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Jürgen Hubert
So what exactly did turn Los Angeles into an island, according to the SR4 maps?

So far, the only explanation I came accross is that one of Winternight's fault-line nukes was responsible for this. However, I've finally printed out System Failure and am reading through it carefully, and on page 82 it says that Ares forces actually succeeded in disarming the San Andreas nuke.

So if it wasn't Winternight, then who did this? And exactly when did it happen?
SL James
God.

In 2069, IIRC.
Eyeless Blond
And my quote in SL James's sig tells you how plausible I think that is. smile.gif
snowRaven
QUOTE (Eyeless Blond)
And my quote in SL James's sig tells you how plausible I think that is. smile.gif

Maybe it's now a bowl-shaped island?

(And New Orleans could in theiry become a mountain...if enough water drained from the oceans and the surrounding land somehow deteriorated...)

Nothing is impossible (or even implausible!) in Shadowrun!!! Don't like it? Call it Magic! eek.gif
blakkie
QUOTE (Eyeless Blond @ Oct 9 2005, 04:40 AM)
"Unfortunately Canon's decision was that LA has become an island. LA is a basin, surrounded by hills; it has about as much chance of becoming an island because of an earthquake as New Orleans does of becoming a mountain because of another hurricane."
-- Eyeless Blond


Once again, if you look at the map the islands in question are actually the high points around the "bowl". EDIT: The Rolling Hills for example is one point above water.

But also it would seem that the map is a gross overstatement/distortion of what happened. Not that any of the description in the book is particularly probable. It certainly is a full kettle of [stinky] fish to sort out for the poor guy that gets saddled with writing about the area in detail in whatever future sourcebook. wobble.gif
Eyeless Blond
QUOTE (blakkie @ Oct 9 2005, 07:55 AM)
QUOTE (Eyeless Blond @ Oct 9 2005, 04:40 AM)
"Unfortunately Canon's decision was that LA has become an island. LA is a basin, surrounded by hills; it has about as much chance of becoming an island because of an earthquake as New Orleans does of becoming a mountain because of another hurricane."
-- Eyeless Blond


Once again, if you look at the map the islands in question are actually the high points around the "bowl". EDIT: The Rolling Hills for example is one point above water.

But also it would seem that the map is a gross overstatement/distortion of what happened. Not that any of the description in the book is particularly probable. It certainly is a full kettle of [stinky] fish to sort out for the poor guy that gets saddled with writing about the area in detail in whatever future sourcebook. wobble.gif

Well I perfer to think that it's just Fastjack not checking the facts and instead going with whatever sensationalistic media crap he can find. I mean, just look at his little iconicized blurb before his "A HISTORY LESSON FOR THE REALITY IMPAIRED". He goes on about dinosaur bones on display, and how he used to see the real thing and these days it's all AR fakery. However, if he really *had* been to the museum as a kid and remembered anything about the experience he'd know that none of those big displays are actual bones but are really plaster replicas made of bones kept in the secured back rooms.

Basically I'm relying on Fastjack not having a clue. biggrin.gif
blakkie
QUOTE (Eyeless Blond)
However, if he really *had* been to the museum as a kid and remembered anything about the experience he'd know that none of those big displays are actual bones but are really plaster replicas made of bones kept in the secured back rooms.

See it's nitpicking crap like that that makes me shake my head. There are some places that actually put real bones out front, even if generally those huge sculpture displays don't (they are sometimes missing some of the real bones anyway). Not only that but often as a kid you aren't nessarily told about that. So yes, that sounds exactly like what a kid would remember unless they gave a serious damn about paleontology.
Eyeless Blond
Oh hush. I'm being facetious; didn't you see the smiley? smile.gif
Orient
It's kinda odd that Santa Barbara survived, but just north of SB, which is all mountainy, is underwater. Maybe the Santa Barbara mob ties ensured that there were flood walls? No - according to canon, SB is a pirate haven. Hmm..
Grinder
QUOTE (snowRaven)
Call it Magic! eek.gif

There's the answer. wink.gif
FrankTrollman
LA can flood, and Signal Hill could become an island if the flood plain got filled up enough. But LA is going to get a runoff flood, not a tsunami flood. A tsunami flood would just wash back into the sea again.

For LA to be "covered in water" it has to result from consistently higher rainfalls, not any single cataclysm. Of course, a 10-fold increase in yearly rainfall is quite possible for that area, so it's a plausible outcome.

So you can have a Los Angeles under water if that's what you want. It could even be pretty cool. But you can't have it happen the way it was described in the book and the map you'd end up with would be substantially different from the mess at the back.

-Frank
nick012000
What's the soil like in LA? Any thixotropic stuff around there?
FrankTrollman
QUOTE (nick012000)
What's the soil like in LA? Any thixotropic stuff around there?

