Greater Appalchia cum Twilight: 2000

[Webstral]

I have been re-reading “American Nations” by Colin Woodard. I highly recommend this book to my countrymen and Canadians. He covers the development of a “nation” he calls Greater Appalachia that originates with Scots and Scots-Irish settling in western Pennsylvania. These resettled Borderlanders carry their cultural norms into a new borderland along the spine of the Appalachians. During the period leading up to the American Revolution, the original territory of Greater Appalachia in western Pennsylvania, modern West Virginia, western Virginia, western North and South Carolina, and northern Georgia is stricken by disorder and violence. Woodard describes a civilization with few significant towns which is highly vulnerable to widespread banditry due to the dispersed nature of the homesteads. The people save little because livestock and whiskey, which had been the best forms of wealth in an area already prone to lawlessness and with very poor communication, draw the predations of bandits. It’s very Twilight: 2000.

[stormlion1]

Don't forget the Whiskey Rebellion! Those guys sure loved there whiskey!

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

Don't forget the Whiskey Rebellion! Those guys sure loved there whiskey!

Bleh...if it's got an e in it it aint whisky...

[Green Monkey]

I second the recommendation of this book. I read it for the first time earlier this year and found it quite interesting. I don't think anyone will agree with all of the author's conclusions and opinions but as food for thought its pretty tasty.

The Deep South he describes is probably more like New America than the real deep south of 2014 (my poorly informed opinion only having not visited). His description of El Norte is probably quite relevant in the v1 timeline. The other regions are probably less directly applicable to t2k but it can definitely add flavour.

[Webstral]

Green Monkey, I had the same impression about the relationship between Woodard's Deep South and Twilight: 2000's New America. Having spent time in Georgia quite aside from my experience at Benning School for Boys, I am inclined to agree with Woodard's portrayal of the Deep South in general scope if not in every detail. Of the regions of the US, the Deep South would be the fertile soil for New America.

It's diverting to explore ideas through a different lens. From that standpoint, I observe that the Mexican invasion and occupation of territory in CONUS strikes El Norte. By mid-1999, the territory occupied by Mexican forces corresponds to the boundaries of Woodard's El Norte. When the Constitutionalists break away in 2000, their heartland is El Norte, though some Constitutionalist forces operate in central Mexico, the Yucatan, and the southern Mexico. In my work, I have altered the official timeline and circumstances so that an American cantonment based on Fort Huachuca and Tucson in Arizona remains in being. This puts an Anglo enclave in El Norte, which is what Huachuca is in real life, anyway. I also place the remnants of PRI forces in southern Sonora and Chihuahua, which just an interpretation of the existing information. The Second Mexican Civil War is a contest between El Norte and central Mexico, with important auxiliary theaters in Maya territory.

Of Woodard's American nations, it seems like the Far West would lose the greatest percentage of its pre-war population. Without energy and without a functioning water distribution infrastructure, the Far West is in a bad spot. This is one of the themes I have been playing up in Silver Shogun (which I am considering renaming Sagebrush Shogun). At this point in my rough draft, Las Vegas survives for a brief time after the Thanksgiving Massacre because someone developed a contingency plan for managing Hoover Dam in the event of an EMP attack on CONUS. Power goes out for a little while, then comes back on. Water becomes available. However, when 99th Wing (which by March 1998 has incorporated all federal forces in southern Nevada, plus law enforcement and county/municipal government assets and personnel) is evacuated from Nellis AFB to help manage the relocation of San Francisco Bay Area urbanites to the Central Valley to help farm (and to be closer to the food), the feds conduct a scorched earth campaign in southern Nevada on their way out to deny anyone else the opportunity to use the remaining assets in the area. They destroy the generators at Hoover Dam, slaughter the cattle of the local dairy farms, destroy whatever industrial machinery they can't carry away, and even go so far as to torch the base facilities on the way out. They also damage the one refinery in Nevada.

One of the reasons Tokugawa becomes a despot is that he has to get the full cooperation of ranchers and farmers who are not inclined to cooperate with outsiders. While he is able to use persuasion to get his way in many cases, a couple of examples of extreme brutality are necessary to as an example. The irony is that he is trying to save lives. In doing so, he becomes a tyrant. The resources of Nevada are just barely adequate to support the 150,000 survivors who make it to 1999. A lot of the survivors who produced food before the nuclear exchange are very unhappy about having relokees from Clark County foisted on them and at having to share what they produce at rates set by the Shogun's council. The Shogun reacts to this by establishing the kempetei--the secret police. The nature of the land and the circumstances compel authoritarianism and collective activity that are at once foreign to the Far Westerns and familiar (working for a big corporation engaging in resource extraction is not terribly different).