Revolutions are often disappointing in retrospect. I still think the corporations thought the NAN was a "good" thing; carve up a potentially powerful USA into smaller, weaker bits that depend on AAA Corp support to stay viable.

And although I don't disagree per say the problem with that theory is that the NAN couldn't have survived the aftermath of losing the support of their corp masters when they decided to give everyone the middle finger and paint their laws hippy green.


My problem isn't the fact that America got cut up into little pieces, it's the fact that the devs decided to base said breakup on LSD and Fairy Dust. Now with that said, I do disagree with the idea that America had to be splintered in order to support a cyberpunk setting but that isn't the crux of the debate.

Well, the Ute didn't do too well. And others accommodated the corps to a degree - likely more than they really wanted.



I agree that it is a bit silly, but you should see what they did to Europe

The original world they set up basically grabs some historical period that captured their imagination and said "it grows back because of magic", i.e. stone circles popping up like mushrooms. In later editions it seems they backed away from the fairy dust and tried to spraycoat it with rationalization.

But some of that sillyness is cool, so...

The NAN are hardly related to cyberpunk, rather to the sixth world. They are one of the Awakened nations after all.

But the fact that their existence creates a balkanized America is pretty cyberpunk.

You can have a balkanized America without having the NANs. The idea that a few "Magical Braves" are going to carve out a big piece of America... IMO utter bullshit.

Ascalaphus sure but then we've still got to explain why the NAN's new corp masters would allow them to continue to exist at all as anything other than coperate puppet states, remember that the NAN "accommodated" the corps a hell of alot less than the UCAS or even old America did.

And I refuse to aknowlege Europe's existance in Shadowrun.

The NAN and Tir Books were disapointing, the Shadows of Euripe and Asia, utter bull.

I forget exactly what about shadows of asia made me want to throw it across the room. But I was sitting in a popeyes at the time, so I just closed it. And haven't ever reopened it.

My feeeling is that FanPro sought out people to write chapters about cultures they both knew essentially nothing about and hated what they thought they knew. Then encouraged them to not actually do any research.

I liked Shadows of Asia, but I'll admit there's a lot in it that's rather outlandish (reborn Xia kingdom? what the hell?). But the nice thing, I thought, is that every place was pretty different from every other place. I think the difference with Shadows of Europe, which I liked less, was from how it was put together; that is, as a patchwork from foreign-language sourcebooks and whatnot. There was less room to be really innovative, and it ended up being a series of fairly generic sprawls. I didn't get the sense that a runner in Zurich or Barcelona is dealing with anything fundamentally different than a runner in Seattle, whereas running in Bali, or Harbin, or Yunnan really would.

Well, there were other conspiracies involved, and poorly understood power factors such as magic. Not every plan would work out as intended.
Mind, it's just a thought. I don't like succesful utopian magical brave states - there have to be catches. I happen to like this one.

But then this is a balkanized America where some of the nations are "magical nations" that fit with the Sixth World scenario.
Also, is there anywhere that says in the books that the native america population of SR's world was 1%? Perhaps they had a baby boon coupled with most of the tragedies not hitting them directly it could balance the odds in terms of population. Maybe it is the fact that I'm not a US citizen, but this doesn't hit my suspension of disbelief.

Then we get into the problem that the devs wanted the timelines to split sometime in the late Seventies give or take so we have to work with the facts on the ground at that time which don't support the notice of a tribal "baby boom" anymore than they do today.


And I'd disagree with the idea that the Sixth World has to have magical nations that were forced into existance by the power of plot in the space of a heartbeat.

why? I mean, there are tribal activists who are trying to do that right now in the real world. If they had real, solid magical firepower at their disposal I do not doubt for one moment that they would hesitate to use it to protect the territorial lines they have ALREADY drawn around themselves.

You are of Course allowed to have your opinion, just down rain on someone else's parade while doing it...

Keep the Faith

However you have yet to address the fact that the extremists are a tiny minority of the indian population which in turn is a TINY minority of the general population. Then you have to add in the fact that less than 1% of the extremists are capable of slinging enough mojo to light a candle, much less do anything useful in combat.

In other words, magic is not and has never been a "war winner" in Shadowrun, if it were during the NAN Wars then we've got to somehow explain why magical research has gone backwards and Mages in 2070 are less powerful than their Grandfathers were.

