North Pennsylvania’s population had grown to 643,841, from an estimated 345,000 in 2001.  Much population growth was caused by resettlement of refugees from Ohio and western Pennsylvania in the counties least affected by blast and fallout and which had industrial bases for employment:  southern Crawford, Venango, Warren-McKean and Clarion.

W|}

Geography

Demographics

Since after Doomsday, Pennsylvania German, a dying language before Doomsday, has slowly been on the rise. This is because with less English influence the rural communities have taught more of the young to speak this Pennsylvanian dialect of the German language. A 2008 census showed that over 9% of the nation spoke Pennsylvania Dutch, leading it to become a co-official language the year after.  As the Amish tend to have large families and prosperous farms to feed them, they are rapidly becoming a larger portion of the North Penn population.

With the Amish being a major presence in the area, the surrounding rural communities benefited off of their way of living, especially after Doomsday. The Old Order Amish, however, have recently been competing with the New Order, with many of those defecting to the more liberal New Order Amish.

Due to the destruction of many records after Doomsday it is difficult to ascertain groups' ethnic ancestry but surviving records and family accounts state that roughly 40% of the country is of German descent. The English and Scotch-Irish come in at roughly 15% while most of the rest is descended from Eastern European and Italian immigrants around the turn of the 19th Century and a 2% Native American population. African Americans come in at a handful of .5% due to the African-American community usually based out of large cities, leaving a handful of college students and the occasional black farmer. Due to racial tensions in the southern parts of North Penn many have relocated to Warren and Meadville which are by far the most cosmopolitan out of the other cities.

Although cities such as Meadville, Oil City and Warren have seen drastic increases in population over the last 10 years, the Commonwealth remains indisputably a rural nation pocketed with small towns. Forest County, Cattaraugus County and the Erie city area, which is in the process of restoration, are preparing to take a larger amount of refugees and economic migrants.

Economy

While the vast majority of its lands is used for agriculture, North Penn has a relatively large industrial sector thanks to many WWII-era factories left in near-pristine condition in the area. In the industrial sector, it produces plastic, mining equipment, oil and gas equipment , hardware and nails.   The Electralloy steel plant in Oil City is capable of melting down and re-using iron and steel scrap, and the Sharon steel works, shut down before Doomsday, has been refurbished as well.    Minor steel facilities are at Warren and Jamestown.  If North Penn can move into Mahoning County, Ohio, plans are in progress to either restore the Youngstown/Warren steel mills and iron foundries or relocate equipment into North Penn.

Much of the plastic produced in North America is made at Erie Plastics in Corry, supplemented by Conair in Franklin.  Core automobile parts, bicycles, and railways are produced in Warren and Jamestown. Tires, guns, textiles, explosives and clothes are produced in Meadville, which also has an extensive machine tool and engineering base. Joy Mining Machinery provides everything from iron-grade pickaxes to giant mining machines for the extensive mining operations that occur in the region, and exports equipment throughout eastern North America.

Agriculture is one of North Penn's largest fields of employment. Local farmers and ranches grow and raise cows, corn, milk, layingchickens, and grapes. Welch Grapes grown in North East Township are considered the best of North America. That being said, most of North Pennsylvania is just emerging from a subsistence agricultural economy although they do provide much of Niagara's food.  The best large areas of arable land are in southern and eastern Crawford County and in Chautauqua County.  Although northeast Ohio was a very productive agricultural area, fallout from the Cleveland and Youngstown strikes and the ravages of desperate refugees have delayed large-scale farming there.

One of the largest factors of the economy is the abundance of natural gas and oil. While it is nowhere near the oil boom of old, hundreds of oil and gas fields still exist all over North Penn, making the Commonwealth energy sufficient and local companies such as Quaker State in Emlenton, North Penn Pennzoil and Wolf’s Head near Oil City, Amalie in Franklin, United in Warren and Kendall in Bradford, refine a vast amount of the Great Lakes and Eastern Seaboard's oil supply. Several smaller companies based out of Warren hold a small stake on individual gas fields as well. Oils and gas refined products include fuel oil, diesel, gasoline, naphtha, and kerosene, as well as asphalt and petroleum jelly. The North Penn Department of Environmental Protection enforces strict production and drilling limits to avoid over-exploitation and failure of fields.

