Greenlanders are probably just chillin'. They have nothing to worry. Strange though, that Nordic overseas territories have not been mentioned.
I would guess if the Faroes and Shetland islands still had survivor colonies, we would have seen something on the map by now...surely Iceland would have checked that out at some point.
I am not an expert on Greenland, but don't they rely on mostly imported food and aid?
To my understanding Greenlanders eat lot of game: fish, sea mammals and so on. They do import lot of food however as nothing grows there. But that is not problem that can not be solved. If they already know to hunt they are ahead of, say, most of Europe or Western world.
Isolation is good. Backwoods do have hunters, so when they can try to sustain themselves. And disease does not arrive there so quickly and less population = less trolls.
The Faroes, Greenland and Shetland thing is odd one indeed. Maybe Nordics just got lazy. :P Or mapping those places would have taken too much resources for some reason.
I'd imagine Japan would zip up tight just like Iceland once the "cataclysm" became apparent in Europe.
Still, even if it managed to avoid outbreaks of the rash I imagine the population would be severely reduced by famine, common diseases, and possibly even internal war between factions.
But I could imagine a relatively sparsely populated island like Hokkaido to manage.
So I would expect surviving communities there, if not a relatively intact nation, and probably plenty other similar situations around the world, but avoiding the rash is one thing, surviving the breakdown and restructuring of society is another.
Iceland was able to stay isolated because they are so far away from anyone else. The problem with Japan is that it is so close to China and Korea, and there are a lot of Chinese people in China. So even if they tried to close the borders it's likely that Chinese refugees would end up there and cause an outbreak.That's always a possibility, though I'm assuming that not only would the JSDF fire upon foreign ships with extreme prejudice, but most refugees would probably be too rushed to effectively prepare, and would perish at sea from a lack of food and water or even rash infection along the way, at least any Chinese. I imagine most people "fleeing" the disease would do as we saw in the prologue and instead head inland.
If they did close down all travel routes though it's likely that isolated parts like Okinawa could get by. If they did it's possible that they reverted to the isolationism of medieval Japan. On the other hand they might be exploring the Pacific, thus maybe encountering Americans on Guam and Polynesians in Oceania and on the Easter Islands.
Society breakdown has probably killed almost as many people as disease.
I agree, humans are just as dangerous as trolls. Society breakdown has probably killed almost as many people as disease. Which again means that already isolated places have better chance. And those places are all over the world.
Other places
*Luna (well far fledged idea)
I can picture the astronauts/cosmonauts on the International Space Station trying desperately to stretch out what little food and water they have as the world slowly dies beneath them. Sounds like a different kind of horror story.Whoa, yeah. I'm pretty sure they need coordination with people below in order to get back home safely--with the world in chaos, they might not be able to come back even if they wanted to.
*FaroesPretty sure the comic specifically lists those places as part of the silent world, thus I doubt there's anyone alive as I'm fairly sure the Icelanders would have at least ventured close at some point.
*Shetlands
I rechecked the map, the Faroe Islands and Shetlands are indeed part of the silent world. I have to wonder why there hasn't been an effort between Sweden and Iceland to go in and cleanse the areas? They would make a good safe zone, with the possibility of resettlement. I know they have a relatively low population right now (Faroe has about 50,000 people). At the very least they could establish a quarantine facility, since Iceland's looks like it's right in the middle of the ocean.Funding and allocation of resources is probably the problem.(and if they do ever get around to it, it will probably be an issue between Norway and Iceland, possibly with Danish input due to historical ownership)
Whoa, yeah. I'm pretty sure they need coordination with people below in order to get back home safelyUnclear. IIUC they keep one of the emptied transport spacecraft docked at all times to serve as an escape vehicle, in case of a large solar flare or somesuch, and I doubt that they trust it to run entirely on RC during such an event.
I rechecked the map, the Faroe Islands and Shetlands are indeed part of the silent world. I have to wonder why there hasn't been an effort between Sweden and Iceland to go in and cleanse the areas? They would make a good safe zone, with the possibility of resettlement. I know they have a relatively low population right now (Faroe has about 50,000 people). At the very least they could establish a quarantine facility, since Iceland's looks like it's right in the middle of the ocean.
And since Iceland seems to be still infection free almost a 100 years on I think this pathogen can't survive in salt water.
The problem with that kind of outpost is that it's nice and isolated but not necessarily inhabitable. For starters the White Sea like the Baltic usually freezes over during the colder months, which means that fishing is limited to a short season.
They would also have a difficult time fighting off any trolls crossing the ice.Isn't that just as true for the surviving communities in Sweden and Finland? Seeing as they're on lakes that freeze in winter. Not sure about Bornholm... Wikipedia tells me that the Baltic Sea does on rare occasions completely freeze in winter.
Growing vegetables like potatoes is also difficult and provides small crops.Surprisingly, it seems not. If you read Russian you can read section XII here (http://az.lib.ru/n/nemirowichdanchenko_w_i/text_0020.shtml) (or use Google Translate). In that account, written in 1872, the monastery's vegetable garden is said to provide onions, cabbages, potatoes, cucumbers, carrots and radishes. The keeper is quoted as saying "we buy nothing from the city".
There is not really much there that can be turned into weapons, so they would have to conserve whatever they have.Well, I imagine it would be the same problem as with the Finnish communities. There's a forest on Solovki. There are also over 600 lakes and a very extensive network of canals that was built over many centuries (bring your own inflatable boat if you ever visit!)
That monastery would be awesome, and then we could have Russians in the setting too!I know, right? If Minna decides to reveal at some later point in the story that any Russians did actually survive, that would be both one of the most logical locations for a surviving settlement and one of the most interesting ones.
Something wild I've been wondering is if there could be tiny bands of nomads wandering the Silent World in distant places.I've been kind of assuming that that's exactly what might be encountered in the course of the adventure. We'll see...
Here's something I've been wondering: what about the foreigners in places like Iceland? For instance, say that I (an American) were visiting Iceland when they closed down the borders. What would happen to tourists like me? I can understand that people in the other, mainland countries would be just about doomed. However, there would probably be a few foreigners trapped in Iceland. Would they be sent elsewhere or kept in Iceland until further development?
On another note, I think Great Britain would have a fifty-fifty chance of survival. While I think some of the more inaccessible towns in the Scottish Highlands would survive, I cannot imagine that much of the rest of England would survive as most towns here are pretty close together (my own town of residence is literally ten minutes walking time from another small town).
p.p.s. Did you know that in England, a settlement is a town if it has a market square and is a city if it has a cathedral? :)
Isn't that just as true for the surviving communities in Sweden and Finland? Seeing as they're on lakes that freeze in winter. Not sure about Bornholm... Wikipedia tells me that the Baltic Sea does on rare occasions completely freeze in winter.The problem is that there's a difference between a community initially simply holing up, and a sustainable population lasting for 90 years.
I believe that island nations who had the foresight to shut down their borders early, and more importantly, patrol and protect themselves from fleeing refugees would have fared pretty well. Japan certainly would have had a hand on the situation, and they have the fleet to protect themselves.To big to much air traffic they clsoed to late so the rash was alreday in Japan. Possible for survivors on isolated island much like in Sweden/Finald/Denamrk/ or fjords as Norway yes but as whole like Iceland no chance at all.
Madagascar might have closed their borders, but I don't think they have the strength militarily to keep out determined survivors.very possible
American survivalists might not do as well as you'd think. They are mostly loners. If they just had to avoid getting sick, that might work, but the trolls and beasties are way too vicious and strong to be defeated by small bands. You need numbers and coordinated efforts to get those monsters at bay.I think they may need less copoeration to keep the troll out (if they built right at least), but complet loners will be gone in a gernations, single families very inbreed in two. And the same attitude of don't trust anybody and shoot first that keep them fairly safe from thr epedmic and the monsters will make it impossible to rebuild society by merging with other survivors.
American survivalists might not do as well as you'd think. They are mostly loners. If they just had to avoid getting sick, that might work, but the trolls and beasties are way too vicious and strong to be defeated by small bands. You need numbers and coordinated efforts to get those monsters at bay.
The problem is that there's a difference between a community initially simply holing up, and a sustainable population lasting for 90 years.Doesn't have to be thousands of people. Most of the settlements (particularly in Finland) seem to be under 1000 people, and that's after decades of relative stability. Probably there weren't much more than a few dozen survivors in many communities initially.
Those are wildly different. Not to mention that at the time of the rash outbreak it would essentially be nothing but a tourist object, and would as a result not have any viable gardens of food.(not that that could supply for thousands of people for nearly a hundred years)
So any population holing up there would be more likely to starve to death, fall victim to scurvy, or be crippled by other diseases. In any case, the population would not last until the present time of the comic.
That's great, Ruth!
It seems more or less believable, although why are there so many communities along the coast that don't seem to be in fjords?
I'm not sure that Newfoundland's population would stay that high... Iceland's is pretty high, but Iceland also has limitless geothermal energy, which Newfoundland doesn't.
(https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5576/14943835818_e1ec7c4916_s.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/oLx4KG)Wow, that's really good!
Stand Still, Stay Silent (https://flic.kr/p/oLx4KG) by ruthszulc (https://www.flickr.com/people/124103985@N06/), on Flickr
here's a little project of mine looking at what survivor communities outside the known world might look like! of course, everyone else's "known world" is going to be different if they haven't made contact. canada hasn't fared as well as iceland, and the largest community in the otherwise safe island of newfoundland—st. john's—fell early to the rash. isolation has been cold and lonely for its survivors, who aren't quite as keen on cleansing as the swedes, but nevertheless by year 90 there are a few projects to expand into the boundaries of the silent world. and the legacy of france lives on with its tiny colonial province. :)
That's really cool ruth!Your picture appears to be broken.
I've been trying one myself since yesterday (over 9000 hours inpaintGIMP, do not steal :P), but I still can't find the right place for the settlements...(https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/photos/Maps/Untitled.png?_subject_uid=41908692&w=AACgwBhB1V74ZaZgCHYgaOEwICVrgMZN_VkbkEozzYHHnw) (https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/photos/Maps/spain.png?_subject_uid=41908692&w=AACvS8zH7Nl47sGBsYkqqLzrex7BQN1ZR8CelqT-06oojQ)
(Click for a biger one)
Something's clear though: It shouldn't be bigger than Mora, it should be away from the coast (The most densely populated areas, specially in the mediterranean, after the capital's surrroundings), and it should be In the northwest and north, because of the temperatures. Then there's things like castles, small walled towns, little villages in the mountains... The only two places I've found are Almeida (Portugal) and Ciudad Rodrigo (Spain), one next to the other, and I hope to find something in the Pyrenees...
Care to share any tips?
That's really cool ruth!
I've been trying one myself since yesterday (over 9000 hours inpaintGIMP, do not steal :P), but I still can't find the right place for the settlements...(https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/photos/Maps/Untitled.png?_subject_uid=41908692&w=AACgwBhB1V74ZaZgCHYgaOEwICVrgMZN_VkbkEozzYHHnw) (https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/photos/Maps/spain.png?_subject_uid=41908692&w=AACvS8zH7Nl47sGBsYkqqLzrex7BQN1ZR8CelqT-06oojQ)
(Click for a biger one)
Something's clear though: It shouldn't be bigger than Mora, it should be away from the coast (The most densely populated areas, specially in the mediterranean, after the capital's surrroundings), and it should be In the northwest and north, because of the temperatures. Then there's things like castles, small walled towns, little villages in the mountains... The only two places I've found are Almeida (Portugal) and Ciudad Rodrigo (Spain), one next to the other, and I hope to find something in the Pyrenees...
Care to share any tips?
Your picture appears to be broken.
hey! this sounds very cool, i can't actually access your dropbox file since i'm getting a 403 error, but if you're looking for an isolated place to put a few settlements in the pyrenees i think val d'aran (on the spanish side) and formiguera on the french side. la val d'aran is i think the only part of spain on the northern side of the pyrenees, and formiguera is a ski resort.*swears profusely*
(https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5576/14943835818_e1ec7c4916_s.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/oLx4KG)
Stand Still, Stay Silent (https://flic.kr/p/oLx4KG) by ruthszulc (https://www.flickr.com/people/124103985@N06/), on Flickr
here's a little project of mine looking at what survivor communities outside the known world might look like! of course, everyone else's "known world" is going to be different if they haven't made contact. canada hasn't fared as well as iceland, and the largest community in the otherwise safe island of newfoundland—st. john's—fell early to the rash. isolation has been cold and lonely for its survivors, who aren't quite as keen on cleansing as the swedes, but nevertheless by year 90 there are a few projects to expand into the boundaries of the silent world. and the legacy of france lives on with its tiny colonial province. :)
Ruth, thanks for the great map!. Newfoundland is sure a good candidate for a surviving comunauty, but I think you are a little over generous for the population. A realist surviving rate is propably more the 10% (50000). If I thnk by ressource, the essentials places are Port au Basque (the only agriculture of the Island), Corner Brook (Hydro-electricity, forestery) and Come By Chance (The only refinery of the island, near the "wall" of Avalon.). You should also a oil platform, like Hibernia of Terra Nova.
For Quebec the number of survivor sould not be bigger that the one of Sweden, so we shoud have 20000 - 25000 peoples max. The actual population of Anticosti Island is only 200 peoples (vs. 300000 deers), even if survivors migrate to the Island, I dont think it sould be bigger the 2000 - 3000 peoples. Magdalen Islands, who actual population is 14000 is probably a best "safe harbour". They aslo have the same soils that Prince Edward Island and the Acadian coast of New Brunswick, so it explain the colonization. For the resource, we sould add the Fermont iron mine (and the railway to Port-Cartier), probably one of the numerous hydroelectric generating stations of the Manicouagan River.
For Saint-Pierre, I think the population is correct.
Is anyone else taking into account the return of pre-christian scandinavian pantheons? The scandinavian mages seem like a pretty major leg up.
Also while fishing seems like a useful means of collecting meals, has anyone considered what happened to all the whales...The comic says that Norwegians hunt "sea beasts." I'm kind of assuming this means whales got infected somehow. Tragic if that's the case, though that would then make me wonder how the Icelanders could possibly be safe at all.
You just need one dead carcass to wash ashore...
- Weapons: Quite obvious, too. The best thing might be guns and rifles, either from humters, nearby military bases or places wwhere a war has happenned "recently". The more recent the better, you don't want a 120 years old rifle from the spanish civil war (but it might work good enough). Maybe, where immunity is commonplace, closer range, more traditional weapons could be an alternative for the beasts and smaller trolls.And a guy wielding a sword against a troll would be cool too. Since the disease only remains active for a few hours, this might be actually doable (But dangerous).
*pondering* However, I think troll-dolphins could still be an issue.
Okay, I'm posting this here as well. I'm about the only one who posted on my "origins" thread, but no matter. I'm going out on a limb here for my theory. Trolls are not humans. They are TREES! or possibly other vegetation. check out the links I posted in the thread as my proof. I could be way wrong, and if someone has info to shoot my theory full of holes, well, I'll recover. But anyway, I'm calling Trolls are mutated vegetation. (Think big, mean, nasty, Ents)
Trolls are not humans. They are TREES! or possibly other vegetation. check out the links I posted in the thread as my proof.While the trolls you refer to may have a barky and tree-shape-ish appearance, they also have limbs and are mobile, which necessitates the existence of a brain (equivalent) to coordinate their movement. Also, shying away from (sun)light would likely severely limit the life expectancy of a plant, as would the loss of roots. Partly vegetal I'd buy (even though fusing plants to mammals would be even more challenging than doing so with non-mammalian animals), but exclusively I doubt.
The troll on the train was decidedly organic in nature.Actually, they specifically called that one on the train a GIANT. Which again, begs the question, are those three terms (Troll, Giant, Beast) interchangeable? I don't think so, since the "cats" page shows one going after a Vermin Beast. So, my hypothesis is that Giants are the mammalian mashups, and Trolls are something else. Since Beasts are already definitely mutated animals that DON'T combine with people.
Warmish, high density, open areas (like most of America) makes a poor situation for those few survivors of the Rash.
even in the Appalachian Mountains or in the Midwest there are a lot of mammals, and most of them would turn into infectious beasts.
well, true, the thing is though, didn't most of the mammals die as well? I seem to recall from the prologue that most animals died, some became beasts, and a few survived, with the exception of cats, who are totally immune...
Here are circumstances that make immediate survival more likely.
-> Cold
-> Low Population density
-> Defensible locations
That's hard to say, the first victims of the rash were reported as being dead at some point, and there's also the picture of a dead dog. Whether or not being dead means that the organism will not become a beast/troll is an open question considering the decayed state of the monsters we have seen so far.There's also the matter of how there probably is something of an immune animal population as well.
There's actually a few in-story reasons!
1: WAY too high overall population density (which is also why the southern parts of the Nordic countries are empty) which is VERY bad for reasons to be revealed.
2. Too far south and therefore not cold enough winters. Also very bad for reasons to be revealed.
3. Not strong enough natural defenses. For example all the Finnish settlements that exist are located on islands surrounded by labyrinths of lakes and the Norwegian ones in fjords shielded by the sea and high mountains. Very good for reasons to be revealed!
And small surviving populations on those little Scottish islands and stuff have moved to the larger/safer Nordic settlements decades ago. :3
This information from Minna herself is quite interesting:That looks like it is a reply. What's the context of what she's replying to? Is she dismissing the possibility of people surviving in some areas?
The three ponts have been considered in this thread so far, but the part about there being Scottish immigrants in the Nordic countries seems like news.
That looks like it is a reply. What's the context of what she's replying to? Is she dismissing the possibility of people surviving in some areas?
What I want to know is why the British Isles aren't on there. Unless it experienced a total population loss, I'd think that small coastal quarantined communities in Scotland or England would be a lot easier to find than small communities in the interior of Finland. I know I know there's that whole "not Scandinavian" thing, but geographically and demographically speaking, it's a bit hard to justify it not being there.
Has Mongolia been mentionned as a possible place of survival?
It has quite a low population density (this is a country almost thrice as big as Texas… with about 11% of the population of Texas), very cold climate, with average annual temperatures at the freezing point (in the winter, the average gets to -20°C (-4°F), with nightly temperatures of -40°C/F (it's cool when it coincides in both units) being pretty normal occurences — it's worth noting than the capital, Ulan Bator, in spite of being much farther from the North Pole than Reykjavik or Nuuk, still holds the title of coldest capital in the world). There are several important mountain ranges in the western half of the country, but in fact the whole country lies at a pretty high altitude (average 1500 meters). Oh, and there are on average 257 cloudless days a year.
And of course the people there are used to survival in extreme conditions (because if the cold weather wasn't enough, the country is also very dry and the weather tends to be quite unpredictable on the short run), has quite a lot of herders, and the population are used to live with virtually no crop, relying almost entirely on animal products (the country has less than 1% of arable land).
There could be some nomadic communities holding out in the middle of nowhere. Mongolia would be at high risk once people start fleeing the northern Chinese metropols en masse. As you say they will have to rely heavily on livestock, which suggests that only existing farmer communities would survive through the first winters.
USA was prepared plans for after MAD between the USSR, and I will be surprised if they didn't prepare aganist biological weapons.The rash is an extremely viral disease that even transmits over air and is transmissible to ALL mammal species except for cats, which means it'll even spread through mice and rats. The moment the rash hit the east coast, the fate of America was sealed just like Europe's.
and they already have plans for reconstruct the contury after nuclear war.
and iceland was not exposed with the rash at all, so I can assume least 10% of USA citizen are immule to rash.
and compare the rash and nuclear warpare, I think the rash is more easier thing to deal with.
(troll and giant is not an issue, because US army wil blow them up with bullet, explosive or something)
hack. europeans are already live through the black death, isn't it?
No amount of guns lets you resist something that will kill 99% of your population and turns all mammal species into perpetual spreaders of disease.Well, short of using your nuclear arsenal on your own territory to erect a barrier zone between the East and the West whose radioactivity permits only cockroaches to travel through, that is. (Pray for the predominant wind direction to stay very predominant through the following centuries.)
Well, short of using your nuclear arsenal on your own territory to erect a barrier zone between the East and the West whose radioactivity permits only cockroaches to travel through, that is. (Pray for the predominant wind direction to stay very predominant through the following centuries.)
... what? I'm a technician. I'm supposed to find ways to solve the problem at hand with the available tools. ::)
I'm pretty sure a lot of places in the UK will have survived.I believe it's been pointed out that Minna has basically declared the UK dead. Any Scottish survivors would end up in Scandinavia in the first few years.
There are lots of regions prone to flash flooding, however we don't know if trolls would be able to survive that or not. There are also lots of large, uninhabited regions in Scotland, Wales, the north of England and west of Ireland so any sheep or cows that have become trolls there wouldn't have any buildings to shelter in for the inevitably awful weather.
Any of the islands around the coast would be good for survivors if they can keep mutant seals at bay.
Another thing I've been thinking about is whether any mammals other than humans have a high immunity rate. If humans survive the rash and the trolls, the next problem is food. They might be able to breed immune cattle from the ones who have survived?
I too am of the opinion that the best way to solve a problem is to create a whole new range of problems in the hope that they will replace the original problem.Sounds like American foreign policy.
Sounds like American foreign policy.
I also think one needs to think about what sort of government rules any such imagined communities.
Chances are that most would originally have started out under some sort of military rule, like an evacuation zone where the military took the reigns when it became clear that things were going south fast.
Probably very similar to the naval forces we saw in the prologue.
Oh dear, that's edgy.Yiss, I'm living on the edge, sticking it to the MAN!
Well, short of using your nuclear arsenal on your own territory to erect a barrier zone between the East and the West whose radioactivity permits only cockroaches to travel through, that is. (Pray for the predominant wind direction to stay very predominant through the following centuries.)I don't think that America would be able to convince itself to turn it's nukes against itself, though, until it was way too late. Unless some third party managed to use the nukes themselves, of course.
... what? I'm a technician. I'm supposed to find ways to solve the problem at hand with the available tools. ::)
I'm pretty sure a lot of places in the UK will have survived.Sheep and Cows would become Beast and beast can survive winters outside at least as well as the animal they once where.
There are lots of regions prone to flash flooding, however we don't know if trolls would be able to survive that or not. There are also lots of large, uninhabited regions in Scotland, Wales, the north of England and west of Ireland so any sheep or cows that have become trolls there wouldn't have any buildings to shelter in for the inevitably awful weather.
...
Sheep and Cows would become Beast and beast can survive winters outside at least as well as the animal they once where.
AntarcticaMcMurdo is larger than Amundsen-Scott (McMurdo having a summer population of more than a thousand, and winter population in the several hundreds). The various research stations in the King George Island (who would speak more languages than the known world) could also have a sustainable population if the population from about eleven different countries could put aside their differences. If enough fishing trawlers seek refuge in McMurdo and other coastal research stations & former whaling stations, and they don't bring the rash with them, the food issues may even be resolved nicely.
—The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, if they managed to somehow create a self-sustainable organisation (other antarctica stations are much too small to accomplish this).
I definitely think that some areas of America would have survivors, but the government would likely be in shambles.Frankly, that would probably make America run better. The Founding Fathers never thought anyone would be insane enough to make a CAREER out of politics, or that WE would be stupid enough to elect someone like that into power in the first place.... :/
Frankly, that would probably make America run better. The Founding Fathers never thought anyone would be insane enough to make a CAREER out of politics, or that WE would be stupid enough to elect someone like that into power in the first place.... :/
Frankly, that would probably make America run better. The Founding Fathers never thought anyone would be insane enough to make a CAREER out of politics, or that WE would be stupid enough to elect someone like that into power in the first place.... :/I honestly can't understand what you're trying to say? And don't make this a political debate, that's not what we're here for.
Of course, they also thought that slaves were 3/5 of a person, plus that slavery was totally fine. They thought a lot of dumb and crappy things.You too, we're not here to debate politics. If you really want to, open a different thread or something, and go talk about how much everyone used to hate each other there, but this thread is whether or not America could survive this plague to any extent, it's not about racism throughout history.
America has several points against it, for the mainstay of the population:I see your point, but I'd put the survival rate a bit higher. I've lived in enough places in America to know that a few of them would shut down it's borders and kill anyone who tried to enter, preventing easy spreading of the disease. Now, rats could be an issue in the major cities, but many of the cities I've been to had little to no rat problems. I'd say that many of the northern regions would be relatively okay, while only a few southern regions would survive. I could see Texas surviving if only because of their insane mentality when it comes to outside threats, which is to cut itself off as completely as possible. I agree with you, though, that our refusal to visit a doctor might work against us, but it could be an advantage, since sick people would be more likely to lock themselves up than rush to the doctor and spread their disease to everyone they met. The safest place in America would probably be Alaska or Hawaii, though, considering how remote they both are.
1. Low self admission rates for medical issues (we tend to go the hospital, not the doctor)
2. Tendency to 'Work Thru' an illness instead of taking time off.
3. Vast city centric population tied to high rural/suburban mammal infestation rates.
4. Centralization of resources prior to distribution
5. Car Centric Culture - We could be anywhere in the country fairly quickly, and the road system is redundant enough that 'cutting off' a route is nearly impossible.
That said, America does have a few areas where survival would be manageable if they could avoid or contain initial infection. Some of the Islands off the east coast would be good candidates, as would some of the Northern Inland areas where the mountains, hills, or badlands could make good defenses. The abundance of fire arms don't count for much in this scenario, but the abundance of hunters does.
That said, I'd place the total number of survivors in the low 50 to 60 thousands, mostly due to point 5 complicating the difficulty in isolating communities for desperate people.
I see your point, but I'd put the survival rate a bit higher. I've lived in enough places in America to know that a few of them would shut down it's borders and kill anyone who tried to enter, preventing easy spreading of the disease. Now, rats could be an issue in the major cities, but many of the cities I've been to had little to no rat problems. I'd say that many of the northern regions would be relatively okay, while only a few southern regions would survive. I could see Texas surviving if only because of their insane mentality when it comes to outside threats, which is to cut itself off as completely as possible. I agree with you, though, that our refusal to visit a doctor might work against us, but it could be an advantage, since sick people would be more likely to lock themselves up than rush to the doctor and spread their disease to everyone they met. The safest place in America would probably be Alaska or Hawaii, though, considering how remote they both are.
