It depends on what sort of society you are running and what they will tolerate.

If your society is fairly non-corrupt and willing to kill without mercy or remorse you can control a large population with limited casualties. Ruthless terror keeps being used through history because it really tends to work well. If you machine gun protesters and make a point of shooting any news reporters you see you'll get a lot less street protests, and no pictures. If you say that "We will shoot everyone in a house if you have a gun" and then go carry out large scale searches and and execute everyone in any house where there is a gun you will tend to have less people willing to hide guns for "the resistance".

Once you have demonstrated that you are ruthless and not playing games you use this to set up informer networks by allowing people to not have the awful things happen that should in exchange for information on other people. Or you bribe them. Either way, you set up the classic communist style informer network.

This doesn't tend to work very well if you troops are willing to sell their guns to the "the resistance", which is one reason that the Russians are still fighting a war in Chechnya, but it has been effective.

What are you blaming me for exactly?

Also, as far as Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Runner Havens are concerned, I was writing a section about HK, not Los Angeles. I'm just not going to waste word count trying to explain, from a Hong Kong point of view, the mistakes in developing California.

Must be that damned E. coli.

(Hmm, soyfood corps had new strains genetically engineered and sent a crop duster down 101 with it?)

That's what the world needs today - a clever leader!

When are the next elections? Do we have time to grow one? Maybe by 2070 if we're lucky?

Ask Hitler. If he were still alive, he'd tell you that you can't exterminate a population fast enough without nuclear weapons. He tried on his eastern front, and they just kept coming.

At the battle of Kiev, the Russians created a diversion larger than the D-Day invasion - 350,000 unarmed militia. Maybe that's why Hitler thought D-Day a diversion? He couldn't think straight with that Russian boot up his a$$.

It's really pretty simple:

The problem with California is that it has always had giant world shattering events thrown at in a ham-handed attempt to make Seattle mean something - without having accompanying world changes in the rest of the world.

So for example, the BBB goes off on that inane tirade about how a giant earthquake came and sank everything - which would be fine if the rest of the world was experiencing huge tidal waves and city levelling aftershocks in Athens. But it's not, so it isn't some sort of "these are the times that try us" storytelling device, it's just stupid geology that makes people cry. But people had been semi-successfully pinning the blame on a bad map and saying "look guys, it's just an off-hand comment by Fastjack and a low-res map, there isn't actually a hole bigger than the Chicxulub crater caused by an earthquake that would have done a fair shot at destroying all life on earth, it's just a somewhat devastated city - like New Orleans." Ok fine. Many people were waiting for the money to get shown on that.

But then what happens? You have to shoot your mouth off in Street Magic in a section that never got exposure to the rest of the authors and hand wave the dropping of the city with the sudden creation of giant magic holes. Well... fuck! While I easily grant that piece of hand-waving is fine and dandy at creating those holes in the first place, it does not require the act of a fault quake that is larger and more powerful than any fault quake that has ver happened since the evolution of the chloroplast, it presents other difficulties just as insurmountable. See, by announcing that the ground really did fall far enough that it is now under water, whatever the cause, you've just dropped a mountain so far that it is under water. Like a pile driver if you will, dropped over a kilometer in distance. Made of stone, and over 200 kilometers across. I'm going to conservatively estimate that what got dropped was only 100 meters thick on average and that it only fell an average of 200 meters. That's three trillion cubic meters of earth - seventeen trillion tonnes. And you "dropped it". About 200 meters. And the Earth wasn't destroyed.

Not only was the Earth not destroyed, but you didn't even feel the need to explain how Hong Kong was avoiding a massive recession under the circumstances.

In short, Zim, you made the fires worse.

Or to put it another way: if the problem is that a section of the setting is completely fucked, the answer is not to put your dick into it.

So that's what I'm blaming you for. I'm blaming you for nearly single handedly taking a very poorly conceived dev idea that caused nearly irreparable harm to the setting and then running it into the ground so that's about a million times worse and probably cannot be salvaged.

-Frank

Frank, I suggest you take a deep breath and go back and read things again. As usual you are making one reading of the material and ignoring all others. Certain areas of the coastline and LA did sink during the twin earthquakes, in some cases as much as 1-2 feet, in a few others more, in most less. But another part of the vanished land went into the "Deep Lacuna" (and didn't come back). Nowhere did the land drop off 200m.

