After Stabilization?

[Olefin]

If anything all the debris blown up into the atmosphere would cause more rain and snow, not less. And the problem with HW is so what if it ends in 2001 - as described basically the US would have had its population reduced below the level of any possible recovery in less than hundreds of years long before any crops would have been harvested in 2002.

The death toll from starvation and disease (millions of unburied bodies resulting from mass starvation deaths would have resulted in plague, typhus, you name it) from the drought as described basically would have ended all civilization in the US, most likely for any forseeable future, and definitely for so long that there is no way there is an American Arm in Twilight 2300AD. With that kind of death toll you would be lucky if the Dark Ages ended in the US before 2400 and we were back to what we had in 1776, let alone in space with faster than light ships.

Destroying the US like that is not furthering adventure in any way - unless what you want is to stop the game and pull out Aftermath instead and say lets play this now and just transfer over your characters.

As for US recovery without HW ever happening - have heard many people say without HW and Kidnapped then the US would recover too soon and be back to being powerful again and unbalance the game. Again I dont see that either - you are talking about a country split between three different power bases, plus with invaders in command of much of its Southwest and Alaska and with huge power generation and food distribution issues and with much of its infrastructure in ruins.

Thats a lot of work to do right there that could keep players busy with various missions for dozens of years. Heck just a drive the Mexicans out and begin the process of stabilizing the Southwest again campaign would keep a good GM busy for a long long time or a MilGov drive to conquer CivGov and reunite the country by force.

So ignoring HW and Kidnapped makes a lot of sense from both a playability aspect and also from having your characters actually trying to do more than simple survival.

And while simple survival is part of the game, so is recovery and trying to rebuild - if not then why was Reset part of the very first module and why did the Submarine Trilogy include the scientists with the knowledge to build cheap fusion reactors?

Now there is a good source of recovery missions- i.e. having characters having to gather the materials needed for those fusion reactors once the Corpus Christi gets back. They could be widely dispersed, in the hands of the New Americans (who may not know what they are sitting on) or even behind enemy lines in Texas or California.