I honestly can't understand what you're trying to say? And don't make this a political debate, that's not what we're here for.Pretty sure he's talking about how American politics is corrupt to the core today. I'd consider it a jest more than anything.
We need more maps!
Stand Still, Stay Silent (https://flic.kr/p/oLx4KG) by ruthszulc (https://www.flickr.com/people/124103985@N06/), on Flickr
here's a little project of mine looking at what survivor communities outside the known world might look like! of course, everyone else's "known world" is going to be different if they haven't made contact. canada hasn't fared as well as iceland, and the largest community in the otherwise safe island of newfoundland—st. john's—fell early to the rash. isolation has been cold and lonely for its survivors, who aren't quite as keen on cleansing as the swedes, but nevertheless by year 90 there are a few projects to expand into the boundaries of the silent world. and the legacy of france lives on with its tiny colonial province. :)
i've updated this map a little bit since i posted it the first time around, adding hydroelectric plants, an iron mine, and even an offshore oil rig!
by year 90, newfoundland is also likely to have resurrected the old decommissioned newfoundland railway. fortunately for them, several towns in the surviving area of newfoundland, including corner brook and port-aux-basques, have some of the remaining cars, and with iron from fermont and plentiful timber, laying down the tracks on the newfoundland t'railway wouldn't be difficult.
in other news, right now i'm working on a little map of the surviving scottish community, named new shetland after the islands that they left for the safety of the nordic countries. even with a population of only a few hundred, they would likely be valued, especially by the danes, for their continued use of english and ability, subsequently, to access and translate a great deal of world knowledge.
Out of interest, do you envision that the Newfoundlanders speak french (since it says France on the map)?
There are several points I'd like to discuss in your argument, but I'm going to do so by discussing the Texas dilemma directly, because it both sums up my thoughts and is one that I have personal experience of. I lived for a period in the backwoods part of Texas, went to high school in Austin Texas, and may have a fair bit of intimate knowledge concerning what a 'Aggie' is. I will admit I no longer live there, but instead live elsewhere in the continental united states.I can see that, and I honestly didn't think about all the cattle and deer that would be infected. I still think they'd stand a fair chance, both because of the sheer enormity of the state to the paranoid tendencies of the people (I knew several that stockpiled food and water constantly), but the popularity of ranching and hunting would definitely make it a huge problem. Especially when the trolls started forming, and used all of those cattle to grow. Where I lived, though, it was fairly desert like, and deer were not common. There are greener areas in Texas, but there's some surprisingly dry places too.
Texas, in my opinion, would be one of the worst hit areas in the country. Partly because there is a MAMMAL problem, not just a rat problem, and partly because of the way flight works in actual disaster scenarios.
First off, evidence indicates that every mammal is a potential carrier for the rash. Hunting is prevalent in the central areas of Texas, and even outside of hunting season it continues on near certain towns I could name. That's one vector. Squirrels and Deer are an issue in and around every town and city, due to over hunting of predators back in the early to mid 1900's, and both commonly eat out of human trash.
Second your argument assumes that everyone with guns will simply hunker down and hold out, safe in their own homes. Issue becomes most of Texas is not as 'country' as they like to think they are. Most of the homes are not sustainable in a disaster, and many of them are cheap suburban construction. Food will become an issue quickly since farming is a secondary activity compared to Ranching, mostly cattle (which again, see point 1). Without food or adequate shelter, people will have to search a increasingly contaminated landscape for food. As you pointed out, many of them are armed, and desperate.
Which brings us to the last point about Texas: Too many people are already there. Texas has some great planes and some amazing views, but it's also filled with people. When desperation sets in, you'll have a wave of refugees spreading outward, triggering other refugees and contaminating the state. They are armed, meaning that it will desperate people vs. desperate people. People will turn, but in Texas it'd be troll season all year round. What you have is a giant mess, with few 'good' natural barriers to prevent the infection from spreading.
That is why I think that Texas, and to a certain extend the rest of the states, would not fair as well under this scenario.
I have been following this thread specifically because I am afraid there's going to be a political debate. They never end well.Thanks for keeping an eye out! And yeah, there's no way the whole nation would survive, most of the places with a moderate climate (I.E. almost everywhere) would be decimated; from both the abundant animals and general relaxed nature of the people who live there. I'd say if you wanted to survive run to Hawaii, they'd shut off their borders pretty quick and they're far enough away that the infection shouldn't reach them by air.
I'm not giving any warnings but I'm keeping a keen eye whenever I see this thread being updated. Keep that in mind.
About this issue itself... I have no idea! The more people there is the worse the situation is going to get - every capital except Reykjavik is destroyed in SSSS. I'm of course there's some surviving communities, cities as strongholds but for the whole nation... No way.
in other news, right now i'm working on a little map of the surviving scottish community, named new shetland after the islands that they left for the safety of the nordic countries. even with a population of only a few hundred, they would likely be valued, especially by the danes, for their continued use of english and ability, subsequently, to access and translate a great deal of world knowledge.
i've updated this map a little bit since i posted it the first time around, adding hydroelectric plants, an iron mine, and even an offshore oil rig!Question: How did you make that map?
by year 90, newfoundland is also likely to have resurrected the old decommissioned newfoundland railway. fortunately for them, several towns in the surviving area of newfoundland, including corner brook and port-aux-basques, have some of the remaining cars, and with iron from fermont and plentiful timber, laying down the tracks on the newfoundland t'railway wouldn't be difficult.
in other news, right now i'm working on a little map of the surviving scottish community, named new shetland after the islands that they left for the safety of the nordic countries. even with a population of only a few hundred, they would likely be valued, especially by the danes, for their continued use of english and ability, subsequently, to access and translate a great deal of world knowledge.
Question: How did you make that map?
Did you simply edit an existing map(if so, which?), or did you draw it yourself? And how?
Do have beasts and trolls problems with high temperatures, too? Like in wastelands? In the Sahara or Gobi nights are really cold and days are quiet hot. Maybe beasts and trolls always have problems with extrem temperature conditions? Or did Minna eliminate this opportunity?
i traced a map off of google maps and then used the texture underneath it as the basis for the texture on the land, which is what gave it that irregular, mottled texture.I see. Would be interesting to try the same. Do you do it with a tablet? Seems awkward to get the tiny details by mouse.
One of those things we probably don't (and in-universe, can't) know yet. The 'heat' of Scandinavian summers would never get even close to daily equatorial or desert ranges.I imagine in very hot lands, trolls would spend a lot of the year soaked in waters, rivers and caves during the day and then mostly active by night. And since almost everyone lives alongside the rivers in those parts of the world, that means it is basically inhospitable regardless.
Though I wonder if there were any attempts to capture a beast or troll live to experiment on them. That lab in Mora has samples in jars but I don't think they were still alive.
I imagine in very hot lands, trolls would spend a lot of the year soaked in waters, rivers and caves during the day and then mostly active by night. And since almost everyone lives alongside the rivers in those parts of the world, that means it is basically inhospitable regardless.They'd also want to keep out of sunlight - another big no-no for them according to Word of God. So... They'd live under bridges? 8)
They'd also want to keep out of sunlight - another big no-no for them according to Word of God. So... They'd live under bridges? 8)Well yes, that would be an intentional thing by the author in order to call them "trolls".
We need more maps!
I imagine in very hot lands, trolls would spend a lot of the year soaked in waters, rivers and caves during the day and then mostly active by night. And since almost everyone lives alongside the rivers in those parts of the world, that means it is basically inhospitable regardless.
They'd also want to keep out of sunlight - another big no-no for them according to Word of God. So... They'd live under bridges? 8)
ALSO, how come nobody(myself included) noticed that the Prologue actually says that JAPAN ALSO CLOSES ITS BORDERS?
Seriously: http://sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=13
Somehow I didn't remember that. So they closed-off right after Iceland did, which greatly increases the odds that much of Japan would still be alive in the current setting of the comic.
i've updated this map a little bit since i posted it the first time around, adding hydroelectric plants, an iron mine, and even an offshore oil rig!
by year 90, newfoundland is also likely to have resurrected the old decommissioned newfoundland railway. fortunately for them, several towns in the surviving area of newfoundland, including corner brook and port-aux-basques, have some of the remaining cars, and with iron from fermont and plentiful timber, laying down the tracks on the newfoundland t'railway wouldn't be difficult.
Plus, Japan takes public health very seriously, from what I recall, so many people would be wearing face masks from Day 1. The big disadvantage it would have as a nation is sheer population density. If they closed the barn doors after the horses escaped, then they'd have some big, big problems. Even if they did manage to keep the Illness out or even just contained, then you've got the issue of resources and how you're going to feed and care for that population. They'd be in rougher shape than Iceland in that regard, IMO.Right, Japan would probably suffer famine like Iceland is implied to have.
In short, I think odds are good of there being a large group of survivors and some infrastructure in Japan, but the population probably took a few big hits from starvation, garden-variety illness and maybe a few contained breakouts. The other variable here is how well they'd be able to rebuild after getting hit by an earthquake.
Plus, Japan takes public health very seriously, from what I recall, so many people would be wearing face masks from Day 1. The big disadvantage it would have as a nation is sheer population density. If they closed the barn doors after the horses escaped, then they'd have some big, big problems. Even if they did manage to keep the Illness out or even just contained, then you've got the issue of resources and how you're going to feed and care for that population. They'd be in rougher shape than Iceland in that regard, IMO.
In short, I think odds are good of there being a large group of survivors and some infrastructure in Japan, but the population probably took a few big hits from starvation, garden-variety illness and maybe a few contained breakouts. The other variable here is how well they'd be able to rebuild after getting hit by an earthquake.
Right, Japan would probably suffer famine like Iceland is implied to have.
But just to note, they produce about 90% of their own rice and eggs, and produce about half of their meat. Infected whales would probably be a problem since whale meat is still a notable part of Japanese cuisine (also, stranded whale trolls may be a serious problem with such a huge coast line).
Japan has suffered some severe famines in the past, though, without losing their collective minds. Culturally, the Japanese seem rather well-behaved in times of crisis.
A lot of essential things like cooking oil and soy beans are generally imported, though, which presents a severe problem for Japanese cuisine.
Decisive restructuring would be needed to reduce the famine, though, as Japan is only about 40% self-sufficient on a calorie basis, meaning over half of their population would be at risk, not to mention those that would die from otherwise treatable diseases.
But so long as their society would not collapse during the famine, they would be able to become self-sufficient as they used to be in the past.
The first decade would not be very pleasant in any case, even if they did manage to keep the rash sickness out.
Barring infection and societal collapse, the current Japanese population in year 90 would probably be somewhere around 20 million if lucky.(keeping in mind that the Japanese have very low birthrates already, and famine would not exactly encourage more childbirth, so the population would decline for decades even without the famine)
The decline of white collar jobs as the largest fields of employment would probably change a lot of Japanese society, though.
I imagine it would be less school and career focused, which in turn would probably lead to an increase in birth rates again eventually.
Also, Japan has a lot of cats, so that bit shouldn't be much of a problem.
Right, Japan would probably suffer famine like Iceland is implied to have.
But just to note, they produce about 90% of their own rice and eggs, and produce about half of their meat. Infected whales would probably be a problem since whale meat is still a notable part of Japanese cuisine (also, stranded whale trolls may be a serious problem with such a huge coast line).
Japan has suffered some severe famines in the past, though, without losing their collective minds. Culturally, the Japanese seem rather well-behaved in times of crisis.
A lot of essential things like cooking oil and soy beans are generally imported, though, which presents a severe problem for Japanese cuisine.
Decisive restructuring would be needed to reduce the famine, though, as Japan is only about 40% self-sufficient on a calorie basis, meaning over half of their population would be at risk, not to mention those that would die from otherwise treatable diseases.
But so long as their society would not collapse during the famine, they would be able to become self-sufficient as they used to be in the past.
The first decade would not be very pleasant in any case, even if they did manage to keep the rash sickness out.
Barring infection and societal collapse, the current Japanese population in year 90 would probably be somewhere around 20 million if lucky.(keeping in mind that the Japanese have very low birthrates already, and famine would not exactly encourage more childbirth, so the population would decline for decades even without the famine)
The decline of white collar jobs as the largest fields of employment would probably change a lot of Japanese society, though.
I imagine it would be less school and career focused, which in turn would probably lead to an increase in birth rates again eventually.
I'm worried how Iceland's history will look, given the drastic reduction in population and excluding Rash as a factor, if 2/3 of the population has disappeared. Is Dagrenning more than just a breeding initiative?Are you alluding to euthanasia or "erring to the side of safety" while throwing suspected infected out? Not too likely IMHO. However, keeping the existing population fed likely required that fishery be turned up to the max - which isn't too easy with a fleet still based on the now-cut-off oil supply, and on seas that make the skipper of a warship worry about encountering whales.
*Snip*Huh, seems my estimation wasn't too far off then.
I think the reason why the rash might still make it to Japan is that, even with the country on lock down, they are still bordered quite closely by mainland China; unlike Iceland which is isolated far from Europe and America, they would have to deal not with dozens of would be refugees, but with probably hundred of thousands; even with the entire Japanese navy mobilised, it would be very hard to prevent them all from passing through and carry the rash with them, especially given the tremondous size of Japan's coastline (29,751 km, compared to the US' 19,924 km and Iceland's 4,970 km) made up of several thousands of islands, in a country that is bigger than Norway.Eh, the distance between Japan and mainland China is pretty damn huge. (https://www.google.no/maps/@32.0349894,133.1874784,4537747m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en)
As of 2013, the JMSDF operates a total of 114 ships (excluding minor auxiliary vessels), including; two helicopter destroyers (or helicopter carriers), 26 destroyers, 13 small destroyers (or frigates), six destroyer escorts (or corvettes), 16 attack submarines, 29 mine countermeasure vessels, six patrol vessels, three landing ship tanks, eight training vessels and a fleet of various auxiliary ships. The fleet has a total displacement of approximately 450,000 tonnes (including auxiliary vessels).They also have several hundred planes.
The JCG operates 455 watercraft, these include the following:And they've also got a bunch of planes and helicopters to do reconnaissance with.
Patrol Vessels: 121
Patrol craft: 234
Special guard and rescue craft: 63
Hydrographic survey vessels: 13
Aids to navigation evaluation vessels: 1
Buoy tenders: 2
Aids to navigation tenders: 18
Training boats: 3
- Year 6 - 52,450,000 souls (1 million by famine/unrest/suppression, 2 million by going-away ceremony/suicide, 0.2 million natural death-birth - population at pre-1915 levels and approaching state of civil war)
- Year 12 - 26,300,000 souls (1 million by oppression, 0.5 million by going-away ceremony, +0.1 million by birth-natural death - the war over, recriminations begin, while the victors enjoy the first net growth in recent memory)
Agreed, the JSDF would be well-equipped to handle the areas of crossing-over - the main focus of their re-arming has been China and the Korean peninsula, as well.Almost funny how the rash would allow Japan to retake former Japanese territory such as Sakhalin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin) and the Kuril Islands(though the latter do not have much purpose). Maybe even some Russians would be surviving there if local authorities took measures, but they would probably soon find themselves under the boot. It could actually turn pretty nasty when the Japanese's need for more farmland would become the hot-button issue.
My guess ran counter to the idea of exploration b/c of how horrible the outside world would appear, encouraging isolation (via horror stories from JSDF crews, etc.) until after Japan had to deal with its own Rash outbreak (whether desperate attack or recall of patrols to deal w/internal unrest) or over-populated itself in a more typical fashion than having their infrastructure fall out.
But I could see your scenario, of a great push for colonization starting a few years in; although it would spell the end for the vast majority (as, I suppose, would be the tacit plan), there might even be the odd success. Although most of the Chinese and South Korean coast would be hopelessly over-populated w/trolls (http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/712130main_8246931247_e60f3c09fb_o.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/712130main_8246931247_e60f3c09fb_o.jpg)), North Korea and the former Russian territories would actually have some chance for re-colonization, thanks to the low development there. Although North Korean lands might also face trolls coming in from either end...
While Sakhalin only has about 100 growing days a year, something that would surely become an object of extreme interest in oil and natural gas, which makes up most of the island's current economy.
An intact Japan would almost certainly go for that once it becomes clear to them that the Russian state has basically ceased to exist.
I honestly can't understand what you're trying to say? And don't make this a political debate, that's not what we're here for.Sorry, I was making a tongue-in-cheek remark that was just supposed to be a one-off. The context of my statement was from an earlier post that said the Rash would turn the Government into a shambles.
Plus Indian reservations such as Red Lake and Pine Bend.
We need more maps!
While terrible, it is conceivable that Japan may encourage their most elderly to voluntarily remove themselves (by dangerous work, exile, etc.) from the population, in order to ease the strain of feeding its people, and may view this as a heroic act, given that Japanese society seems to not suffer from excessive individualism. A near-complete halt in reproduction, combined with the pre-crisis mortality rate, might decrease the population further by about 2 million a year, but could not be sustained for more than a few years without dire consequences.
This will be some incredibly cruel math, but, assuming a) disasters in the three largest cities within the first few years, coupled with losses from panic over the general change in social order/profession/etc. b) exacting application of Japan Self-Defense Forces against even the most remote possibilities of refugee incursion (think end of the Prologue, but with bigger ships) c) Application of all of the possibilities above d) no (immediate) catastrophic unrest e) food reserves appropriate to stave off famine for a few years, here would be my (probably wrong) estimates for Japan's population:
(...)
I'm most curious as to how their energy security situation would look. Just 10% is renewables, uranium could supply 30% of current consumption if a sufficient fuel stockpile is attained, less what can be recycled, and the remainder is fossil fuel unavailable to Japan in the wake of losing contact to the entire world. 40% of the food and energy needs, then, and even less for losses in territory and/or consumable resources?
Huh, seems my estimation wasn't too far off then.
Though I doubt such a thing as intentional rash infection really would happen.
And considering Japan's culture I actually doubt they'd have a civil war. Maybe coups and such, but not so much the population itself being divided and fighting each other.
I also think excursions into Korea/China actually would happen quite quickly, relatively speaking.(within two decades, I'm thinking)
Unlike the Scandinavians in this story, the Japanese would have an incentive to explore out of desperation.
Hell, food shortages was one of the main reasons post-Meiji era Japan decided to go the imperial route in the first place.
It would be a divisive issue, though. If Japan ended up "fracturing" then I imagine certain factions would be more conservative than others. Metropolitan areas would probably be quite eager to strike out, while areas such as Hokkaido that technically can be self-sufficient would probably be very conservative on this notion.
I also imagine "excursions" could be a way for society to "rid" itself of superfluous people. Convicts, old people, unsustainable individuals, undesirables all could be sent out on a "sacred mission" or whatever.
In reality it would be an attempt to either establish a foothold outside Japan at minimum budget, or get rid of hungry, useless mouths. Most likely the latter, but with an incentive that would avoid sparking conflict.
No one is going to stand up for a criminal convict being sent to an almost certain doom.
Almost funny how the rash would allow Japan to retake former Japanese territory such as Sakhalin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin) and the Kuril Islands(though the latter do not have much purpose). Maybe even some Russians would be surviving there if local authorities took measures, but they would probably soon find themselves under the boot. It could actually turn pretty nasty when the Japanese's need for more farmland would become the hot-button issue.
I would like to think there wouldn't essentially be merciless oppression(if not outright genocide) of survivors there... but I'm pretty sure there would be. Still, this is under the assumption the island is generally safe from the rash after the rest of the world breaks down. If the rash has taken hold, it would need cleansing.
While Sakhalin only has about 100 growing days a year, something that would surely become an object of extreme interest in oil and natural gas, which makes up most of the island's current economy.
An intact Japan would almost certainly go for that once it becomes clear to them that the Russian state has basically ceased to exist.
Side-note: while fuel is the main use of oil, even with renewable energy hydrocarbons extracted from crude oil and natural gaz would remain in high demand and use (starting with the fact that they are needed for the creation of any explosive more sophisticated than gunpowder; the entire chemical industry is highly dependent on access to abundant hydrocarbon sources).
There are way to artificially create hydrocarbons, but they are still on the experimental stage and very costly.
Side-note: while fuel is the main use of oil, even with renewable energy hydrocarbons extracted from crude oil and natural gaz would remain in high demand and use (starting with the fact that they are needed for the creation of any explosive more sophisticated than gunpowder; the entire chemical industry is highly dependent on access to abundant hydrocarbon sources).
There are way to artificially create hydrocarbons, but they are still on the experimental stage and very costly.
Yeah. Also plastics. Plastics can be recycled but it's costly and inefficient.
The possibility of Japan retaking Sakhalin, while interesting, is not very likely. Because as soon as calculate the costs and risks against what could be gained it becomes from an economical and security perspective useless and highly risky. For one the 14 billion barrels of oil on and around Sakhalin would last Japan less than 10 years at its current consumption rate of 1.5 billion barrels a year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Japan). Considering this it would be more reasonable for Japan to employ renewable energy sources than trying to gain access to Sakhalins oil reserves. And depending on how large Japan perceives the risk of introducing the rash through an attempt to take Sakhalin the might even decide not take this risk at all and restrain themself to their own resources. I admit that these views can and will change over time but I think the result will stay the same unless perhaps an vaccine for the rash is found.Japan's oil consumption would obviously drop as population numbers sink drastically, and even bans on unnecessary fuel usage would be enforced.
ooh... I forgot about them. Given the returhn to the old ways in Scandanavia, I wonder if the Shamans of Native america would find thier own magic "reactivated". The Native American Mythos is poulated by Animal Spirits, who sometimes supported Humans, and sometimes not, but I think, with Nature Gone Wrong, "They" might just decide to "throw their support" to the Humans...
Instead of relying on electric fences, perhaps the native Americans would use Totems....
japan is a really interesting case. i'm still thinking about it, but i have a couple ideas i'll throw out in a couple days or so.I think what Japan would need is "multiple scenarios".
the entire middle east is pretty much toast.
For some reason, i see a US spinoff of SSSS as a mcguffin quest, in which a character is sent with a sacred amulet (Nuke key) to activate The Great Temple (Nuke silo) and bring salvation (Nuking a place in russia, initiating a cold war era protocol automatic chain reaction that nukes a lot of the big cities, essentialy cleaning them from the diesesed, and putting humanity a few steps closer to defeating the apocalypse.)That sounds pretty freakin' neat! There should be a book or something about that, that'd make for a great story.
[sure, this relies on lots of artistic license and idiocy but whatevs]
Sorry, I was making a tongue-in-cheek remark that was just supposed to be a one-off. The context of my statement was from an earlier post that said the Rash would turn the Government into a shambles.It's okay, I just thought you were trying to spin the thread into a debate about American politics, which noone should want. And though it was tongue in cheek, America could probably run fairly well without an organized government, so if it failed the US wouldn't be entirely screwed.
I quoted that, then said that America would probably run better WITHOUT the gov't. I should have left it there, but then got a little preachy.
Sorry, everyone.
I do doubt the totems-as-fences..yes, well, Like a lot of my posts, I had a brainstorming moment there. it went sort of like (I only have fuzzy memories of the actual sequence) hmm. If tribal magic was resurrected like Scandanavian and Finnish majic, then possibly their devices might begin to function as well. Dream Catchers, using peyote to enter the spirit world, and the use of various types of stone to ward individuals, malachite, in particular, as well as a few others that enhace magic and psychic abilities... so.... maybe they could enhance malachite and create "Monster catchers", large constructs surrounding a settlement that Monsters would get tangled in, much like bad dreams get tangled in a dream-catcher. The sun is said to purify the dreamcatcher every day, which is why you hang it in a window facing east. anyway, I thought all that, and condensed it to "totems".... and hey, a monstre tangled in the confusion of a Monster-catcher would be stuck out in the sun, all day. Wonder what happens to them if they are caught like that?
Japan's oil consumption would obviously drop as population numbers sink drastically, and even bans on unnecessary fuel usage would be enforced.I am quite embarassed that I missed the possibility that Sakhalin could become a breadbasket for Japan. Because Sakhalin can provide between 7000 and 15000 km2 of land which is suitable for agriculture(at least if I didn't mess up with the maps). And depending on how much grain can be harvested from this land Sakhalin could become quite an important pillar of Japans food supply(the only number I have for how much can be harvested per area is for wheat in germany with 8t/ha or 800t/km2 in 2012 which would result in a harvest of between 5600000t and 12000000t for Sakhalin). But I still doubt that Japan would go because of the oil, but it would be an added benefit of taking Sakhalin. Also I don't think Japan would conquer Sakhalin because it would be more efficient to 'ask' the people of Sakhalin to join something like a trade union. But all of this depends on that Sakhalin is free from the rash. Before I forget I also had accounted for Japans oil consumtion to drop significantly mainly because a great part of the consumption is in manufacturing of export goods. Additionally I had calculated the effort it would take to build a pipeline from Sakhalin to the industrial centers of Japan and found it to be too big.
And when the option is to get their hands on some oil(and tenable land for the starving masses, remember) or to get none, it becomes a forced choice, especially if the rash doesn't beset Sakhalin.
You can't simply skip jump straight over to renewable energy sources. If it was that simple, Japan would already have done it IRL.
Most of the process you mention still require a source of hydrocarbons — I simply had overlooked that coal is also such a source.Well you don't need hydrocarbons, you can use water and carbondioxide to produce syngas(for an example look here: http://energy.sandia.gov/wp/wp-content/gallery/uploads/S2P_SAND2009-5796P.pdf). Also I have to admit that I didn't pay any attention to the byproducts of oil and when I did look at them I was quite suprised. And I can see that sulfur could become quite a problem despite Japan having so many volcanos.
And this doesn't even get even byproducts. Hydrocarbon sources are also where we get most of our hydrogen and sulfur from.
Wow, Ruth! That's really dark, but really creative.
Do you suppose people turn back to Shinto, the way several of the Nordic nations decided to readopt the old gods? I'm even more curious, do the nature spirits start showing up again?
Hey ruth, a few questions.
1 - Why are so much rice as a currency?
2 - Why is the map written in Japanese >.<''
But awesome map.
...Switzerland - they have been prepared for over 50 years to blow the bridges and tunnels and hunker down in case of "the big one". ...Swizz hadn't closed the boarders before Iceland and have MUCH higher level of intternationall visitors than Iceland. So if they every clsoed the boarder the illness was alrday spread inside the country. So the possibility for Swizz to holdlike one unit is zero. But it di have a lot of small weel isolated places so minor holdouts in rural swizz that have reunite (like in Norway,Swedeb and Finland) seems very possible.