Maybe I am oging out on a limb here, but the Great Ghost Dance was an exceedingly potent ritual, possibly fueled by a Horror, which killed its participants with clockwork regularity... death magic is generally the most powerful of all, and is generally not practiced in the 2070's...

My take anyway... Not really trying to prove anything myself, just sayin'...

Keep the Faith

Sure, and I don't despute the raw power of The Great Ghost Dance but the problem is that the ritual can't explain more than a fraction of what the NAN would have had to pull off in order to actually win.

Er, color me confused. Why does it seem like in some posts we are being told we have to stick to the bits and bites the canon fiction gives us when it shows NAN founders in a bad light then ridicule the potency and effectiveness of the NAN founders in that same official fiction?

Oh well, all I know is that if there is a perception that the NAN is fading in SR, I would like to see it ... hmm, the opposite of fade, brighten? For one thing, Seatle (UCAS) IMHO would have quite a bit of trouble not being absorbed into the NAN (Salish-Sahide Council) on many fronts: culturally, economically, and militarily.

I think my next character is going to wear clothing that is Haida and/or Salish fashion and "invade" Seatle. Frack the UCAS, long live the Salish-Sahide Council.

Cultural imperialism often comes down in part to the popularity of certain viewpoints rather than military might. Due to the incredibly low population and general lack of political power prior to the Great Ghost dance, Native Americans simply don't have that big of a cultural impact in North America relative to other ethnic groups. I would think it more likely that the NAN could be be swallowed up culturally and economically than the the opposite, regardless of how militarily successful they may be. Just because you're the one who conquered others doesn't mean that much in terms of cultural imperialism. The spread of Christianity in Scandinavia, for example, is often cited as one of the reasons the Viking age came to an end; enslaving and pillaging other Christians generally isn't encouraged, for rather obvious reasons. The only mitigating factor I could see helping the NAN out is that their obvious magical prowess might lend some legitimacy to their claims of better understanding the real nature of the world. But then again, the way magic works in Shadowrun would render that a temporary advantage at best.

You're confused because you are misunderstanding what people's basic problem with the NAN actually is so I suppose I'll try to explain it slightly different.

The problem that people have with the NAN is that nothing they did follows any of the internal logic of the setting. We know how magic works in the setting, but yet the NAN was appearently full of magical super shamans who quite simply doesn't have to follow the rules. We know from history what happens to people interned in "death camps" but yet the NAN was spared the rampant disease and came out of said camps as a bunch of badasses. We know how large the population gap between the indians and everyone else is but yet the raw numbers doesn't matter to the NAN either in the actual wars or in mantaining control of their new territory after the fact.


As I said before, I wouldn't really have as much as a problem with the "nice NAN" but then we would have to account for the population and cluture changes that would be feasible based off the population gap. Although of course then we'd have to adjust the backstory to account for a massive popular uprising and the aftermath thereof.

It's not necessarily impossible.

In any society, there is a cultural elite; they make most of the culture the rest is influenced by. Priests, artists, journalists, marketeers and lawmakers being the kind of people that come to mind. These people have vast influence over how the rest think.

Suppose the cultural elite is changed; you get rid of the East Coast establishment that half of the western USA seems to despise anyway. You replace it with nice, clean-living NAN culture. You have some very impressive cultural elite in the NAN; powerful shamans (a religion with miracles is so much more credible) as well as all manner of manipulation from spike babies/IEs.

OTOH, the cultural elite of the UCAS is behind another border, and was described as morally bankrupt anyway.


Still sounds extreme, doesn't it? Consider something I'd call comparable; the Reformation in Europe. You have this vast, powerful catholic church. It's rotten, but it's powerful, rich and has centuries experience in repressing any opposition.

In the Dutch Republic, Calvinists originally number less than 10%; they're scary religious fanatics as far as everyone else is concerned. But they're moving up, successful. They make it so that only proper Calvinists can hold public office.

I can go on and come up with lots of other examples, but the core of my argument comes down to this: a vital, successful minority culture can overwhelm a stagnant, decaying majority culture. Conversion has always been possible in history. Every great religion has started small, and so has every strong empire.

In closing: I don't think there would not have been any uprisings or protests in the NAN; but I don't think resistance has to have the kind of power you expect it to have. Possible, but not necessary. Maybe many people thought they were better off this way.