For the record, LA relation with HK as you described was still born in the Sixth World. People tend to forget you had food riots in the good old USA in the early 21st century in Shadowrun. The balkanization of North America took care of the rest. Nor did LA survive VITAS unharmed, in fact it was one of the worst hit parts of the North America during VITAS 2, at which point the population of LA dropped by 20-25%. And that's all before the toxic levels, astral phenomena, the gang warfare, the water problems, the Tir invasion, the Aztlan invasion, the Japanese invasion, Aztlan and Tir militarization of borders, all working against repopulation...

As an addendum to kzt's post, it also depends on the population you are attempting to control.

If your target population is used to normal ruthless terror, you've got to come up with something creative to terrorise them. As it was, Stalin was already so ruthless, Hitler had nothing ruthless enough to scare the Russians into submission. So when you use ruthless terror, you got to really measure yourself against the tyrannical despots of the ages and try to top them. However, the good news is once you do so and reinforce that with appropriate indoctrination, you got yourself some Sardukkar/Fremen.

Machine gunning people down is ruthless but it lacks true cruelty. People are instinctively afraid of fire, use flamethrowers and BBQ those protestors. And don't kill all the reporters, capture their families and mail them back to the reporters in letter sized bits if the broadcasts offends you. Don't shoot everyone in the house if they have a gun, nail them all to the house, preferably alive and then shoot anyone who comes tries to help them.

Ha! You realize the more you terrorize a populace the more you generate dissent?
Reign of terror, geez sounds supervillianish.

If you want to conquer someone you don't roll in, trash the place and start shooting people for little to no reason. Those people you just machinegunned have relatives you know. Good job, you took out one guy and added three to oppose you who probably wouldn't have done a damn thing otherwise.

If you want to conquer a people you do it as quickly and quietly as possible. Then you make as little changes as you can. Hell you can leave the guy who was in charge before your little war in power. With such a small change to people's every day paradigms a population would hardly notice the regime change. Also you tend not to piss off the individuals who are wealthy and powerful in that country. Most could care less who's running the show as long as their slice of the pie is left the hell alone.

Apparently nobody's heard of the word subtle.

You are also assuming a few things. First, you're assuming that at least 100 meters thick worth of earth fell anywhere. You don't know that. Hell, I don't know that. I never said where the earth that vanished into the metaplanes ended and where the earth that fell began.

Second, you make it sound like it was an instantaneously process. Which also isn't the case. It did not just "poof" and tons of earth fell into the void. Some of it slid, some of it shifted, some of it collapsed. But it didn't happen instantly.

Of course there were. There actually were food riots in Mississippi, last year in the real world. I know some people who had to be evacuated from one and I persnally was performing inventory for the Red Cross volunteers who cleaned up after it.

That's because the modern "on demand" economy, which has been so successful for Dell Computers, is also extremely fragile and vulnerable to interruption. That is, having things sit in backstock doesn't make money for anyone, and with the modern rapid shipping and purchase tracking you can buy pretty much what you can sell right off. Which is fine and dandy until something happens to a major port.

Then, affected regions don't have fallback supplies and they don't get resupplied and then they don't get food. World food production is far and away larger than it needs to be to feed everyone, but starvation and food riots happen whenever distribution breaks down (either because of structural poverty or damaged infrastructure).

So yeah there were food riots. And if you level Los Angeles, there will be more food riots all over the place. Not just because it's attached to the most productive agricultural land on the planet, but because it's the 5th largest port in the world. People all over the planet eat because there are containers guaranteed to be delivered through that port to a city near them.

It's a bad hand to be dealt, but you played it badly. Where a single sentence would have eased things, you said nothing. And where mere silence would have sufficed you spoke out in an inelegant fashion.

And that, is what I'm blaming you for. Nor for getting us into this mess, it's been a long time coming and dependent upon a series of bad ideas that propagate through one another. But for taking this bad hand and raising when you should fold, and folding when you should raise.

You gotta know when to walk away and know when to run.

-Frank

Different wording or different information may have appeased you, Frank. But honestly, appeasing you wasn't really on my mind at the time.

Nor is it now.

But thanks for the feedback.

Who was that even directed to?

-Frank

Well, since the geniuses at Fasa and Fanpro have cleverly eleminated EVERY OTHER port on the West Coast, I'd have to guess Anchorage, Alaska. This is, of course, totally insane, but hey, how does that differ from anything else that they have written?

LA didn't take a dive into the ocean. It has some areas that have collapsed and filled with water. More details will be in Corp Enclaves, but I don't know those details and I couldn't say even if I did!

