New Reality Seeds

[Gedrin]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

1. This occurs because of a series of volcanic eruptions. It's not a single catastrophic event that happens with little warning, such as a comet strike.

2. That means it takes weeks to realize this might be a problem, and months before it becomes obvious to everyone that it is a problem, and even then they'll argue about how bad it's likely to get. Heck, they do that with atmospheric science, now, and it's much more sophisticated than it was, 75-80 years ago.

3. The United States continues to struggle with the after-effects of the Great Depression, and the general public has already expressed its displeasure with "Do-Nothing" reactionaries, by voting Herbert Hoover out of office. They expected the Federal Government to "Do Something" about the Great Depression, and they'll likely continue to expect the Federal Government to "Do Something" about this problem, too.

4. Franklin D. Roosevelt, regardless of how he's perceived, today, was seen by most Americans back then as a popular leader doing the best he could to deal with the national crisis and, for the most part, doing a pretty effective job of it, despite whining of Hoover supporters in Congress, and a recalcitrant Supreme Court. That means...

5. ...when Roosevelt picks up the telephone and talks to the state governors and says, "Here's what we need to do, boys," most of them will respond, "How can we help?" Not, "Go f*** yourself."

6. When U.S. Army Chief of Staff Douglas J. MacArthur picks up the phone and talks to the various National Guard commanders in each state, they're also likely to say, "What can we do to help?" The reason is they know that, while the Regular Army isn't very big, in the 1930s, it's commanded by men such as MacArthur, Fox Conner, John J. Pershing and George Marshall.

Moreover the second-tier officers include such talents as Dwight Eisenhower (well known, already, for his command of logistics), George C. Patton, and Omar Bradley. These men chose to remain in the Regular Army during the inter-war period, rather than move to the National Guard, or quit and join the private sector as businessmen. Their primary loyalty is to the United States of America, and they'll have zero patience with any secessionist movements, which...

7. ...are not very popular, at this point, anyway. The Civil War had ended only about 70 years before, and the horror of that was fresh in everyone's mind -- as were the reasons for the Confederacy's defeat. Nobody sensible would want to put the nation through that again (especially since the most active of political agitators were leftist, at this point, and few people wanted to see a socialist revolution).

Also, Roosevelt is a DEMOCRAT, and Nixon's Southern Strategy hasn't taken place, yet, because the Civil Rights movement hasn't started. Why would southern DEMOCRATS thwart someone they helped to elect?

8. That means the only people likely to resist pulling together as a country to meet the crisis, head-on (which is what Roosevelt would call for, in his popular Fireside Chat radio addresses), would be utterly idiotic reactionaries. They'd face a National Guard willingly serving under federal command, the Regular Army, and the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Yes, they'd commit horrific atrocities against blacks, at first, but when Patton and Eisenhower roll into their towns with tanks and troops, they surrender or they die. Moreover, the military commanders know who to arrest, once they take the surrenders, because J. Edgar Hoover's G-men are right there, with them.

That's exactly what MacArthur would order them to do, and they'd do it. His commanders extensively studied Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, and those would be the commanders they'd emulate, in this civil insurrection. Moreover, the nature of the crisis would be such that they wouldn't have any luxury to fool around with a bunch of idiots.

So, any southern resisters wouldn't be facing what they consider wimpy, starving, unarmed Yankee refugees, because Roosevelt wouldn't let it reach that point. They'd face the U.S. Army, led by some of the most able commanders in U.S. military history.

Resistance wouldn't last much more than a year, if that long. After that, the CCC and other work-groups get busy building housing, water and sewer treatment plants, hospitals and other facilities and infrastructure. It's a race against time, by that point. They don't have time to dilly-dally, and Roosevelt and his officers don't have much tolerance for foolishness, either.

The survival of the country is at stake, and they'll not put up with stupidity from the philosophical grandchildren of those they'd consider fools from three generations, past.

If your argument is that the people of the North would have the time to properly martial power to invade the South, and they would win that fight, I can see that scenario working in the short term. If your argument is that the South will cooperate as millions of starving homeless people descend on them over the course of a year while they can't raise enough food for themselves? No, I don't buy that.