Couple of problems, even with your numbers the "Calvinists" outnumbered the NAN by at least tenfold. Secondly, the kind of social and cultural changes you are envisioning doesn't happen overnight and lastly, the indian's "culture" isn't vital or successful in the first place.


*EDIT*

Never mind the fact that it is vastly harder to get people who are used to being able to vote and hold office go along with the idea of being second class citizens based along racial bloodlines. And before anyone even mutters the "one drop rule", proclaiming that you have an indian somewhere in your family tree is not going to change your beliefs or the way that you govern yourself.

If you will allow, I will attempt in my limited way to address each point.

1) Magic:
- I use just SR4A, so my knowledge on the subject is limited but from that I gather that the rules are abstract (pg 60), so the rules are meant to be something that bends to the will of the fluff, not have the fluff bent to the rules ("The world of Shadowrun, however is not the real world -- no matter how closely it is based on it." pg 60). So, I take a closer look at magic and I see Adept, Magician, and Mystic Adept qualities and this tid bit - "There are few who would argue that any single event in the known history of Earth is more significant than the return of magic. One morning the world woke up and the rules were different." pg 69. That morning was December 24, 2011 and "the Native American prophet Daniel Howling Coyote leading his followers out of the Abilene Re-Education Center. Camp guards swore that no shot fired at Howling Coyote touched him, some sort of "glow" stopped them. Ignoring their captors, the Native Americans walked through the gates and out into the storm surrounding the camp, with no trace found the next morning to mark their passage." pg 26. I also have this to work with as a limited resource informing me: http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Daniel_Howling_Coyote . To me that reads like at the very least DHC was sporting a high charisma, willpower, magic, and edge attributes, probably no joke in other mental attributes and if "re-education" was hard on the physical, lets go with moderate to poor physical stats and then toss in a mentor spirit to help him along the path of shamanism, manipulation: armor (physical) enough to stop bullets - and that is friggin day one for his side. Thanks to knowledge of the 2009 Lone Eage Incident, we know there is NAN founders who had been operating in a shadowrunner fashion for at least 2 years not even considering lead up prep time to that event, so how much karma do you figure their characters would be sporting by 2011 or by 2016 when DHC declares war? And that is just the mundane, DHC had at the very least from 2011 to 2016 to build himself up from his stormy night debut and pass that on to the people he was leading, so I'd suggest a NAN shaman would be sporting shadowrunner magician attributes, skills, mundane gear, magical gear, mentor spirit, spells, karma and initiated at least once. That's a range of Magic 1-6 + Initiation (1-6), so at the very least a magic of 2 to work with and all that allows. Now given that time to prepare, toss in ritual spell casting in a magical lodge for extra mojo. In what way am I breaking the rules? And I am even ignoring anything to do with whatever a Horror is and that is still a pretty hefty advantage to the NAN when you consider all that magic can do (and I am only looking at this basic spell list let alone whatever it was they were manipulating storms with), especially a bound spirit. Unless you are using a previous version of the abstract rules for magic, then you have me at a disadvantage and I will have to defer.

2) Death Camps:
- You mean the Re-education Centers in the USA and internment camps in Canada? Let me refer you back to this quote: "The world of Shadowrun, however is not the real world -- no matter how closely it is based on it." pg 60. I agree that the FN person coming out of the RC has lower stats in physical but mental attributes I would argue a survivor could end up with better stats in at least willpower, maybe intuition and charisma from the experience, and have logic be at whatever they went in with ... unless the experience breaks them, so suppose they went in with a under developed willpower and/or charisma, they end up hugging their knees rocking in a corner muttering some insane mantra to them self with a thousand yard stare re-living the trauma. But back to the attributes, those stronger mental attributes are a benefit to a shaman, yes? Heck, even a mundane, right?
Interesting thing about the names used for the places they were sent to, they do remind me of the internment camps of WWII for Japanese and Germans we had in the US and Canada, and the residential schools ("re-education") - not exactly the same thing as Germany's WWII Auschwitz, right? Still, I am aware residential schools had a disturbingly high number of deaths among their students and there was plenty of abuse. I'm not too sure what the conditions were like for the Japanese internment camps, did that result in a lot of trauma and death for them? I thought the worst stuff to come out of that was the seizure of their property.

