The more I think about it, the more it seems likely that once the food situation can be brought in hand, the Navy is in a position to use the waterways of the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system to put the Recovery on a favorable footing. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, along with their tributaries offer access to more than half of the Central Valley. Use of these rivers in their untamed state would require adjustments to barges and other river traffic. Nonetheless, the combined assets of San Francisco Bay’s population and industry, the Central Valley’s food production, and the river highways make central California a natural springboard to recovery of the state and much of the West.
In a very real sense, the Mexicans were right to think that occupying San Francisco would be devastating for the Americans. It’s hard to see how they would have a prayer of reaching so far north, though.
Here’s a question: where is Third US Fleet HQ in 2000? It would seem that the major surviving bases would be in San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound.
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“We’re not innovating. We’re selectively imitating.” June Bernstein, Acting President of the University of Arizona in Tucson, November 15, 1998.
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