Agreed.

Like I said, I am not a big fan of what was done to California in the SR universe. But to each there own.

Slip

There aren't many fans of SR's version of California, that I've seen. What I'm mainly curious about is what people would like to see, and their ideas on how to get from what there is now to what they would want.

*Raises hand* I'm a fan of it.

~J

Personally I just don't like how nonsensical all the justification is for everything. The US thinks California is weird, and are sick of hearing how some of us want to be independent, so they kick us out. California. A state whose economy is bigger than most countries.

Then every single other country in the world smells blood in the water and decides to invade. Actually I can kinda see this one, assuming the former. But, somehow California ends up being completely incapable of defending itself, even from the army of frickin Mexico, and just rolls over for every single millitary power who wants a piece of them. Bull. The vast majority of the millitary personel who are stationed here, if the rest of the US decided to leave us to our fate, would stay here. I don't know about you, but if I had to choose between California and the rest of the US, I'd choose Cal in a heartbeat and be damn proud of my decision.

Additionally, whomever wrote the Cal sourcebook ignored the most important reason that few people conduct major millitary campaigns these days: namely retaliation. If you invade another country, particularly one as big and with as much economic clout as California, then the rest of the world witll be lining up to hand you a gigantic beatdown, if for no other reason than you're making their country's stock market crash. Look at the "first" Gulf War for an example.

The Tirs invading, well I've already given my thoughts on how stupid the thought of the Tirs amassing an army without anyone noticing is ridiculous. Even moreso though was the idea that they would use the environment to justify their invasion. California, out of anywhere in the US, would be the last place to be critisized for envoronmental policy. There are different reasons for this in both Northern Cal and Southern Cal: NorCal does it because the Bay Area is filled with hippies (j/k, mostly), and SoCal does it because in LA in particular the la of the land causes all pollution to just stick to the ground out here, especially in the Riverside area. Invading California and claiming environmental protection reasons is somewhat akin to the Democrats trying to impeach Bush for being too millitarily passive.

Additionally, the thought of California not recruiting magic users--and lots of them--to the millitary if it became clear that the Tir were invading and doing very well because of magic is stupid. Canon notes how big on magic UCLA (and MIT) became, but for some reason it stops there, and the millitary doesn't pick up on it. I don't know about you, but if I were a millitary strategist and I saw people on a college campus flying and throwing around fireballs my ears would be pricking up in a big way.

On a side note, I'm dissappointed how noone mentions UC Berkeley or Stanford, who would have had them all beat easily in any Occult Studies department. The Berkeley campus has so many liberal arts programs that are quite literally the best in the world; the infrastructure is already in place for such a campus to pick up the magic thing instantly and in a big way. Hell, with all the hippie liberal arts people around there I wouldn't be surprised if a third of the campus Awakened in the first decade. It'd probably be its own seperate college within the university (like the College of Chemistry) before 2020.

Then of course there's the aforementioned bulldrek about LA becoming a free city for no apparent reason, etc etc.

It's not *all* bad, though, I guess. There's still the People's University, which is just such a cool concept I can forgive at least some of the events that brought it into being, like the invading Japanese (ugh!). I guess the thought of an entire college in the shadows (and my alma mater no less!) is highly amusing.

But Blond, your forget the real reason CFS is fucked up, so they could make Seattle worth wile.

LOL, that's true, isn't it? Why the Tirs decided to invade Cal and *not* invade Washington state instead, that's something I'll never know.

Because California is so much better, haven't you been listening?

Either that or they don't like rain

~J

It would be interesting to see if anyone that lives or has lived in California for a long time actually likes the book.

Slip

What constitutes 'a long time' in your opinion?

Did CalFree? If I'm the UCAS those are the first things I make sure are secure and transported out of the region back east.

Aztechnology has nukes, and Tir can stop them from working...

I suppose I'm thinking about what Harley said about Tunguska. They can knock the nukes back into orbit. That still leaves tactical nukes, but I doubt that was what Cynic meant.