3) Population Gap:
- Interesting thing I am coming across in trying to find out more about the history and current (2072) standing of the NAN, specifically the Salish-Shidhe Council, I noticed that both VITAS 1 (2010) and UGE hit while thousands of innocent Native Americans were in those centers and camps. I'm picturing FN ladies giving birth to a dwarf or elf in or just after being in one of these places now while aprox 1/4 of the world dies. But what does that have to do with holding sway with local population and holding territory, right? Ok, fine, I'll go with the Treaty of Denver for starters: http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Treaty_of_Denver

I highlighted a few parts there with bold. Then I will go after this here: http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Salish-Shidhe_Council

Looks like they have a ork & troll tribe too, cool.

http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Algonk...Manitou_Council


http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Athabaskan_Council


http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Pueblo_Corporate_Council

Particularly interesting how the NAN considered most friendly to the "Anglo" ends up absorbing the NAN who are the most hostile to "Anglo".

Sure seems like the NAN who chose to be nice to others in their territory are the ones who ended up surviving long term thanks to the advantages it gave them.

This. You have to greatly oversimplify Reformation politics for this argument to hold water. The Peasant's War ended in defeat, Catholicism ultimately survived and most of the bloodshed in the European Wars of Religion came as a result of major, established powers drawing lines in the sand for political reasons as much as anything. The shortlived success of Cromwell in England was actually less about religion and more about Royalists vs. Parliamentarians. A monarch was eventually put back into place regardless. These things take time.

Anyway, I just handle this with a whole metric ton of handwavium and by not using the NAN in my games very much at all. I simply assume that the SR universe Native Americans never declined as much as they have in reality to begin with. It's just not a situation that I could imagine panning out otherwise; a more thorough retcon of North American history really seems like the only option that makes sense to me if you genuinely want to make the idea work for some reason.

"Mother nature is on our side", and everyone else seemed to believe it. I think that the NAN represents a cultural renaissance for the FN.
Although the numbers are perhaps lower (the 1% has been argued a lot - a lot higher numbers have also been shown), their methods of convincing people are also better; actual miracles beat dry theology. And the NAN can use modern propaganda technique as well.



I don't deny that there will be conflict, but it's not impossible. With some control of the media you downplay resistance and emphasize the people who're happy with the new nature-loving, free-of-the-fascist-UCAS lives you told them to live.

I have to simplify if I don't want to write a book instead of a post. I was trying to give an example; and the example does hold. Any cultural shift starts with a small vanguard.
Yes, the Catholic Church wasn't destroyed. Neither is the UCAS. Rome did lose power in England, the Netherlands, northern Germany, Scandinavia and various other places.




So what have you done then? Balkanizing the US is sort of the objective to create a nice corporate playground I suppose. But the NAN isn't the only way it could be done. I'm curious about other cool scenarios.

They lost it to power centers that were already in place though, for the most part. Many dukes and lords saw the Reformation as a chance to get out from under the Holy Roman Empire's thumb. The principal combatants were established lords with political power who decided to convert, whereas the Native Americans make up roughly 1% of the North American population. Even then the fighting took a good century or so.


Anyway, I simply don't worry about the NAN or use it much at all. It's all NERPS as far as I'm concerned. I accept it, but as long as the subject comes up I'd side with the people who say it tends towards the silly.

The whole 1% population thing is a bit misleading.

There are large areas of North America where the percentage is way higher. For example, the Province of Saskatchewan in Canada is or soon will be over 50% First Nations (Population growth among First Nations people in Canada is about four times that of the general population), and the Province of Manitoba is getting there too. These are huge tracts of territory, each the size of Texas. The political ramifications are enormous. I imagine there are other large regions in North America that also have a much larger percentage of First Nations people.

Take out the massive conurbations (New York+, Chicago+, Los Angeles+, Philadelphia+, Toronto+, etc.) that take up relatively little geography, and even the overall percentage of the whole continent rises dramatically.