Minerals are somewhat abundant as well, such as salt, coal, phosphate, sandstone, clay, and limestone. There are small amounts of iron but almost all iron and alloying materials are reclaimed from scrap metal.  Copper is scarce and must be imported from Superior or Canada.  Gravel and silt are found off the coast of Lake Erie and in the Allegheny River, as well, although due to radiation concerns fears the lakebed has not been mined yet. Most mining operations use Joy's mining equipment. Glass making is found all over North Penn, including large factories at Brockway, Oil City, New Castle, Lake City, and a large auto glass factory at Meadville.  Several specialty glass blowers in Erie are being revived as well.

The economy was completely government controlled until 1990 when the first private enterprises, mainly light industry reemerged. Until 2000, most other sectors were at least partially overseen by the government to control spending and to make sure the right industries had the right manpower. When the United Communities was founded in 2007, all but several farms, electricity, and ammunition and firearms manufacturing were privatized. Meadville, North Penn’s largest town, is the capital of commerce in the region as it is home to the largest number of specialty machine shops in the U.S. pre-Doomsday, and also has multiple producers of  textiles, munitions, paper, and most processed necessities. Oil City and Franklin contain heavy machinery producers untouched by Doomsday.  Warren, although less populated than the other cities was once the capital of heavy manufacturing in the area up until the summer of 2012 when extensive flooding caused many businesses, as well as its small men’s clothing manufacturer.to move to Jamestown in Pennsylvanian New York. Bradford is famous for its Zippo lighter company as well as oil field equipment.

Media

The North Pennsylvania government runs two television stations, NPTV 2 in Warren and NPTV 4 in Franklin and Mercer. Both broadcast from 7 to Midnight weekdays, from 5 p.m to 1 AM on Saturdays and from 6 to 11 p.m. on Sundays. The United Communities-sponsored Central Community Television also broadcasts daily. Programming includes news, sports and locally produced public affairs, political and entertainment programming, as well as pre-Doomsday movies and television shows and post-DD programming from Superior, Canada, Vermont and the Celtic Alliance's RTE network. The government-controlled North Pennsylvania Radio (NPR) has affiliates in Warren, Franklin and Oil City, with re-transmitters in Little Valley, Meadville, Tionesta, Forest, Bradford and Westfield. Programming includes news, politics, public affairs, classical music, and entertainment produced by North Pennsylvania Radio as well as other networks throughout the United Communities; Vermont Radio; the CBC; Superior's NBN; and the RTE. NPR stations broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Amateur HAM radio has survived to large extent, and channels are a popular way for young people to communicate, called "chat rooms".

A privately-owned station in Franklin, WNPJ 99.3, broadcasts post-Doomsday pop and rock music began broadcasting in September 2010. Other privately owned stations in Warren,Meadville and Oil City broadcast local news and pre-Doomsday pop, rock, urban and country music most notably WARC 90.3 FM, WMED 97.5 FM  and WOYL98.5 FM. Recently a group of reverseengineers in Meadville successfully rediscovered how to make vinyl records so the music industry has begun to blossom. Among popular regional artists is Trent Reznor who popularized the energetic-ambient rock genre and has sold over 5000 copies and also attended Allegheny College.

The Warren Times Observer newspaper publishes six days a week (excluding Mondays) and is the nation's de facto paper of record. The Franklin News-Herald publishes Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and is considered a reliable source for United Communities-related news and Commonwealth government news. The Oil City Derrick; Meadville Tribune; Bradford Era and the Little Valley Express publish once a week.

Transportation

Road and Rail

On Doomsday, most of the newer cars in North America were made obsolete by the EMP's. However, for those older cars that did not rely on electronics, gasoline is not a problem since North Penn is home to both abundant oil fields and five refineries with an expanded capacity of 50,000 bbl/day. In addition, there is an abundance of natural gas to be utilized as vehicles are converted to use that fuel. Since production of Jeeps began, the Pennsylvanian-native Quaker State company and the rehomed North Penn Pennzoil have seen a handsome increase in profits. Paved roads have also been repaired with gravel dredged from Lake Erie and limited amounts of asphalt from the refineries. The rail systems have been rebuilt with locomotives from purchased from London,Ontario.  A priority North Penn government project is to restart the GE locomotive factory in Harborcreek, which will allow North Penn to export locomotives, hopefully by early 2022.