Well, thixotropic soil is to be found anywhere where you have swamps, and Southern California has its fair share of those. A big enough earthquake is going to sink and destroy buildings all around the tarpits, for example. But that isn't going to make anything into an island.

The real soil problem that the LA region has is that it has very little in the way of absorbancy. The wetlands are all dried up long ago and the forests no longer exist. The entire region is thus subject to flash flooding.

-Frank
JBlades
QUOTE (Orient)
No - according to canon, SB is a pirate haven. Hmm..

AAaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, matey.
Orient
QUOTE (JBlades)
QUOTE (Orient @ Oct 25 2005, 06:12 PM)
No - according to canon, SB is a pirate haven.  Hmm..

AAaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, matey.

I'm still mad that I missed Talk Like A Pirate Day.
blakkie
You don't need water on the surface for thixotropic subsoils. I believe Mexico City is an example of where sandy, unconsolidated (loose) soil containing a water aquafier is what jiggles during an earthquate. Repeated earthquakes can even help create thixotropic conditions overtime by breaking up the subsoil.

There is a large aquifer under LA (it's why they actually managed to build a large city there) but i don't know if it is sandstone or what. That said, it would take one hell of a lot of shaking for that much soil to to settle enough and slide out to the ocean. It has to go somewhere, no way it is loose deep enough to have enough empty space to settle into itself that far without something magically shielded from mundane detection like an enormous Earthdawn carin.

Also, taking a peek at this site you can see that it is a confined aquifer. I'm not sure how common it is for an very low permeable subsoil to liquify, though i guess since some clays are thixotropic it could be (see Anchorage Alaska). Low permeability does not nessasarily mean dry. In fact clay needs at least some moisture to stop water. Brine water will move through clay much, much faster than fresh water because osmosis tends to keep the clay particles from absorbing water.
SL James
No, they managed to build Los Angeles because William Mulholland was an engineering genius who managed to pipe enough water that the metroplex needed (needs) from the east where there is water. This is one of the reasons why in Shadowrun PCC and Ute could significantly affect Los Angeles before PCC took it over - because they could turn the water off to L.A. and southern California (e.g., Imperial Valley). This is also why L.A. had to build so many fusion/ desalinization plants along the coastline in the beach cities.

Then they had to go and "modernize" the damned L.A. river, which is now just a massive (mostly empty) concrete ditch. Remember, before people arrived Los Angeles was a desert when one river could sustain life. Now, it's almost all "foreign" water being fought over by the metroplex municipalities, farmers in the Imperial Valley, and Las Vegas.
blakkie
True that, to get it from 6 digits to several million people needed that rerouted river. You'd suck the ground dry (or in LA's case, salty) trying to keep up to that many people....which i understand is exactly what places like Arizona are doing right now. frown.gif
Eyeless Blond
Er, here I thought the vast majority of the water came from North Cal, and definately not from the east, as Nevada and Arizona are even more desert-like than LA is. Certainly there's no water coming through that little finger of land that the PCC has extended between LA and Arizona; that's mostly the 29 Palms/Death Valley area, which is desert.

Ah well, it's probably my mistake; I just live here. nyahnyah.gif
FrankTrollman
California does indeed get most of its water from the Sierras. But LA also gets some water from the Colorado River. In the year 2000, the Colorado Rivr Board of California had this to say:

QUOTE
The Colorado River is a vital water resource for California. For some areas, it is
the only source of water supply. Currently, Colorado River water and hydroelectric
energy support approximately 17 million people in southern California and the region’s
municipal, industrial, and agricultural centers, which are considered some of the most
productive in the world. California also has a vital interest in the recreation, fish,
wildlife, and other environmental resources of the Colorado River. The quality of
Colorado River water and watershed management are also extremely important to
California.


Now, since then California has been doing a number of things to reduce its dependency on the Colorado River, and so by 2070 it is entirely possible that we won't be using it at all. But the PCC does have some leverage. Not as much leverage as the CFS has over the PCC (they could institute a tax on trips to Vegas and watch the PCC lose 1/4 of its economy), but substantial nonetheless.

-Frank
Cheops
God I'd hate to see the nitpicking you guys would do over what happened to California in Deadlands...
FrankTrollman
QUOTE (Cheops)
God I'd hate to see the nitpicking you guys would do over what happened to California in Deadlands...

Mostly I'm just pissed off at them because they announced that in canon my personal head had been cut off and put on a stick.

