Just a question for the details of a characters background.

The Source books suggest that Redmond when to hell very quickly after the Great Crash of 2029... what I wanted to ask was how fast a zone like that, which is currently quite rich could turn into a no-go Barrens as presented in the books?

A slow disintegration as the money/rich leave but taking time to collapse? The poor arrive slowly and over time as its clear the zone is empting.

A quick fall as the rich grab what they can and charge away from a zone full of dead tech and fallen dreams as a rise of the poor streams in?

How long would it take a rich American city/zone/suburb to descend into chaos?

Also can anyone suggest any good picture sources for the Redmond Barrens please!

According to New Seattle, Redmond's major industry was computers and when the Crash of 2029 hit, this industry was wiped out overnight. 80% of businesses collapsed and the local government failed to cope. The richest few escaped and the rest fell to rioting and lawlessness. Abandoned homes, offices and apartment buildings drew refugees from other parts of Seattle which exacerbated the exodus of the well to do, accelerating the cycle of abandonment. According to New Seattle, this turned Redmond into a ghost town of criminals, refugees and transients.

Now that's all the canon stuff. As to realism? Not going to comment, but if you want to be convinced by it. picture a small city of 500,000 people of which 80% of earners suddenly become unemployed. And remember that due to the Crash, there would have been a lot of financial turmoil of savings and shares anyway. And even if there hadn't been, the common US citizen is a creature of debt (try getting on in life without getting some these days). So you have a severe shock accompanied by desperation. You may know the old quote about civilisation being two meals away from barbarism. What would you do if you suddenly couldn't feed your family anymore? Now you might think that a widespread computer crash would be a good thing for those in the IT business. Well for some it probably was. But again, if you want to consider how it might not be, recall that this wasn't just any crash. It was a crash that for the most part, people weren't able to fix. Those computers just wouldn't uncorrupt, back-ups were already infected. It took a team of government geniuses with experimental technology to defeat the almost living thing that was the virus. And it killed some of them!

So that's kind of the background to the Redmond barrens. At least they didn't have a volcano erupt on them.

Hope that helps,

Khadim.

Yes, it's possible. It's happening now in California, Nevada, Arizona, and several other states where the exurbs are disappearing because of foreclosures. Stockton, CA has entire abandoned neighborhoods now.

You have to remember that the Crash of '29 was intentionally based upon the original Crash of '29 (1929, that is), leading to the Great Depression and nearly destroying the country. As bad as things are now, it's nothing compared to back then. And then whole populations did just move on and disappear. The Crash was, as far as I understood, supposed to be something that was earth-shattering. Which of course doesn't come across when you have Crash 2.0--supposedly the second time such as shock occurred and yet comes across (because it was) as insignificant and mostly forgettable.

Love this pic, which I just happened to come across this afternoon. But it's useful for putting things in perspective:

http://data.tumblr.com/qUZ0jyiGPggmglimbOha69qAo1_500.jpg

I think I might be able to offer an even better example.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/am...wn-1024597.html

Detroit used to be home to 1.85million people and is now down to half that. There are empty city blocks just sitting there. The reason being the trouble with the US car industry. And the remaining manufacturers are apparently asking the US government for similar aid packages to the banks. (Probably with more justification and less chance of success, if you ask me).

Now that decline has taken significantly longer than the time the Barrens took to form, but the Crash wiped out industry faster and the rest of the country was also in less of a position to help. Also, there was greater political upheaval meaning more refugees ready to immigrate. At any rate, we can see similar examples to some extent in the real world. We have proof of concept (sadly).

The big difference between what happened in Redmond and what we're seeing in reality was that when the reasonably well off abondond their office buildings and condos the squatters poured into the posh spaces like a tidal wave. Also initially there was probably really good looting. So it makes sense others would be scared off.

Currently in America we just don't have that large of a squatter population. But the SR world was already pretty mixed up by that point in time. And especially compared to the Puyallup barrens (which I presume had be crappy not long after the volcano) the newly abandoned Redmond buildings were practically a squatters "promised land".

Ah, yes. Detroit.

There are also a lot of examples of military towns post-BRAC, where a base or defense contractor plant closed down and the town failed. And, shit, look at New Orleans.

Actually Michael Moore's first film, Roger and Me, would be a useful resource for depicting the Barrens. He shows what happened to Flint, MI (which is a suburb of Detroit) when the GM plant closed, and it's ... Wow. It's grim. Houses are abandoned and crime skyrockets relatively overnight (or in a few years), anyway.

Allow me to take this opportunity to thank the OP for a wonderfully thought-provoking question