....US Navy Carriers. Yes, they'll run out of food eventually, but they'll have at least six months to think of something and a compliment of U.S. Marines to "secure" necessities. Fleet deployments also include tender vessels full of food, fuel, and expendables, and they've likely teamed up with whatever container vessel, barge, fishing trawler or any other ship in communication range when things went down.The one to where the infection didn't reach should have a good chance. But unless the US govermnet accted well before anyone else in the comic realised the danger the ones they tried to transfer would in many/most cases have brought the infection with them and thus doomed the carriers they where transfered to.
I wouldn't be surprised if the president and other cabinet officials and essential personnel were transferred to a carrier when people realized how out of hand things had gotten. Galatica 2103!!...
More possible survivor communities:
US Navy Carriers. Yes, they'll run out of food eventually, but they'll have at least six months to think of something and a compliment of U.S. Marines to "secure" necessities. Fleet deployments also include tender vessels full of food, fuel, and expendables, and they've likely teamed up with whatever container vessel, barge, fishing trawler or any other ship in communication range when things went down.
I wouldn't be surprised if the president and other cabinet officials and essential personnel were transferred to a carrier when people realized how out of hand things had gotten. Galatica 2103!!
If year zero is in the near future, there will be waay more men than women on those ships.But that will only be a problem for the first generation ;)
But that will only be a problem for the first generation ;)Not quite (genetic diversity, especially mitochondrial) ... :P
I've actually been wondering how Icelandic people are doing in a world where things like Islendiga-App (http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/04/18/new-app-helps-icelanders-avoid-accidental-incest/2093649/) aren't working any more. Which is not to say that we Finns aren't quite inbred too, which would probably lead quite quickly to serious health issues in a small society like SSSS's.
Do you know if that count was based on a society allready quite inbred? And made keeping in mind the existence of the 40 Finnish heritage diseases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_heritage_disease) and the fact that they are more common in East and North Finland, which include the Saimaa area? In a small population a serious hereditary illness like Salla disease could cause much damage...
I've actually been wondering how Icelandic people are doing in a world where things like Islendiga-App (http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/04/18/new-app-helps-icelanders-avoid-accidental-incest/2093649/) aren't working any more.
The interesting thing for me (as an ecologist) is that most of the problems with the ecosystems here are caused by introduced mammals. Killing them off might actually lead to some interesting results, although replacing them with ravenous undead monstrosities is not an approach that is likely to win funding if I propose it to anyone.
I think if there is anything "poetic" about the grander world in this story, it is that might nations like the US and Russia wouldn't go out in a great blaze of glory, but with a whimper.
A few naval ships of whatever countries might have struck out for or crashed on islands or other remote locations here and there hoping for a safe haven. Who knows? Further explorations to Greenland or the Azores might find an isolated and remote community sheltered by the hulk of a beached aircraft carrier.
1. Siberia. That place is big.Too big, too cold. Some pockets of survivors, maybe, but those pockets would not be made up of the everyman.
2. Madagascar. Because at Day 203918, it's still not infected.We don't know that, and Madagascar is too hot to manage if an outbreak does occur.
3. Texas. Enough guns here to take over a small country.Too hot.
6. NORAD. A bunker buried in a mountain, which is within a mountain range, which is in the middle of a continent.Nothing to survive on.
8. Antarctica. "Hey guys! I heard that you have a crazy rash thing going on over there! Guys?"Same point as above.
9. North Korea. Because there is zero chance that an epidemic could get in there.North-Korea is nowhere near as tightly closed as you think. North-Korea even has about 4-5K tourists every year, and the North-Korea/China border has many mostly unguarded spots, and many smugglers.
1. Siberia. That place is big.
Too big, too cold. Some pockets of survivors, maybe, but those pockets would not be made up of the everyman.
It also does nothing to prevent infected mammals, and NK is already a starving countryNK border guard: "Come heeeere lunchie lunchie lunchie ... that's seven fine legs you have there ..."
NK border guard: "Come heeeere lunchie lunchie lunchie ... that's seven fine legs you have there ..."
"I'm not feeling to good but I better go to that parade anyways so that the Juche idea can grow stronger!"
I’ve been thinking about Britain’s current status in the Silent World. In theory Britain should be in a similar if not stronger position to Iceland: it’s a small, cold island with enough natural resources to keep civilisation running, a strong national identity and the locals are famed for having the Blitz Spirit. Unfortunately it also has a high population density, excellent transport links and a ruddy big tunnel connecting it to the continent, so once the Rash took hold it probably swept through like wildfire, hence why according to the map Britain is part of the Silent World.And in the midst of this terrible, terrible disaster, one question arises: Are you drift-compatible?
But, compared to other European nations, native Britons are genetically very close to Scandinavians thanks to centuries of settlement and the Danelaw. This suggests to me that the level of immunity is similar to that of the Nordic countries. So give or take the non-native population and deaths caused by the collapse of civilisation, this could imply at least half a million survivors (Great Britain has more than double the population of all the Nordic countries combined). Combined with food supplies and infrastructure you’d think survivors would be able to contact the outside world and be part of the known world- so what’s going on?
Horrible Beasties[/u]
Britain no longer has any large predators, so there’s no infected bears or wolves to worry about. Beasts would have to deal with both the climate and the sheer hordes of cats everywhere (8.5 million registered pets, unknown numbers of feral/unregistered ones), so would be manageable. If anything the population crash would massive reduce the numbers of vermin as they subsist on humanity’s wasteful behaviour. A major problem would be zoo animals, and I can easily see breeding groups of beasts taking control of certain areas of the country- gorillas and apes in the East Midlands, white lions in the West Midlands, tigers in the Isle of Wight etc.
The main threat in post-Rash Britain? Trolls and giants. Remember what I was saying about high population densities? What do you think is going to be the end result of 50+ million people living in close proximity becoming infected? Trolls and giants are going to be much more common than in Scandinavia and make the cities/large towns no-go areas. Which leads to…
Society Structure
So we’ve got a large population that have been forced out of the cities and are in need of defence against large monsters slithering about at night. What’s the obvious solution for such a historic nation?
Castles, aww yeahh!
I can see British society as having been forced back to mediaeval levels. The populace are based around fortified castles, farming and scavenging the land around for food and supplies before retreating inside the walls at night as protection against the frequent troll/giant attacks. Trade is limited and each fiefdom stands as a largely independent entity. The reason Britain hasn’t contacted the outside world is simply because it’s unable to- the population centres are isolated and beset, more concerned with survival than expansion. Food, fortification and supplies take up so much effort there’s none spare to reach out to other survivors. The Brits likely think they’re the only people left in the world, and perhaps each fiefdom thinks it too.
Just To Make Things Worse
So, those trolls and giants roaming about in large numbers?
London alone has a population of 8.5 million (more than the entire populations of Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Finland!). All those people, all infected, all in one small geographical area…
London is no longer a place for humans. The entire city is a death zone, because it is now the domain of two colossal giants- Gog and Magog.
The number of people and London’s extensive underground infrastructure mean that trolls would thrive in huge numbers. Which would eventually become giants, which would eventually become larger giants…I theorise that in London this has reached its inevitable conclusion with the formation of impossibly enormous giants, likely made of hundreds if not thousands of victims. Possibly approaching kaiju-size. And since Gog and Magog of folklore are said to be the guardians of the City of London, it seems appropriate that these are the names given to the two behemoths that reside inside London.
Tl;dr: Britain: still around, but a pretty terrible place to live in.
native Britons are genetically very close to Scandinavians thanks to centuries of settlement and the Danelaw. This suggests to me that the level of immunity is similar to that of the Nordic countries.
In theory Britain should be in a similar if not stronger position to Iceland: it’s a small, cold island
That, and i still dont see why coldness is a requierment to survival?Because exposure to cold is what keeps trolls from going 24/7 nightmare march all year round, and it is what is used to cleanse infected areas.
If they can get cold they also get hot, and blistering heat is very deadly, sunburns can become very serious, and maybe trolls can suffer sunstrokes if their brains function proparly.Possibly, but trolls may have way more options to deal with heat than they do with cold. And even in the cold, we know giants are capable of moving around.
(Also im really into the idea of named giants, awesome!)
And in the midst of this terrible, terrible disaster, one question arises: Are you drift-compatible?
"Strong national identity" and "Britain" are not two things I expect to see in the same sentence, actually.
Okay i dont want to be "that guy" but this line bothers me a lot.
Well, cold.... I suppose it's not particularly warm in the usual sense of the word but to an Icelander it would seldom be particularly cold. The point about animals might be true, but in a country with a higher population density than Germany and France the primary spreaders would be humans.
I'd imagine a scenario where some Britons might survive like the Hotakainens - living as boat people in the relatively calm Irish Sea before seeking isolated islands on the coast of Scotland.
If they can get cold they also get hot, and blistering heat is very deadly, sunburns can become very serious, and maybe trolls can suffer sunstrokes if their brains function proparly.
(Also im really into the idea of named giants, awesome!)
I think the Britons might be dealing with a serious case of Plot. The webcomic would be too complicated if they make contact with the Nordics, so they won't for now...
So, the language tree suggests that there are surviving estonians somewhere. Probably in one of the islands?Possibly on Osel? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saaremaa)
Possibly on Osel? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saaremaa)Saaremaa and Hiiumaa are quite unmistakably marked as Silent on the world map. There are a couple cleansed islands in front of Skutskär, if some Estonians were forced to flee their original country but wanted to settle on a nearby stepping stone to taking it back later, my bet would be on those. However, considering the ship traffic on the Baltic Sea nowadays and how popular (cheap) Baltic crews are, I'ld consider the possibility of them turning into marine nomads, too.
So, the language tree suggests that there are surviving estonians somewhere. Probably in one of the islands?
But even better, try to imagine this scenario:
Monsoon season separating Japan from the rest of the world in the time period where the rash broke down civilization, thus hindering any and all potential infected refugees. A third Kamikaze, to be specific.
With magic then coming about later, you can imagine a crazy strong revival of Shintoism in Japan. That would be... interesting.
All famine aside, Japan would then in the first few years after the cataclysm face two options:
-Completely closing off from the rest of the world, not even permitting exploration of neighboring countries.
-Searching outward, possibly out of desperation for overpopulation issues and famine, and then learning the truth of the rash sickness that way.
Human curiosity suggests the latter, though how it would play out is anyone's guess.
wow. one second... wow. I LOVE THIS! GENIUS! Japan would totally recluse and develop their own magic! sorry, im from the RPG thread, and I think this could totally work as like an alternate type of mage.
Shintoistic mages would be awefull. For the roleplaying we should wait a little if we get to know any more information about Japan. On the other hand I think that Minna wouldn't have mentioned, that Japan and Madagaskar (???) closed their borders very quick. But it has been discussed a lot already whether the Japanese could have survived so I won't start the discussion all over again ;).It is canon that Japan closed its borders right after Iceland did, then followed by Madagascar.
wow. one second... wow. I LOVE THIS! GENIUS! Japan would totally recluse and develop their own magic! sorry, im from the RPG thread, and I think this could totally work as like an alternate type of mage.
I've been thinking about how magic would work outside the Nordic countries. Magic and spirits exist, so are presumably worldwide. Magic users would likely be based on their culture's opinion of magic. Japan for instance would have heavily spirit based magic, others could lean towards sigils etc.
Icelandic mages get their powers from the Norse gods. Does this mean then that other ancient gods are now back? Are Egyptians now reworshiping Osiris and Thoth? Or are the Norse the only ones, and other cultures are seeing them as their own gods?
Food for thought:
Africa: The Maghreb, the center and South, what will go with those?
And maybe those big kitties helped in surviving beasts in deserts and rain forests.
Also @Raya the thing i didnt like about this line was "Only Nordics can into immunity" which carries a lot of very unfortunate meanings to it.
Just imagine, cleansers in India riding around on Grade A tigers. Awesome.
Now, an Akula class submarine... does Russia still have any of them? They might come in handy during the rash for a short period of time. Longer than the carrier anyway.
I see society in the Maghreb and other middle eastern areas breaking down to what they were before any european labels were forced on them: Simply tribes surviving on their own in whatever location they were in.
Wonder, too, how they react to heavy metal ? :-D
Depends on the genre. If it's "depressive suicidal ambient black metal", "progressive technical modern death core" or progressive ambient blackend thrash metal" (or anything else using more than two adjectives) I would assume it puts them to a kind of rage which only could be stopped by a thick bullet rain.
This always kind of got me... wouldn't "bullet hail" be more fitting than bullet rain? Unless your bullets were made out of molten lead, it's not really much of a rain.
Even if trolls go to water to cool off, they still need to get to those places, and that makes the hunter's job much easier.You're assuming that any human society will survive long enough for hunters to ever become a thing when we're talking about the complete eradication of humanity within months.
Rather than the norwegian "Walk through the wild, look for prints, signs of nests, be careful", the desert hunter's is "These places have water, go here every once in a while and destroy the trolls there." Plus any troll that wonders into human settlements will probably not be in a good physical condition to cause too much harm.
I see society in the Maghreb and other middle eastern areas breaking down to what they were before any european labels were forced on them: Simply tribes surviving on their own in whatever location they were in.While tribes are still a major influence in much of the middle-east, the majority of them are completely urbanized, or based in rural districts still heavily dependent on the nearby existing society.
It's a good point that there's very incredibly little that we (or the characters in the story, really) know about how the monsters beyond actually operate. People just happened to pick up that fire+freezing=dead and electricity+bullets=dead and cats=good and kept doing that because they had something that worked and probably didn't have the resources or people to risk figuring out if anything else worked. One thing that may keep Our Motley Heroes in funds enough to explore might be that they learn some important thing about how trolls or whatever operate that's really obvious and easy in hindsight, only no one was able to figure it out before, and that makes cleansing easier.
Heck, could be they accidentally discover (after crashing through a former perfume shop maybe) that a particular smell repels trolls (maybe not giants or beasts, but trolls), but people can spray their trains, boats, walls, tanks, whatever with it and make travel and exploration easier. Step 1 of cleansing would be "unleash the stink bombs." And then further travels to distant lands find people who discovered the scent thing decades ago.
This always kind of got me... wouldn't "bullet hail" be more fitting than bullet rain? Unless your bullets were made out of molten lead, it's not really much of a rain.LEO (http://dict.leo.org/#/search=kugelhagel) calls it a "hail of bullets", but still fails to point out when hail and/or rain started to fall horizontally. 8)
Sounds like American foreign policy.
So, at long last, I have a moderately polished outline of what shape survivors in North America's Pacific Northwest might be in:
http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0 (http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0)
So, at long last, I have a moderately polished outline of what shape survivors in North America's Pacific Northwest might be in:That is super cool! I wish I had the photoshop skills to make one of these.
http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0 (http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0)
Hello,
first time poster, so I beg for understanding :)
Anyway, I'd like to make case for Poland...
So, at long last, I have a moderately polished outline of what shape survivors in North America's Pacific Northwest might be in:
http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0 (http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0)
So, at long last, I have a moderately polished outline of what shape survivors in North America's Pacific Northwest might be in:
http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0 (http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0)
So, at long last, I have a moderately polished outline of what shape survivors in North America's Pacific Northwest might be in:
http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0 (http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0)
...
I acknowledge that I may have spent far too much time on it, but there is an entire spreadsheet behind the numbers and outlines I've come up with, and some headcanon for each nation that has popped into my mind as I went about writing this, which I might share when I have more sleep in the tank.
Hello,
first time poster, so I beg for understanding :)
Anyway, I'd like to make case for Poland. It was mentioned before, but not in detail, so here you are:
http://mapa.zumi.pl/_d/mapy/polska.png (http://mapa.zumi.pl/_d/mapy/polska.png)
...
In general, main cons would be unreliable winter and summer (much like in Britain) and fact that Poles generally don't have guns. On the pros, Poles as a nation are survivalists and McGyvers (no kidding here), and have some talent to work without government input, which, following the societal collapse, is very useful. There's also historical precedent: find some maps of Black Death spread in medieval Europe :D
So, at long last, I have a moderately polished outline of what shape survivors in North America's Pacific Northwest might be in:
http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0 (http://imgur.com/a/98rkU#0)
I acknowledge that I may have spent far too much time on it, but there is an entire spreadsheet behind the numbers and outlines I've come up with, and some headcanon for each nation that has popped into my mind as I went about writing this, which I might share when I have more sleep in the tank.
Good work Deadlander, particularly that you could managed to gather such a wealth of information. However I don't think they will have much use for the uranium mine. Anyway the map is quite informative.
As to the magic, I... don't really see slavic religion reemerging in Poland. If you asked Poles about some of their ancient gods, they'd prooobably remember Perun (that's our God of Thunder, more user-friendly than Thor), but that's about it. Ever since 996 AD we've been catholics, so I think some sort of christianity-based magic would be more probable (priests turning into mages? Hmmm...) [...]
I'm thinking about making a map, as they look really cool when you do them. What font did you and Minna use?
Fish don't carry Rash. I'd say Channel Islands have quite a chance of survival, although mind the weather. [...] Those are good conditions for trolls. On the other hand, if they cleansed themselves quick enough, their only problem would be sea mammals on the shore, so I guess it's possible they could survive, albeit with very high immunity rate.
Thanks. That's actually my thinking with the Uranium, as well. Mostly a sentimental move ("Hurr, we are America, so we have to be nukular, hurr...")
Agreed - I'd say it might look like the scenario I came up with for the San Juan Islands - scraping by, fishing, scavenging, and being very careful to avoid sea beasts. Dancing on the edge of a knife like that for 90 years must be nerve-wracking, and I don't know if the small population and relative homogeneity of an Old World island might not cause some trouble...
Finnish mage vs Maori mage. Who would win? Theres only one way to find out....
I'm not sure its been mentioned but I'd think a lot of the British overseas territories would have survived.
I'd probably say specifically:
- Falkland Islands
- St Helena
- Pitcairn Islands
- Bermuda
Let's be honest, the Falkland Islands are going to be toast. Whenever Argentina is having economic/political problems the government start kicking up a fuss about the Falklands to distract the populace from the real problems. As soon as the Rash begins to spread and civil unrest starts the Argentinian government is going to launch an assault on the Falklands, using 'national security' as an excuse. Not only will it serve as a temporary distraction from the fact the nation is on the brink of collapse, Britain will be unable to launch a defence due to dealing with the Rash on its own shores. Argentina will control the Falklands for about two weeks, until the Rash reaches it from soldiers/colonists. Then it's a goner.
A reasonable assumption if we assume that Africa and Eurasia are the first to be hit and paralysed by the advanced stages of the pandemic, followed by North-America, then South-America and Oceania. But today's Argentina is not the same Junta-led Argentina that invaded the Falklands back in the days, regardless of contuining Argentine claims on the islands. The more immediate threat is probably Argentine boat refugees that may include people who have are still in the incubation phace of the disease.
Argentina then claimed it didn't count because the native Falklanders are just illegal colonists anyway.It's funny because the Falklands never had a native human population, and Argentinians themselves are all colonists to begin with.
The European Comission did a study (http://bioval.jrc.ec.europa.eu/products/gam/sources.htm/) that might be helpful here, although it only takes land and sea travel into account (This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx7_yzypm5w) should cover air traffic good enough).
For a tl;dr: this (http://www.universetoday.com/29469/where-is-the-most-remote-location-on-earth/) article explains the whole thing.
Thanks for re-posting the graphic!
Although you solved your own problem, just for the record, Imgur doesn't require an account if you want to use it merely for one-time link creation (like a URL-shortening service for Twitter, etc.). I don't have an Imgur account either, but I've used it several times for one-off photo postings on this forum.
I can just imagine those Doomsday Preppers going "HA! YOU LAUGHED AT US BEFORE, BUT WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?"They'll most likely die because they're typically loners who, while prepared, are in reality only prepared to survive a few weeks or months on their own.
They'll most likely die because they're typically loners who, while prepared, are in reality only prepared to survive a few weeks or months on their own.But still, before they run out of food, I'd imagine that they'd be pretty smug.
And, of course, if you're not immune then it won't amount to much if you're not in a safe, permanent settlement.
But still, before they run out of food, I'd imagine that they'd be pretty smug.Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.
But still, before they run out of food, I'd imagine that they'd be pretty smug.
A reasonable assumption if we assume that Africa and Eurasia are the first to be hit and paralysed by the advanced stages of the pandemic, followed by North-America, then South-America and Oceania. But today's Argentina is not the same Junta-led Argentina that invaded the Falklands back in the days, regardless of contuining Argentine claims on the islands. The more immediate threat is probably Argentine boat refugees that may include people who have are still in the incubation phace of the disease.
While I accept the situation as regards Argentina's military situation, I have to say that in the event of a major pandemic there is a very good chance that the British Government would withdraw the troops stationed there - and everywhere else in the world - as they try to maintain control of the domestic situation by bringing in troops they hope are not yet infected and thus not liable to lapse into a coma at short notice.Well that wouldn't matter very much as far as territorial status goes. Invading the Falklands would still be an utterly foolish endeavor as a pandemic rides through the world.
Yeah Argentina is very much hosed, Dramatic Intervention or otherwise.
A few pages ago i mentioned Malta to no response, anyone else willing to theorise about one of the oldest human settlements in the world?
Malta has enormous problems with African refugees already, I'd say they don't stand a chance.
According to the big map of the world, the Netherlands are reflooded anyway.
I had a discussion with a guy from Northern OntarioHe seems to have a lot of points that are regularly brought up in this thread. That being said I think it's adorable how he seems to believe that wolves can comprehend the nature of firearms
Quotes:
Him:"We have wolves up north where I'm at, but they usually are smarter than to come that close to humans, Due to bullets"
Him:"Northern Ontario, where there's no population density to speak of, and everybody's got some kind of ranch rifle
Me:"Now im curious. How self sufficiant is it there?
"Well, you gotta drive into town once in a while to pick up staples like dry foods and wood and whatnot, but for the most part people are pretty good getting by on their own, We could cut down our own trees, but meh"
I say that place can have a sizable survivor community.
He seems to have a lot of points that are regularly brought up in this thread. That being said I think it's adorable how he seems to believe that wolves can comprehend the nature of firearms
I think it's adorable how he seems to believe that wolves can comprehend the nature of firearms
Crows and Ravens are smart and have a healthy dislike to getting shot at. They are quite capable of distinguishing human with gun from one without.
I can vouch for avian species being able to discern between gun toting humans and those who aren't. Pheasants for example tend to flee if you walk towards them with anything that looks like a gun. If you have your hands visible, they'll still keep their distance but won't be as worried about whether you're about to fill them with buckshot or not...Ah, but is that something they learned or just that Pheasants born with an irrational fear of stick-like objects survived and so much better that now almost all of them have it? just by survival of the fittest, when it turned out stick-like objects is indeed more dangerous than almost anything else.
I guess with this latest revelation of UV and sunlight (which shouldn't be a surprise, really) I could easily see Bedouin tribes surviving and areas of the middle east.Didn't you read my post? :D
<Solokov> Now that's a weapon if any! Maybe the next attack by Danes to the mainland is lead by these! Add a couple of cutters to the sides of the thing to prevent side attacks and you're the king of the battleground until they get to your backside. No way a monster wielding some tools (they can't use normal guns since they're so deformed, my guess) would get near that one. And you'd probably see poorly made traps from up there, too. Of giants (and some beasts) I'm not too sure, maybe they could jump over the blades.
Didn't you read my post? :D
There has been lot of talk by Minna and the community that summer is the most dangerous time in post-rash world and that trolls hate cold more than anything.
3. Texas. Enough guns here to take over a small country.
I wonder what Owens valley would look like, after its water is no longer taken by Los Angeles?
Notice!
The Nordic Council intends to search for lost communities.
Requirements for searching these zones for lost communities in Karelia:
— 2 years of language study in the lost language of Russian (for books on this, you might try looking in major cities).
— The Karelian language will probably not take more than study of Finnish to understand (likely to sound as a thick northern Swedish accent would to a Dane).
— Excellent scouting skills, including drawing maps.
— Mage skills preferred, but it is uncertain how mages operate in this field (due to different languages).
— Must be good with people outside the home.
— Experience with travelling outside of the Known World is a must.
In green: The main objective of the search.
In purple: Known and predicted areas of high danger.
In brown: Suggested names for the settlement.
If you wish to know more, talk to your contact officer!
I think Alaska would be a good candidate for survivorcy. Not only does most everyone have guns and good sense, but some of the places are so dang secluded that I wouldn't be altogether surprised if they never actually got infected. They don't have a lot of contact with other places, with exception of people flown in by bush plane. So, depending on how quickly the Rash spread down south, it might just be that those little places only hear about everything on the radio.Considering that animals are affected by the rash illness, I think Alaskans would either starve or have to import food. We have a really erratic growing season, and without moose and fish everyone would just eat potatoes forever. And there's not nearly enough people to purge "silent" areas, so most of the state would be overrun and stay that way.
without moose and fish everyone would just eat potatoes forever.
... so fish is still a viable resource.
If you dare go in the water alongside those infected whales!
Apparently the Norwegians go to sea with precisely the purpose of getting at those sea beasts so it's clearly not the massive threat one would assume it was.[Imagines the Timbercruiser with cannons and harpoons peeking out the "portholes"]
This Gizmodo article reminded me of this thread...
http://gizmodo.com/the-alaskan-town-living-under-one-roof-1678831641 (http://gizmodo.com/the-alaskan-town-living-under-one-roof-1678831641)
Looks like another area made it into likely survivor area category.
Most people in the know say that most reactors are a lot safer than the one at Chernobyl, so though they will fail and severely damage their reactor cores, there won't be widespread nuclear contamination.Non sequitur, I'm afraid. The reactors in Fukushima were of a design much safer than Chernobyl, yet failure to keep the coolant circuits running (like you would also expect when the Rash eventually disables the entire power grid) and the inevitable energy release from the secondary fissions (which is why used fuel rods need to be stored in on-site holding basins for years) led to oxyhydrogen gas buildup and the explosions caused enough damage to cause significant contamination. Of sub-Chernobyl scale, sure, but still. Picture many NPPs going that route in the wake of the Rash and it ought to be something you'ld need to take into account.