..........actually 1 percent is a bit of an overstatement (if i remember my math from the other night it's something like .89 etc etc etc repeating based on current US census figures. Also your sense of soon and mine is vastly different considering the first nations population of Sk is about .08 percent of the whole. In fact the explosive group amongst the Metis and First Nation peoples population wise is almost directly corrolated by a decrese in non-tribe affiliated aboriginals. It's not that the population as a whole has gone that signifigantly (there has been some growth) it's that more are identifying as members of a specific tribe or group. Secondly isn't SK one of the least populated places in north America per capita, saying it's a land area the size of texas doesn't mean nearly as much if it has signifigantly less people per capita then texas. Yes a miniature poodle is big in comparison to a mouse, not so much compared to a german shepherd. Likewise acting like the the disproportionate populations of a very unpopulated area is only significant if you can discount the most populated areas.

Oh look, citations!

http://www.stats.gov.sk.ca/pop/2006%20Cens...l%20Peoples.pdf

Thanks for the link LurkerOutThere, I am enjoying the reading material
Just curious, how do you refine your searches to find such valuable real world sources?

I guess my google foo is strong? In the case of that particular link i'd been building a game (another sitting) base din the far cold north so I looked at population as part of that and found that website. That i found with google. A ton of population data is availble from the census bureau in the US or the beureau of statistic ( i think?) in Canada.


As i'd like to point there can be no excuse for Japanese American's treatment during WW2. However there can be no comparison between Japanese internment camps and Nazi death camps. If the NA camps were built on the internment camps model there is no reason they shouldn't have been that bad at all (all things being relative of course) however the extermination proclamation and other items were retroactively added into the backstory to justify the NAN's actions.

Hmmm... seems I'm talking through my hat. Thanks for that citation. I will try to figure out where I got the other idea from.

In regards to your point about land area and population, that's my whole point. In some segments of North America (seems like not a whole province, after all) the small population has a higher percentage than 1% being First Nations (Hey, lets go for an official term FNMI: First Nations,Meti, Inuit). In those segments, the political/cultural will to secede into a NAN type state may very well be strong enough to carry the vote.

Right but those places are few and far between the overwhelming majority of North America is populated by peoples other then NA.

That's my point, it's silly to have 1 percent of the population ursurp the will of the rest of it, no matter what their justification no matter what their powers. In the magical indian brave scenario they are not only taking control of the territory (which has been done before) but wholesale requiring the disenfranchisement and exodus of the locals, which has not.

Government weakening and balkanization is fine cyberpuunk, the NAN isn't, the nan is a combination of "stick it to the MAN!" and the isolation of seattle, nothing more nothing less. It's too bad they overlooked in the process an act that eclispes the atrocities it was supposedly righting. That is in essence my final word on the subject, the sooner the NAN fades away the better as it's pretty much vestigial to the shadowrun story as a whole.

That is true, but as the dudes who wrote SR1 didn't do ANY research and just let the stream of consciousness flow onto the page the tribe that actually could do this doesn't exist in SR. There are over a quarter million Navajo in a very sparsely populated area of NM, AZ, CO & UT. however the supergeniuses who wrote SR ignored the Navajo and decided that the less than 10,000 Utes took over the area.....

Just to consider the reality, there are only eight Native American tribes in the lower 48 that have over 50,000 members. Most of them are missing from SR due to the above mentioned supergeniuses. As a matter of fact, only the Pueblo people and the Sioux actually make it into SR as far as I can tell. Many of the "important" tribes in SR couldn't actually fill a city high school football stadium.

There are 270,000 Navajo, 110,000 Sioux, 60,000 Pueblo, 52,00 Lumbee, 45,000 Iroquois, 41,000 Creek, 87,000 Choctaw, 106,000 Chippewa, 281,000 Cherokee, and 57,000 Apache.

That would make me sad, I would most likely fade away from SR if NAN faded from SR, it simply is that big of a draw for me to the setting as a place of fiction and fantasy.

But people don't want miserably paid jobs that doesn't even cover their low living expenses. And if the government isn't even willing to adress such blatant issues, it leads to a deep resentiment towards the president and his cabinet. After all, the southern regions seceeded from the UCAS because whoever's sitting in the White House is a weak, utterly corrupt, and despicable person who is so far detached from reality, that they might as well go crazy too and halve whatever country still belongs to the anglos.

People continue to starve, the corporations that exploit the lands get richer, while their worker have barely enough to afford food, and the government sells beneficiel laws for the corporates in an obvious way.

Especially then if the corporations are allowed to keep paramilitary security guards who are allowed to kill whoever's complaining about their working condition. Literally.