Jeeps

In 2004, one small vehicle helped revitalize an entire region's transportation. Obviously, not every single car was rendered useless on Doomsday. A handful survived, mostly were common cars and pickups with limited electronics. However, there was a man in Franklin who was in possession of multiple genuine, working WWII 1942 Jeeps* and had donated several of them to the local police following Doomsday. After the subject was brought up with two businessmen, one a Toledoan and the other a North Pennsylvanian on manufacturing the vehicle again, it quickly gained steam. There actually was a Jeep FJ manufacturing plant in Toledo, and all they needed to do was put it back into production. By using parts from dead vehicles and from purchases in Toledo, they successfully created a better-than-original version of a Jeep. Soon, they began manufacturing around six vehicles a month, an astounding rate for custom made machines in a factory with such limited resources. These two businessmen re-started one of the most successful military vehicle manufacturers of all time, using its original name, Willys-Overland.  By 2009, when a rail link was established between North Penn and Toledo, bypassing Cleveland, production was split.  Franklin in North Penn produces chassis, wheels and cabs, while Toledo focuses on the higher tech engine and drive train manufacture.

Today, the Jeep is the  main form of transportation for the North Penn and Toledo armies, and since they can be produced quickly and require only the simplest parts they are cheap and reliable. The average Jeep used by the military is a canvas-door three-seater with a canvas roof used for transport. This is known as the Raider, because this Jeep is most commonly used for field missions in raider territory. There is a combat version of this vehicle depicted below.  In recent years, the GM plant in Niagara Falls has joined the consortium and makes many Jeep components as well.  The Willys-Overland company has begun production of pickup trucks, in cooperation with Niagara Falls, which are expected to be a major boost to the United Communities economy.

A Jeep Raider Add a photo to this gallery

AUTHORS NOTE: There actually is a personb in Franklin who possesses a collection of WWII-era old Jeeps.

Airports

Chess Lamberton Field at Franklin, which was a commercial airport pre-Doomsday,is the nation's main airport at this time, although flights mainly go in and out of United Communities member states mainly for governmental reasons or for the upper-class. Unfortunately, the missile strike on Erie was almost on top of Port Erie International Airport, which cannot be salvaged.  There are, however, multiple local airports in other counties as well. Although both oil and oil refineries are available, almost all of the Commonwealth's planes, and the world’s planes in general, are propeller-driven using gasoline, because of the need to devote kerosene production to lighting, heating and petrochemical uses.

Maritime

After Doomsday, stress on Lake Erie’s ecosystems was reduced because incoming pollution and sewage from human activity were greatly reduced  and commercial fishing came almost to a halt. This was countered  initially by the massive amount of radiation that washed into the Great Lakes which contaminated the lakes  and injured the native ecosystem. All but the central parts of the Lakes were hostile to large fish for five to ten years.

As the water cycle continued after Doomsday much of the radiological contamination subsided over time, allowing the remaining lake life to rebuild the food chain. The critically-low fish population, both due to radiation and over-hunting by desperate individual fishermen, spurred the North Pennsylvania Fish Commission in 1987 to ban commercial fishing and impose strict catch and zone limits on individual fishers with the intent that   the aquatic population might rebound. By the early 2000s, sport and commercial fishing resumed on Lake Erie as the surviving fish adapted to the new environment One blessing was that the lamprey eel population, which had eliminated many fish species from 1955 to 1975, was particularly susceptible to radiation and completely died out.

Energy

Petroleum and natural gas

North Pennsylvania is quite an oil rich nation, with hundreds of oil fields, they are able to produce 40,000 barrels per day, making the country largely energy sufficient. With oil in abundance, it is the main source of heat and energy for the people, and those who own working cars do not have to worry on fuel shortages either since it is all locally based. As noted above, there are five oil refineries with a refining capacity of over 50,000 bbl/day.  In 1987, gasoline distribution was consolidated by the Community Convention government into the Quaker State company, a century-old refiner, for maximum control. The UC has been urging its members to dismantle this type of monopoly and break-up of gasoline and fuel oil distribution is one of the hottest topics in the General Assembly.