Does anyone know anything about nuclear power plants and what would have happened to them if left unattended for 90 years? I suspect they would probably have had meltdowns and made the surrounding area uninhabitable, which means when we consider possible survivor communities we need to also consider whether they are near such power plants.
While reading through this thread I've noticed a lot of speculation about Japan. Japan has an awful lot of nuclear power plants so if any part of Japan was lost to the Rash there's a huge probability there was a decrease in people with the ability and willingness to maintain these plants and prevent widespread radiation poisoning...
I'm not sure about the distribution of nuclear power plants in other countries but I know it isn't anywhere close to zero.
It's possible that people of the Turku Archipelago did survive for a while and then move in with other people (in Finland or elsewhere) later, like how some Scots survived on the Shetlands IIRC before moving to Norway.
Check the world map, I think there were some pockets of inhabitation in Ahvenanmaa archipelago at least.
...The Finland/Sweden ferrys didn't break down (like the Bronholm one) so with 4+ daily ferrys from Helsinki and Stokholm Mariehamn and mainland Åland must have been hit hard by the rash. The more isolated Islands in the Åland/Turku Archipelago may have survived better.
What about The Rash, though? I’d like to think that the people of Keuruu and Saimaa have the same natural resources, personal qualities and food and equipment at their disposal as those out in the Baltic Archipelago as well as plenty of waterways, islands and arable land. Plus, if Bornholm is Rash free then I imagine parts of the Turku Archipelago and maybe even Åland could be rash free and habitable, except Pargas. So, what happened?...
I believe that island nations who had the foresight to shut down their borders early, and more importantly, patrol and protect themselves from fleeing refugees would have fared pretty well. Japan certainly would have had a hand on the situation, and they have the fleet to protect themselves. Madagascar might have closed their borders, but I don't think they have the strength militarily to keep out determined survivors.
American survivalists might not do as well as you'd think. They are mostly loners. If they just had to avoid getting sick, that might work, but the trolls and beasties are way too vicious and strong to be defeated by small bands. You need numbers and coordinated efforts to get those monsters at bay.
Eh, perhaps, but I would love to see an up-armored corn chopper in Minna's art style mowing down giants and beasts.
(http://i61.tinypic.com/2mrv41g.jpg)
I've seen what these things do to flesh and bone thanks to being the son of a farmer, reading ALL the safety manuals and watching all the OSHA safety briefs.
While I accept the situation as regards Argentina's military situation, I have to say that in the event of a major pandemic there is a very good chance that the British Government would withdraw the troops stationed there - and everywhere else in the world - as they try to maintain control of the domestic situation by bringing in troops they hope are not yet infected and thus not liable to lapse into a coma at short notice.
Speaking of survivalist stuff check out this real survivalist moped.
http://www.dudeiwantthat.com/autos/motorcycles/motoped-survival-bike.asp
I just have to say where people won't survive the Rash: North Dakota, which is featured as the dead dog on page 47.Surely there were dogs dying left and right in Scandinavia as well. North Dakota is a big place.
I this scenario then, surviving communities can settle anywhere because their population is 100% immune. Probably winter countries enjoy their yearly respite from troll attacks, but this doesn't preclude warming countries from having survivors. It just means that communities in warmer countries need to be more warrior-like because they have to deal with trolls all the time.
Settlements don't survive only by having people in them, they need resources.Iceland's population dropped by half becuase they didn't have resources and idustrial capasity.
How do you get resources? Through work. And who works? People! If you don't start with a sizable community to begin with you'll be going down soon, and the only places with an inmune population big enough will have an even bigger troll population that'll kill them before they leave from there. You'll need to save some non inmunes too. And you have to hope that the chaos caused by the collapse of civilization doesn't kill too many people either.
And now the worst part:
Where do you get resources? From the source obviously. And there'll probably a village, town or even city there already, with all it's trolls and nasty stuff. You'll have to cleanse an area before exploiting it and get food from it, and for that, you'll need resources: fuel, bullets, steel...
The cold, however, is free, carries no risks for the population (which was small to begin with) and makes cleansing way easier by not having to hunt every single troll and risk leaving some alive.
This is year zero, the decisive point, and here, with no resources and almost no people, the cold is not a comodity, but a necesity (and the same would go to any other envviromental factor that could be helpful: sunlight, vegetation...)
I am quite embarassed that I missed the possibility that Sakhalin could become a breadbasket for Japan. Because Sakhalin can provide between 7000 and 15000 km2 of land which is suitable for agriculture(at least if I didn't mess up with the maps). And depending on how much grain can be harvested from this land Sakhalin could become quite an important pillar of Japans food supply(the only number I have for how much can be harvested per area is for wheat in germany with 8t/ha or 800t/km2 in 2012 which would result in a harvest of between 5600000t and 12000000t for Sakhalin). But I still doubt that Japan would go because of the oil, but it would be an added benefit of taking Sakhalin. Also I don't think Japan would conquer Sakhalin because it would be more efficient to 'ask' the people of Sakhalin to join something like a trade union. But all of this depends on that Sakhalin is free from the rash.
Isolated areas within the US and Russia are likely to survive. US and Russia as a whole are not.
[and Russia is far from "well organised"],
And now the worst part:
Where do you get resources? From the source obviously. And there'll probably a village, town or even city there already, with all it's trolls and nasty stuff. You'll have to cleanse an area before exploiting it and get food from it, and for that, you'll need resources: fuel, bullets, steel...
The cold, however, is free, carries no risks for the population (which was small to begin with) and makes cleansing way easier by not having to hunt every single troll and risk leaving some alive.
Many Siberian towns may survive for years, but eventually vanish due previous reasons until theres only couple of small and connected ones left.
But I talked not about a whole Russia or USA. I talked about a small part of that countries, where Military can arrange safe zone and evacuate the people. Electricity from nuclear reactors on submarines and Ice-breakers, food and another resourses from military depots and military bases in first few years and after have a level of technology and sources of resources like a Swedish version of civilisation but with more biggest number of a people and high-lvl tech. Only Sakhalin have 500.000 citizen, public warehouses in case of war, military bases and fishing fleet. And that island also well isolated, becausee noone care about a Sakhalin. If we lost that island we still save a Kamchatka with 300,000 citizen, where we actually can bild a defence against mammal in few next mount - Kamchatka is a well isolated part of Eurasia and people here will be ready to meet the infection after several months. And Russia or USA save more people then Scandinavia, just because 20,000 kilometers of land border means what infected human or mammal (including bats) will be go too long to a isolated towns. Several months or near.
In Finland the lakes was a pretty good defence, anyway.
Of course we can't magically prevent any infected human or mammal (including bats) from crossing anywhere over 20,000 kilometers of land border, but size of Russia is a defence itself. How many time need a bat or a wolf to go all the way in 5,000 kilometers from border to a town with a people? In some cases it's be a days or weeks, if town near has the big airport. In another cases it can take a years. Why AirForse can't evacuate a people from some towns on Kuril island where Military make a quarantine zone? And why Russian military can't keep the 50 km of a isthmus on Kamchatka in the climate zone of the Far North? In an extreme case, we can detonate a few nuclear bomb on that isthmus, because Kamchatka is just a indastrial base for the fleet. If we need growe a food - we have a Sakhalin and Islands in the Pacific. If we need technology - why Russian can't fly in the isolated and low-popylated city and take out the old equipment from the Soviet Era?
It's be not a country like a Iceland but Russia will be have better tecnological lvl then Sweden and more people then in all Scandinavia. Pretty same with a USA, that people have enough military to create a safe zone.
Excluding our Military. Ministry of Emergency Situations and Usually in Russia everything starts to work only in an extreme situation. If well-prepared Scandinavian people keept defense during the 90 years why Russian people can't be well prepared, if have a real advantage in the size of a territory ans better lvl of a isolation - so, some part of Russia will be have more time for preparing and Russia itself have more resourses and and more organized military.
USA, for example, just can clear up the Hawaii from their fleet and lost only small part of soldiers. If they need a women - they can evacuate them from other islands. Really that Epidemy have only one problem - long incubation period. Quarantine allow to save the people. Why can not give for all the gas-masks? It's airborne infection and it's worked in comix.
I'm sure that Russia and the US can save a lot more people then Iceland and pretty close tecnological lvl with a Sweden at least
So, it's mean what Canadian, US and Russian military can evacuate a people from isolated towns in a safety areas, usually in Pacific region, and it's be near ten millions of survivers. I see no reason why US or Russian navy can't do that.There's only so many individuals you can carry in a ship at once, and you only need one infected individual.
In a situation like this it seems to me that it's highly likely that the military force would face a breakdown since most commanding officers would most likely be dead and communication between armed personal disrupted resulting in different squads doing different things that could be counter productive since once the highest command falls the invidual leaders are going to start making their own decissions.
With this in mind i imagine that people would also start deserting since once they realize the nature of the disease they would want to get as far away from the centralized military compounds as possible.
You seem overly reliant on military here.
Any military force requires extensive and constant funding and supplies to keep working, which is straight up impossible at the scale of Russia or the US when the entire surrounding world collapses. HALF of Russia's national budget comes from oil exports, which would within months virtually cease to exist, as would any and all vital imports to Russia.
The central government would inevitably collapse in such an apocalyptic scenario. You can't manage a country of 144 million people like that.
Hell, it's not even about the "surrounding world" collapsing. Russia and the US would have infected individuals within its borders long before these countries would seriously shut down any and all international trade and travel, and you only need that one infected individual wandering freely in crowded area for the Pandora's box to be irreversibly unleashed.
There's only so many individuals you can carry in a ship at once, and you only need one infected individual.
Even then, you'll be left with an enormous amount of refugees that have no infrastructure or economy to support them. You can't conjure up resources out of nothing.
You can't conjure up resources out of nothing.
There's only so many individuals you can carry in a ship at once, and you only need one infected individual. Even then, you'll be left with an enormous amount of refugees that have no infrastructure or economy to support them. You can't conjure up resources out of nothing.
snip
I think that people here don't understand absolutely modus operandi of the armed forces. Rash epidemy from point of view of a World Military looks like a Third World War. If you're interested, and the Soviet Union and the United States are actively developed biological weapons during the Cold War and the military are required to have an action plan in this case. Moreover, no one here could say that it really was not a biological weapon.None of their biological weapons were like the Rash sickness in the SSSS universe. The rash spreads as easily as a normal flu does(even without the part where other mammals spread it), and there's hardly any countries in the first world that do not get a wave of at least one flu strain every year.
In any case, the Rash Epidemic will be looks like a War. Dying officers and crumbling economic system, the panic everywhere. And really Military should be ready for that.No it isn't, and it never was.
Rash is a airborne disease with a big incubation period and if people know about that they can make something for defence. Quarantine, isolation, protective suits and masks. Russian military, for example, have a special military units of a anty-biological and anty-chemical defence, and usually every military base have at least one company.Again, it doesn't matter. Once the disease is in their mids(and it takes time to visibly manifest) it is already too late.
Of course, lots of military people died in first few next weeks but the soldiers and officers in a centralized military compounds will be have lots of reasons for save that centralized system, because only if they save a coordination and discipline they get a chance to survive. And really lots of officers and professional soldiers have own families who live in a military town near them.And with this you can damn near guarantee that you'll have people smuggling their sick relatives to "safe zones" in hopes of treatment.
Rather, your knowledgeable about the military isn't enough. In case of the Rash epidemy the national budget and oil exports will be no matter, really. Matter only how long the country can survive on own resources with closed borders.Once again, it doesn't matter. As soon as the rash is within the borders and spreading among the population, it is only a matter of time.
Russia have a Federal Agency for State Reserves, where he have a system of a underground warehouses with a clear water, food, medicaments, oil, ets. That agency worked from the Cold War and should save a resources for people in the case of War. For 144 millions it's be enough more than for one year. For 14 millions?Going to need sources for that one.
If we add thousands of transport ships in the ocean (where we also have a Navy), military and civilian warehouses and well-motivated professional military who works for own families in a isolated military towns... The country will have a time for rebuild a economic system in a small size. Government never forget about a own people, because people itself is kinda like a resource. Then more people Goverment have then more Goverment can do.Rebuild on what? And by whom?
I think I know what Military should do with a infected people. http://sssscomic.com/comicpages/54.jpg Why they can't do same on ship or give for all a military chemical suits?A ship where? You're either implying that St Petersburg could be a safe haven(you're really going to need to explain your rationale on that one), or you're implying that Russia somehow magically transports enormous amounts of west-Russian refugees to Yuzhno-Sakhalisnk as the entire country falls apart at the seams, and then somehow creates a sustainable nation on an island whose economy revolves around oil production.
None of their biological weapons were like the Rash sickness in the SSSS universe. The rash spreads as easily as a normal flu does(even without the part where other mammals spread it), and there's hardly any countries in the first world that do not get a wave of at least one flu strain every year.
They were not, and are especially not today prepared for an extremely virulent disease with a near 100% mortality rate which then also turns a portion of the infectees into terrifying monsters.
What you're saying is also inconsistent with what you later present as how the military would then "save Russia."
You can't manage a country of 144 million people like that, and you certainly cannot keep an already poorly funded and poorly equipped military force going without the infrastructure to support it, especially when the disease is already infecting military personnel. The military would perish just as the civilians do.
And with this you can damn near guarantee that you'll have people smuggling their sick relatives to "safe zones" in hopes of treatment.
Once again, it doesn't matter. As soon as the rash is within the borders and spreading among the population, it is only a matter of time.
And I can pretty much guarantee you that these reserves you speak of are not in Kamchatka of all places. No, if they are anywhere, they are safely stored somewhere in Western-Russia, which will be the hot zone of the rash sickness.
You keep saying "resources" like it's a magic buzzword, and nowhere here do you present a reasonable rationale for the rash to be unable to spread to them.
In any scenario, West-Russia is completely and utterly doomed.
And, in order to survive, a settlement will need the basics: food, water, clothes... This is solved by scavenging, having access to forests and having arable lands, but scavenging will only be an option for the first year or so, you'll need a long term plan to survive these 90 years, and those plans usually require some land.
These actions require some cleansing first, to reduce any danger to the population, which is made out only of a minority, the inmune, and therefore incredibly small: Every life counts
Now, cleansing is basically a code word for "kill all trolls, beasts and giants in the area". In order to do this you can go the easy way (having the cold do most of the work) or the hard way (killing each and every single one by yourself, one by one). The hard way requires more time and resources and is way more dangerous to your cleansers (to the point where any try always ends in tragedy), and you could have used these resources to better defend the settlement itself.
Crew travelling around and survivors entering buildings: The weather was cool and crisp (http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=232), and the interior of any building can have a nest, with the trolls inside being perfectly awake and full of murderous desires.
Bows and spears: Both require resources (wood and metals for the arrwheads and spearheads). Once again, getting any resources means doing some cleansing first. Spears are useless: Trolls don't care for any organs but the brain, and don't seem to bleed out; you'll need a lucky strike to the head, which is hard when that thing is attacking you. Bladed weapons (which require "rare" materials such as iron and in bigger quantities) are a much better option, since you can cut it's limbs and then destroy the head more easily. Arrows are tiny spears that can be launched far. You'll get a range, and that range will give you time to aim at the head, and you'll have to pray the shot is bot accurate and strong enough to hit the head, break the skull and tear the brain. and loading your bow requires some valuable time, too. Guns are more precise, are faster to reload and have a longer range while packing enough of a punch.
Nature retaking the world in 90 years: First you have to survive those 90 years, and even then, nature taking back a place doesn't cleanse it from trolls or makes it any safer. In fact, it provides more places for them to nest.
Why you thinking that ordinary people will be more smart than the special military unit or will be have more resourses?We've been shown a selection of Nordic would-be survivors of the Rash in the prologue, their common trait was "OH GOD RUN AWAY AND HIIIIDE" (long before a common panic took on), as far as we know, there was not a single active soldier among them. Please explain how your military is superbly qualified for that.
In my earlier calculations, I assumed an equilibrium between the alleles. So if I=Not immune and i=immune, then f(1) is assumed to be II:40%, Ii:60%, ii:10%. If immunity is genetic, then that means 90% of people are killed. If only 90% of people are killed, then there's still a lot of people on the planet.The Nordic countries minus Iceland each had 5-5.5 million people in year 0 and 10-20 thousand in year 90. Even ignoring the probable population regrowth after establishing the first stable post-Rash settlements, that's a 99.7% mortality - from the Rash and the subsequent monsters. The pre-Rash immunity rate has been estimated to .1-.15% by several fans.
We've been shown a selection of Nordic would-be survivors of the Rash in the prologue, their common trait was "OH GOD RUN AWAY AND HIIIIDE" (long before a common panic took on), as far as we know, there was not a single active soldier among them. Please explain how your military is superbly qualified for that.
I wouldn't however put too much faith in underground warehouses from the Cold War era. For a start a lot of that stuff will have been looted long ago, and a lot more will have simply been lost to time, either perished or destroyed through lack of maintenance.
I was picturing just following behind the fire and getting any trolls that survive in holes in the ground. Sort of like a spear fishing/whack-a-mole approach :)
I don't believe cleansing would be required to get some wood, assuming the trolls tend to stay where they are. And I'm not saying people wouldn't have to adapt. The ability to move quietly and surprise the trolls would be essential. Humans have hunted with spears for centuries. Our ancestors were able to take down mammoths and all manners of creatures with spears. Spears also have an advantage over bladed weapons by being longer, giving you some space between you and the troll. Also, don't forget the awesome atlatl.
Still as you mentioned I would take the official listings with a pinch of salt and assume that there is less in storage than is claimed.
Do you seriously think that the Russian military in such conditions will show incredible incompetence and don't be thinking about quarantine measures? Or what Russian quarantine measures with be more less effective than Swedish quarantine measures 90 years later?Yes. We've seen the Russian military show blatant incompetence before. The military killed more civilians than the terrorists did in the Beslan school hostage crisis, where it actually went on Hollywood movie logic where gas just "knocks people out".
I think no, you don't think so. So, it's be mean what Russia will be have some survivors in a towns like Swedish people but on 90 years earlier then Swedish people. Also, Russia will be have more survivors, just because have more isolates areas then Nordic countries. And it's also mean what Russia be have main part technologies of the Old World for some time and biggest tecnogical base in towns of survivors.Being isolated isn't enough. You still need an actual foundation to live on, and the best farmland in Russia is not in the depths of Siberia.
It's better than nothing. I think that these underground warehouses will be only insurance in case of problems, because Russians will be have all resourse of Silent World.You're suggesting that the military would somehow relocate millions of people as far as Kamchatka.
The first few years before military equipment worn out, Russian military will be have a absolute power and mobility superiority over the Rash beasts.By what reasoning?
Helicopters,Do you have any idea how much time and resources goes into maintaining flight crafts? And who would resupply these? From where? What ammunition? What gas?
manpowerNonexistent and not immune.
allow Russians forget about silence during the evacuation of equipment and resources from infected towns,Do you have any idea how huge Eastern-Russia is?
because every small groups of a beasts will be killed very fast. And tactical nuclear weapons can stop any massive attack of a Rash beasts. Military gas-masks and military equipment of chemical and biological protection also will be very useful. Backpack flamethrowers are extremely simple to produce. Navy and Air Force also can do a lot of work.You're still talking magic here, dreaming about resources there's literally no physical way they could have in such numbers, nor maintain even if they have.
Theoretically, the Russian can get two safety zones - Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Kamchatka also can be protectedAgain, geography. Literally nothing you're proposing here makes any sort of physical sense, even if the military could somehow spawn food, medicine, heating and sanitation from literal magic, there's still literally no way they could do what you're proposing.
We've seen the Russian military show blatant incompetence before. The military killed more civilians than the terrorists did in the Beslan school hostage crisis
If they actually would be as outlandishly reactionary as you assume they would be, there's no reason why nations like China wouldn't just force their way into Russia either. Hell, they're better positioned geographically, better mentally prepared culturally, and far better equipped militarily.
Again, your entire proposal is magical wish thinking and unsustainable in every sense of the word.
Russian military and incompetence is two opposite words.Care to remind me which other militaries in the world saw fit to dump entire nuclear reactor sections into the seas adjacent to their own coasts (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/27/science/russians-describe-extensive-dumping-of-nuclear-waste.html)? Or how reunification with East Germany caused our rate of illegal firearms to rise threefold? Or why the Nedelin disaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe) killed so many personnel who had no business being on the launch site next to a fueled experimental missile in the first place?
Swedish and Finnish coast are also littered by tiny isles with semi-isolated communities...
Plus Finland has tons of lakes and islands in them...
And more about Finland:Every apartment building here is has small blast/fallout shelter with supplies in them.
(Norway seems to also have shelters everyehere)And cities have massive public shelters everywhere with more supplies.
And Finland also has well equiped and trained army...
Let's face it - military idiocy is an almost universal constant.
Those mistakes for the British military largely come from the government. Unfortunately the British military does not have anything in the realm of sufficient funding to decide to just build a huge aircraft carrier like that. It was a government decision that much of the military considered a waste of time and resources.
The Nordic countries minus Iceland each had 5-5.5 million people in year 0 and 10-20 thousand in year 90. Even ignoring the probable population regrowth after establishing the first stable post-Rash settlements, that's a 99.7% mortality - from the Rash and the subsequent monsters. The pre-Rash immunity rate has been estimated to .1-.15% by several fans.
Of course, we have no information whatsoever about what pre-Rash immunity rates outside the Nordic countries might have been, given that both survival factors appreciated in the comic itself (genetics and Old Gods) could vary a lot between ethnicities ...
I'm just basing my theories on my academic background in biological anthropology. I don't know anything about immunology though, so for all I know there could be a million different ways people can be immune which isn't genetically transferred. And yeah, I hadn't even begun to go into gene pools and standard deviation. Even if we can assume the world population has the equilibrium I mentioned earlier, it would be bloody useless if that gene was only found in people of east and south east Asian decent, because lets face it, that region is drowning in trolls.
And I have to be honest, I completely forgot about the old gods protecting certain populations. But that's totally right and totally incalculable. (*science brain implodes)
All my genetics talks aside, I still hold fast to my theory of the alps being a likely place for surviving community. The alps are cold, have a relatively small population, and are full of places that are easily defensible. For instance, there's a town in I think the Swiss alps which is in a small valley and is surrounded by steep mountains on two side and two lakes on the other sides. Minna has hinted before that water is very important, so assuming water = NOPE, then this town, with only one thin road on each side of the lake along the mountain side, would be easy to defend from first infected, then trolls.
I think there is a decent cattle/dairy industry in alpine areas. Crop fields on the other hand are an entirely different matter.The traditional Almwirtschaft (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Almwirtschaft) includes both livestock (grazing on the high altitude Almen/Alpen (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B6mmerung) in summer and passing the winter in stables down in the valley, feeding off hay that the farmer collected in the summer as well) and crops. Both require availability of fields/pastures, of course, which the most inaccessible parts of the Alps might not provide.
Hmm well that does sound good, but one important thing would be; Do they have the necessary suplies to survive the first few years and are the lands close by easily accesible and something that could be turned to farms.
I think this might be the biggest problem with many settlements. The simple fact that places that are easily defendable are more often than not also in places that don't support large scale farming/fields.
Really? Sounds very strange, because Russian military and incompetence is two opposite words. Probably you confuse the Russian military and Chechens terrorists in the Beslan so I will explain this misunderstanding specially for you. Terrorists were so blatant incompetence what accidentally detonate own bomb and shockedspetsnaz start unprepared assault of school. Fortunately, the terrorists couldn't detonate a second bomb, probably because they didn't knew how to make a bombs, nonetheless terrorists started shoot at children. Spetznaz acted very quickly and evacuate the children directly in combat. Often they had to sacrifice himself to save the kids from fragmentation grenades or ricochets. Unfortunately, they could not save everyone. Of course, some incompetent people started screaming that drunken Russian broke into the school and began to kill everybody, but I always thought that sounds so absurdly and no one would believe it.
I'm sure what now you see the difference between a heroically Russian soldiers and incompetence terrorists who can detonate own bomd only accidentally. I'm amazed, as you might think what it's a spetznaz start to assault a school with a kids. I hope you never make such a mistake again. Perhaps the reason for that sadly misconceptions from you is the language barrier only. If you want I can help you learn the Russian language, maybe I will help you to improve your knowledge about Russia.
I think what I see here very sad example of poor level of knowledge not only about Russia, but also about the China. Of course, China have a third military in the world, but mainly because that military is a very-very big. Their weapons are replicas of Russian designs or they use imported Russian arms. Perhaps you are decided that it is Russia used Chinese weapons - so, it's a mistake.I never said anything of the sort, nor does it matter that the Chinese use some weaponry similar to Russia's. At the end of the day, the Chinese military is both bigger and better.
I'm so sorry, I don't answer the rest of your post because I already clarified and confirmed my idea. Maybe are you tired and missed some my posts? It looks so. I think what you should follow the discussion more closely.You dismissed me with some grandiose speech about how heroic the Russian military, and how Russia is better than China "because reasons".
Chill. This is the second post of yours in a week that someone's reported to me, and the last one was rather like this as well.
Yeah, no. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis#Criticism_of_the_Russian_government)
The military's handling of the situation was utterly incompetent.
It's pretty clear by now that your grandiose ideas of a superhuman, psychic Russian military comes from some nationalistic fervor, not any reality grounded rationale.
And don't condescend me as if I cannot do my own research.
But Russian media has been on a highly revisionist streak in recent years, so it hardly surprises me.
I never said anything of the sort, nor does it matter that the Chinese use some weaponry similar to Russia's. At the end of the day, the Chinese military is both bigger and better.
You dismissed me with some grandiose speech about how heroic the Russian military, and how Russia is better than China "because reasons".
Oceania
—Possibly Tasmania and southern New Zealand.
—Most micronesian and polynesian islands.
The traditional Almwirtschaft (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Almwirtschaft) includes both livestock (grazing on the high altitude Almen/Alpen (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B6mmerung) in summer and passing the winter in stables down in the valley, feeding off hay that the farmer collected in the summer as well) and crops. Both require availability of fields/pastures, of course, which the most inaccessible parts of the Alps might not provide.