*sighs* I take it you've never researched the working conditions and power dymantics that have existed for most of our country's history have you?

I guess I missed your comment earlier, Bira, but I think you and I are on the same page. That said, I mean, I can see where Lurker and Ravor are getting their ideas from in the early canon, but I portray the NAN in the same spirit in my games as you, I think.

Which is why the 20s saw the rise of Anarchism and the whole Propaganda by the Deed set. That's totally the climate I run games in.

Aggressive corporate masters holding a choke chain on an increasingly belligerent or stupified public. I like the "corps are evil" mindset.

True, I probably run the setting as a whole, especially the corps just as dark if not darker than anyone here, but it is important to note that the powers that be have both the motivation and the means to ensure that they stay on top, and a resource both as rare and as fickle as magic isn't going to change the way things work much, especially when the rules that govern magic doesn't play favorites.

So I'll assume that most people had the US balkanized somehow. If you're not using the NAN, what did you do? I'm curious as to your alternatives.

I keep thinking about Jericho all during this thread.

LOL! Me too. I wonder, any news on the tv-movie thing or is it definitely six feet under?

One of the things I've run with over the years with Shadowrun is a long term conspiracy run out of the CAS by those who still consider themselves "Americans" and not CASans backed by the Great Spirit of America (much reduced) that calls itself Uncle Sam. They've sent in agents to the UCAS and bordering nations to promote 'Cultural Exchange' (read: political indoctrination) to lower tensions among the North Am nations and promote the concept of reunification. it's been slow going but in the long term the idea has been planted. A series of runs was for this Cabal....with the players none the wiser

This actually easy. The UCAS govt was faced with a grave choice: capitulate or nuke their own people. Cede some land back to the original owners or forever be known as Hitler's relief. The original concept was great. Choose a large land mass to give back but in theory did not displace many people. It introduced magic with a cork pop and became plausible for the rest of SR canon.

Ok, to avoid bringing back stuff from here to the NANers thread I'm bringing back this thread.
And now I make a different question.
The whole point of the NAN was to bring a HUGE balkanization of the America. The Native American Nations are all part of a council (which I think is not even close to a European Union) but some nations have issues with others.
I think that simply making a "south will rise again" would not be balkanization enough, you would have two countries that most likely would behave just like the South and North Korean do, they wouldn't have a Peace treaty, possibly just some kind of cease-fire and a hot borders.
Now, here is the question? How else would YOU guys make a balkanization of America? One that you think would make sense INSIDE Shadowrun's universe, not necessarely in Real Life®.

Why do need that? It's always seemed pointless.

Some ideas on alternatives to the NAN balkanization:

A panel of supreme court justices that severely limit the elastic clause (I.E. the part about regulating interstate trade and commerce), and cause the federal government to become a powerless entity.

With the awakening, many of the awakened formed their own fiefdoms (using mind control and other tricks), sparking widespread riots. This eventually leads to the collapse of the US.

The US government loses its financial footing and goes bankrupt. Debts to foreign nations are not paid, leading to an escalation of conflicts, and eventually a limited nuclear war. This causes civilization to breakdown into a hap hazard array of city states.

You could always have space alien refugees crash land in the Four Corners Area and through their superior technology take over the middle of the continent as their new homeland. of course, statistically, there is no way you could get enough aliens into a RL space ship to hold that much land...

*Kanis grins for Coyote is pleased*

As the polar ice caps begin to melt, the 30% of the world's natural gas held within them starts being released into the atmosphere. This huge burst of methane, which is 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon-dioxide, accelerates the Earth's climate change so drastically that everything falls to shit in short order. The increased heat absorption and decreased heat reflection (since there's less ice left,) means that both poles are free of ice within less than 3 years. Global sea level rises significantly, aquifers are either depleted or polluted with salt, and major population centers must be abandoned. 80% of the Earth's people are made homeless. Meanwhile, the huge rush of fresh water from the melting poles changes sea currents in the Atlantic. Europe begins to freeze over. Huge wind destruction, famine, floods, everything is falling apart. Native Americans say, "I told you so," then take another slug of hooch.

That wouldn't really leave us with a very recognizable world though. I guess when it actually happens to us, Catalyst can retcon it in to bring the 6th World in line with reality.