[IW] Apocalyptic World, Maya-12

[Phantasm]

Just a little something I hammered out in my brain a half hour ago. Feel free to expand on things for this timeline (or correct any of the other timelines).

Maya-12:
To Homeline, the "Maya" designation is assigned to those timelines whose apparent point of divergence appears to be centered around the turning over of the Mayan Long-Count calendar: Dec 21, 2012. Currently, there are thirteen of these timelines known, most of which are in Q5.

Maya-1 through Maya-5 are hell parallels where natural cataclysms occurred: asteroid strikes, solar flares strip the Earth's magnetic field, magnetic pole or rotation reversal, etc. Maya-6 is a world ruled by Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, who have enslaved the world's populace. Maya-7 is the world of Shadowrun just prior to 2061, the Year of the Comet, Maya-8 is the world of Shadowrun after the events of 2061, and Maya-9 is the world of Shadowrun in 2075. Maya-10 is a pristine world with no humans on it at all; the ruins of the large cities are there, but there are no people whatsoever. Maya-11 and Maya-13 are post-apocalyptic worlds a few decades after the event, with scattered settlements trying to return to civilization.

Maya-12, however, is only a month past the divergence point: January 2013. According to the Infinity Exploration teams that went in, a solar flare occurred on Dec 21, 2012, which weakened but did not destroy the Earth's magnetic field. The effect of the solar flare was to render every piece of TL8 electronics, and some late-TL7 electronics, inoperable. Millionaires overnight became paupers as the banks that stored their money lost all records. Personal computers, laptops, PDAs, cell phones, smart phones, cars, motorcycles, GPS devices, iPods - all worthless paperweights. Those with pacemakers and on life support were the first to die.

On top of this, the current winter is proving to be the coldest winter on record for much of the industrialized world; Infinity estimates that 3/5ths of the world's population has already died or will die of exposure and starvation this winter, with more to come in later years. Society is collapsing all around; many cities are turning into war zones as the survivors there fight each other over what they can get their hands on. Ironically, rural areas are faring better, as many were already skilled in chopping wood for fires, hunting for meat, and fishing, and/or had stored grain.

Infinity notes that electronics brought into the world from outside timelines still function, just that the flare appears to have fried every single microchip and circuit board that existed on Earth at the time.

Roleplaying:
Natives of Maya-12 are just trying to survive. The elderly and newborn have the lowest chances of survival, while the younger generations who grew up in a mature TL8 world are coping with the loss of technologies they have never been without. Survival is the name of the game; the resources are there, but there aren't enough in one area to go around for everyone.

Infinity faces a difficult choice. Maya-12 is currently closed to all except the Exploration Division. Do they reintroduce the satellites into orbit that were rendered inoperable by the solar flare and covertly bring in new computers to the major institutions, trying to stabilize the world before the scenario becomes similar to Maya-11 or Maya-13, or do they sit back and simply observe?

Centrum also knows about and has access to this timeline, and is more opportunistic about intervening in scenarios such as this. Indeed, and it may actually pain Infinity to think this, Centrum may actually be the survivors' best chance at stabilizing their society.

[AOTA]

Interesting world. The moral questions that must be driving Infinity personal up the wall trying to figure out what to do to help these people and to still keep the secret.

[SpaceGurper]

A solar flare that made TL7+ electronics inoperable. Interesting. However being an electromagnetic pulse type effect only items that are online and not hardened against EMP will be effected.

Most military computer systems are hardened and I'm sure a lot of the banks and financial institutes would have redundant backup systems.

All in all I don't think an EMP type effect would bring civilization to a coping halt.

Satallites in particular are already designed to withstand the EMP effects from solar flares and other cosmic events. However I'm sure if the flare was powerful enough to destroy them they'd be out of operation until new ones can be built and sent up.

[SCHIFTY]

In the Shadowrun-styled worlds, I assumed cyberware got fragged as well?

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by SCHIFTY

In the Shadowrun-styled worlds, I assumed cyberware got fragged as well?

The Shadowrun worlds (Maya-7, -8, and -9) are distinct from the one where civilization came to a halt due to the solar flare killing all electronics (Maya-12). (I only really added them to the list because their own apparent point of diversion is the same date.)

[Six_Gun_Sam]

I think you performed a creative bit of work on this tbrock1031. Good stuff.

[Six_Gun_Sam]

Originally Posted by SpaceGurper

A solar flare that made TL7+ electronics inoperable.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...ght=carrington

[Randyman]

The Shadowrun parallels violate the "Homeline has not discovered a parallel that is farther along in time" rule. Granted, there's nothing saying that such parallels can't or don't exist, but it is a major departure from existing IW canon to assert that such do exist.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Randyman

The Shadowrun parallels violate the "Homeline has not discovered a parallel that is farther along in time" rule. Granted, there's nothing saying that such parallels can't or don't exist, but it is a major departure from existing IW canon to assert that such do exist.

I was thrown by that "rule" myself a few times, until I read the following passage:

Originally Posted by Basic Set Campaigns, p.B544

No "future" echos are known - although there are parallel worlds with higher technology or more adcanced local dates.

(bold emphasis mine).

Echos are all in Q6, for one; the Shadowrun timelines would be closer to "weird parallels" than anything else, what with magic working there.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

I was thrown by that "rule" myself a few times, until I read the following passage:

You're misreading that, though. It doesn't mean that there are any timelines where the objective date, as measured from Homeline, is more advanced than 2027. It means in some timelines, the year 1 AD was pegged earlier (maybe that monk who set the system up did a better job researching Jesus' actual likely birthdate, for example), or the whole world uses Roman dating and we're now in the year 2653 A.U.C, or something like that.
Note the sentence just below the one you quoted: "In all of the echoes, time is flowing more slowly than on Homeline..." (Basic, p. 544).

In any case, the concept of the Shadowrun world as a parallel has been discussed before - you might want to take a look at it, if you're interested.