For Hawai'i at least, I think only Ni'ihau and maybe Kaua'i would survive. (Maybe Hawai'i? 50-50 on that.) O'ahu has an extremely-high population density, so even if the borders were shut, the infrastructure would break down very quickly.
Whales and dolphins frequent the channels between the inner islands (Moloka'i, Lana'i, etc...), so they would most likely get infected the first time someone decides to cross the channel.
Hawai'i (The Big Island), I think would either have a hard time with the amount of mammals found on the islands, or water. There is very little potable water on Hawai'i. All of the streams have leptospirosis from the cattle, and the aquifer is small and located deep beneath a layer of blue rock (a type of dense basalt).
The alps have been inhabited for thousands of years. Crops such as wheat and rye can be grown there, and baking bread has historically been very important to Alpine settlements.
Exactly like JoB said, cows graze in the summer and shack up in the winter. It's no different to how any other cold country raises cattle. There also used to be lots of sheep, but they lost out in favor to cows. But we know the Alps can support sheep herds, and I think likely it wouldn't be hard to raise goats in the Alps as well.
The one thing I don't know is how much land one cow would need without worrying about overgrazing. But the Alps has such an immense connotation with cheese making, that I can't imagine it's too hard to raise cattle.
Hmm true that and i will have to add that i have in no way any expertice in the area so my ideas are going off just speculation here.
The thing with that is in Finland seemingly they don't keep any lifestock since woulnd't be a very risky bussines to practice? One cow infected and the whole herd might turn in to a pack of beasts rampaging near settlements or even worse morph to a giant if that is possible. Especially if the cows would be allowed to be free since that way guranteeing them would be quite the nightmare.
Alps inherintly do have the advantage of being isolated, but that could be a curse as well since i don't think they could replace any equipment easily. The best grace for the nordics so far in my opinion has been the fact that Iceland is around with most of its infastructure more or less intact enabling them to produce things the other countries with their small comminities can't.
Also even without the Icelanders the other countries have resources and salvage in areas near them; Troll infested yes, but still in their reach since for example in Finland any salvaged material could be transported through the rivers where seemingly a lot of the settlements alive still reside. In Alps i think the distances and the terrain make. Getting stuff from point A to point B seemingly would be a lot harder, but you guys should correct me on that.
Ehh bit of tangent that was...
The Fins though have the highest immunity rate specifically because they have the least defenses.Non sequitur, I'm afraid. First and foremost, they are dispersed and many of them have a good chance of never running into any grosslings in the first place. Right after the initial onslaught, I'ld guess that more densely populated areas would have had higher immunity rates (and considerably lower survival rates).
Chinese military is both bigger and better.
I think a lot of this depends on how quickly the virus spreads. We saw in the prologue that people with the rash were still highly mobile and capable of spreading the rash, but then in the death room in Copenhagen it looked like many people were bedridden and therefore non-mobile. I think the time period between these two stages is important for community survival because it determines how much defenses you need and for how long. Does anyone have any clues as to when immobility happens?Hilde Rasmussen (http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=275) went from infection to first visible symptoms (a timeframe that the standard two weeks of quarantine should match), then "a week, possibly two (http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=275#comment-1872187268)" to the 15-Oct photo, and turned positively bedridden somewhere between that and 23-Oct.
"deserving" doesn't really have much to do with it.Strictly speaking, you're right of course.
The island still needs a foundation to live on, which I am not able to comment on due to my lack of knowledge about its geography and economy.
Also worth noting that cats are pests, just as if not more destructive than rat infestations when there's too many of them in one area.
Strictly speaking, you're right of course.
Possibly. Ruth on the board is writing a fic about Canadian survivors which include a small enclave in Maine, though I haven't read it yet (just found out about it about ten minutes ago).
I'm not sure I this place was brought up but how about Acadia National park in Maine USA? One road in, lots of fish and lobster, several surrounding islands to inhabit and or retreat to as well. Also possibly Grand Manan Island to the north.
It's possible! They have a lot of large mammals, and seals visit the shores so there would be serious danger of infection getting in that way which makes the chances rather low. Having said that, I'm not at all sure exactly how the islands in Finland survive, given that they would have similar problems!
Other cool things to consider is also some thematic connections these lands have with the SSSS setting. Newfoundland itself was famously discovered by Norse explorers - Vinland and all that.
Question to anyone who has an answer, something that always annoyed me.
Why are the Shetland and Faeroe islands not inhabited?
I mean seriously, if Bornholm can survive then why can't those two islands which are right smack in the middle of the trade lanes?
Though closer inspection of the map seems to show the northern Shetlands as cleansed... maybe the Norwegians decided to have some fun?
Shetlands are part of Britain, one of the most international countries in the world. Almost impossible to enforce quarantine even with prompt reaction and martial law, neither of which happened in time.
word of god is that there ARE faroese survivors (though we don't know exactly where they are), and also that there are scottish survivors who made contact with the other nordic nations and moved to safer communities in iceland/scandinavia. so it's not necessarily that they couldn't survive, rather that they found it easier to live in a safer place that wasn't potentially under threat of roving sea beast attacks—the large amount of coastline in the faroes and shetland would have to have a large amount of usable land under constant watch by the coast guard to protect against that.
Though closer inspection of the map seems to show the northern Shetlands as cleansed...Yup (http://sssscomic.wikia.com/wiki/Shetland).
Is this the area immortalised in Erskine Childers' book 'The Riddle Of The Sands'? It certainly sounds a possibility - yes, a long shot, but not impossible, especially as Heligoland allows an easy link to the islands to the east of Jutland, which would be a tempting way to expand, and might even lead to contact with the SSSS area...After some digging into the internet, yes, that is the same general area. It does extend further west than Memmert, though.
I would argue the point that if Britain were going to quarantine anywhere it would be the Shetlands since it is so far away from the mainland. Chances are, the Royal Navy could have pulled a mini-Iceland there. I mean just because the south of England is going to be devoured by monsters and refugees doesn't mean that the whole country will go down with it.
If you want to talk isolation, you don't get much more isolated in the States than Appalachia, the mountains on our east. They span several States, but the people that live up there don't really belong to anything except each other.... Poor, isolated, inbred, and willfully ignorant. Not like Amish, who reject technology for religious reasons, but just out of plain old obstinance.... I expect they would weather things pretty well, since there isn't anything resembling modern medicine up there. Oh sure, high death at first, but those people are naturally tough, I would expect a high rate of immunity by year 90. Most of those folks up there are Survivalists of one sort and another as well, so I would expect communities would be very isolated, travelling only to the closest neighbor on each side for trading and getting news.
Wow. I honestly don't think I've ever seen such a large collection of ignorant stereotypes about Appalachia stated so baldly. I guess it's nice that you think our inbreeding and willful ignorance will save us from the apocalypse, but I'm afraid we'll probably turn into trolls with everyone else. I'm from a town in the heart of the Blue Ridge. Sure, there are some roads and houses out in the county that are hard to get to in bad weather, but everyone there still has the internet and uses plenty of modern medicine, thanks. We've got a hospital and even a university! Somehow I and other high school classmates are in the process of getting PhDs, so I guess we need to be a little more willful about that ignorance. The only survivalists I know are from Milwaukee, in the Midwest. Maybe they'll make it.
I know you posted this months ago, but I'm hoping you will still see it somehow and realize what a hateful comment that was. I just found this webcomic and absolutely love it, and I'd like to point out that the characters, all with different levels of education and different class backgrounds, some from very isolated places, are all fully rounded, interesting human beings and not just backward stereotypes.
Aboriginal Australians used to do a similar tactic of mass burnings to clear land. Do it enough times over 90 years and the Texan landscape is going to change, bringing in new plants, and then new game animals.
Though I don't think Texas has much in the way of natural defenses save for it's size. The Danes had an island, the Finns had lakes, the Norwegians and Swedes had their mountains. If you're relying on being too far away from population centres to survive then you're going to have to always maintain those distances with your settlements, which is gonna limit your land options.
Possums have abnormally low body temperatures, which prevents incubation of a lot of diseases, while armadillos are the only species besides man that carry the leprosy bacterium, while being immune. That was my rationalization, although I could be (and probably am) wrong.
That's actually an interesting speculation. (I never knew about possums having low body temperature, though I did know about armadillos and leprosy.) Word Of Minna has not yet been specific about Rash vulnerability and whether/which feline species *other* than domestic cats are Immune.
Until we hear otherwise, I think it's perfectly plausible that the Rash affects only Old World mammal species -- i.e. not marsupials, and possibly not even the Xenarthra.
(Plus, I'm too amused by the thought that if possums are Immune, there could be some crazy cult out on the Texas prairie that puts dumb old Blessed Possums up on a pedestal...)
Well funnily enough I guess you could say that playing possum is ultimately standing still and staying silent.Somebody stop me.
Somebody stop me.
(http://orig10.deviantart.net/04ab/f/2015/094/7/a/68_by_whyblessyourheart-d8oew1a.jpg)
Well, I just read through almost this whole topic, and every single idea I have had has already been suggested - except one.I actually think this sounds very plausible! It would be interesting too. In an enclosed space like that it would take only one breach to kill everyone, so they'd be extremely paranoid (is it paranoia if it's justified?) and the necessary 'group before the individual' mentality for enforced communal living like that would be fascinating to see played out.
The Hydropolis underwater hotel in Dubai is a good option, because it is like an underwater village, it has lots of space to house survivors, and there are fish and marine plants all around to serve as a food source. It does not have many opportunities for weapons, though. :-\ It has some boats at the hotel, so I don't see why an area on the mainland couldn't be cleansed to gather resources from, with which some weapons some would be made. The only problem is whale trolls...
:)
On the flipside, if we assume it doesn't affect xenarthra, it would likely imply it also doesn't affect afrotheria (elephants, aardvarks, dugongs, hyraxes and a few other things), since those are at least as distant from the main group of mammals as those are from xenarthra.
Interesting story about what might have transpired in Ireland. However, I remember from another forum that on of the Irish folk there claimed the Irish air force is basically a bad joke(with a bunch of transport helicopters, a few propellor fighters nobody is even still supposed to be flying and all that) and that the army is rather under-equipped in terms of transportation possibilities. It has however been a rather long time since I last read anything on that forum, so my memory might be a bit fuzzy. Then again, we don't really know what the Irish army has been up to until year 0, so this assesment of mine might be entirely incorrect.
As for further reclamation attempts, would Hadrian's wall or the Antonine wall have any future strategic value in terms of land barriers stretching across the narrow points of the Scottish region in the future? It feels kind of like the reverse of the scenario in the film Doomsday, where the entirety of Scotland was cordoned off.
As for the survival in the British Isles idea. Much as I like the thought of my home surviving, I just don't see it happening, definitely not on the scale you are suggesting. As I've said before, this country is far too international to make any attempt at quarantine effective, plus our politicians are too timid to enact martial law to maintain order. If there were survivors it would just be tiny groups that were forgotten about/passed over rather than a population the size you are suggesting. Still the thought of us reverting to a monarchy makes me smile.
Kapitoid, that's some pretty interesting speculation about the state of the British Isles you've got there (nice map too). While I'm not sure whether I share Koeshi's concerns about martial law being viable in the UK or not, I do have one question: how have the British and the Nordics not made contact yet? I'm looking at google maps now and the areas you've marked as safe/cleansed aren't too far away from one of the shipping lanes on the Page 66 map. I would have thought at least one British trawler or something might have run across a Nordic ship in 90 years or so.
Also, why on earth did that navy ship you mentioned go rogue?
Well in the comics I recall that Sweden and Finland implemented their closed borders rather late in the day, around day 9 I believe, I get the feeling that they did so because other larger EU members were beginning to do the same. France borders Spain where the infection would be strongest, hence they'd close their borders, Italy and Portugal would be likely follow suite, then once Germany does it the whole of Europe will go into lockdown. Britain may stay open for an extra day or two just for the sake of image but the government is bound to realise that at some point that maintaining trade whilst the infection is in full swing is simply damaging to themselves and to the rest of the world.
As for martial law, as an Irishman I think your underestimate your governments willingness to shoot its own civilians :P
Yes, but London is one of the most, possibly the most, internationally trafficked country in the world. With the sheer amount of people we have entering and leaving the country both legally and illegally the Rash would be rampant in no time. The Nordic countries are saved by having large areas of land with very few people.
And I think that is a topic for another time, rather than derailing this thread for everyone else.
You do have large areas with little settlement, parts of Scotland and even parts of Wales and northern England are sparsely populated and inaccessible enough that strongholds could be created that could survive for a time, not necessarily until Year 90 but still for a while.
Though IIRC weren't there canonically some Scottish survivors who migrated to Norway in the decades after the Rash?
Interestingly, Japanese language is an isolate the used to have sister languages on nearby island, and people were uncertain how the family of languages connected to others in the world, since they were different from their closest neighbors. Linguists looking at a lot of factors believe that it's closest relative now is Finnish. So maybe there could be connections culturally and metaphysically. (I don't think anyone from Japan would be able to contact folks in Finland, but who knows?)
I thought it was derived from Chinese, or is that just the writing system?
If Japanese has connections with Finno-Urgic languages (there's a lot of them in Siberia that are likely closer to Japanese than Finnish) then that means that the native Japanese islanders have a origin from the far north rather than crossing from China or Korea as I had assumed. Very interesting if it's true.
linguists have proposed a lot of hypothetical connections between japanese and other languages, probably the largest of which has been "macro-altaic" (turkic, tungusic, mongolic, korean, and japanese), but none have been proven to anything like the satisfaction of the linguistics community at large.
If no one's said this yet, Switzerland would probably implement the same self-isolation policy as Iceland did, so I'm thinking they'd get through virtually unscathed.
Give it another 100 years and you may have people who have permanently adapted to the darkness.
However I do think the French, German, Italian, Austrian, and Swiss/Liechtenstein governments could create small safe zones in the mountains with survivors living in fortified villages built on top of deeply fortified bunkers. Give it another 100 years and you may have people who have permanently adapted to the darkness.*Begin to think of how old sites un the mountains with castle/fortified places can be re-used*
However I do think the French, German, Italian, Austrian, and Swiss/Liechtenstein governments could create small safe zones in the mountains with survivors living in fortified villages built on top of deeply fortified bunkers. Give it another 100 years and you may have people who have permanently adapted to the darkness.
As cool as that would be evolution really doesn't work that quickly. Also living in total darkness is going to result in some serious deficiencies, such as Vitamin D, UV exposure is really needed unless you have access to a lot of sea fish. That said, maybe a set-up like that seen in The 100 would work as long as they closed the doors before any infection reached them. (If not we are looping back to the nightmare scenario of dealing with trolls and the infection in an enclosed and inescapable environment, not a happy place to be.)
Well obviously they wouldn't turn into mole people, that's just nuts, but with a sufficiently small population mutations can spread very rapidly. Generations of people living and dying underground are eventually going to have eyes becoming not completely necessary, or more likely they're adjusted to working with minimal light. Which would make sense if electricity and fuel for fire is being rationed.90 years is not nearly enough for human body to evolve and adapt to such conditions. Some minor changes might be present, but nothing too drastic.
A Cold War era bunker which has been completely overrun by infectee's and them all mutating together to form a giant that fills up the whole thing like some sort of creepy mutated dragon...
Look at how the disease spread in Scandinavia. Literally, one day Iceland seals its borders, enforcing an armed quarantine, and the next day the disease is spreading virulently through the rest of the population. Within like 48 hours the rash has achieved almost total saturation through all the rest of northern Europe. That's fast. Basically all the characters we meet are already isolated in some way or another by the time we meet them. Everyone else already has the disease, they just don't know it.
If they can sail the damn thing, as I assume the crew of a submarine could, they could always diversify the gene pool through some spoils of war; or to be more blunt kidnapping women from other survivor communities.
I do not remember who Frank Horrigan is.
By the way does anyone know if trolls can survive high levels of radiation?
Finland was most likely boned from the very beginning.
One think that is a good question is the before stated border between what used to be Russia and Finland. If we assume that one day the infected areas will be cleared and the entirity of Scandinavia and finland purged, the border is going to be quite massive task to guard and maintain.
Luckily most areas up north are very sparcely populated, but down south near places loke viborg and St.Pietersburgh there are bound to be a constant flow of trolls towards the border and near by settlement.
So... sealed early, total isolation, total self-sufficiency, absolutely no contact whatsoever for days or weeks while the critical period passes, not even personnel changes... aside from Iceland, who does that sound like?
That's why the nuclear submarines seem the most likely to me. Carrier fleets could, too, but would they really have no contact at all for that long, not even people flying on and off? If they would, then yeah, it makes total sense that they would start doing island defense. Maybe some of the Hawaiian islands, near the big US naval base there?
By big US naval base, I'm assuming you're talking about Pearl Harbor, because there are tons of military facilities in the islands. Yes, Hawai'i is extremely isolated, and it would be safe for a time if sealed off early enough, but the islands are almost entirely dependent on the mainland for food, fuel, as well as other supplies. This is especially the case for O'ahu, the island where Pearl Harbor is located. There are around a million people on O'ahu, and although it may be able to sustain itself initially, the infrastructure tends to collapse very quickly, very easily.
The channels between the inner islands (Mau'i, Moloka'i, and Lana'i) are a breeding ground for humpback whales during the winter, which could be bad if the pods who come every year get infected with the Rash. Hawai'i (the Big Island) has to deal with a scarcity of clean water.
On the other hand, if we manage to survive the collapse of the state government, avoid infection from sea mammals, and find a way to feed and water ourselves, maybe the Hawaiian Nation can finally get a foothold, and by Year 90 we may have reverted to the old ways. (Pre-western contact Hawai'i).
The best part about the rash illness only affecting mammals is that we don't have to deal with any mo'o nui!
This interests me because I lived in Hawaii from ages 6 to 10 1/2, and remember it fondly. (My father was a Naval officer stationed at CINCPACFLT, near Pearl Harbor.)
I doubt O'ahu could have sealed itself off in time, and anyway it wouldn't be self-sufficient in food. However, if we assume a population of 1 million, and a 5% Immunity rate, about 50,000 would have survived the first onslaught of the Rash, so maybe...?
I bet Ni'ihau could have sealed itself off successfully, at least if the residents have weapons to stave off any would-be refugees/raiders/etc.
Also:
"nui" = "great, large" is one of the few Hawaiian words I know. What is a "mo'o nui"?
Tigers and jaguars would probably destroy what few humans in their environment survivedActually, I doubt it. Man-eating tigers and lions tend to rather be ill-disposed individuals that are far between - to the point of being named and famed (http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/03/07/man-knowledge-a-history-of-man-eaters/) - instead of typical for their species, and that's with lots of humans encroaching on their habitat to boot. There'll likely be the occasional human winding up as kitty chow, but.
Actually, I doubt it. Man-eating tigers and lions tend to rather be ill-disposed individuals that are far between - to the point of being named and famed (http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/03/07/man-knowledge-a-history-of-man-eaters/) - instead of typical for their species, and that's with lots of humans encroaching on their habitat to boot. There'll likely be the occasional human winding up as kitty chow, but.
Actually, I doubt it. Man-eating tigers and lions tend to rather be ill-disposed individuals that are far between - to the point of being named and famed (http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/03/07/man-knowledge-a-history-of-man-eaters/) - instead of typical for their species, and that's with lots of humans encroaching on their habitat to boot. There'll likely be the occasional human winding up as kitty chow, but.
Then comes the problem of refueling. Twenty years of safety, and then they would need to find new uranium cores.Having a vessel lug around all the facilities needed to safely exchange the actual fuel in the reactor would be suboptimal - they have the entire reactor exchanged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_naval_reactors).
What of the possibility of refurbishing these vessels with molten salt reactors based off Thorium? The overhaul would probably be even more immense, but I guess some of the newer vessels might be built with such reactors in mind.
Having a vessel lug around all the facilities needed to safely exchange the actual fuel in the reactor would be suboptimal - they have the entire reactor exchanged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_naval_reactors).Okay, that makes a lot of sense, thank you. I agree, it really wouldn't make sense to stockpile them. Making new ones is out of the question, so that'd limit carriers to being just a way to ride out the initial storm. Even that would still be very valuable though, since it would give the inhabitants years and years to prepare and to look for a good place to settle. And as a bonus, they'd have a near limitless supply of scrap metal when they finally do find a new home~
I didn't find any information on how much stockpiling they do, but considering the ratio between 27 different reactor designs and (only) 500 reactors ever going operational, having them made ahead of time doesn't seem to make much sense.
At least the ones working with enriched uranium should have a limited shelf life as well (like actual warheads do), though that'ld possibly still be measured in decades ...
I'd say that if there was a surviving carrier near the end of its lifespan the best thing to do would be to beach it at the right location. You then have a very sturdy pre-built fortress to live in that will be extremely difficult for enemies (human and non-human) to get inside.As awesome as that would be, I'm not sure how great conditions inside would be without any kind of power. It seems to me like there would have to be a lot of ventilation going on. You would also regularly have to leave for food and water, so it might be preferable to aim for a more normal settlement eventually anyway. It might be better to gather metal from the inside, make fences/houses, then use what's left as a kind of emergency shelter.
What would the chances be for uncontacted tribes that are so remote from everything only beasts might venture into the rainforests and other zones where such tribes live?
Good question, Snotra! What if the rash illness never got to them in the first place? I mean, they never had contact with other human communities.
You know, my first thought was that the Amazon would quickly be overrun by trolls and beasts, but now I'm wondering... there's a fair amount of non-mammalian life in there. Including some terrifying non-mammalian predators like anacondas, caimans, and wandering spiders. And of course jaguars and cougars, which are big cats and therefore immune.
That is a good point, there would be fewer varieties of beasts than I imagined at first. You'd have to deal with all the normal dangers on top of everything else. And infected monkeys, which would be the most terrifying thing. Relatively small, nimble, and able to swoop down on you from above. And if you spend all your time looking upwards, you'll trip and fall into a spider nest or something. I think I'd rather take my chances in a city.
...ohgod, infected howler monkeys. I have just imagined a new level of fear. I blame you, BreezeLouise! >:(
...
:P
...ohgod, infected howler monkeys. I have just imagined a new level of fear. I blame you, BreezeLouise! >:(
...
:P
Ughh... I already hate monkeys on their natural form. Now you made me imagine them as beasts.. *shudders*
Also, can somebody draw that, please? Now I'm curious. :P
That's why I haven't even mentioned Amazon. As I said, most of South America would be swarmed with beasts, and a thousand times scarier than any colder places out there. So if we think about the possibilities of survival communities, we must narrow down to the few places that have more inclement weather.
What would the chances be for uncontacted tribes that are so remote from everything only beasts might venture into the rainforests and other zones where such tribes live?
My main concern with Japan was China is just over the strait, and it's densely populated cities and large land area would make it one of the least countries to survive, maybe tied with the U.S. It would not be that difficult for refugees to cross the strait and some of them may carry the rash.
Russia suffers the same problem, but it is so large that I am sure there are some survivors making settlements in the tundras, thought the cities are most likely doomed.
Eh. I think some section of China might endure. The mega-metropolitan areas of the south are megascrewed, but the mountains and more harsh climates of the north and west provides some interesting opportunities.
What I think is the most interesting is the bomb shelters of America. There are people who actually keep and maintain shelters just in case everything goes up in flames, they probably have enough food to last through a nuclear winter and weapons to boot. Granted some of them would have probably been destroyed either through internal strife or infected people or animals sneaking in. But it is a possibility there are small communities in the U.S. that are still making by.
I still think the northern most island of Japan, Hokkaido, could survive. It has a much lower population and gets cold in the winter. Especially since Japan was one of the first countries to close boarders along with Iceland, and magic has returned. Likely there would be kamikaze (in the literal meaning of divine wind) protecting them from infected from other lands try to get there.I've said it before, but I'll say it again:
I've said it before, but I'll say it again:
Just imagine the scenario in which a storm sets in when the world infection is peaking, vanquishing or denying any would-be refugee fleets that may carry the rash. Basically a third Kamikaze. Then magic returns.
The Shinto faith would experience an explosive rebirth.
Japan would probably succumb to the rash eventually in any case. It's geographically a huge country, and most of it quite warm as well. You just need that one beached beast whale.
And with the almost inevitable collapse of its current central government due to famine, there wouldn't be anyone capable of mounting any sort of swift response.
Even with surviving civilization in Northern-Japan, those would be some extremely brutal first years, with or without the rash.
Japan would still definitely succumb to the rash. However, so did Sweden, Finland and Denmark, and yet they are still struggling for survival. Therefore, there is a chance of pockets of survivors.
Shintoism in particular is all about purification and pleasing to gods, if magic comes back to the world it would not surprise me that they would have magic wards in place to keep trolls and Giants at bay.
However, if Hokkaido is the main place that the survivors are, then it is also very possible that Ainu (indigenous people of Hokkaido) culture is mainly practiced by the survivors and not the culture of the mainland. While Ainu religion is similar to Shinto practices is still slightly different.
people talking about japan? sounds like it's time to plug my drawing of post-rash japan (https://www.flickr.com/photos/124103985@N06/15160406199/) again! :D
I would love to work out how Australia would go. Eastern seaboard is toast. But the interior may be ok. Yes hot but sparsely populated. How would marsupials go? They aren't placentals, more primative. I think we may have survivor populations.
Aussies, any thoughts?
Also, drop bears become a real thing, because of infected koalas.
people talking about japan? sounds like it's time to plug my drawing of post-rash japan (https://www.flickr.com/photos/124103985@N06/15160406199/) again! :D
I'm not from Oz, but even so, I lay good odds on infected creatures (trolls and beasts) having a hard time getting a foothold there. So many of Australia's dangerous animals aren't mammals - crocodiles, the inland taipan and other absurdly venomous snakes, funnel-web spiders... of course, a lot of how Australia goes would depend on how infected creatures react to venom.
Also, drop bears become a real thing, because of infected koalas.
I feel like if anyone can handle the apocalypse, it's the Aussies. I mean, snakes, crocodiles, giant spiders, almost everything that moves on that continent wants to kill them already and they seem to be doing fine.
Realism wise: Oz can survive, yup.
Drama/awesome/funny wise: Oz can become a mad max style wasteland becuase any single apocalyptic or semi apocalyptic or just a slight disrepcency of their lives turns that place into a gang riddled wilderness.