It's never been said that LA isn't shipping to HK. I'd wait until Corp Enclaves to determine things like that. Also, Seattle-HK shipping hasn't been hurt much. Where Seattle is hurting is being used as a Pacific-side gateway for continental shipping in North America. That's because Aztlan finished the Nicaragua Canal, which allows larger ships to cut through Aztlan to go to the east coast of North America themselves, cutting out Seattle as the middleman.

I seem to remember something bad happening there, involving a bunch of Japanese people. . . .

That's a long way from the 1999 food riots in New York City that prompted the Seretech decision (admittedly were revisited and given a more reasonable explanation). But then again I wouldn't disregard the fact that by now New York is already in ruins due to an unprecedented earthquake and the East Coast economy is also in tatters. Not that most of that matters anyway since the US will have to bounce back from loosing 20-25% of its active population to two bouts of VITAS in the next couple of decades...

The Sixth World is not our world. It hasn't been for at least 10 years. Facts, figures, and relationships are not the same. There are parallels. There are differences. Live with it.

Like DE said, the Nicaragua Canal drained a lot of Seattle's traffic, though the city is still North America's biggest port in the west coast.

The latter.

I actually kind of like the idea. At least when I read it, it struck me as pretty cool.
I sort of want to go diving and spelunking down there to see what's up. Dungeon crawling in shadowrun, who'd have thunk it?

I'll put Frank in a headlock later today until he calms down.
Course then he'll have some toxic eastern wyrm twist my head off like a tube of toothpaste.

My guesses...
I suspect the coastal areas will be hit hard, hell they currently are already. It's amusing seeing them try and keep the beaches in one place.

My money's on islands.
I would guess large island around Griffith Park, Anaheim hills, Brea. The rest is almost entirely arbitrary as it's all mostly flat land.

I figure Malibu will have some kind of mudslide, sinkholes, then catch fire before sinking beneath the waves ending the universe's running joke with that little slice of hell.

What I will be especially interested in is Irvine. With the proximity to the coast having an airport and several skyscrapers go half underwater should provide some interesting locales. And of course UCI will be history (good riddance) leaving some nice goodies underwater.

Probably a nice toxic zone around San Onofre nuclear generating station. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nu...erating_Station

Look at that satellite pic especially. Right on the pacific as is.

As for shipping you could always just shift north to I don't know say Monterey Bay, right Frank? Of course you wouldn't have to worry about that pesky marine sanctuary thing in the future. Get some cheap land... you could have a field day.

You know I'd throw in the occasional megalodon. Great whites sometimes try and take a nibble on surfers these days. http://www.cdnn.info/eco/e030825a/e030825a.html

You haven't been keeping up on your Cyberpunk. Ares owns that place so tight that when he named Santa Cruz after himself noone even protested.

-Frank

Eh whatever. I'm sure Wuxing and the pacific prosperity group could negotiate access to Monterey in return for giving Ares access to asian ports such as HK. I think it would be an especially good idea if the Japanas have SF shipping tied up. That way the PPG could give the ol finger to the Japanas.

Sorry if that was overly obscure. While Ares does own Santa Cruz (it owns things down to, but not including Carmel), Shadowrun has never said explicitly that Damien Knight changed the name of the place.

But Santa Cruz is called "Knight City" in Cyberpunk 2020, so the fact that Damien Knight owns that area in Shadowrun is a long running CP reference in Shadowrun.

Me too. And the usual answer is "nothing". Many of the authors couldn't actually be bothered to look at a map to see whether Monterey is north or south of Big Sur, so some of the information is... uh... contradictory.

Monterey has been a powerful port before, but the simple fact that San Francisco is a better harbor and Los Angeles is better than that has meant that commercial shipping into and out of Monterey has been on a steady decline since it was owned by Spain. And with Los Angeles wholly owned by the most powerful economy north of te Aztlan border (Pueblo Corporate Council), I really woouldn't hold my breath until it came to the forefront of international shipping once again.

Since they stopped being total cocks about taking all my water I don't have a problem with the place. I also don't have a problem with it getting sacked by interdimensional mongols, or hit with a meteor, or removed from the planet in any of a number of means. Distopian Science Fiction isn't about holding hands and singing songs, it's about bad things happening to good people for no reason. I do however, have a problem with bad things happening to a mega city that is the only major harbor of the second most powerful economy in North America and the headquarters of one of the ten largest corporations on the planet and having this have zero effect on the rest of the world.