In the early 2000’s a petroleum engineer managed to scrape up $500,000 for a wildcat gas well into the Marcellus Shale formation and managed to frack the well with his last $10,000. The well was a success, spurring development of a major natural gas formation that can supply most of the northeast U.S.  North Penn’s oil and gas equipment manufacturers have been running three shifts (when raw materials are available) to support exploitation of the Marcellus Shale.

Electricity

Until 2012, the sole operating power station in North Pennsylvania was the Kinzua Dam outside of Warren. The third largest dam east of the Mississippi, and at a generating capacity of 400 megawatts, it generates power for 75% of North Penn..

Following the dam being critically damaged in 2012, it was extensively repaired following aid contributions and private donations, after the Amish-led Government failed to appropriate the necessary funds to repair it.  At the same time, Penelec, the local nationalized electric utility, finally was able to source new generators and turbines from Canada to replace items in the Tionesta Dam and Piney Creek hydroelectric stations, which had spun out of control  in the Doomsday chaos and were unrepairable.  Nevertheless, North Penn’s electricity supply is inadequate, especially for heavy industry, and rationing and brownouts are common.  Penelec is trying to source equipment and engineering to add hydroelectric capacity to the Shenango dam near Sharon, the Pymatuming Dam near Greenville, the French Creek dam near Waterford and the Clarion River Dam in Elk County, but the generating capacity of those facilities would be limited because those dams are low.  Efforts to use North  Penn’s ample coal reserves to generate electricity are hampered by inability to strip mine, environmental concerns and lack of equipment to build new power stations. Instead, North Penn is considering whether to harvest equipment from the huge, coal-fired plants in Indiana County or possibly to reopen one of them.  However, Indiana County borders State College also and is closer to Altoona and other State College industrial centers, and State College is using access to those plants as negotiating leverage in  the ongoing discussions about Pennsylvania reunification.  Access to more electricity supply is a major diplomatic objective of North Penn, and it continually presses Niagara Falls to commit to supply and thus facilitate construction of high tension lines to North Penn.

Kinzua Dam

Culture

Oil City, the "capital of modern oil drilling" is a major cultural center point around the area. The resettlement of approximately 20,000 Ohio and Pennsylvania refugees in its vacant housing during 1984-1988 created an impetus for crafts, furniture design, theater, cabaret and jazz, musical performance and literature, as refugees tried to eke out a living by using their creative talents.

Warren has recently become a very active, bustling city once more as more and more residents move in from other areas, sometimes from State College or north-east Ohio.

Lifestyle

Since North Pennsylvania is largely rural,over fifty-percent of Pennsylvanians do not have access to most modern amenities and continue living the life of their ancestors.

Many rural North Pennsylvanians live a simple life inspired by the growing Mennonite and Amish communities, which did not employ modern technology pre-Doomsday and thus were well prepared to survive and flourish afterwards. Excess material possessions are often shunned by the Mennonites. However, after the Amish Schism the New Order Amish faction has risen to prominence, shunning many aspects of the simple life and choosing newer technology.

Education

Since the formation of the Community Convention one of the government's greatest concerns was providing even a basic education to the younger generation. Most public schools outside the immediate area of Franklin, Oil City,  Warren, and Meadville were run independently and as a result many became abandoned, lawless, or strict, locked-down schools in which the students often were separated from their parents during the school year. The college towns managed to survive differently, as many of the students, especially in Edinboro had used their knowledge of their subjects to serve their community. If one was studying animal husbandry then they would be sent to try to salvage animals from abandoned farms. If one studied any form of medicine they would immediately become a makeshift doctor for the refugee masses outside Edinboro, Oil City and other towns. With the creation of the 1990 strict Commonwealth of North Pennsylvania government, or "Quaker Regime", the new government slowly took back control of the public schools, by which over half of which had been dissolved due to dropouts or students and families fleeing to the woods or farms in search of food. Those schools that remained were usually home to between one-half or one-fifth of normal pre-Doomsday classes. The government made education of everyone in the towns and cities mandatory from six to 14, with high school becoming optional but still paid by the state and college as was pre-Doomsday. With the 2000 Public Instruction Act, high schools became mandatory and anyone who had quit classes in the past decade was required to take night classes. Furthermore, the 2007 creation of the United Communities encouraged the Great Lakes region's schools to follow common principles and requirements and organized a common school accreditation authority.