Eh. I think some section of China might endure. The mega-metropolitan areas of the south are megascrewed, but the mountains and more harsh climates of the north and west provides some interesting opportunities.
Dramatic irony tends to be savage to those kinds of people and that kind of scenario.
As for the people talking about Australia. I think internet culture has got you a bit too worked up about how lethal the place is. Keep in mind that people were living there quite comfortably for thousands of years before modern medicine and housing.
We really need to make a huge collaborative project of what happened in other parts of the world at some point.
Because I'd read that.
Ah, but we're talking about whether or not trolls could survive there - or at least I was (because that's the major change that would determine if a post-Illness community could survive). So the question then becomes one of troll psychology: can trolls recognize and adapt to danger? And also troll physiology: are trolls still alive enough to be affected by venom?Trolldom versus the komodo dragons is likely going to end very one-sided. Although it's a bit out of the route from Australia and relatively close to the equator, it is an island and as soon as the komodo dragon gets to have at least one bite in, whatever gets bitten is usually done for, right?
Trolldom versus the komodo dragons is likely going to end very one-sided. Although it's a bit out of the route from Australia and relatively close to the equator, it is an island and as soon as the komodo dragon gets to have at least one bite in, whatever gets bitten is usually done for, right?
Done for without the proper healthcare, and i doubt trolls use antibiotics.Actually the "germ-laden saliva causes infection" theory has been debunked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon#Saliva) and an actual venom delivery mechanism was found, the venom suppressing coagulation and upping the amount of blood lost.
We really need to make a huge collaborative project of what happened in other parts of the world at some point.
Because I'd read that.
From what we've seen in the comic so far, I think the only permanent change the Illness would cause to Australia would be a significant decrease in the number of mammals, because I don't think the trolls as they've been depicted thus far are adequately equipped to deal with the non-mammalian dangers of Australia. This opinion may change, as we gain more insight into how trolls, beasts, and giants function.
Plus, there is no cold to deter Trolls and limit their actions.
As much as I would like to say my descendants would be punching trolls in the face, I don't think Aus has a good shot at anything in the long run.
That, I think, is the big question that needs answering before we can really delve very far into the rest of the world. We know trolls (and beasts, to a lesser extent) are negatively impacted by extreme cold. We don't know how they react to extreme heat, like what you have in the Australian Outback, the southwestern United States, the Arabian desert, etc. We also don't know how much (or if) humidity might affect them.
In our more rural areas population is so sparse there is very little chance of a group of survivors managing to actually build a community. Lack of genetic diversity would destroy them quickly.
Also:
"nui" = "great, large" is one of the few Hawaiian words I know. What is a "mo'o nui"?
I really don't know whether or not the UK could impose martial law quickly and decisively or not. My guess is they'd try and lock down the ports and airports and the channel tunnel pretty quickly but nationwide martial law might indeed be slow to be implemented. What I'm more concerned with is that such an act would be utterly meaningless when the rash can be transmitted via any mammal (or so it seems). Martial law can keep people from moving around the country, but all it would take is one infected rat or dog or something like that to slip out and that's that.
In all seriousness, I do agree with this. Lots of good points raised that I didn't think of. On top of all that, too, it would be nearly impossible to retake land without very cold winters, assuming that extreme heat isn't enough to actually kill trolls. They would have to manually hunt down every single beast, troll and giant.
Since the only information we have so far points to trolls thriving in heat, I think the base assumption should be that extreme heat wouldn't be as big a concern to trolls as cold. It's true that, no matter what you are, enough heat will kill you. However, given that we don't actually know their limit and that we do know that they prefer hotter environments, I really think we have to assume that they have a very high tolerance for heat.
As for humidity, I don't think we really have anything to go on one way or the other. The starting assumption kinda has to be that it wouldn't really affect them, at least until some more information comes up.
Which makes sense. Because the disease is, as we've noted, basically a total wipeout. We would know very easily if Iceland had suffered a substantial infection -- because the Y90 population would be in the 100s, top.
If you go back and read the prelude, the difference was two days. Two days, at most, between when the government in Reykjavík made the decision to impose absolute quarantine on the island (combined, presumably, with quarantine on all visitors who had arrived recently), and when the other governments of the world began following suit.
<SNIP>
By day 3 Denmark closes its borders, but it doesn't help. Denmark is already dead. The people on the ferry boat were by some freak coincidence a whisker ahead of the rash.
This is a lethal freaking disease. Virulent, incredibly infectious, and incredibly lethal.
I'm not sure about that, the southern US states seem to cope with it quite well (I kid :P). But in all seriousness, I think people from different settlements would group together instinctively and that would probably provide enough diversity for a century or so. As I have said before, modern day Iceland is notoriously inbred and yet they are (kinda) thriving in Year 90.
BTW, loving your avatar :)
It is not the heat but the ultraviolet that would kill the trolls.
It is not the heat but the ultraviolet that would kill the trolls.
I don't think it's either. Apparently moonlight can hinder trolls as well as sunlight. Now the moon only reflects the light the sun gives off, and mostly in the visual spectrum. Little or no UV gets reflected, and the little that did would be defused by the atmosphere. It also doesn't give off heat. So, I think it's the actual light from the sun or moon. This may be a magical thing, since both are seen as deities in most cultures. Does man-made light stop trolls is the question.
If you're an aircraft carrier and you had personnel transfer in the 48 hours between day 0 and day 3? All dead. Floating tomb.
Remote, sparsely inhabited island with a bed and breakfast for tourists? All dead. Or trolls.
So from the point of view of imagining intact societies, we're faced with an interesting situation. In some ways it simplifies things. It doesn't really matter so much who has what equipment or training, or which kinds of geographies help or hinder human survival. It all really boils down to one thing: were you cut off from the rest of the world by day 0 or weren't you?
Maybe this wouldn't work for all 10 of the aircraft carriers, but I find it pretty easy to believe that the majority would be able to make it.
Well, that's why I think it depends on whether they had new people coming aboard. I don't actually know -- how often do personnel rotate on blue water surface ships? And how "trigger-happy" are the quarantine policies in case of an epidemic? That makes all the difference.
It's also why I think the best bet is the nuclear submarines. By the same reasoning, they are conversely almost guaranteed to be un-affected -- and while their power plants aren't as apocalypse-proof as geothermal energy, they are enough to last through the worst decades of the rash crisis.
Those nuclear warheads might even be retroconverted into fast reactor fuel.. I could see the remnants of the US Navy spending decades trying to get that working. Finally put those weapons to good use!
If they have enough knowledge about the reactors (which seems pretty unlikely to me, honestly), they could try to build a new one.
I can't see that happening. There's a WHOLE lot of infrastructure that goes into building and maintaining these things. There certainly aren't going to be any in Y90. They'd undoubtedly hold out for a while, but then they'd need to just come in to port somewhere.
Right, agreed. That's pretty much what I was trying to say in the sentence immediately after that one. They would, however, ride out the worst of the storm in safety. They also might not necessarily need to find a proper port, in theory they could find a nice, defensible location and beach the thing. They'd have a ready-made fortress and a massive supply of free scrap metal, electrical components, stuff like that.
On the other hand, if it's some kind of magical property of the sun and moon, then we don't know that they have a conditioned (or instinctual) avoidance of light in general. Man-made light may work, but it also might not. What's interesting to me, though, is that trolls are able to survive in moonlight. On the train ride, the threat level was lowered, but only to a 7/10. That implies that the moon would either be a lot weaker than the sun, or that it's not diametrically opposed to trolls.
As for the extreme heat, I'm pretty sure deserts are some of the most sterile places in the world. (Don't quote me. One of Paul Salopek's dispatches from about a year ago was my reference) The Arab desert has all those wells made by the Nabataeans, right? Could they be used as a viable resource for 90 years?
Eastern Anatolia has been mentionned has a possible zone of survival yeah, due to the unusually cold climate spot in that area, when the rest of the countries on that lattitude are mediterranean. So bits of Turkey, but also of Iran and of the Caucasian republics, could survive in that region, yeah; there's a major obstacle though: most of the region has high population density, and even the lesser populated area are still rather dense compared to the areas of Scandinavia that survived.Another reason would be a far closer proximity to ground zero, being the Mediterranean coast.
I can't see that happening. There's a WHOLE lot of infrastructure that goes into building and maintaining these things. There certainly aren't going to be any in Y90. They'd undoubtedly hold out for a while, but then they'd need to just come in to port somewhere.
It also depends where disease came from. I always assumed the rash came from West Africa and brought to Europe through Spain.
I thought that the refugees in Spain weren't the patients zero, but they were running from it.
Another reason would be a far closer proximity to ground zero, being the Mediterranean coast.
So it's my initial thoughts. So what do you think?
http://i.imgur.com/4xeek.jpg
Plus, another question. Does anyone who is infected become a troll? Because, if only a certain percentage of the infected become monsters and then add the biomass of the others to itself, it might be manageable (which might bring hope to a lot of other regions).
As for "manageable" the rash seemed to be first lethal a lethal strain, and at the moment it is speculated that Trollification (took the liberty to use a totally made up word) mutates sometime between tear 0 and 90.
I'd speculate that the Rash is fatal in more cases than not and trollification happens when someone is almost immune, but not quite. Otherwise, there'd be a LOT more trolls.
So we learned an interesting factoid in the last update.
Trolls don't like crap building, probably because they provide poor protection from the elements.
So I guess large swaths of North America is going to be difficult for the trolls to live in.
Confirmed today, crap buildings are bad for trolls because they don't provide protection from the elements. However, it's doubtful that any part of North America below a certain latitude will get cold enough for that to become a huge issue. I'm feeling too lazy right now to figure out exactly what latitude that would be, but I'd say that anything south of the Mason Dixon line won't have winters cold enough. Mexico and Central America are gone. The northern US and Canada are iffy.
To be honest even if many of the buildings are of questionable quality, there will still be many places sturdy enough to provide protection. There are of course the modern buildings that are simply better quality but there are also churches, electrical/water stations, older buildings, prisons, hospitals, etc. Not to mention that the sewers are always a good bet for avoiding the cold in winter and I doubt Trolls are going to be squeamish about it.
Even if some modern buildings are technically better made than those of the past, many of them lack the qualities that some building of times before central and electrical heating. A lot of modern buildings are complete bogus when it comes to heat retention or cooling since they compensate with more modern technological means.
Harvard's campus, as an example, would probably still be almost entirely intact, and be a nice refuge for trolls.
North Sentinel Island might survive.
1. No living human ever set foot in it since a long time (unless you count being chased out of there in 2004 to be a visit [After the tsunami Indian officials went there to see if these guys are still alive. they were.])
2. No living human ever CONSIDERS to go near it, as the locals kill on sight anyone who comes near (and try to shoot down HELICOPTERS that come to extract the corpses!)
I am not sure if I missed this some where, but do Troll migrate? Do beasts? If they do not, and if they only stick to the areas surrounding cities, then there will be much larger pockets of human colonies.
Oi, I'd totally neglected to think about migration, as well. Good thing it's only mammals who can catch the disease, otherwise birds would've brought it to every place in the world!
Birds can be carriers without catching it. So can bugs (how many mosquitoes die of malaria and dengue fever?).
Well, that's why I think it depends on whether they had new people coming aboard. I don't actually know -- how often do personnel rotate on blue water surface ships? And how "trigger-happy" are the quarantine policies in case of an epidemic? That makes all the difference.
It's also why I think the best bet is the nuclear submarines. By the same reasoning, they are conversely almost guaranteed to be un-affected -- and while their power plants aren't as apocalypse-proof as geothermal energy, they are enough to last through the worst decades of the rash crisis.
Those nuclear warheads might even be retroconverted into fast reactor fuel.. I could see the remnants of the US Navy spending decades trying to get that working. Finally put those weapons to good use!
Anyone that has played Pandemic knows that Madagascar is practically immune to destructive diseases ;)
Birds can be carriers without catching it. So can bugs (how many mosquitoes die of malaria and dengue fever?).
I may be mistaken, but it seems from what Minna's revealed in the comics thus far that the disease can't live anywhere beyond a host that is actually susceptible to the disease.It remains viable (read: infectious) outside of suitable host bodies for a couple hours - which is why the team members need to be decontaminated before they may come into contact with Tuuri.
The Brits might have one or 2 carrier groups that miss initial infection if they are in Mid Atlantic when the break out occurs. If Britain was overwhelmed before they could do anything for them they may have been ordered to Falklands to protect the colony there and insure the British culture survive in some form.
Nuclear strikes would be a poor response anyway. Overwhelmingly destructive, hard to control and irradiates the area. Fire bombing would be a lot more effective and efficient.
Ripley didn't see to think so ;)Ripleys getaway car was a deep space craft. :P
Nuclear strikes would be a poor response anyway. Overwhelmingly destructive, hard to control and irradiates the area. Fire bombing would be a lot more effective and efficient.
Yeah, nuking the f***er from orbit is not exactly an option in this situation.
Now there is a nice thought, the Rash spreading on a spacecraft... Whole corridors blocked off by fleshy mounds, small scuttling trolls bursting out of air vents...
The U.S. tour of duty on the carriers is 3 and 6 months. Tours can be extended. The ships that had just left the U.S. coast and not yet made landfall in the Mediterranean or other European ports would be safe along with the carrier group ships (destroyers) that are sailing with them. The ones that they would be relieving (because of shore leave) though could be infected. Still I think that you could initially have 3 to 4 carrier groups unaffected. Two in the Pacific and two in the Atlantic.
The Brits might have one or 2 carrier groups that miss initial infection if they are in Mid Atlantic when the break out occurs. If Britain was overwhelmed before they could do anything for them they may have been ordered to Falklands to protect the colony there and insure the British culture survive in some form.
Most personnel is rotated while in port. Only occasionally is someone special flown out to the carrier group once it is in progress.
I want to point out that this would actually be an extraordinarily bad idea! It would poison the soil and groundwater for quite a bit longer than a few years. Hopefully the people in charge of those weapons would remember everything they learned in school and not be so quick to set them off. But as someone else pointed out, they might panic, or think they were being "pragmatic" or something.
And the current population of Iceland is around 330 thousand, but Year 90 Iceland has only 190.6 thousand. Even the safest spot in the known world saw a dramatic decrease in population; it was cut almost in half (~57.76%). High estimates put pre-Cook Hawaii at around 1 million people. If Hawaii had a similar drastic population decline to what Iceland experienced, that puts the population comfortably back into pre-Cook levels. I wouldn't be surprised if Hawaii experienced an even greater decline than Iceland's, truth be told. But a dramatic decline is very different from complete annihilation.
That was part of my point with nukes. Even if they did wipe out all of the infected, you don't want to choose to settle in an area that has been irradiated.
And the current population of Iceland is around 330 thousand, but Year 90 Iceland has only 190.6 thousand. Even the safest spot in the known world saw a dramatic decrease in population; it was cut almost in half (~57.76%). High estimates put pre-Cook Hawaii at around 1 million people. If Hawaii had a similar drastic population decline to what Iceland experienced, that puts the population comfortably back into pre-Cook levels. I wouldn't be surprised if Hawaii experienced an even greater decline than Iceland's, truth be told. But a dramatic decline is very different from complete annihilation.
Yes. Although lack of cold might be a problem, but I don't see it as insuperable. It would be a rough few years.
Actually, what's the situation in Nuuk?
Japan is actually a fairly likely candidate. They were the second nation to close their borders, and they have some crazy healthcare.
They're also extremely far from Spain, where the first victims of the illness were, making the chance of infection much lower.
They can survive easily on fish and rice.
Their biggest problem is the fact that right now they aren't having enough babies, so as old people die, the population will swiftly decrease for the next decade or so. However, in a country where the population density is already extremely high, that could be a benefit.
Another problem is that the population density would make any possible tourists spread the disease extremely fast. Rural villages and other islands would be almost completely safe, though.
But there is a lot of underlying folk belief in traditional Hawaiian religion, even on cosmopolitan Oahu and much more on the other islands. So I can picture troll hunters in salvaged armor from the many U.S. military bases, zapping trolls in the sugar plantations north of Honolulu with mana and retreating to a defensible camp on Ford Island.)
On another note, there is evidence of survivors in the Faroes. They were shown on the world map, but as part of the Silent World. However, on page 196, there is a section specifically showing the portions of the language trees containing Nordic languages. It also shows many speakers there are in the year 90 relative to the number in the year 0. On the Faroese section, there is a light blue dot. This could be an accident, or it could mean the Faroes are inhabited, or it could mean there are some people in the Known World preserving the language. It's probably an accident, but hey, maybe not.In the comments on that very page, Minna labeled Faroese and Estonian as "the endangered, almost extinct fringe languages of the SSSS world".
Well even if the immune would have stayed behind wouldn't their community be very heavily inbred by now? After all i don't think there is too much traffic back and foward from there.Maybe not enough yet to make them go extinct. Ninety years aren't that many generations for humans.
The quarantine facility is probably on an oil rig or something.
...
And speaking of island nations and closed borders, have we discussed Madagascar yet? They're one of the first four to close their borders in the comic, but they're also not far from the mainland at all, and have tons of native mammalian species. Also, tropical climate. Probably totally overrun, yes?
...
Madagascar:
Since I don't have any data for Madagascar at the moment I can only offer some guesses. The main one is that while for Japan there are distinct scenarios, Madagascar has a spectrum of possible outcomes with lots of fine gradations between each major point. Therefore I will only give a brief summary for now.
The possibilities for Madagascar reach from no one surviving to a considerable number of small groups of survivors, which roam the countryside, and continue to the existence of a number of seperate agricultural areas, which are seperated by hostile wastelands, and end with the existence of a small number of industrial centers(at the level of the early industrial revolution).
...
High chance of survival and relevence, also size and strength: The Principality of Sealand.That would be awesome, but there's no way to grow food.
Dont look at me like that.
That would be awesome, but there's no way to grow food.
No problem Snommelp. Beside Japan and Madagascar detailed cases were made for New Zealand(https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg2437#msg2437), the North Americian Pacific Coast(https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg4507#msg4507) and New Foundland (https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg445#msg445 and following posts).
One big problem remained and is still unsolved: Why is there no radio communication from the Silent World? Building the equipment for short wave communication isn't that hard and morse code is a very robust form of transmission. So why didn't they receive signals yet from other communities? I consider it as an established fact that it is quite likely that there are several communities of at least a size comparable to the Known World. So I can not ont only assume that it's possible that there are radio transmitters but that it is guaranteed. I had hoped somebody would have come up with a solution to this, because the only solution I found is a strong imperativ to stay isolated and the only case where such would exist is for Japan if they managed to keep their population intact(an unlikely scenario compared to the others for Japan). Ah well back to the thinking room.
Radio communications are easy to disrupt, and we've seen that even transmissions from Copenhagen to Malmö (the base) are an iffy proposition at best due to the amount of "black noise"-laden interference. It's all in the comic!
Voice is easier to disrupt than morse. I'm surprised they're not using morse
Morse is a specialised skill set, which would cut down on the number of potential radio operators. Second, does the increased legibility compensate for the risk of transcription errors? Third, did any copies of Morse code actually survive to the time Post-Rash when radio communications came back?
No, I'm not asking rhetorical questions. I actually wonder. Though I still think sending a radio message around the world when the rig in the Cat-tank can barely get a transmission 30 km to Malmö is asking a bit much.
Specialized, but pretty easy to learn. I'd expect that there were military people and ham radio operators who'd know enough, especially given that emergency operations are a normal part of their remit.
That or beasts and trolls put out a lot if interference
Voice is easier to disrupt than morse. I'm surprised they're not using morse
Morse is a specialised skill set, which would cut down on the number of potential radio operators.That frankly doesn't strike me as a problem. It's not that much more specialized than knowing how to get your radio equipment powered up and tuned to the proper frequency, and we're not speaking about putting those into the hands of everyone, like cell phones.
Second, does the increased legibility compensate for the risk of transcription errors?The comparison here is being able to receive Morse vs. not being able to pick up voice at all. True, receiving nothing at all prevents transcription errors ... :P
Third, did any copies of Morse code actually survive to the time Post-Rash when radio communications came back?Morse code is in a similar position as ASCII: It needs special additions to seamlessly support various languages' special characters, but the core is the Latin alphabet and thus quite international.
Most likely because they haven't had a need for it. Most of their communication has been short range and nobodies probably thought through that the code they found that consisted of dashes and dots could be used anyway more that just having a secret comversation with your friend.Eeeehhhh, I disagree. I don't think that you can have a group of survivors containing people who know how to do radio without them also being aware that Morse existed to this very day because of its ability to pierce through noise in a way voice (modulations) can't.
As for it being clearer than speech, the "black sound" seems to have a more fantasy quality about it than scientific, and I believe it would probably stop morse as well.That is, of course, a possibility. As I said, Morse is better than voice to pierce through noise, but that doesn't mean that you can't put up intentional interference in such a way that it "attacks" Morse transmissions specifically. And we already know that the black speech does contain voice artefacts.
Therefor it is save to say that it should be possible for every community with sufficient ressource to build a station that could punch through all interferences and let the rest of the world know that they life. [...]
With all this in mind the question remains: Why is the rest of the world silent?
With all this in mind the question remains: Why is the rest of the world silent?
Therefor it is save to say that it should be possible for every community with sufficient ressource to build a station that could punch through all interferences and let the rest of the world know that they life.
No problem Snommelp. Beside Japan and Madagascar detailed cases were made for New Zealand(https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg2437#msg2437), the North Americian Pacific Coast(https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg4507#msg4507) and New Foundland (https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg445#msg445 and following posts).
Morse code was written down by lots of groups, from the military to ham radio enthusiasts to Boy Scouts, so I imagine pre-Rash documentation wouldn't be hard to find. And once a single copy is found, it's a small body of knowledge to transmit -- i.e. it's not like relearning how to build a computer chip foundry.
I don't think that you can have a group of survivors containing people who know how to do radio without them also being aware that Morse existed to this very day because of its ability to pierce through noise in a way voice (modulations) can't.
So. What's stopping them? Is it cultural taboo? Or does something bad happen to every mission they attempt?
What if radio rash noise is more than just a nuisance? What if it's a hazard? What if they are actually radio-aware, and broadcasting draws their attention?
I'd still expect that morse would be more efficient at cutting through the noise and making the contact as short as possible.Minimize exposure (as in, throw in a narrow band-pass filter to prevent most of the black speech from coming out of the speaker in the first place), yes. Minimize total time, no. Unless you're a rather experienced operator, the speed of Morse is measured in tens of letters per minute; there's a reason why virtually all those strange abbreviations (CQ DE DD0KZ PSE K QSY 5K UP) were originally invented for use in Morse.
Minimize exposure (as in, throw in a narrow band-pass filter to prevent most of the black speech from coming out of the speaker in the first place), yes. Minimize total time, no. Unless you're a rather experienced operator, the speed of Morse is measured in tens of letters per minute; there's a reason why virtually all those strange abbreviations (CQ DE DD0KZ PSE K QSY 5K UP) were originally invented for use in Morse.
And then there's RTTY, which doesn't take much more bandwidth than plain old morse (and not all that high of a tech level either)Come to think of it, there's lots of simple-tech modes where no human needs to actually listen to the transmission in the first place ...
@Divra: First about the argument of Morse being a specialised skillset. While I will not deny that you need some training to become proficient in the use of Morse code, the knowledge to decipher it should be widely present. The reason for this is simple: Morse code was the first usefull way of transmitting message via electric signals, and is therefor often used as an example in books about electricity, also it is part of almost every printed encyclopedia(omitted only in specialized encyclopedias like those for biology and chemistry), it can be found in many adventure novels as part of the plot. As an example I have no less then FOUR books in my shelves that contain translation tables for morse, two of them are novels, one is an encyclopedia and the last is a childrens book about electricity. So I can savely assume that not only people will know that there is something like Morse, but I can also say that people will know how to decipher such a message. Second about the problems of our heroes getting a message to Malmö. These are propably due to the fact that voice transmissions require a considerable bandwidth(at least 3000-4000 Hz). If they used Morse they would only need a bandwidth of no more then 10 Hz which would boost there effective range considerably, how much greatly depends on there carrier frequency. This brings me to the point of global broadcasting. For a given carrier frequency and transmitter power the range is in a inverse relation to bandwidth. That means if you reduce the bandwidth of your signal you increase its range and vice versa. And for the possible power of transmitters, already in the 1930s broadcasts were made with a power reaching several hundred of kilowatts and there is nothing which says you can't build transmitters in the megawatt range. Therefor it is save to say that it should be possible for every community with sufficient ressource to build a station that could punch through all interferences and let the rest of the world know that they life. And I have not even started with the possibilities other radio bands offer.
With all this in mind the question remains: Why is the rest of the world silent?
-.-.- - .... .. ... -- . ... ... .- --. . .-- .- ... -... .-. --- ..- --. .... - - --- -.-- --- ..- -... ...- ... .- -- ..- . .-.. -- --- .-. ... . .-.-. .-....
Edit 1: corrected typo in the morse sequence
Even if the facilities exist in these cut off locations there is still the language barrier issue. Using Japan as an example, what is the chance that they have fluent Icelandic speakers in the year 90 or vice versa. Unless you have someone who is able to translate the morse code and then once it is written down, recognise what language it is in and be able to translate it, it is useless. And even if you somehow manage to fulfil all those requirements, what use is it to correspond with someone a world a way that you have no hope of ever reaching?
.- .-.. ... --- --··-- -- --- .-. ... . -.-. --- -.. . .. ... - . -.. .. --- ..- ... ---··· .--.
Even if the facilities exist in these cut off locations there is still the language barrier issue. Using Japan as an example, what is the chance that they have fluent Icelandic speakers in the year 90 or vice versa.That raises the question of a) how downright extinct are the "Old World languages" actually (there's a footnote in the language tree page saying that some specialized skalds keep the knowledge available so as to be able to decipher old documents), and b) would they actually have lost them that much all the same in Y90 if they had established contact at a reasonable time (not Y90, rather sometime while the Y0 survivors and their knowledge were still available)?
And even if you somehow manage to fulfil all those requirements, what use is it to correspond with someone a world a way that you have no hope of ever reaching?Coordinating the worldwide efforts to find a vaccine or cure (or to announce the instructions once one is found) doesn't require the researchers to meet in person. FWIW, improving one's skills in a foreign language doesn't, either. There's also stuff (notably, books) where a facsimile will go a long way.