-Frank

I was thinking an orbital drop bear bombardment might be good. I hear yuppies are tasty.

Wasn't Gilroy where the Universal Brotherhood got their start? ISTR Gilroy getting namechecked in the big holy-crap-what-are-they handout, anyways.

The Invae love garlic, maybe?

Last time I checked CP2020's "Seattle" (so to speak), that 5-million-people founded-in-1995 metroplex in the Free State of Northern California, was called Night City, not Knight City - as its founder went by the last name Night...

Obviously L.A. is better but hadn't we determined it's been sacked by interdimensional Mongols or whatever? The shipping infrastructure isn't there any more. I mean besides the political crazyness if the coasts are history and the land has been flooded where the hell are you going to offload? Besides I don't think it's a shining example of civilization at the moment, would I want my stuff going there? Wars aren't free either, probably increased tariffs and fees are being imposed.

blah blah you get the idea.

*sigh*

Which tells us nothing about where it is in 2070 following partion and invasion, separation from its biggest markets by semi-hostile nations, multiple natural disasters, a break down in internal state authority and law and order, etc.

Argentina was a top ten economy a hundred years or so ago, too.

I don't think the U.B. started there, I think they cropped in in Seattle first and branched out. IIRC, there was a big ifght between rival Ant spirit hives between Gilroy and the neighboring town. Really they should have just gotten together at the garlic fest and had some garlic flovered ice cream (sadly, both of the latter are real).

SD: That's my point really. If one of the world's biggest economies collapsed over the last 50 years, where'd all the money go. 3rd edition canon would point to Seattle I guess, but RH says that Seattle's going through a decline (recession, whatever). So who's moving up? Who's benefitting? Oregon gonna try opening up more in the spirit of democracy? I don't recall the Oregon coast having too many major ports (Portland?)

I'm pretty definite that this is not the case. With the UB's heavy initial inspirations coming rom Scientology, it is unsurprising that this religion also started in California. A nod and a wink to the fact that L. Ron Hubbard started Scientology to settle a $500 bet - in California.

Major potential ports north of the Aztlan border are:

Los Angeles
Monterey
San Francisco
Portland
Seattle
Vancouver

The Nicaragua Cannal is fine and all, and I'm sure it takes a substantial amount of traffic from Antwerp to Hong Kong (though why the hell wouldn't they just go through the Arctic Circle now that global warming and the TPA shaman can keep oceanic traffic safe and fast year round?) but to say that it takes even the brunt of North American shipping is laughable. First of all, the West Coast doesn't even benefit. CFS, PCC, TT, Seattle, SSC, and Athabaskan Council all already have direct access to the Pacific. They get literally nothing from shipping East/West through that canal.

Now let's consider the nations that don't have such a port: The CAS is not going to be willing or able to ship through Aztlan, so that canal doesn't exist as far as they are concerned - they still need to ship it through the PCC or around the horn. The Sioux have to ship goods overland through another country to get them to where they could hit the water and go through that canal zone. And um... those countries they could get through actually won't let them ship to Aztlan and will give them a Pacific port (through the PCC or Salish). So they don't use it either. The Algonkian-Manitou Council and Quebec already have access to the Northwest Passage operated by the TPA, so the Canal Zone doesn't do anything for them.

No. The only country in Norh America that can make use of the Canal Zone to get goods into the Pacific Ocean is the UCAS. And the UCAS owns Seattle!

Aztlan's ownership of the Nicaragua Canal is good only for moving European, Carribean, and African goods into the Pacific. Every country in North America has very good reasons for not using that canal system to send goods in that direction.

So yes, shipping out of the West Coast is still a big deal. It has to be. And that means that we're in the part of the cartoon where the dog whips out a register, punches in some numbers, turns to the audience and says "It just doesn't add up!"

-Frank

Been a while since I read through the UB book, but where was that little compund that they had where they kept the doctor that came up with the original idea for the UB in the first place? In the NAN somewhere wasn't it?


other topic:
So, if they're not going to LA (because it broke) , or Seattle (because Runner Havens says it's port buss is declining), is there any words/thoughts on where everything is shipping through? Vancouver seems a bit too far north, so S.F. seems most likely to me since Saito is gone.

Um, I figured that out about page 13 of SR1 a few years ago.. . .

That's what I was thinking. Some good material for gov. spook games and some more good politics to work with. Nothing like a little conflict between neighboring goverments to spice things up.