http://www.scientificamerican.com/article....y-deforestation

something to contemplate when one considers economy in SR and similar, i guess.

The other side of that thought is VITAS has depopulated a lot of areas, and the NAN are kind of agressive in their beating back of exploitation and what the is cannonical of Brazil shows that in 2070 'nature' can be down right agressive in it's own right.

And on the OTHER side, volcanoes, earthquakes and wild storms also don't do anything good for forests.

In short, the last naturally grown trees in Shadowrun are living in museums. Everything else is a product of magical interference. (Or at least, that's not an unreasonable philosophy to run by.)

suburanisation does it worse.

actally volcanos are mazingly good for crops. yeah the explosions, lava and pyroclastic clouds are really bad for trees (and wildlife and people and houses and rocks and damn near everything) but when it clears it leaves behind incredibly rich soil. That's why the slopes of etna and Vesuvius in Italy are heavily farmed even with the dangerous possibilities. If you want to play Gia's advocate after the resource rush the mass of eruptions might be seen as the earth trying to revitalize her soil.

Is that why the section of Mt. St. Helens that was government owned is a crapshoot now? The part that was corp owned they immediately replanted and the trees there are indeed growing much better.

In essence I guess I'm saying that each volcanic eruption is a little different. The soil left behind is amazing for growing, but if other factors move this soil, it leaves pretty much rock behind.

I could say that's proof the government could screw up a wet dream but I was just pointing out that a volcanic erruption is not necessarily a bad thing. and being an optimist, well I'm hopefull that some good might come out of nature as man screws up his environment.

I think we dont screw up our environment as much as change it to be more suitable for humans. And we're good at not killing each other when we get close to each other so the usual population pressures that keep large amounts of animals from being in one area dont apply so well to us.

Eh? I thought that is what war and crime are about. Population control.

pollution to the point a river catches fire is not adapting the environment, it's killing it.

how many rivers catch fire each year?

and yes we are good at killing each other but with a population over 6 billion people I'd say we're good at not killing each other as well.

There was an interesting thread on overpopulation a month or so ago (unfortunately I haven't been able to find it). One of the issues that came up was the listed population density in Seattle 2072 being incredibly low. Less then half of 2009 New York or Tokyo. The total population also didn't bear out the idea of the urban sprawl having pressed our little noses up to the walls of the NAN - it's about what Seattle is at now, actually.

GIS for Puget Sound Aerial Photo

I tend to run Seattle like New York City - most runners don't leave the city, and actually getting out of it is kind of a hassle, but once you do you wind up driving through mountainous forests pretty quick.

GIS for Snoqualmie Pass Aerial Photo

As a local boy, I feel like I should point out that once you go about five miles east of I5/Lake Union, you start to hit the foothills, and by the time you're 10 miles east of the I5 corridor most of the land is not suitable for building. Development wiping out the forests in the mountains isn't practical and may not be possible. If I wanted to wipe them out entirely, I'd probably have to invoke some sort of nuclear or chemical event that sterilized the soil for the entire region. I like the urban sprawl setting as much as the next guy, but the latest edition of Shadowrun looks a lot less like Fallout to me.

On the upside, having settings other then 'urban warzone' and 'office building' makes for some interesting scenarios.

The background for SR is such that the world was hit by tons of weird natural disasters in the 2010s and 2020s (if memory serves), including Mt. St. Helen blowing its stack all over Seattle's pretty face. This was combined with laxity in the enforcement of pollution laws, so companies in and around Seattle could dump whatever toxic chemicals into the ground and air they wanted, as long as they didn't piss off someone bigger (so putting it in the countryside makes sense). Then when everything went even more to hell and the NAN and Tir formed, they used elfy magic to make all the trees grow back. So there are forests and mountains, but they aren't PRETTY mountains and forests (well, they are) so much as they're sort of eerie, creepy, magically tainted mountains and forests, full of freaky monsters that will eat your face.

I'm a pretty big fan of nature as described in the Cyberpunk Educator video (check it out on google vids) - nature is violent, dynamic, destructive, dark, hungry in Shadowrun. This is in part because it's zombie nature, killed by poison and revived by unholy elfy magic.