Coordinating the worldwide efforts to find a vaccine or cure (or to announce the instructions once one is found) doesn't require the researchers to meet in person.
And even if you somehow manage to fulfil all those requirements, what use is it to correspond with someone a world a way that you have no hope of ever reaching?
Which assumes that there are other places still doing that kind of research. Remember, the Nordics got off light due to having Iceland's knowledge and manufacturing base come through more-or-less unscathed, and the Nordics also have a huge advantage in having iron- and copper mines, and do not depend on scavenging troll-infested ruins for metal.This entire thread works on the assumption that whatever protected the Nordics was not exactly limited to them. And that, quite to the contrary, certain basic facts (like the Y0 immunity rate) apply the world over.
Don't ask any of the people doing SETI research that question.Why not? Serious SETI guys are very much aware that the EM spectrum they're looking at takes centuries, if not more, to travel one way, and that the most that'll happen within their lifetime is to discover that the other guys exist.
That raises the question of a) how downright extinct are the "Old World languages" actually (there's a footnote in the language tree page saying that some specialized skalds keep the knowledge available so as to be able to decipher old documents), and b) would they actually have lost them that much all the same in Y90 if they had established contact at a reasonable time (not Y90, rather sometime while the Y0 survivors and their knowledge were still available)?
Also, they seem to have a radio range issue well within the range of their language skills (in particular, between NO, SE, and DK).
Coordinating the worldwide efforts to find a vaccine or cure (or to announce the instructions once one is found) doesn't require the researchers to meet in person. FWIW, improving one's skills in a foreign language doesn't, either. There's also stuff (notably, books) where a facsimile will go a long way.
Don't ask any of the people doing SETI research that question.
Even if the language is not completely extinct, what are the chances that a radio operator will receive the message and decide to record it for a skald to review it, rather than dismiss it as Troll static?Thank you for another argument why survivors might want to use Morse (assuming that the grosslings don't use it) instead of engaging in a shouting match with them ...
Another requirement to add then, willingness to put scientific documents through morse code, the operator will need fingers of steel :D*shrug* As it happens, all scientific papers I wrote went through my fingers and into electric switches at one point ...
Thank you for another argument why survivors might want to use Morse (assuming that the grosslings don't use it) instead of engaging in a shouting match with them ...
Also, of course you do a phase of "hello, anyone out there?" before running a "Scientific Mumbojumbian" broadcast. >:(
*shrug* As it happens, all scientific papers I wrote went through my fingers and into electric switches at one point ...
This entire thread works on the assumption that whatever protected the Nordics was not exactly limited to them. And that, quite to the contrary, certain basic facts (like the Y0 immunity rate) apply the world over.
Assume for a moment that the initial patients - the refugees arriving in Spain - had come from Africa and that their society may have had previous encounters with the Rash, building up a noticeably higher immunity rate. Add the current "fashion" of sending garbage - up to entire ships to be scrapped - to third world countries, with their low wages and virtually nonexistent environment protection. Finally add those who went studying medicine in the First World and returned to their home countries to help building a healthcare system there when the Rash hit. I wouldn't want to bet any money on who's going to research circles around whom in Y90.
Also, of course you do a phase of "hello, anyone out there?" before running a "Scientific Mumbojumbian" broadcast. >:(
Unless there's an actual, internationally recognized "hello, anyone out there," similar to how "SOS" is internationally recognized.
Again, I took that to be obvious. Not really sure how this relates to what you quoted though.You spoke about the likelihood that the radio operator would "receive the message and decide to record it for a skald to review it". That's not what *I* would do when I receive a transmission that is a) obviously from humans, rather than grosslings, b) at a place where we had no idea humans survived in the first place, c) short enough to suggest that they're actually (still) searching for other humans and d) thus likely to vanish again if I don't answer their call right away.
You used to send your papers using a straight key? Or do you mean a keyboard? Because the second is a lot less impressive.Then be prepared to be a lot less impressed ten seconds from now. Morse ops doing serious amounts of text didn't stick with the historic straight key, either.
My point is that most facilities (both in terms of labs and libraries) necessary to build up a biomedical research program will be situated in cities [...]And that right there is proof that your point fails to prove anything.
Iceland, emphatically, has all these things.
But the question is, if that "hello, anyone out there" is in Japanese (or even better, Wabun Code), would an Icelandic Morse code operator be able to understand it or even recognize it as a language? Or would they assume it's troll static?Well, that's first and foremost depending on what that troll static is like exactly. The stuff we've seen is radio speakers emitting what appears to be yelling in the local human languages; any radio op hearing that here and now (and not knowing about Rash and trolls and SSSS) would swear up and down that it IS humans trying to communicate in their spoken language.
Unless there's an actual, internationally recognized "hello, anyone out there," similar to how "SOS" is internationally recognized.If I were trying to contact survivors of unknown familiarity with Morse in a postapocalyptic world, I would definitely add in some SOSs(*) early on even if there's no emergency at hand. CQ, QRRR, MAYDAY, group of Vs, etc. etc. are plain unrecognizable to the laymen.
Telling proper Morse from random interference is a no-brainer (certain Hollywood movies notwithstanding). Make your dits and dahs and the pauses between have the proper duration (dashes exactly three times as long as dots, etc. etc.) and it'll be pretty obvious that that's an artificial signal even before you transcoded from Morse to letters, much less wonder what language the resulting words might belong to.
I'm hearing a lot of very poorly done morse code(http://www.darc.de/typo3temp/pics/ed23e4a43d.jpg) (http://www.acronymfinder.com/Try-Sending-Code-With-Your-Left-Foot-%28amateur-radio-code%29-%28QLF%29.html) ::)
And that right there is proof that your point fails to prove anything.
Of course it doesn't prove anything. Everything we do is speculation. Still, probability is still a thing.We don't know the probabilities of people's fates outside the Nordics beyond "they obviously didn't come out unscathed". The Icelanders have two potential bases for their immunity rates to offer for our pondering, genetics and old gods. Both telegraph (pun intended) "things could easily be an order of magnitude different in the next country over". Most of the people presenting a case for survivors in their surroundings in this thread assumed that immunity rates, rate of undeath+trollification, grosslings' tactics and problems etc. etc. would be the same as seen in the comic.
But, if you're feeling combative, let's flip the question: Which other places could maintain the levels of quarantine necessary to maintain a viable population, have the infrastructure necessary to support any form of investigation into the nature of the Rash and global radio communications, and (which was the original question) would make someone shell out for a world-encompassing radio?For the records, I'm as much outspoken against "there would be survivors in place X because I cannot imagine how the Rash could succeed in wiping them out" as I am opposing "everyone everywhere else is dead because I cannot fathom how people could survive that". Unknown means unknown, not "oh well, then the opposite must be true".
And would anyone in The Silent World feel inclined to shell out for a short-wave radio on the off-chance that someone can get through to someone on the other side of the world who may or may not be alive/have something relevant to say? I'd say that money is spent on new flamers for a Cleanser squad.I see amateur radio transceivers suitable for such communication and in working condition getting sold for scrap value on flea markets (probably by the heirs of the original owner). World-spanning amateur radio frequencies get polluted by, e.g., fishermen in Indonesia who somehow got their hands on even smaller transceivers. Marconi took five years to proceed from his first experiments to the world's first transatlantic transmission. For crying out loud, NASA astronauts leave more money behind in the parking lot at the Cape than one needs to get a cross-ocean radio link going.
But it's also an island that had quite limited resources ever since it got settled. The early settlers - less numerous than the Y90 population - relied heavily on fishing to keep themselves nourished; the presence of sea beasts (and scarcity of immune people to man the ships) threatens the feasibility of that approach now.
Unless there's an actual, internationally recognized "hello, anyone out there," similar to how "SOS" is internationally recognized.
You spoke about the likelihood that the radio operator would "receive the message and decide to record it for a skald to review it". That's not what *I* would do when I receive a transmission that is a) obviously from humans, rather than grosslings, b) at a place where we had no idea humans survived in the first place, c) short enough to suggest that they're actually (still) searching for other humans and d) thus likely to vanish again if I don't answer their call right away.
Then be prepared to be a lot less impressed ten seconds from now. Morse ops doing serious amounts of text didn't stick with the historic straight key, either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraph_key
And the sender using a full keyboard to create a Morse transmission is not any more complicated than using a largely identical device to create the 5-bit characters of the abovementioned RTTY system.
Are you suggesting that you sent papers by morse using more advanced versions of the telegraph key?No, I typed them into a keyboard and thus into a computer.
Or do you mean that some people use full keyboards to send morse code these days? I can see how that could be done, though I don't know whether that is a used practice.It is not a very frequent practice, but I think one needs to look at why exactly it isn't. Once you look for a way to type text into a keyboard and have it autoconverted to Morse for you TODAY, you invariably end up looking at a computer (in the laptop to PC range). Having the output be Morse code, however, is a way suboptimal mode for such computers to communicate, even in those cases where the computer is set up to communicate through a radio transceiver.
Hence the result that most people who want to send Morse today are Morse enthusiasts, insist on decoding the transmissions themselves (in their head or with pen and paper), and shun encoding by computer because "it ain't true to the spirit" - and because a computer could send Morse orders of magnitude faster than the human can ever hope to decipher it. ::)
I'll be rebuilding my antenna this weekend and will be doing CW on 40m (QRP, of course)Phased array (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woodpecker_array.jpg)? >:D
Phased array (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woodpecker_array.jpg)? >:D
Nah, that's a little small. I prefer something more robust (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Arecibo_Observatory_Aerial_View.jpg)QRP this (http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090224141145/starwars/images/3/3f/Deathstar_blueprint.jpg), then. ;D
QRP this (http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090224141145/starwars/images/3/3f/Deathstar_blueprint.jpg), then. ;D
Hmm...anyone know how long the ISS can go w/o resupply? (Not 90 years, obviously, but imagine being on the ISS in Y0)The ISS has had resupply missions delayed for weeks due to technical problems with the spacecraft used. Simultaneously, they keep one capsule suitable as a reentry vehicle docked at all times to allow for immediate evacuation (loss of station atmosphere, noxious gasses in the atmosphere, hard radiation from a solar flare, that kind of "immediate"). I have little doubt that they can return to planetside whenever they want to, the question is which part of the planet they'ld be safe after the landing.
The ISS has had resupply missions delayed for weeks due to technical problems with the spacecraft used. Simultaneously, they keep one capsule suitable as a reentry vehicle docked at all times to allow for immediate evacuation (loss of station atmosphere, noxious gasses in the atmosphere, hard radiation from a solar flare, that kind of "immediate"). I have little doubt that they can return to planetside whenever they want to, the question is which part of the planet they'ld be safe after the landing.
I think if they could communicate with Iceland they could probably crash down nearby and have a "code signal" to allow them to get picked up. If Iceland would take them is a different question though.
The ISS has had resupply missions delayed for weeks due to technical problems with the spacecraft used. Simultaneously, they keep one capsule suitable as a reentry vehicle docked at all times to allow for immediate evacuation (loss of station atmosphere, noxious gasses in the atmosphere, hard radiation from a solar flare, that kind of "immediate"). I have little doubt that they can return to planetside whenever they want to, the question is which part of the planet they'ld be safe after the landing.
Oh, sure. They COULD come back at any time. I'm not sure they'd want to, given what they'd be coming down to. They'd have better luck hoping a carrier group was available and rash-free.
What kind of communications equipment do they have on the ISS? Would they only be able to communicate with specialized places designed specifically for that? Or once they're back down to Earth, would they have an emergency signal or something?Don't know for sure, but the ISS has been around for a while and many astronauts are also radio amateurs. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there's ham equipment in storage, if not actively used, on it.
That's a thought. What kind of communications equipment do they have on the ISS? Would they only be able to communicate with specialized places designed specifically for that? Or once they're back down to Earth, would they have an emergency signal or something? And if so, I wonder what the range would be.
One thing i wonder is that how attractive might a battleship be for a sea giant ( if they excist ) since i think we know pritty well that they are attracted to humans so a giant attacking a battleship might end up looking a lot like the tales of
Iceland was able to stay isolated because they are so far away from anyone else. The problem with Japan is that it is so close to China and Korea, and there are a lot of Chinese people in China. So even if they tried to close the borders it's likely that Chinese refugees would end up there and cause an outbreak.
If they did close down all travel routes though it's likely that isolated parts like Okinawa could get by. If they did it's possible that they reverted to the isolationism of medieval Japan. On the other hand they might be exploring the Pacific, thus maybe encountering Americans on Guam and Polynesians in Oceania and on the Easter Islands.
Given time, I could probably formulate an idea for a pretty convincing community in Anglesey, or perhaps the Brecon Beacons. Snowdonia and the Carmarthen/Ammanford area are ideas too.
Lots of countryside to choose from.
No chance. The UK as a whole is too heavily populated. As soon as it became obvious that the urban areas were dying people would flock to places like Snowdonia and Brecon.Given how quickly the illness spreads, most people would be killed off.
Wales has a population density of 148 people per square km, Sweden has 21.5. Even ignoring the population boost added by the rest of the UK there is a huge disparity in population density. Plus I live in the midlands and can tell you that people would head there, trust me.Well, to be fair I didn't know Sweden's population density was so low.
Hi, ParanormalAndroid, I'm sure that you are right that the tiny villages in Snowdonia and the Beacons could survive the initial outbreak. It's what happens after that that is the problem, especially in such a mild and troll/beast friendly climate as the British Isles.The detail's good, although I've never been to Eyam so I wouldn't know it. As we've seen already though, the beasts seem to prefer sheltered, urban areas to nest in. Snowdonia especially isn't exactly a hotspot for cities or even towns, so there would naturally be fewer beasts. It's possible to kill them too, as we've seen in the library/house- a group of determined people with good enough weapons could easily kill the few beasts that came wandering their way.
I started writing a fan fiction about Year 0 that was set in Eyam in the Derbyshire hills.
Through a mage warning (and the collective memory of their self-imposed isolation during the Black Death) I wrote about Eyam as a survivor community. Thus, Eyam became a rallying point for the immune in the autumn and winter of Year 0. However, I realised I couldn't make the non-immune in the village survive long-term because there would be too many beasts, trolls and giants wandering the countryside and moving along the roads in such a densely populated country.
Eventually, the non-immune of Eyam would have been overwhelmed as the trolls and beasts found their way from the surrounding cities and towns; all it would take is for one beast to get through. In the end, I had the survivor community/small army trying to move from Eyam to Anglesey and the Isle of Man, whilst trying to protect the non-immune. The non-immune didn't make it and neither did many immune due to their being too many troll-filled urban centres to pass through.
In my head, the story did progress to the IOM, where similar survivor communities from Ireland, Wales, northern England and Scotland eventually cleared the island of rash grosslings, but not without dispute and betrayal. I did have the mage and the person who became the warrior leader of the island making plans to establish contact with Anglesey or cleanse and resettle the island. It was a bleak, depressing story though and never bothered to write up properly
"I feel like we could put a lot of thought into this..."Of course, one of the best places to be would be somewhere like the Isle of Lewis, up in the north of Scotland. One of my friends lives there. Sparsely populated, close-knit community, little access to the mainland, etc..
I frequently do. Self-reliant farming communities would be the longest-lived. Attracting the immune might be one way to make such communities survive in Wales. Eyam wouldn't survive as there are too many large metropolitan areas nearby.
Also, those with holiday homes would be reliant on locals to feed them after their tinned food ran out. I'd expect ugly conflict.
I'd expect the locals to shoot anyone who tried to come in after a certain point.
"Of course, if there was mob hysteria over the sickness when someone got chickenpox or simply scratched their arm a bit too much, the community would start to fall apart anyway."
Nah! They know their diseases in those communities. They wouldn't panic. Besides, I imagine them: "You've got The Rash, you say? Well that's no reason not to go to school. Now go on and don't forget to moor the boat properly when you get to the other side. And if the sea does start to ice up today, make sure you get over to this side before nightfall. We don't want you stuck on the school island for a week like you were last year." (This actually used to happen my children's grandfather)
I guess the biggest thing is going to be if they manage to connect the rash with the trolls and the beasts because if they do they will have far easier time with guarantening, but if they don't some of the sick are going to trollify at some moment and if it gets loose on the civilians it's really a good game at that point.
The biggest strike against the UK is this: they're shown as Silent in the map made by Minna. Granted, a large section is covered by the map key, but one doesn't tend to put a map key over inhabited areas. If there are any survivor communities at all, they are incredibly small and have made zero attempt at contacting the outside world.
Those sea routes we see on that world map pass clean through the Shetlands. So either she never thought about the possibility of survivors there or she just went "Probably killed by refugees trying to get to Iceland". Also could have gone "not relevant to my interests, not worth the effort"You might want to note that in the World Map, two islands of the Shetlands archipelago ARE color-coded as cleansed areas.
You might want to note that in the World Map, two islands of the Shetlands archipelago ARE color-coded as cleansed areas.
http://sssscomic.wikia.com/wiki/Shetland
In regards to England. The southeast would be gone in its entirety. London would just be essentially one gigantic troll monster thing, going there would be like tearing off all your skin and jumping into shark infested waters. [...]. If high heat is universally good for trolls then the whole of England may wind up ravaged.
Wales would probably do pretty well. Southern Wales (especially Cardiff) would be troll country but central and northern Wales would be pretty safe due to a winning combo of difficult terrain, spread out sparse population and frequent cold spells.
What would stop trolls going over to scottland? It is not known for really cold winters in comparison to scandinavia or the alps for example.
Your image of a giant beast blop covering london is amusing as well as scary. Imagine how İstanbul would fare :o
What would the welsh eat though? Same goes for Scottland. Any infested person would turn sheep and the like into trolls. Chickens are not a major ressource and getting hand on fish means climbing down the mountains.
Another problem is that Wales and Scottland are well known tourist areas. If I head to flee to some other country knowing I might die there, hey I really would opt for northern Ireland (death at the cliffs of moher or the giant's causeway, why not?), the orkneys or Wales. Also the english fleeing would try to go to these areas and I am not sure how much military is available to hold them back.
It would be interesting to see the old Celtic spirituality coming back. I know just enough to know that it could be very interesting, and historically the Celts as a whole were pretty gender neutral on what work was done, including having women in their fighting forces. IIRC, there's at least one historically verified case where a woman led the charge of battle against the Romans, while PREGNANT.
If the Norwegians and Celts ever met up, I think they'd get along well, stereotypically or on a society level.
So, the few survivors from Ireland, North Ireland, Wales, England and southern Scotland all head into northern Scotland.
Much as I like the idea of part of the UK surviving, as I have said before I don't see it happening. Wales and Scotland may have a far lower population density than England, but it is still far higher than Scandinavia. Add our warm, wet and cloudy climate into the mix and you have the perfect habitat for Trolls. As for Anglesey, it is popular with tourists and many people have holiday homes there. It will likely be infected before a lot of the rest of Wales.
It would be interesting to see the old Celtic spirituality coming back. I know just enough to know that it could be very interesting, and historically the Celts as a whole were pretty gender neutral on what work was done, including having women in their fighting forces. IIRC, there's at least one historically verified case where a woman led the charge of battle against the Romans, while PREGNANT.
If the Norwegians and Celts ever met up, I think they'd get along well, stereotypically or on a society level.
>Many people
>Owning second homes
You mean many upper class or upper middle class people.
Not exactly many people and most of them will be seeking to leave the country and most importantly have the means to do so.
Upper and upper middle class together still combines to a large number of people. As for leaving the country where would they go? And how would they have the means to do so? I think you will find it is a lot more common to own a holiday home than private international transport.
All in all I just don't see Britain surviving. As I mentioned before the climate is pretty much perfect for those infected by the Rash, we have a higher population density and a lower proportion of people with military training.
Our population density isn't as high as people tend to think it is.
The southeast skews pretty much every statistic from population density to economic figures to violent crime to rape.
Also when I say the means I don't mean privately owning their own international transport I mean being able to buy passage.
I guess it was commonly aggreed that the UK and Ireland would barely stand a chance during the first twenty pages of that thread ;) I wonder which regions we have not discussed yet...
I suppose Tasmania might stand a chance if they acted quickly enough. Apart from Australia it is pretty isolated and is also very lightly populated.
I'm guessing the Inuits haven't yet noticed anything changing :D..... Was a thought, until I remembered seals and whales. Nevermind that then.
France is dead. I'm sure. Next country ?
Actually I had thought there could have been tiny pockets of survivors in the Alps (possibly joining pockets of Italian, Switz and Austrian survivor in a single confederacy; I wanted to write stome stuff about that possible setting but I never got around too), Pyrenees and maybe Massif Central.I was pessimistic on the ability to french people to live together in such conditions, but maybe... The Alps and Pyrenees seems more "sure" than Massif Central, for me.
I was pessimistic on the ability to french people to live together in such conditions, but maybe... The Alps and Pyrenees seems more "sure" than Massif Central, for me.
I can't imagine the French living at all without coffee and cigarettes.
I can't imagine the French living at all without coffee and cigarettes.
If the polar bears and the whales take care of each other Inuit could survive on fish pretty well, right?. For a while at least.
I actually doubt that marine mammals could become infectedMinna explicitly confirmed that "sea beasts" are a thing, and that there are Norwegian hunter squads going after them. No clear statement which marine mammals are affected, though.
Minna explicitly confirmed that "sea beasts" are a thing, and that there are Norwegian hunter squads going after them. No clear statement which marine mammals are affected, though.Norweighan sailing crews hunting gigantic zombie whales with crap technology? 8D Yes please.
Norweighan sailing crews hunting gigantic zombie whales with crap technology? 8D Yes please.The Norwegians are pronounced the master shipwrights of the post-Rash world and the creators of this crappy dinghy (http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=92). Their drakkens may be using sails (http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=177) because there isn't crude oil anymore, but seeing that the cleansers can afford demolishing old buildings wholesale, I wouldn't bet on their weaponry being crap.
I just had a thought. What about Socotra, off the coast of Yemen? It's "one of the most isolated landforms on Earth of continental origin" according to Wikipedia.
It's 150 miles to the closest large landmass (the Horn of Africa), is relatively hot, and has comparatively little rainfall. It also has a small mammalian population, and a relatively small human population.
I think if a naval carrier firebombed the entire island first in the first 1-2 years of the rash. In any hot climate you would need to destroy all human and mammal populations in an area before it is inhabitable. The Nordic regions get away with it due to the cold.
There are many isolated or isolatable areas that might possibly be safe at a stretch, assuming luck and good planning, if you want them to be for the sake of a story.
I had an idea for 'nomads' groups of US and other military naval vessels that function for transpacific trade between a handful of surviving communities (Japan, New Zealand, Falklands, Alaska for example). Formed out of a US carrier group that isolated Guam and performed some heavy handed quarantine and bombings. Guam was lost in Y40 from an attack by leviathans and the ships now function as a civilian-military merchant swarm.
I think there are probably a few places like the Nordic countries. But probably not all that many. I really like the idea of nomadic groups of people just barely clinging to civilization.
Yes…
I replied "Plenty of places like Scandinavia, but isolated", but I would say that they are not so common and most of the world is just the silent world.
Yes…
I replied "Plenty of places like Scandinavia, but isolated", but I would say that they are not so common and most of the world is just the silent world.
It has probably discussed in length before, but a population needed drastic immigration control (like we have seen in Iceland in the prologue) to prevent the spread of the disease.
Of course, humans don't wanna die in Death Valley either. But, if they had the technology and the resources, plus some determination, they could have a society in Death Valley completely safe from the Rash and it's monstersI think the determining factor here, for the whole secret human community, is how large the aquifer is in that region. Digging wells is a huge operation, and no matter how stealthy one gets, large operations draw attention. Especially in Death valley, which has little to no (I think) overland water sources, they'd either have to dig wells, or pipe in water from other regions, which is a risky maneuver. Also, depending on the size of the community, and what kind of agriculture they're doing, the drain on the aquifer varies. They could also support the water supply with catchment systems, but depending on the annual amount of rainfall, this could be hit or miss. If the community draws water faster than the aquifer can replenish itself, they're going to be in trouble very quickly.
In fact, it's interesting to speculate what sort of an ecology would evolve in different parts of the Silent Lands. So far all we've seen have been 90 years old trolls and beasts. But can they reproduce? Has Minna stated anything I might have missed on the issue? If infected people and animals are effectively sterile, then over time they would surely die out, just from accidents if not from diseases other than the rash. In the long term the immune would inherit the Earth because they can replenish themselves. The Silence would be merely another bottleneck and humanity would re-emerge as top predators, chastened but undefeated.
In fact, it's interesting to speculate what sort of an ecology would evolve in different parts of the Silent Lands. So far all we've seen have been 90 years old trolls and beasts. But can they reproduce? Has Minna stated anything I might have missed on the issue? If infected people and animals are effectively sterile, then over time they would surely die out, just from accidents if not from diseases other than the rash. In the long term the immune would inherit the Earth because they can replenish themselves. The Silence would be merely another bottleneck and humanity would re-emerge as top predators, chastened but undefeated.
Oh! Another thought. If trolls absorb other trolls, becoming giants, then does that mean giants have a higher concentration of Rash than regular trolls? In a sort of accumulation of toxins way? Could it be more difficult to deal with a giant because the risk of outbreak is higher than regular trolls? Or is any amount of contact dangerous?I think that, judging by what we saw on the train, a giant is an amalgamation of individual trolls- kind of like a hive mind, only more purposeful.
No, wait, that makes no sense, never mind.
Yes, Barbarylion22, the rash could continue to infect creatures and humans that don't have immunity, but given that there exists a reproducing cohort which is immune I would guess that this strategy would eventually become an evolutionary dead-end. Over time the non-immune strain would be bred out of the various populations. Unless the organism causing the rash can mutate pretty rapidly, like influenza, it could find itself confined to an infected population in decline from the everyday ravages of accidents, starvation and active hunting by immune humans.That makes sense.
OK, so I've been reading this thread an any ideas I have come up have probably already been posted/suggested by others, but I thought that maybe someone could create a map of the world showing any possible locations of surviving communities, just so we can get a picture of what the whole world looks like? I know people have made maps of smaller areas, but that could be quite interesting.
