First and foremost, I agree 100% with the idea that no resettlement program is going to go smoothly. I would go so far as to say that the programs that basically achieve the stated goal(s) with a low 20% casualty rate will be the exceptions. Plenty will go wrong. Plenty. However, where there is a discernible pattern, something can be salvaged from the wreckage. If something can be salvaged from the wreckage, we have a chance of explaining how 125 million Americans are still alive as of 7/00.
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Originally Posted by HorseSoldier
If things are bad enough in southern California, I can see it playing out that refugee outflow from there doesn't manage to constitute a wave, at least not by the time it would be getting to the San Francisco area. Probably spells the doom of intact communities closer in to the LA/San Diego metroplex that might have, left to their own devices, survived.
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You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie. SoCal is largely depopulated by July 2000. Only the Imperial Valley may have something left, because that’s a place worth defending for both the Americans before 6/98 and the Mexicans afterwards. The other cities will have a population ceiling set by the availability of water. The real numbers will almost certainly be somewhat lower.
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Originally Posted by HorseSoldier
I think the biggest foundational impediment to resettlement programs that repurpose surplus labor from urban areas into agricultural field hands will be people wrapping their head around that being the extent of government help. Initially, the logic of insisting the government should provide such assistance as is needed for someone to be able to keep their home, some semblance of their lifestyle, etc., will probably keep voluntary enrollment low. As people get hungry this will change.
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The government can help this along by bottlenecking the flow of rations. Get people hungry early, and some of them will sign up for relocation. By the same token, tell the farmers that they are going to have to adapt to having a lot of laborers at their farms, or they’ll be replaced by another farmer who will play ball. The farmers will be pissed off, of course. I picture the end of the conversation going something like this:
Farmer: This is my goddamned land! You don’t tell me how to run my farm!
Captain Smith: You have two choices. Get on board or don’t. If you don’t we won’t do anything to you. We’ll stand aside when the inevitable tide of hungry [expletive deleted] rolls through here like a swarm of [expletive deleted] locusts and eats this place down the dirt. We’ll protect your neighbors who play ball and grow food for the survivors. We’ll put up sign posts telling the locusts which way to go to get to your farm. Make your choice.
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Originally Posted by HorseSoldier
It's probably not a smooth transition at all, even in places where it works -- I'd expect rioting and turmoil, in suburbs as well as the more stereotypical inner city areas. Maybe even more unrest in the suburbs as members of the middle class with completely irrelevant job skills stare at the prospects of being turned into farm field hands at the bottom of the new pecking order.
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Damned skippy.
Some SoCal people may be left alive because there will be an early need to evacuate refugee camps in the region. Before people start moving out of the Bay Area in large numbers, they will be leaving SoCal in large numbers by whatever means are available. It’s not hard to imagine refugee camps springing up in and around all of the cities of the Central Valley from 12/97 onward as survivors from SoCal are trucked closer to the stores of food. From there, redistribution of the available labor to the farms will be much easier. People already uprooted will have far less attachment to their temporary quarters. Someone is liable to notice this fact early on and exploit the readiness of refugees to be moved vis-à-vis folks living in intact homes.