I always found that strange in SR. low world populations, high poverty, and high urbanisation. they dont really fit...

I look at it as more of corporate version of the old feudalistic system.

well yea but that worked because in alot of places because of outside invaders and eventually overpopulation. what is driving people in SR to keep being slaves I dont understand because of the contrary events. Only thing I can think of that kinda fits is that desire for freedom and a care for charity was bred out of people in the SR universe other than runners; and that I find hard to believe. Although that could be it since it is supposed to be dystopian and hence the worst kinda stuff has to happen.

history shows that poverty concentrates in urban areas.

and with the rural areas regaining its wild, more people would probably uproot and head for cities in the hopes of being safe from the new big scary predators (only to come face to face with a different kind of predator).

i suspect much of the high poverty zones are areas of prefab apartment complexes, with minimal services and in a real need for replacement, that was put up as the non-natives where evicted from nan and similar. Heck, now i find myself wondering about what effect the establishment of amazonia had on brazils cities...

perhaps its the big scary predators. People being scared of big predators would imply that americans have lost their pioneer spirit and more than that really even. It means the people of the former USA and canada really have become a bunch of complete sissies. killing big scarry predators is what this continent is really good at. Again I can understand this in a sort of dystopian setting where it is assumed that the worst (sissification of North America) has happened.

hate to say it, but your common US citizen had lost that spirit even before turner put his thoughts onto paper...

I'm not so sure it was that fast. Even if it was, in WWI and WWI we still had alot of people join up with the canadians or brits to join the war before the US govt got involved.

One of the most widely held models of social change used in archaeology argues that fear of risk (of raiders from over the hill, of bad farming years, of divine retribution...many sources available) is the primary motivator for individuals to surrender autonomy and accept the elevation of a few to elite status. I was lecturing about this idea a few years back right when George Bush was invading Iraq (second time) and suspending liberties. What a great teaching aid he was!

So what does that make our current fearless leader? I've noticed that bush was a slight wakeup call; people said ok at first but before his presidency was over were thinking hmm... this is bad lets not do it again. And with Herr Hussein people had just heard the argument for more centralised power for more safety and said wait no I dont want that anymore, I want freedom. Also bush did other things to even things out like pushing for and supporting firearm rights and economic freedom.

given the size of the population, the percentage of people willing to do that can be below 10 and still give a nice number.

still, with beings that grab livestock like owls grab mice, your starting to look at the need to go paramilitary on every farm out there. Easier to sell to some agricorp (unless you happen to live in a area that ended up as part of the NAN) and pack for the sprawl then trying to take shots at a dragon or thunderbird thats airlifting the herd, one animal at a time.

well where I'm from, they would probably be ready to take shots at dragons and thunderbirds and figure out a good recipie for em. I expect most rural areas are similar. I would hope that humans in cities would rather try for a hard time against critters than poverty, but eh if not I guess its all for the same group that does the ag business now, farmers and some big corps that employ farmers with college degrees. oh and mexicans cant forget them.

I always assumed the designers just didn't have a head for numbers However, the flaw in your equation is that history assumes a more or less static amount of arable space available for people to move into and profit. This is no longer the case. The forests around Seattle are unnatural, grown magically in desperate hope of repairing the ecological disaster underneath. Space to actually grow food requires clearing the area, then basically bringing in your own fertilizers, clean water, etc. because the land is unsuitable for supporting food crops. The situation is no longer analog to say Paris and its outskirts following the black plague, where peasants could just stake out land and be immediately self sufficient. It's closer to Nome, Alaska, where survival is expensive energy wise, and the land can only support a very small number of individuals.

As for poverty inside the city, well a lot of actual wealth has been destroyed. Most of the remainder has been locked up in corporations and is now traded between them. There's a new apartheid, but instead of it being racially based, it's a separation between corporations (and if you're not a corporation, you're nothing). When people are intentionally and systematically excluded from the system, they suffer.

