Hi,

I've been thinking about the SR world, and wondering if it's accurately protrayed.


By which I mean that with the tsunami's, flooding, earthquakes, forest fires, bird flu's, mad cow' disease, HIV, malaria epidemics, etc that we've had over the last few years, and are likely to continue in the future..
..Would the SR world be in the shape it's described ??


Events like the above are damaging enough, but when you add them together, in relatively short periods of time, their effects add.

Add to that, computer systems dying all over the place, destroying data, records, crashing planes, locking vaults, a world recession because of disrupted money, disrupted communications, disrupted travel, disrupted trade..
..And this is before magic adds itself to the mix !!


With no records, would there have been landgrabs or resource grabs ??
Strong gangs just taking over areas of land ??
Would the Tribes have just staked out land, and defended it, against poorly organised and underequipped government agencies ??
Would Corps have survived ??
With damaged records, how would anyone prove debts, and how would they collect if they could ??
Would some Towns or Cities actually be gone for good ??

Any thought, oh Dumpshockers ??

In a realistic setting the Great Ghost Dance would have been a flop, maybe the tribes would be able to leverage their survival with the return of magic, but the NAN wouldn't have been allowed to form, even if they did have the help of a half-horror.

I don't buy into the "lost technology from crash" idea either. (Not going to use crash 2.0, I simply retconned the wireless matrix).

Herald :-
I'm not sure that during a time of national emergency, with no communication, millions starving and rioting, anyone would be claiming land - apart from the people actually there [the apartment block is empty of people = now it belong to me until someone says different].

Martial Law is a great idea [and a great comic, btw], but not enforceable in the large areas of land where there is no government presence, and by the time it gets there, it's too late.

With the computer systems down, I think most banks would be gone in the short-to-medium term - even with backups.

If SanFran got hit hit by an earthquake, would it really get rebuilt within a reasonable amount of time, with all the other things going on ?? Would it be left, with its corpses and rubble, for people to live elsewhere -after all, there's now plenty of space elsewhere.


kzt :-
You're right, in a world able to recover from singular events, those things were recovered from [we live in that world, so the proof is evident]..
..But when they happen within a short period of time, to many countries ??

What would happen with 10 hurricane Katrina's in 20 years, as well as 10 New Orleans floods within in the same 20 years..
..And then add disrupted communications, disrupted travel, disrupted banking, disrupted care and food supplies, disrupted farming and disrupted industrialisation.

Not so easy to recover from, especially for somewhere as large as the US - I imagine.


I just think there could be more in the backstory than there is - SR was written before most of these things came to pass, and I'm just extrapolating into the near future with what's happening now.

You'll notice how there have been NO real hurricanes that hit the US for the last two seasons? You may have noticed that despite the giant headlines of "Worst Hurricane Season Ever, Experts predict" the actual hurricane seasons have been significantly less than average. It's kind of sucked if you lived in Cozumel in 2005 when two monster hurricanes hit it, but Mexico has rebuilt it.

New Orleans is the most corrupt and least functional city in the most corrupt state in the US, and it's been a disaster waiting to happen for decades. There isn't any other place in the US that has that combination of traits.

testing testing

There was a Tom Robbins book that mentioned San Francisco, I want to say it was Even Cow Girls Get The Blues, in which a tribe of Native Americans were living in the area when San Francisco was just getting started. Things were relatively peaceful, and then there was a big earthquake that flattened everything. And then the settlers moved back in and started rebuilding. The Native Americans were incredulous; I mean, here was the Earth itself saying Don't build here, but pretty much as soon as it stopped shaking, people went right back to building the city.

I think that's just human nature. And not so much in a good way. Similar to the big tsunami that hit a few years ago, how all the animals fled hours in advance and the people walked down to the beach and watched the ocean recede. It’s not so much that we're ignorant of the way the world works (although we are, in a large part), it’s just that we don't take it seriously. To quote the guy who wrote The Serpent and the Rainbow, I can no longer see Neptune.