-"Tombstone" Frank
Cheops
Yeah I could see myself being very pissed off if my head got piked too
PlatonicPimp
We nitpick on SR canon because we expect a certain amount of beleivability to the setting. We like the setting because, unlike many others, it is the world that we live in, plus the fantasy/sci-fi stuff. It's the fantasy that makes it fun to play, but to use an anaology, the real world is the canvas apon which the authors paint.
Turning LA into an Island is like ripping the canvas. Mess with the fantasy stuff all you want, but the real world parts have to remain beleivable or we lose that feeling of SR as an outgrowth of the world we are familiar with.
Eyeless Blond
You kidding? I loved what they did to California in Deadlands! That whole bit was one of the reasons I've really wanted to play that game, someday when I can actually get a RL group together.

The difference there is that the book practically outright stated that the Reckoners were out to get California, so crumbling the state into a bunch of cliffs surrounded by ocean worked just fine. SR tries to pass the whole thing off as "normal" though, when clearly the events as described could only be possible of the Horrors came out early and sandblasted the state--first economically, then politically, then millitarily, and finally physically--in which case why are the damn Tirs still there? biggrin.gif
PlatonicPimp
The Tirs are still there because they Controll the early released horrors, and have sicked them on California.

Actually, All this shit has happened to california because, given the Collective karma of the population (Especially LA), they DESERVE it.
Cheops
and what per se is wrong with the magic and/or horror explanation for it? If you were willing to accept what the Reckoners did to California why not assume it is magic until you learn otherwise?

As far as horrors potentially being the cause why not? PLus remember last time that the elves mangled themselves to the point that the horrors didn't want to feed on them anymore so maybe that bad juju is still around in the sixth world (it is a surge effect btw).
PlatonicPimp
BECAUSE WE"RE SICK OF HORRORS.

The same reason we don't want magical explanations for technomancers. The same reason we don't want adepts to automatically be better at everything than sammies, or riggers, or deckers. The same reason we don't want another god damn elven nation or great dragon run corporation.

WE DON"T WANT MAGIC TO BE BEHIND EVERYTHING. This supposed to be the real world of the near future, plus magic. This is a cyberpunk setting first and foremost. The magic is there, it's supposed to be mysterious, and most people are supposed to get by without it, or without ever seeing it. World changing magic is supposed to be so damn difficult that it requires mass Blood sacrifices to power. Letting magic Run Rampant causeing every fricking thing ruins the setting as much as, or even more, than the geography foul-ups. NO MORE MAGICAL EXPLANATIONS.
nick012000
I still like the thixotropic soil best. Just watch as all the soil flows out to sea...
FrankTrollman
QUOTE (nick012000)
I still like the thixotropic soil best. Just watch as all the soil flows out to sea...

It doesn't do that though. It becomes liquid, but liquid in the way that silly puddy is a liquid. Things sink in occassionally, and quite frequently they break apart. Occassionally the things on top even explode. But the soil doesn't flow out to sea. The soil already is below ground level (by definition), which in coastal places means that it is often below sea level to begin with - there's nowhere for it to flow to.

Believe me, my house is on thixotropic soil (being in the swamp and all). Earthquakes are very devastating here, but not because the ground moves more than a few centimeters. If you want land to flow out to sea, earthquakes just aren't ever going to be your disaster of choice - you want volcanic erruptions or heavy rain. That is what causes the heavy erosion.

-Frank
SL James
QUOTE (Eyeless Blond)
You kidding? I loved what they did to California in Deadlands! That whole bit was one of the reasons I've really wanted to play that game, someday when I can actually get a RL group together.

The difference there is that the book practically outright stated that the Reckoners were out to get California, so crumbling the state into a bunch of cliffs surrounded by ocean worked just fine. SR tries to pass the whole thing off as "normal" though, when clearly the events as described could only be possible of the Horrors came out early and sandblasted the state--first economically, then politically, then millitarily, and finally physically--in which case why are the damn Tirs still there? biggrin.gif

Didn't it also kind of explode moreso than just collapse into the sea due to an earthquake?
Eyeless Blond
QUOTE (SL James)
Didn't it also kind of explode moreso than just collapse into the sea due to an earthquake?

Eh, something like that. The point is, there really wasn't a rational, logical explaination, because the very people who were coming up with logical explainations were corrupted by demons anyway. The setting is absolutely full of crap that doesn't make any logical sense, like how the hucksters bargain for powers from demons by playing poker with them, and can fit in the entire game in the time it takes a gunslinger to draw.

It doesn't work in SR though because at least on the surface everything is supposed to make sense. SR is a magical cyberpunk setting, not a zombie spaghetti western, so you expect the developers to at least look at a topographical map when deciding that random places fall into the sea for no good reason.
SL James
Ah, yes. Well, the merits of Deadlands are IMO more than offsetting specifically because it's built on a foundation of absurdity.

Otherwise, I don't expect squat.
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