Attendance in school is mandatory between the ages of six to eighteen, and from there can obtain a higher education in North Penn state universities at very low out-of-pocket cost. Still, a significant number of Amish and Mennonite children are home schooled (7%) due to the secular policies within the schools themselves. According to government laws the government can not control the ideologies of private schools unless in the case of wrongly-taught education, in which the government can strip control of the school. Despite this policy, the government occasionally funds private institutions, in the hope that increased competition for funds between public and private schools might, as a result, have both perform better in their education process. Many private schools are also religious schools, as these have complete independence from the oversight of the Great Lakes School Accreditation Authority.

Colleges

North Pennsylvania is home to a large number of both public and private colleges. Allegheny College is by far the most famous and has produced many famous musical, athletic, philosophical and legal individuals throughout the United States before 1983. Nowadays, it continues its liberal arts focus and sometimes is seen as  a "party school" for the well-off who can afford its tuition. Edinboro State University in Edinboro is a center of education, and was the de facto county seat in Erie County before Reconstruction began. Clarion University, another state institution, emphasizes education courses and is home to the Golden Eagles.  Its Venango Campus in Oil City stresses nursing and medical technology.  Slippery Rock State University in Mercer County continues its emphasis on health, physical training and psychology, while the nearby Grove City College continues its conservative-libertarian orientation and attracts like-minded students from the entire United Communities.  The University of Titusville (formerly the University of Pittsburgh at Titusville) is currently subsidized by the government to be brought up to academic standards of other colleges and has only recently been re-opened. Currently the University of Titusville's main academic focuses are "all things oil", reflecting the city of Titusville's history as the birthplace of the oil industry. The Bradford College, the former Bradford campus of the University of Pittsburgh, is functioning as a two-year institution.  Gannon University in Erie almost miraculously escaped destruction and is one of the few remaining Catholic universities left in North America. It is known for its medical and engineering program, and has relocated to Northwest Harborcreek. It was one of the original founding universities, and was crucial in the reconstruction of North Pennsylvania. With a majority of faculty living a fair distance from Erie, they were able to aid in relief efforts after the nuclear strike on Erie. It is one of the smallest universities though due to it being private, but it has recently been supported by the Archdiocese of Altoona-Johnstown, and the Diocese of Meadville.  Penn State’s Behrend Campus southeast of Erie also escaped much of the destruction, but most of its programs have been transferred to Edinboro to achieve economies of scale.

Crime and Law Enforcement

Crime in North Pennsylvania is taken very seriously. Since the creation of the Community Convention all of the counties operated their own police forces and would often severely beat or even kill those for committing crimes such as stealing from a communities' food or wood supply or robbing others. Since the 1990 Commonwealth of North Pennsylvania was created, however, most of the police forces voluntarily united to form the Northern Pennsylvania Commonwealth Police Force which numbered over 6,000 people and had more rights than even many previous police forces had. However, despite years of peace, crime has increased due to recent economic downturns and the  Commonwealth’s policy to emphasize army expansion rather than expand police forces in step with population increases..

Military

See main article: Military of North Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of North Pennsylvania Military relies heavily upon volunteers, who are often lured by programs which offer large incentives and benefits. Those who sign up are required to serve four years in the armed forces, after which they can be called at any time in the case that an emergency reserve must be formed. Women, however, are given exception from the draft, but are still allowed to voluntarily join at their behest. Unlike before Doomsday's American army, women are allowed full military rights, meaning they may fight on the front lines alongside men. The air force, however, discourages women from joining since it is often that women pass out in fighter jets from too much pressure from the G-forces and crash. Until recently, the military was no more than a rump force armed with Jeeps and sub-machine guns, until the rapid militarization that occurred after the end of the Saguenay War which is creating more and more units and service arms almost daily. 

As discussed above, North Penn’s perception that it must obtain resources from neighboring areas depopulated by Doomsday may result in conflict with Virginia and possibly other regional nations.  Further, its military success in supporting Remaining Canada and other United Communities states  has brought it tangible rewards.  Accordingly, North Penn government policy, especially after the downfall of the Amish party, is to create the most effective armed forces possible, consistent with a democracy. The military is split up into three different divisions, the North Pennsylvanian Army, the North Pennsylvanian Air Force, the North Pennsylvanian Coast Guard and the North Pennsylvanian Navy. The Army and Air Force are the result of a combination of survivors from the US Army and the Penn National Guard as well as instructed Vietnam-era veterans. The Navy, however, was made up of entirely small civilian vessels and basically can only carry out coastal reconnaissance.  It would be no match against the navies of Canada or other nearby nations. The Coast Guard, which may be more effective than the Navy, is made up of four small United States Coast Guard cutters found at Westfield and North East, as well as salvaged boats  from Erie and speedboat donations from Canada. There are currently 31,000 people serving in the North Penn armed forces accounting for about 4.5% of the population, and another 25,000 in reserves.