It's a basic survival scenario. I find it far more likely that the unassimilated and racial minorities will be thrown under the bus than anything else.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Gedrin

If your argument is that the people of the North would have the time to properly martial power to invade the South, and they would win that fight, I can see that scenario working in the short term. If your argument is that the South will cooperate as millions of starving homeless people descend on them over the course of a year while they can't raise enough food for themselves? No, I don't buy that.

It's a basic survival scenario. I find it far more likely that the unassimilated and racial minorities will be thrown under the bus than anything else.

I think most southern governments would try to cooperate, as best they can -- with admittedly mixed results, some tragic. Most willingly worked with an increasingly powerful federal government after Pearl Harbor, and this scenario genuinely poses as much greater existential threat to the existence of the nation. Why wouldn't they pull together, for this, if they were willing to pull together, for that?

(Remember, the Greatest Generation aren't called that because they were perfect -- or even morally and ethically superior, in any way. They're called that because of what they accomplished, despite their flaws.)

I think the only people who would actively resist the southern migration -- and the mobilization of society to deal with it -- would consist of hard-core racists and secessionists. I think they'd get quashed in a hurry, because all they have is small arms, maybe some explosives, but no heavy weapons and no logistical support. However, the year or so it would take would be an ugly time, followed by even worse decades.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Hmm. You'd have a lot of British people, for example, wanting to reclaim their grandparents' homeland, and a fair number of old people wanting to see how much of their childhood homes had survived.

Agreed. You can do multiple levels of drama. By adjusting how late in the 1930's the Supervolcano went off, you can make further refinements to the setting. Example: if the Volcano goes off in late 1939 with WWII starting. The refugee crisis is much messier.

How soon after the climate switches back would be an intersting varriable too. A 1960's setting of this parallel with a party braving the wilds of tundra Europe to retrive important artifacts of information could also work.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Agreed. You can do multiple levels of drama. By adjusting how late in the 1930's the Supervolcano went off, you can make further refinements to the setting. Example: if the Volcano goes off in late 1939 with WWII starting. The refugee crisis is much messier.

How soon after the climate switches back would be an intersting varriable too. A 1960's setting of this parallel with a party braving the wilds of tundra Europe to retrive important artifacts of information could also work.

There's also the question of what Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal, et cetra, are doing here.

[Randyman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Agreed. You can do multiple levels of drama. By adjusting how late in the 1930's the Supervolcano went off, you can make further refinements to the setting. Example: if the Volcano goes off in late 1939 with WWII starting. The refugee crisis is much messier.

How soon after the climate switches back would be an intersting varriable too. A 1960's setting of this parallel with a party braving the wilds of tundra Europe to retrive important artifacts of information could also work.

Here's a twist: have the supervolcano be the Yellowstone Caldera. This definitely produces a much different post-cataclysm scenario.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

This still counts as an "America! Hell yeah!" timeline of the sort you tend to like. :)

I'm allowed to like what I like. And the USA has a lot of pragmatic advantages in any realistic world. Besides, in normal fiction and Hollywood films the USA always gets the absolute worst of it. So I'm bucking the trend.

I'd make the situation in North America a little more difficult. The need to move south, so quickly, into the former states of the Confederacy, would bring U.S. cultural conflicts to the forefront -- especially since there were still people alive, in the 1930s, who has either fought in the Civil War, themselves, or had parents who did.

Frankly I saw that being part of why the clock moved forward on race issues in the states. We had decades of internal struggle in the real world, they had that here as well. Since in the Ice Age, the American southwest was forested and had more rains, the expansion of argriculture here was a safety valve. Which, given the area was settled by the least repentant Confederates, would lead to more stress.

Yankee culture differs from Southern culture in significant ways. One of the reasons the Civil Rights movement lasted at least two decades (and remains an ongoing effort, really) is that it had to take that long. They couldn't move any faster, and still maintain civil order (which got pretty shaky at times, even so).

If you have desperate Yanks and Canucks moving south in a hurry, because they have no other choice, then Southern reactionaries have no time to adapt. The same sort of mindsets that led to White Defense Councils would lead to something similar by a different name (Associations for the Defense of Southern Traditions, or what-not), that would act legally -- and illegally -- to defend the status quo as much as possible.

Which would explain why the USA was pretty much out of the picture throughout most of the mini-ice age.

In the end they'd lose. Given the scope of the catastrophe, every culture would endure radical change. But, traditional Southerners would fight tooth-and-nail to resist, and I think we'd wind up with, in effect, a brutally nasty second Civil War, and that's how we'd have addressed the issue of race, in this scenario.