I'd like to be the first to point out that if this thread goes political, it's going to get real ugly in a hurry. Always has, always will. The only winning move is not to play.

On topic, I'm not sure a willingness to take potshots at big paracritters is a smart move. If you've got the right gear and you get the drop on them, you might be able to bring them down (hell, most Shadowrunners have dropped a couple of nasty critters at one time or another), but lots of these things are hard to see coming and smart enough not to wait for you to get ready. I'm thinking of the Velociraptors in the first Jurassic Park movie - scary not because they were strong and fast, but because they tended to come out of nowhere and rip your head off. Living in a rural area in SR4 means not having any idea what might be trying to get inside your perimeter today. With enough tech and preparation, a regular guy can harden his homestead enough to stop most critters from getting into the chicken coop, but the kind of perimeter that will defeat all the various infiltration/insertion methods that you see in the old Paracritters sourcebooks is going to be a drain on a corporate budget, let alone a hard case with a GED and a give-'em-hell attitude.

One of the main deciding factors in the effectiveness of the Fortress Homestead plan is the diversity of paracritters that wander in. If you just get the occasional Bandit or Ghoul, it's not hard to work out a plan to deal with them. If you live in a region with a dozen different sapient maneaters within walking distance, you're going to have a lot of trouble identifying them all and adding countermeasures to your security net. If you assume that some dangerous critters take it one step further and migrate/wander over a large area, you might get hit by something that you've never even heard of before.

Way I figure it, you should be able to hold the line if you've got the manpower to maintain a perimeter 24 hours a day, the tech to beat whatever stealth the critters might use, the firepower to stop the biggest thing that's going to wander in, and the economics to feed, clothe and power all of these defenses. If that's the case, I figure you're independently wealthy and would probably do fine in a city as well. On the other hand, if it's just you, a dog, a bunch of kids and a lever-action rifle...can I have your rifle after you get your family eaten?

no doubt but do you think everyone in the country only has a lever action even nowadays? and do you think kids cant shoot? what would probably happen, is the paracritters would be hunted like wolfs were once hunted. To extinction. When there are critter problems most guys get trail cams, hunting dogs and good varment rifles. Also, in most areas it would probably get more like out west where alot of ranchers have at least one truck gun and are generally always armed. oh and varment rifles these days are not 22lr bolt actions anymore. http://www.bushmaster.com/catalog_xm15_PCWVMS24FVAR9.asp and if the varments got bigger so would the cartidge. Also, it could go the way of Africa where they hire professional hunters to get rid of the dangerous game that get too close to crops or people.

According to the wiki The Seattle Metroplex has a population of around 6 million people in 3,992 km², giving it a pop density of 750 persons per km². Problem with that is, Seattle propper sure as hell isn't 3,992 km², it's closer to 370 km², so that should be 7,500 persons per km², and that's only downtown. The slums probably have densities closer to Mumbai's 22,000 persons per km².

If we're going to second-guess the numbers, we need something for comparasion - how about King County, WA, which incorporates most of Seattle's urban sprawl in 2010 - it stops short of Tacoma and Everett. According to Wikipedia, King County is about 5500 km². Keep in mind that is before you add in Tacoma, Puyallup, etc. We can assume the NAN pushed the eastern border back a bit, but I still get darn close to the 4k km² that the book is quoting for the region.

Sadly, I think the only reasonable way to handle those numbers is just not to think about them. If you want Seattle to be solid skyscrapers, just run it that way. If you want it to be 2010 (or 1987) Seattle with cyborgs and Orks, you can find plenty of stuff in the fiction to back you up. Nothing I have ever read has any fluff to explain a city with population density as low as Seattle 2072 gives it (including Seattle 2072) and the simplest explanation is that there was some sort of typo.

Seattle is Seattle, was Seattle, and will be Seattle. Best not to think too hard about the details.

i wonder if the outlying areas are more factories, warehouses and r&d, with the odd A-AAA walled enclave.

I was just going off the fact that the 6th world wiki says that the numbers they're using are for the downtown area only. The metroplex proper should be closer to 26,000 km² if you consider it the "greater Seattle area".