And that's just *one* problem with relocating the hundreds of thousands of millitary personel who are stationed in this state away from it. Hell, with the amount it would cost to abandon the state, it would probably be cheaper to just fire everyone who is stationed here and leave 'em, and it wouldn't make any *less* sense than jettisoning the rest of the state just because it's "weird." Keep in mind the economic part of California is more important to the US than the millitary stationed here; if they were brain-dead enough to leave they'd probably just leave everything and not try to take their troops with them.

But California has enough nukes to have a MAD with any nation on earth.

No, it doesn't. The UCAS has all of those nukes, and my point is that they'd probably use them if California tried to take possession of them.

~J

Not to begin with. If they did get their hands on any, they're not going to have the activation codes for the things without having to spend a fair bit of time hacking them first. During which time they're useless as weapons which the UCAS will know and take advantage of. Mainly by probably transporting them to somewhere safe like Seattle - nearest home ground before moving them back east.

And what nukes are stationed in California anyway?

I was under the impression that they were at Vandenburg AFB, IIRC. But that was during the Cold War. AFAIK, the only ICBM facilities are in North Dakota (which itself is supposed to be the third-larget nuclear power in the world), Wyoming and Montana. SSBNs are based in Washington (Bangor, which NAN focres took over and SSC still controls) and King's Bay, Georgia (which now belongs to the CAS). The B-2 squadron is based in Missouri; B-52s in North Dakota and Lousiana. That only leaves tactical devices and warheads, like the stockpile of warheads at Kirtland AFB (which is suggested to be anywhere from 600 to 1,000, and is why I don't think for a second that the U.S. would have hesitated to nuke Albuquerque.) Source.

Anyway, they can't use the weapons themselves without the codes, but that doesn't stop them from removing the cores and reverse-enegineering the warheads.

But, personally, I think that IF THEY EVER EXISTED the U.S. would have left them after the Treaty of Denver, but once they seceded, they'd have disappeared under heavy cover. At least, they'd have moved out the warheads.

SAD. I'm of the opinion that this is important enough that they would say "if we don't have all of our nukes accounted for, we start bombing you until we hear two bangs".

~J

Not a chance. I'll admit the UCAS has been portrayed as pretty stupid before, but nuking California because they made a clerical error? Not happenning.

I'm not even that sure the UCAS would even *care* about their nukes, or their millitary personel. They certainly didn't care about the tens of billions of dollars in taxes (EDIT: no, sorry, make that hundreds of billions, likely trillions by the 2030s) that come from a state as large and economically important as California; why would they care about a few piddly personel and bombs which haven't been used since the 1940s?

It's pretty obvious that, for whatever reason, California had become more expensive than it's worth.

~J

The "giant, city-wide bender" explainnation is also the only one to explain why Sacramento kicked out too.

Yes, well they also say the city of Berkeley is a "nuclear free zone," despite the nuclear engineering and nuclear chemistry majors at the university and the synchotrons just up the hill in the Berkeley National Laboratory. People can be remarkably blind officially when they want to be.

Hm. Suddenly this thread takes on a whole new significane, doesn't it?

Or maybe not.

Well, I imagine DE was in the loop.

But if you mean, how can we influence the SR4 "... And So It Came To Pass," then by all means shoot.

Well, I'm not sure how much our ranting is going to affect anything before 2065--which makes it unfortunate that I wasted so much time ranting about it--but I'm curious if we may be able to have some input on what's going to happen in the intervening years.

There seems to be a few opinions on what should happen to Saito's regime, so let's start there. How many people see Saito lasting to 2070? If you do, then will his little empire have expanded? Contracted? Will the corps want him gone, seeing that the constant war really isn't helping their bottom lines any, or will they see him as a stabalizing force as compared to the MPA, People's University, et al? And how will the new Crash affect Saito (or, for that matter, the People's University, which seems to be in a delicate position in that regard.)?

Come to that, that's true. There are a lot of plotlines that will almost undoubtedly just die over the course of this gap; Saitoh being one likely, the rebellion in the Yucatan almost certainly being another. Others will have evolved to an extreme degree if they're moving at all. Are all of these threads being cut, or are they being extended to 2070 at the risk of breaking credibility?

~J

My money's (unfortunately) on the latter.