All the old would-be Confederates would be broken or dead.

That means, 70 years down the line, the scars on North American societies would remain pretty fresh. Everybody would know about such atrocities as forests full of "strange fruit" or other sorts of summary executions without due process, as well as devastated towns and land redistribution.

Oh agreed on several points. At the same time, the USA would be better off than many other groups. I picture large groups of bitter Confederates moving south into Latin America. European refugees would also run there. Things would get mean.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

There's also the question of what Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal, et cetra, are doing here.

Perhaps it's as simple as the place is easy to reach for some reason or other. Or maybe the Cabal simply sees a place where they can slip in and build up so reasources and control. Cabalists with engineering degrees could simply offer TL8 innovations. The US tech level is much like the late 1970's. The big difference is that research into atom bombs never happened. Atomic research focused on Thorium because it can't become a bomb. The Cabal is helping the USA build a reactor. The government doesn't know it's working with wizards, although it jokingly calls the reactor design team "our Wizards" and the "high cabal."

Meanwhile Centrum is looking for influence in the Southern Union and Infinity is focused on India. Maybe you could get sepperate heir to the British Imperial crown to fight a war in the Indian Ocean over which King is the real King-Emperor!

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Randyman

Here's a twist: have the supervolcano be the Yellowstone Caldera. This definitely produces a much different post-cataclysm scenario.

Consequences of a yellowstone eruption.

North America would be hit hard, but the rest of the world would be fairly untouched by the volcano. Of course, the economy would go to hell.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I'm allowed top like what I like. And the USA has a lot of pragmatic advantages in any realistic world. Besides, in normal fiction and Hollywood films the USA always gets the absolute worst of it. So I'm bucking the trend.

Hey, just to be clear, I wasn't giving you a bad time about your preferences. Those are pretty well understood, at this point, by anybody who's been on the forums for a couple of months. :)

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Frankly I saw that being part of why the clock moved forward on race issues in the states. We had decades of internal struggle in the real world, they had that here as well. Since in the Ice Age, the American southwest was forested and had more rains, the expansion of argriculture here was a safety valve. Which, given the area was settled by the least repentant Confederates, would lead to more stress.

I wondered what you thought about the Southwest, and if in your conception you'd have it do what the Sahara did in the last ice age -- turn into more useful territory that's mostly empty.

I could see some conflicts with the American Indian nations, there, and they were pretty oppressed, back then. Having the Canadian Dineh move in to help them would increase the tension, by a lot.

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Oh agreed on several points. At the same time, the USA would be better off than many other groups. I picture large groups of bitter Confederates moving south into Latin America. European refugees would also run there. Things would get mean.

I'm not sure how much better off we'd be economically, but the pressure would have forced us to handle a lot of our cultural issues. I just think the process of the resolution would be brutally violent, in ways that would leave lasting scars in the U.S. culture that resulted.

All of that said, I think maybe one of the reasons the South was (and continues to be) so culturally backwards is because necessity is the mother of invention, and mama is pretty laid back, down there.

The richness and fertility of the land, down south, favorably compares to the best in the rest of the world. A large family with only about two acres, or so, can produce more than enough food to eat really well, with minimal visits to a Piggly Wiggly -- mostly just for coffee, tea flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, paraffin and Ball jars with canning lids and bands. They could get most hardware they need with a trip to a store about twice a year.

I know this, because I grew up in poor, rural southeastern Kentucky, and that's how people actually lived. They resisted change because they had no reason for change, and were so culturally isolated that, in some ways, the rest of the country seemed like an increasingly alien place (especially during and right after the Civil Rights movement).

A sudden influx of people from elsewhere in North America would come as a rude shock, because the people, there, simply aren't psychologically prepared for any such thing. Those families have lived in the rural south, for generations, without having to deal with anything resembling a dynamic society.

I think that, in a lot of ways, the crisis would precipitate radical changes, because the grassroots reactionary movements would be so brutal, and so bitterly angry, that they'd wind up discrediting conservatism for multiple generations.

[PTTG]

The winner of the volcano setting has got to be the British Empire.

So they'd probably kill Gandhi. The end result is Britain relocating to the coast of the Indian Ocean, fully anticipating to return to the British Isles.

The freezing of the mosquito population might be a vast blessing, too.