[raketenjagdpanzer]

OK guys, I'm feeling a little creative so here's some more stuff: a neighborhood I once lived in. Later, I'll offer up some small adventure hooks and a few rumors. Like elsewhere, very beta, so pick apart at your discretion:

PINE HILLS
The boundaries of Pine Hills are Apopka-Vineland Road to the west, the city limits of Orlando to the east, Clarcona-Ocoee Road to the north, and State Road 408 to the south. It is, or was, a typical southern overdeveloped suburb of strip malls, gas stations and fast food restaurants surrounding residential neighborhoods.

The area began to decline from 1985 onward, as the titular road that winds through the heart of the area was gradually zoned from residential facing to commercial.

The Thanksgiving Day Massacre in 1997 left the region's 38000 residents without power or water, and shortly thereafter without food. As mentioned earlier, some (very light) fallout reached the Pine Hills area. This caused a major panic as the residents of Pine Hills, already on edge and fearing a second Soviet missile strike on Orlando itself were now confronted with the specter of radioactive fallout. The worst crises erupted near Evans High School and surrounding elementary and middle schools as well as municipal buildings and fire/rescue houses: most still featured fallout shelters, but the number and provision were woefully inadequate for the amount of people attempting to get in. Rather than listen to the information the thinly-spread emergency management personnel tried to disseminate regarding where shelters were for given neighborhoods, many people tried to gather with loved ones at already overburdened shelters, or demanded entry into shelters that they happened upon.

The result was chaos: hundreds died in the panic, stampedes and outbreaks of violence, as well as the use of force to stop same by the police.

Perhaps the worst irony was that the fallout was dispersed enough to prevent (relatively) little danger. When the initial alerts were finally lifted, Pine Hills was a shambles. Whole blocks of apartments had caught fire and let burn: few if any firetrucks were capable of operating after the EMP from the Thanksgiving Day attacks, and no-one was in the mood to assist their neighbors with bucket brigades.

As happened across the nation (and indeed the world) huge amounts of looting went on - most grocery stores, gas stations, pawn shops and gun stores were emptied. Civilians remaining in the sprawling Seville Place neighborhood became hostages in their own homes as now even better armed street gangs battled one another settling old grudges once and for all at what was seen to be the end of the world.

By the start of 1998, Pine Hills was a wasteland: two-thousand or so people eke out a living here, fighting over plots of land for growing and what few items of (meager) convenience may still be found here. There are no operational hospitals or doctors offices; Mercy Drive Hospital was overwhelmed and looted, as were all private practices.

Hurricanes took a serious toll from 1998-2000, as many of the quickly assembled houses and apartments were built at the barest minimum of code compliance prior to the war. Thus the entire borough is dotted with ruins, the streets choked with rubble and fallen trees. If there is a lone bright spot it is the orange groves: the north and northwest areas of the neighborhood were once bucolic areas of greenhouses and more importantly orange groves. Even with the poor weather of the winter of 1997/1998, citrus is readily available as food or as a source of fuel. Those who remain in the area grow and sell oranges and other vegetables as they can: most people were suburbanites, ill equipped to deal with the realities of subsistence living.

The 1st JMC does not have any outposts here, but stays in contact with a few civilians and overflies the area periodically. Civil authority here lies in the hands of street gangs, most of whom are distressingly well-armed.