Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[PTTG]

It's a fungus that makes you wear snazzily tailored clothes, and it's spread by lifting your arm up and marching vigorously.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

It's a fungus that makes you wear snazzily tailored clothes, and it's spread by lifting your arm up and marching vigorously.

No! It is spread by beer and pretzels.

[somecallmetim]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Now I'm wondering about a horrific combo of Gotha, Reich, and Hell worlds.
A weird reality where some infectious agent turns people into pseudo-Nazis.

Not just extreme xenophobia and paranoia a disease could plausibly cause, but cliched specific behaviors and interests to hammer home the weirdness.

I had my players pass briefly through a world based on Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros, which was somewhat similar in feel to what you're describing, if not in the actual result.

[Astromancer]

A common trope in post-apocalyptic fiction is the land of isolated communites. We've all read works were the, normally young, protagonist is the only member of the community who even imagines going beyond the boundaries of that community.

So why not a world were, other than outcastes and total weirdos, no one travels beyond their community.

It would be a world of small isolated societies with strange rules and vast floods of local quirks.

Perhaps the isolation is a responce to the Spainish Flu. Trains and the radio still exist but quarantine regulations, plus fear and custom, maintain strict isolation. Perhaps some group on the perminant outs in small town America of the 1910s, like gays, could be drafted to be the exiles that run the trains.

How universities, vital to maintaining a TL6 society, would run is a stranger problem.

[PTTG]

Any printed or written material from the outside world might be contaminated in transport. If it's a textbook or a manual, it's reasonable to quarentene the shipment for a few weeks, (dormant bacteria can only live so long). Letters are both more contaminated to start, and are only so relevant when it's been a month in travel.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Trains and the radio still exist but quarantine regulations, plus fear and custom, maintain strict isolation. Perhaps some group on the perminant outs in small town America of the 1910s, like gays, could be drafted to be the exiles that run the trains.

TL6 radios need new tubes regularly, and making those needs reasonably large factories, and quite a few mined materials. The overheads of quarantine are going to make this horribly expensive, in a society with very limited productivity. I think they're liable to lose TL6 on a timescale of a generation or so.

Originally Posted by Astromancer

How universities, vital to maintaining a TL6 society, would run is a stranger problem.

An extension of the Australian School of the Air system would be possible in theory, but the costs are horrible. The cultural adaptations of the Australian Outback are going to be helpful for this setting in general.

Originally Posted by PTTG

Letters are both more contaminated to start, and are only so relevant when it's been a month in travel.

They're still very relevant to maintaining family contact and relieving isolation. Long-distance correspondence was very important at TL5.

[RogerBW]

You can keep telegraphs going (they're solidly TL5), but you'll need to send people out to repair the lines. That's almost certainly your train crews, again. (Putting telegraph lines along the rail lines makes sense for all sorts of reasons.)

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

You can keep telegraphs going (they're solidly TL5), but you'll need to send people out to repair the lines. That's almost certainly your train crews, again. (Putting telegraph lines along the rail lines makes sense for all sorts of reasons.)

All the more reason to have a pariah-exile group. Gays would be one choice. There are others.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Perhaps the isolation is a responce to the Spainish Flu. Trains and the radio still exist but quarantine regulations, plus fear and custom, maintain strict isolation. Perhaps some group on the perminant outs in small town America of the 1910s, like gays, could be drafted to be the exiles that run the trains.

What would the trains be for? Presumably you don't need passenger service and trade is hard through quarantines.

Admittedly you *must* have fairly extensive trade to justify much above TL3. You can probably do that with local resources (small iron deposits are everywhere) but it's hard to do gunpowder without sulfur or printing without lead for type and those aren't so common, and higher technology depends on specialists who couldn't make a living from a single small town.

[Apollonian]

It reminds me a bit, oddly enough, of the anime Haibane Renmei. The setting is a (rather idyllic) TL5^ town with farm fields, wind turbines, and some woodland enclosed by very high walls. There's no military or police, or government AFAIK (like I said, idyllic) though there is a religious institution of monks sworn to silence. The only contact with the outside world appears to be through the one very large gate in the wall, through which caravans of veiled, silent traders enter town every so often and set up in a market at the gate.

So, extending this to the Spanish Flu setting:

A hundred years or so after the Quarantine began, most communities are fenced or walled compounds covering several square miles of land, with most of the natural resources for subsistence enclosed. Travel between them is by caravan on the old railroads - caravans pulled by beasts of burden, as the society no longer has the resources to fuel or build locomotives. Caravan traders are a special caste - respected outcasts, sort of, valued for what they do but shunned because they might carry the plague. When in town, they wear heavy, protective clothing, something like biohazard suits, for the protection of both sides. Goods are traded by sign language in the designated market area, and then sterilized by quarantine or other prescribed methods. Every so often, a townie gets the itch to travel and joins the traders, irrevocably leaving their old life behind. It's a common refuge for those who don't fit into their home town. Other refuges might be becoming hermits in the far reaches of their home enclosure, or joining together in pseudo-religious communities that provide some kind of service that the rest of the town tolerates/needs.

For outtimers, infiltration is very difficult; each town is insular, and strangers are unknown and feared. The traders are theoretically easier to infiltrate, but even if you do so, they have their own customs and quirks, and they (by cultural design) cannot easily infiltrate the towns. There might be some cities or towns that are large enough, with a sufficiently large enclosure, that agents might have an in, but it's going to be tricky.

As for outside the walls, who knows?