New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Kaynes said that the depression was like the dark ages. He had a point, and his actions and FDR's made sure the point was moot. But picture a world were the economy stayed dead. No jobs, no social services, nothing for anybody but a narrow elite. A world were Mellon's advice to liquidate society was taken to the fullest degree. In such a world, why would people stand by a failed and cruel system?

Maybe society suicided to please the money men. We come close to doing that several times in our real history.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by PTTG

What changes could make a modern worldline collapse into anarchy without being triggered by widespread destruction?

Think like Mad Max except without the environmental devastation. Or, more directly, any situation which allows your classical Dungeon Fantasy style adventuring party to work more or less the same, except with modern tech and a familiar world map.

The current trend in survivalist fiction is a vast overestimation of how effective EMPs would be at knocking out a civilization. Before that was a vast overestimation of how effective a plague could be at depopulating the world.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by thorr-kan

Infertility plague.

I like the scenario presented in the Spanish film, Los Últimos Días (also known The Last Days). In that one, a virus afflicts all adults with lethally crippling agoraphobia. If they go outside, they suffer an anxiety attack so powerful it results in a heart attack or a stroke.

The movie takes place in Barcelona, which has extensive underground transportation and storm drainage systems. Those able to tunnel into that can move around, and find supplies, and such. The protagonist is actually able to find his fiance, by the end of the film.

I like it, because it's a unique take on the plague scenario. Those out in rural areas just die, because they can't go outside and they have no underground. The only survivors are those able to get gardens going in buildings with big, south-facing wndows.

For children born after, the virus is a childhood disease. If they survive it, it no longer affects them. Parents, however, are always crippled by agoraphobia.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Kaynes said that the depression was like the dark ages. He had a point, and his actions and FDR's made sure the point was moot. But picture a world were the economy stayed dead. No jobs, no social services, nothing for anybody but a narrow elite. A world were Mellon's advice to liquidate society was taken to the fullest degree. In such a world, why would people stand by a failed and cruel system?

Maybe society suicided to please the money men. We come close to doing that several times in our real history.

I recall one seed I wrote up years ago posited that the 2008 crisis as met with aggressive austerity, and white paper markets froze up. Might work, but I think it would have to be something like "There was a stock market crash AND a sterility plague AND political disruption AND severe climate change all in one year..."

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I recall one seed I wrote up years ago posited that the 2008 crisis as met with aggressive austerity, and white paper markets froze up. Might work, but I think it would have to be something like "There was a stock market crash AND a sterility plague AND political disruption AND severe climate change all in one year..."

A multipronged crisis without any viable leadership wouldn't need anything exotic to bring society down. A simple grain blight that lasted long enough to cause wars would do it.

[Astromancer]

While reading Jonathan Israel's Expanding Blaze I came across something interesting, well bunches of interesting things, but for this item I'm looking at Thomas Paine's reaction to the Louisiana Purchase.

Tom Paine thought of two things when the Louisiana Purchase was confirmed. A) Keep the local French Royalists and Oligarchs from taking it over, B) prevent the spread of Slavery. My alternate focuses on the second issue.

One of Paine's plans was to attract large amounts of Free African Americans to Louisiana by offering them to chance to buy land through labor. Basically if an African-American knew how to farm in the Louisiana climate, they could claim land and pay for it with produce. There are more details than that, but Paine's plans got shot down, all of them. Jefferson was as bitterly disappointed as Paine.

In this Q6 reality (Tom Paine-7)Paine's allies made subtle appeals to planter prejudice, both against black folks and Catholics, and got some of the plan passed. It's now 1830, Andrew Jackson is President. Louisiana and Arkansas both have sent Black Senators and Congressmen to Washington. An alliance of working class Whites, with Blacks and Indians, basically runs Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. They are less than thrilled with Jackson, as they call themselves Painites much as most American radicals did in the 1780's, John Quincy Adams disliked them too.

Basically a very different early America. The politics of the lower Mississippi is radically different, They are still expansionist. And the Slavery question is even more volatile in this American Southwest.

Andrew Jackson knows that the Five Civilized Tribes have close allies here, and some Indians are in congress. This fight won't be pretty, or merely two sided.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Here's a great reality seed. Ben Franklin's grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, by his daughter Sally was as radical as his grandfather. I'll have to look up the name, but he was a radical newspaper editor of national importance who died at twenty-nine from Yellow Fever. No less a person than John Adams proclaimed his relief. Alexander Hamilton toasted the news of this man's death in prison. The editor was in jail because of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

This potent and capable a radical could lead to many different timelines.

Add B.F. Bache to the Tom Paine timeline and have more fireworks.

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Add B.F. Bache to the Tom Paine timeline and have more fireworks.

Yes, he would both give Paine's proposals more publicity and make them seem moderate in comparison to Brache's ones.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Yes, he would both give Paine's proposals more publicity and make them seem moderate in comparison to Brache's ones.

Good thinking. Heck, it could be their plan of attack.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by PTTG

What changes could make a modern worldline collapse into anarchy without being triggered by widespread destruction?

Think like Mad Max except without the environmental devastation. Or, more directly, any situation which allows your classical Dungeon Fantasy style adventuring party to work more or less the same, except with modern tech and a familiar world map.

A rapid plague reducing population to 1% or so, like in Station Eleven.

Or just have 90+% of the world's population disappear in a moment, like the inverse of The Leftovers or the novel The Vanishing Point.


Indeed, there's even a canon example - Microworld. Earth's population shrinks to 1/100 their size. Could totally have Dungeon Fantasy adventures in the remains of the big world (even many years after the initial shrinkage, since buildings and such would be so hard to tear down), fighting unshrunken rats and the like.