While since the 2000 reorganization of the National Guard into the Military and the Regional Guard, the North Pennsylvanian military has grown large in numbers, equipment, most commonly automatic firearms and military attire are very scarce, and North Penn has a policy of "Strip and Save", which calls for after a battle that North Pennsylvanian soldiers must strip the dead enemies (and allies) of all of their battle attire and weapons, although stripped allies are left in their uniforms out of respect. Another problem is that most all military bases in North Penn were built from scratch, other than a handful which were built from existing foundations and old historic military bases. The National Guard armories in Corry, Oil City, Franklin and Meadville are exceptions, as they were proven vital in the early history of North Penn, but nevertheless, North Penn is improvising with their materials available.  With the growth of the Great Lakes Compact to include Canada, a powerful trade ally, North Penn hopes to strengthen their forces.

There is also a private protection force, the State Police of Crawford and Erie, which survived in certain parts and reunited two years after Doomsday. The group was rivaled with the Community Convention's Police Forces for jurisdiction of chaotic Erie County, and the group was forcibly disbanded until 1990, when the Community Convention was abolished and the Commonwealth of North Pennsylvania was founded. By then, only 90 members were still alive, but they trained locals in Erie and Crawford County and relocated to North East Township. By 2000, the group's numbers had swelled to over 3,000 members throughout all of North Penn. The group evolved in 2005 into an autonomous, private entity within the government of North Penn and was renamed the Erie and Crawford Special Police.

Sports

The university athletic teams compete mainly against other schools in the region, such as Penn State University in State College and the University of Toledo in the Toledo Confederation, as well as colleges from Superior, Vermont and Aroostook.

The state universities recruit mainly from the North Pennsylvania high school leagues, which are governed by the Lake Erie Interscholastic Athletic Association (LEIAA). Football and basketball games are especially well-attended and the various schools enjoy a high degree of popularity and loyalty from local residents.

Youth sports leagues are generally sparsely attended, parents having too many economic responsibilities, but have one of the highest participation rates of all nations in the Great Lakes Region and former northeastern United States. These leagues are considered important for player development by the high school leagues, and therefore are supported in numerous ways by the NPIAA. Youth coaches also attempt to instill positive ethics in their players.

The exception to the rule regarding youth sports attendance are the Little League regional playoff games held every other year in Warren, which draw good crowds from across the region. (These Little League teams are not yet affiliated with the Little League Baseball organization based in Mexico)

International Relations

Pennsylvania was a founding member of the United Communities in 2007. It is not a member of the League of Nations at the moment, but will consider joining further down the road when international communications are more easy to come by.

The Commonwealth mainly maintains communications with local American and Canadian successor states. Presently they have relations with State College, Toledo, Aroostook, Superior, Thunder Bay, Niagara Falls, London-Ontario, Norfolk-Haldimand, Midland, Sudbury, Ithaca, Binghamton, Canada, and to a certain extent Kentucky and Virginia. They know of the existence of Blue Ridge, Piedmont, Keene, Plymouth, and the North American Union.

Since 2008, they have had a pleasant relationship with Canada. North Pennsylvanian Coast Guard vessels and occasional heavily-guarded civilian vessels attempted to maintain contact with Canada, and before the Saguenay War, the North Pennsylvanians had sent ambassadors to Canada. It had been hoped that via Canada, Pennsylvania could establish diplomatic ties with the larger community of nations. However, the Lawrence Raiders and blockages on the river foiled these attempts.

Since the years following further contact throughout Pennsylvanian survivor-states, North Pennsylvania has become increasingly vocal in further strengthening ties between the larger states in the region, perhaps in the form of either a united economic bloc or a unified, confederation-style government. The interim government is currently in process of beginning reunification with the adjacent State College government, as well as laying the basis for a larger economic union in the area.

Externals

See Also