[Webstral]

Horse, you raise some very legitimate points.

I have dealt with the southern California exodus by killing most of them. The nukes are bad for SoCal: four strikes along the coastal spine of Los Angeles, plus one each at Vandenberg AFB and March AFB. The L.A. strikes and their resulting fire storms pretty much should do it for greater Los Angeles. Northern Orange County probably will get swept up in the firestorm. The hit on March AFB will destroy the Inland Empire. It’s possible that San Bernadino and Fontana will survive the firestorms intact. Vandenberg is pretty isolated from the SoCal metroplex.

San Diego survives, as does Camp Pendleton. Inland Empire municipalities 10 miles or more from March AFB probably won’t be much affected by the firestorm. A lot depends on the topography and moisture. Winter 1997-1998 was an El Nino winter, dumping a lot of rain on California. Therefore, the firestorm might not have been able to jump over the open spaces between densely settled areas.

The effects on SoCal are pretty severe even before the Mexicans invade. One good point is that we might see an effort to move some refugees to the Imperial Valley or the Central Valley before the start of the Second Mexican-American War. I don’t have a good idea how many people we’re talking about, though.

As for draconian measures, I think one option for the government is to offer food for movement. Point out to the folks in the ration line that the stockpiles are going to run out soon. Labor is needed in the Central Valley and elsewhere to grow and bring in more food. Start with volunteers. Once the looting and violence begin, it shouldn’t be hard to find people who are willing to go elsewhere.

All of this leads me to the contingency question. How prepared was the United States for the TDM? In Howling Wilderness, GDW seems to have presumed that the US was basically caught off-guard. I find this unrealistic. As the war escalates, people everywhere are going to start asking what if. Governors are going to ask their Depts of Ag what the effect of an exchange on food production will be. The answer almost always is going to be that production will take a hit without fossil fuels, and distribution will be very difficult. Some of these governors are going to ask whether additional labor can make up for the lack of fossil fuels. From this line of questioning, some are going to think to themselves that it would be best to make some arrangements ahead of time so that there is some idea of how many people are needed where. Obviously, reality is going to overwhelm the best-laid plans.

Now in the best-case scenario, you’re going to get millions of former urban and suburban dwellers living in rural hoovervilles. The effect will be rather similar to the latifundia of late Rome. It’s not hard to see a lot of Americans becoming indentured servants. It’s not hard to see a lot of farm hands overpowering the farmers and redistributing the land. GDW explores this idea in Alleghany Uprising. It’s a bad situation all around. But it may help explain why in mid-2000, 48% of the pre-war population is still alive. Somehow or other, they are growing enough, hunting enough, catching enough, and gathering enough food to keep 125 million people alive, if not in comfort.