So the baseline is, they'd have to be really, really lucky, at least for the first generation or so. Well, I guess it is possible, but my vision of large neo-nomadic tribes travelling through plains and lowlands with packs of horses, cattle, dogs and cats seems much less realistic now. Thanks! :)
Also, as a bit of a sidenote, I must've been sad for the people in the ISS (International Space Station) to see the world die off, I mean, aside from them passing away as well (because it's freakin' space).
Well, there could be a trade caravan of sorts, a food route (similar to the Silk Road) to move between good and bad seasons.That is more or less the idea, but I doubt the Silk Road is a good comparison. For one it was used mainly by traders who merely traveled along the different branches without living of the land. And for the other there weren't any regular migrations along that route. But you can find good exaples in several tribes who traversed the Sahara in the past. For one the traveled the lands as part of raising their camels and other life stock and for the other they exchanged goods with the locals at several keypoints of their routes.
Also, as a bit of a sidenote, I must've been sad for the people in the ISS (International Space Station) to see the world die off, I mean, aside from them passing away as well (because it's freakin' space).
I might be able to help you with that. (http://archiveofourown.org/works/4334900)
And that is a good story about the astronauts fates you wrote there, SectoBoss. I hope you will cover the fate of other survivor groups in the future.
Hmm, maybe I could write one from survivors from southern US/northen Mexico... That being said, it's hot :s.
A couple of people above have said Western, and I love the idea, but I think it lacks the post-apocalyptic vibe of SSSS. With that in mind I humbly submit the idea of crossover with Fallout:New Vegas.
Tuuri and Lalli live in some run-down frontier settlement near the border with Legion territory. Lalli scavenges old world ruins at night for medicine and supplie, armed only with his trusty hunting rifle. Tuuri, a genius with machines of all kinds, helps them make ends meet by trading old world curios she has managed to get working again to passing traders.
Sigrun, a Ranger veteran from California, has just been posted to a base on the Colorado and can't wait to get across the river and deliver Caesar a lesson on women's suffrage in person. Until the order comes through, however, she has to content herself with hunting cazadores with her squad. Also stationed at the base is Mikkel, patching up the wounded as best he can and hardly ever mentioning face cancer these days.
Emil was born into a wealthy family of brahmin ranchers who lost everything in a drought a few years back. Having since joined up with the NCR military he dreams of becoming a heavy trooper one day, with his own power armour and flamethrower and everything. He has yet to see actual combat.
Now, driving a beaten-up old APC that was decommissioned by the NCR years ago, our five heroes sally out into the world outside the Mojave with one goal: scavenge as much high-value old world tech as they can get their hands on!
No-one counted on the appearance of a mysterious young New Canaanite and his pet cat.
SectoBoss: I do hope you intend to write that! And in case I failed to mention it earlier, the new avatar suits you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_neopaganism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_neopaganism)
Even Iceland, where modern paganism seems to be actually making some progress, it is still confined to a very small percentage of the population. Nothing we have been told in the comic so far, barring people starting to actually see spirits and stuff, can actually account for such a sudden and decisive change in belief.
Well that's the thing though. While the plague has a definite supernatural component, we have yet to see anyone in the comic treating it as supernatural. Instead the line of thought is that the gods came in and protected their chosen people - at least, that's the Icelander version of things.
90 years of a plague that has an obvious supernatural component? What's more interesting is why the Swedes DON'T believe in this stuff.
Do you all think the extreme heat would affect the afflicted? Would they not like it? Also, the dry land of the desert? Has that been discussed before? I live in the vast deserty portion of Arizona, and the heat and aridity is not friendly to organic life not native to it.Actually, that has been a subject that has been discussed on and off this entire thread, though I could be wrong and it has only been discussed once before. Here are my two cents on the matter:
I don't know if anyone has brought this up before, but I would consider Spitzbergen and Jan Mayen as possible candidates. On Spitzbergen, the combination of cold climate, extremely sparse habitation, and near total isolation would certainly make it a likely candidate for survival. In addition, it has the Global Seed Vault, which would certainly come in handy for a new community of survivors. The other option, provided it is still accessible after the breakdown of society, would be Jan Mayen. There are (as far as I know) no permanent inhabitants of the island, but it would be a great place for survivors to seek refuge. First , it contains a meteorological and radio communications station, which would be extremely valuable in helping survivors communicate with any surviving societies. It also has an airstrip, Jan Mayensfield, and the mountain Beerenberg could potentially serve as a local stronghold should sea beasts become too troublesome. It gets 683 mm precipitation yearly, which is pretty nice as farming and drinking water are concerned (though it gets limited sunlight, so that's a potential downside). It's not huge, but considering that the Danes packed ten thousand into Bornholm, it should be plenty large enough for a self-sustaining society. The average yearly temperature is just barely below freezing, but it doesn't actually fluctuate that much month to month. Overall, I'd say these are certainly good options, and while they're remote enough that the average person wouldn't think of them or be able to get there, it would only take one boatload of people to decide to flee north to have a viable colony at either of these islands.This makes a lot of sense, especially your analysis of Jan Mayen island. The question, of course, is whether the surviving community would be lucky enough to have among them someone who knows anything about farming. I presume that large reason for Bornholm's fortunate fate was having farmers - like Michael Madsen's sister - and farming equipment, meaning that they knew how to feed themselves without imported food. I presume transporting a tractor with all those add-ons on a small boat would be somewhat... cumbersome ;) , but even if we settled on even medieval farming methods, whether there'd be anyone with knowledge of how to plant crops and such is a question in and on itself. If not, then such a well-willing community may end up short on food, especially if they had only one boat available for fishing (there are fish there, righ?) and sea bests near by.
This makes a lot of sense, especially your analysis of Jan Mayen island. The question, of course, is whether the surviving community would be lucky enough to have among them someone who knows anything about farming. I presume that large reason for Bornholm's fortunate fate was having farmers - like Michael Madsen's sister - and farming equipment, meaning that they knew how to feed themselves without imported food. I presume transporting a tractor with all those add-ons on a small boat would be somewhat... cumbersome ;) , but even if we settled on even medieval farming methods, whether there'd be anyone with knowledge of how to plant crops and such is a question in and on itself. If not, then such a well-willing community may end up short on food, especially if they had only one boat available for fishing (there are fish there, righ?) and sea bests near by.
This being said, if such a community knew how to farm, I'd give this idea definite thumbs up.
Even if it wasn't colonized from the beginning, it has strategic importance that makes me think that Iceland should have colonized it by now: Long-distance radio equipment, an airfield, geothermal energy, and a choke hold on leviathan migrations. Seriously, what's not to like?
Speaking of which, do we know if Iceland had military planes at year 0 in SSSS? I don't think it maintains its own air force, but there is a NATO presence there and I know that Reykjavik has its own airport. I feel like this would be an important detail, because if, for some reason, Iceland had no planes, I would think obtaining and maintaining them would be a first priority (especially given that this would be the only easy way to travel without being harassed by trolls).
Also, Jan Mayen actually *might* survive without a ship, as it maintains a research staff of up to 18 every winter, and has supplies to support at least that many for about a year. But any society of 18 would be hard-pressed to survive and repopulate for 90 years.
As for Iceland's air force, they don't have fighter planes of their own - Iceland Air Defense System consists of radars and whooping total of 25 people. Other NATO countries do provide some planes to Keflavik base as part of Iceland Air Policing system, though, so this would be available, unless they pulled it back due to Rash. Then again, it's interesting question whether Iceland would let them out. And of course there's this small problem of aircraft, especially fighter craft, needing a dedicated fuel.
Then again, it's interesting question whether Iceland would let them out.
I think the main problem of Jan Mayen would be food... far as I know the land there is not arable and the climate is bad for growing anything. Sheep? Fishing and whaling (with the threat of sea beasts in mind)?Ah, if the land isn't much for growing food, then yeah, probably yes. I wonder - if they had a big ship, say, a container ship, could they set up some sort of "fish farm" in it? I know that fish farms are usually found in lakes and the such, but with waters being risky, I guess it would be safer to have fish out of leviathans' reach.
However, within Iceland aviation would not necessarily die entirely since we have lots of ultralight hobbyists and many small "airports" throughout the country (I say airport but that basically means a small landing strip, controls and a wind sock - take Gjögur (http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000sr6MfHQpDx4/s/750/750/MWL0012648.jpg) for example). Ultralight planes, gliders and para-gliders within Iceland would be an option; being small and light the planes need much less fuel, and recently there's been interest in electric powered ones so with a bit of work Icelanders might be able to continue flying.
2. Potential strategies for reducing the threat of sea-beasts and leviathans.
Fish farms. Hmm. Have you come across the concept of aquaculture/aquaponics? Basically like hydroponics in gravel beds, with the beds being irrigated by water pumped from the fish tanks, thereby turning the fish waste into fertiliser.
Well, well! Some interesting ideas there. You'd need arts-and-sciences people and fighters rather than Mistress Laurel Seamchecker and her ilk, but it might just work.
Just as well NZ ran to birdlife rather than too many mammals! Seals and other seabeasts might be a problem though.
Does NZ also have a Garrison (or whatever they call them nowadays) of the New Varangian Guard? Viking Society? Anything else of that kind?
Are there still Tohunga mages in Maori society? Practitioners of Makutu? The Golden People? I'd just about forgotten about that lot, thanks for reminding me. I know they used to practice both healing and war magic. And Tānemāhuta in particular is quite close to the Finnish Tapio in nature. Interesting possibilities.
Even if there are no active practitioners, having portions of the cultural rituals known would probably be enough to restart the tradition.
Fish farms. Hmm. Have you come across the concept of aquaculture/aquaponics? Basically like hydroponics in gravel beds, with the beds being irrigated by water pumped from the fish tanks, thereby turning the fish waste into fertiliser. The gravel retains nutrients to feed the vegetables (You can even grow fruit trees and some grains). Clean water from the gardens is pumped back into the fish tanks, nicely aerated, and around it goes again. Some small farmers and more dedicated home gardeners around here use it. Might be a workable system for your survivors.
Fish farms. Hmm. Have you come across the concept of aquaculture/aquaponics? Basically like hydroponics in gravel beds, with the beds being irrigated by water pumped from the fish tanks, thereby turning the fish waste into fertiliser. The gravel retains nutrients to feed the vegetables (You can even grow fruit trees and some grains). Clean water from the gardens is pumped back into the fish tanks, nicely aerated, and around it goes again. Some small farmers and more dedicated home gardeners around here use it. Might be a workable system for your survivors.
Don't you need some special nutrient solution to keep it running though? Nutrients would still be removed from the system by harvesting fish and edible greens. I had a friend with an aeroponic system who had to add store-bought nutrients constantly to the water.
I saw Alaska mentioned a few times, and having lived here for a few years feel like sharing a few things about Alaska.
Alaska, despite being the biggest state in the entire United States of America, is a very undeveloped state, more so than any other. Most of the land in Alaska is owned by the federal government (The percentage goes to 70% or 75% according to some.). As such, we do not have highways connecting all of the population centers (Oddly enough, many of us have to take a ferry to get to our capital of Juneau.). And even if we could get roads to connect all of Alaska, we have unique problems involved with building, or doing much of anything (Namely one problem that I care to mention, but there are others.). For us to construct on federal land, we have to ask permission and wait for however long it takes for them to approve or deny it. So development is incredibly slow here in Alaska.
The largest population center is Anchorage, and that is 230,000 of our total 700,000 population. After that, the next largest cities are our capital and Fairbanks, both clocking in 31,000 people. But past that, all of the remaining 408,000 people are scattered throughout the entire state, and with a rate of 1.26 people per square mile, there are a lot of areas where there are literally no people. Even with all of this land, we barely use any of it because we simply do not have the population to have a town every few hours from each other. In most cases we have to take bush planes to some of the smaller towns and villages, and the only major way to get into Alaska without getting a plane or a ferry, is to go through Canada on the Alkan Highway, and that highway is long as balls, and the only time to negotiate it easily is during summer or spring.
Winter is cold and it is long, and we basically go through Summer and Winter with no Spring or Autumn. You might think this is awesome, and that we get tons of snow, but such is not true. We do not get as much snow as you think, although that depends where in the 5 regions of Alaska you live (The Interior and North Slope are what I will be referring too, but the West Coast, the South East area, and the Islands usually get pretty heavy snow.). The snow in most places is useless, acting more like watery-icified-sand, with no real value besides covering the ground. The air itself is so dry that the moisture from the snow is literally sucked from the snow that falls, contributing to the uselessness of our snow. Also during winter, we lose a great deal of our day-light. During the earlier and mid-summer months, we have almost 24 hours of straight sunlight. Yes, the sun almost literally never sets. However, because of Alaska's place on the Earth, during winter, we get only about 8 or 6 hours of daylight, and when the sun is down, the temperatures drop even colder. Where I live, the cold is so intense that it prevents much of the exhaust from furnaces and cars from escaping, and visibility and air quality plummet during those days. Although it wouldn't be a problem if most of the people died and turned, it is still an issue (Mostly for those living in natural "bowls".)
I saw someone earlier mention that Alaska has lots of guns and common sense. Yes, this is true. Many Alaskans own guns, and many of us are smart enough to not go outside naked during mid-winter. However, another thing about Alaska is that it is incredibly isolated, especially if you are putting forth an SSSS situation. We import basically all of our foods, and many other things because we don't have them here. That is part of why living up here is so expensive (But we also have higher wages than people in the lower 48 [Any state that isn't Alaska.] to balance this out!). Should mammalian life turn with the affliction, then much of the food that we have up here is going to be gunning to kill us, and thus makes much of Alaska easy pickings for the Silent Lands. I regret to say, but guns and ammunition are not edible. Although the native Alaskans would probably have a better time making it to the year 90 mark, much of Alaska would be Silent Lands and it would stay that way for a loooong time after, especially with how large and rugged we are here.
Although we have a very large military presence here, we do not have as many personnel or toys as we used to. We used to have a cracker ton of F-15's, but the lower 48 put them elsewhere in the states, taking with it all of the personnel who work and maintain those planes. We still have stuff up here, like A-10's and Bradley's, but not as many as there were at one point. And should the refineries, the pipeline, or the rigs lose too many people, there is no way to fuel all of those machines. Even now, the Alaska Pipeline is going to have to be replaced entirely in a few years because the steam from the oil is rusting the pipes from the inside out. So if someone wanted to claim all of the neato weapons of mass destruction we have up here, they'd need to devote a lot of time (And I am talking years if no touches those things for 90 years) and a lot of man power to reclaim those missile and nuke silos, and get those vehicles rolling again. Who is to say they'd even be useful (Although the APC's might be useful.) during the illness.
If anything, people would be surviving the 90 year mark on the coastlines near river mouths, or a little ways upstream. And they'd more than likely be Alaskan Native. (Imply there are no weirdo zombie whales!)
I could have gone on, but I wanted to make tacos, and I like tacos.
Wow, that's really well thought out. (snip) Here, all our big cities are on the coast, and there is a real disconnect between city and country. I had got the impression, back when I was in Alaska, of something similar in the mindset. How do you find it now?
Considering the semi-autonomous state of the Christiania commune in Kopenhagen, would it be possible that they survived for a short time on their own, after, say, day 10? The foritifications encountered in page 408 (http://sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=408) might be in the wrong place for it, but would packing up and moving be beyond the capabilities of its inhabitants and any refugees that came along with it?
hey, new to the comic & forum so im not sure if this has been said yet but:
i sure hope that there are other surviving communities because the idea that only white people will survive the end of the world is well... terrifying.
im from latin america, and i know cold is a factor (and well you have patagonia, plenty of mountain ranges, half of bolivia, chile, etc..), but so is isolation. And the geography of latin america allows for the existence of many remote communities of campesino and indigenous peoples in areas of very low population density, isolated by mountains, forests, and/or deserts.
My guess also ventures to the thousands of small populated islands in the pacific and southeast asia.
hey, new to the comic & forum so im not sure if this has been said yet but:
i sure hope that there are other surviving communities because the idea that only white people will survive the end of the world is well... terrifying.
im from latin america, and i know cold is a factor (and well you have patagonia, plenty of mountain ranges, half of bolivia, chile, etc..), but so is isolation. And the geography of latin america allows for the existence of many remote communities of campesino and indigenous peoples in areas of very low population density, isolated by mountains, forests, and/or deserts.
My guess also ventures to the thousands of small populated islands in the pacific and southeast asia.
hey, new to the comic & forum so im not sure if this has been said yet but:
i sure hope that there are other surviving communities because the idea that only white people will survive the end of the world is well... terrifying.
im from latin america, and i know cold is a factor (and well you have patagonia, plenty of mountain ranges, half of bolivia, chile, etc..), but so is isolation. And the geography of latin america allows for the existence of many remote communities of campesino and indigenous peoples in areas of very low population density, isolated by mountains, forests, and/or deserts.
My guess also ventures to the thousands of small populated islands in the pacific and southeast asia.
hey, new to the comic & forum so im not sure if this has been said yet but:
i sure hope that there are other surviving communities because the idea that only white people will survive the end of the world is well... terrifying.
im from latin america, and i know cold is a factor (and well you have patagonia, plenty of mountain ranges, half of bolivia, chile, etc..), but so is isolation. And the geography of latin america allows for the existence of many remote communities of campesino and indigenous peoples in areas of very low population density, isolated by mountains, forests, and/or deserts.
My guess also ventures to the thousands of small populated islands in the pacific and southeast asia.
EDITED: I've concluded that bats must be immune to the Illness, even if nobody has realized it, because otherwise Iceland would be full of shambling goo monsters. Bats don't breed in Iceland (as far as I can tell), but they do visit regularly from the south.They need to be able to fly to do that, and Word of God is that the deformations caused by an infection up-end the aerodynamics.
Anybody mentioned mountain ranges yet? Those could certainly house survivor communities - the Alps, Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateu, Maybe the Altai, the Taurus Mountains, definitely the Andes.. maybe more I don't know about.
It would be a harsh life for sure, with major survivor communities probably being confined to the cold of the glaciers and the very highest altitudes. But it would be possible - such places have very little in the way of vermin, it's still possible to keep some hardy types of livestock, and such places are very scarcely populated, thus limiting the Rash. That adds possible communities to South America at least, despite its southern altitude.
And that's a big issue: if in year 90 nordic peoples had archived reliable radio communication, why they haven't stabilished links with other survivor settlements via long-wave radio?
Because the Y90 Nordics do not actually have reliable radio communication, as was proved by how quickly the line went bad after they left the cleansed, inhabitable areas. Copenhagen is not even a long distance away and still the troll noise made it impossible to communicate between the other end of the bridge. I'm guessing mages could help clear the noise but their powers are limited and they simply cannot reach far enough, and if they're already convinced the rest of the world is dead they might not want to use up their energy on something that is/seems futile.Copenhagen might be a special case, as you have what was a densely-populated urban centre on your doorstep (and it presumably still is rather densely populated, in a grisly way). In other areas, without troll-infested ruins nearby, the signal may well carry much further. After all, the Dalahästen had its radio on (unless that was an intercom), and it was far away from Mora/Oresund at the time, implying they may have been expecting to be able to talk to somone.
Actually this does raise an interesting issue - how good is general communication within the known world? A postal service must surely still run between cities, using trains and ships. Is radio good enough to be relied upon? I was going to suggest that maybe Iceland made use of submarine cables, but by the looks of this map (http://www.submarinecablemap.com/) they don't have any cables going to other parts of the known world. Maybe they dug some up and repurposed them?
Actually this does raise an interesting issue - how good is general communication within the known world? A postal service must surely still run between cities, using trains and ships. Is radio good enough to be relied upon? I was going to suggest that maybe Iceland made use of submarine cables, but by the looks of this map (http://www.submarinecablemap.com/) they don't have any cables going to other parts of the known world. Maybe they dug some up and repurposed them?
Yeah, I had very much got the impression that radio, like noise and lights, attracted trolls. As you say, Morse code would probably cut through the noise effectively. The concept of a troll trap is really cool - at least until they get a giant or three, which I presume is what happened to the Copenhagen expedition.
How far could you actually get a working radio signal to reach without satellites or huge radio towers, though? I mean... Scandinavia is a pretty terrainy place. Just going into the countryside in some areas is bound to give your car radio some difficulties, even if you stick to fairly big roads... the distance between Copenhagen and Mora is fairly flat and low terrain, and the crew STILL had to radio some professional dude with a radio mast just to get in touch with Trond and co. Since most of todays radio traffic relies on satellites and a few major transmitter towers (neither of which are likely to be maintained in y90) their radio network would essentially have to be completely re-built once the old system began to fall apart.
It did occur to me to wonder how sunspot levels and the like would affect their radio. Aren't we due a Maunder minimum soon?
Right- it should be in the SSSS category- sorry, I hadn't noticed that.
By the way, (Feartheviolas) how can I move this to the SSSS thread? Or do I leave it to the admin/moderators?
I had mentionned the southern archipelago (Tierra del Fuego) at the tip of South America, so close enough.
It looks similar to Falklands: http://thompsonsubzero.ca/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/jan_global_temp_map_labeled1.jpg
Yeah but it has low population (less than Iceland for the whole archipelago) and consists of many tiny islands, so it's easy to defend/isolate.
Although quite a bit less isolated.
Hmm...looking at the Map, the Sandwich Islands (though the climate may be too harsh to support enough people). The Kerguelen Islands are a possibility, although they have a very small population (120 or so in the summer),
http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=457
"The fort is protected by water on all sides, making it a relatively safe sancuary....
Small immune colonies are known to thrive in spots like these."
Islands are good. I have great hopes of King Island, Kangaroo Island, the numerous Bass Strait islands, plus Philip Island, Lord Howe Island and of course Tasmania. I'm sure there are lots more.
overhunting and generally pushing the land beyond its carrying capacity, I can see it as a place where the magic would come flooding back fairly quickly.
Are we sure Mikkel didn't mean "Small immune colonies of animals are known to thrive in spots like these"?
I hope I'm wrong, but it's something we should consider.
...and I've just gone back to check the page and (if I'm not mistaken) Minna has just changed the text to maker it clear that he means animals, dagnabit!
Maybe Vancouver Island or some of the smaller islands surrounding it? Most of the islands are pretty self-sustaining, with access to large areas of agricultural land, and ferrys could take survivors from the mainland.
That's a bit misleading. Native americans did have crops, but oaks were not among those — the oaks were not domesticated nor intentionally sowed. Rather, the natives engaged in forest gardening, allowing the oaks to thrive and multiply by killing competitor plants through controlled use of fire.
But that's different from the selective breeding and intentional cultivation that they did practice with tobacco, sunflowers, strawberries, squashes, little barley, marshelder, wild rice, mapple sugar, etc.
The trick with arid climates, and anywhere, really, is to plant crops suitable to the land and weather, to rotate them and rest the land as needed. Above all, to learn to listen to the land. It will tell you.
Oh ho yes all kinds of nasty stuff can move in and slowly kill you if you eat meat raw. Raw meat eating is still a tradition in rural Alaska, but official state healthy eating pamphlets specify that you have to freeze it first, like, a lot. Or air-dry it, or dry it over smoke...
i might like a rare steak now and then, but that's farm raised and hopefully SHOULDN'T have parasites (and even then....) But i also like the taste of the game animals i have tried well cooked a lot better than a well done steak.
But then i can imagine there are Americans that don't get the difference between farm raised cow steak and freshly hunted game animal steak....
It varies by region. A lot of people hunt for the pot here in Alaska because the meat may actually be cheaper than red meat from the store. Venison backstrap braised gently with new potatoes, mushrooms, and a little wine....mmmmm. And I know somebody who loved to get deer-heart sandwiches in his lunchbox.
Oh lord, I just had a horrifying thought. I was lying in bed, unable to sleep because I kept thinking about this thread and different advantages and hardships survivors in various regions would face. One thing that came to mind was that deserts would be unlikely to harbor large trolls or giants because few large mammals live there, but they might instead have to deal with swarms of infected rodents. And then I remembered that there are some particularly iconic large mammals living in the American Southwest - bands of mustangs and burros. And that most giants are basically a bunch of organisms fused together...
Guess I can just forget about sleep after all.
Few things I forgot about in my case for Poland (BTW, thanks for positive reactions) :D
As to the magic, I... don't really see slavic religion reemerging in Poland. If you asked Poles about some of their ancient gods, they'd prooobably remember Perun (that's our God of Thunder, more user-friendly than Thor), but that's about it. Ever since 996 AD we've been catholics, so I think some sort of christianity-based magic would be more probable (priests turning into mages? Hmmm...). There's also the fact that after government falls, Church is the institution most Poles would turn to (as of the last survey, 98% of the population declared themselves catholic). Combine that with the fact that historically, churchmen had some very highly-ranking positions (first councillors, royal advisors), the recent (80s) Church's support of anti-communism, and almost-cult of St. Mary some Poles indulge in and it's possible that post-Rash Poland would be very religious state.
Oh, and I am new on this forum as well, so hi ;D. And sorry for my English; I don't use this language too much ;)
Well, I do not agree with you. Maybe majority of Poles truly don't know too much about our slavic tradition, but thank to our fantasy books and even games (especially the Witcher :D) there's more and more people who know about Slavic gods, traditions and... monsters.
Yeah, slavic monsters. They were pretty much awesome and I would reaaaaaally love to see some of them. Polunocnica (Północnica), Likho (Lico), Leshy (Leszy), Koschei (Kościej), Shishiga... That would be amazing, wouldn't it?
Anyway, I know many people, who are now about 20, who could say a lot about Slavic mythology. Myself, I could tell names of slavic demons without hesitation (only with English names I've got a problem). In addition there are growing population of neopagans, who are returning to the old faith. So, who knows - there is a chance that in SSSS people in Poland would praise Marzanna ;). Also, there are a few people who consider themselves as a witches (me among them >:D) and try to practise "magic" using some traditions of slavic rituals. I think that it would be pretty great to see one witch in the comic. Who knows, maybe in future...
Oh, and I am new on this forum as well, so hi ;D. And sorry for my English; I don't use this language too much ;)
Hi, welcome to the forum! Yes, I'd be all for seeing some Slavic monsters, though with a reimagining trolls got, I'm not certain if we'd recognize Północnica or Południca in SSSS setting. As for paganism in Poland - I admit to not knowing about it, and that's somehow despite me living here. :-[ Having read what you've said, I've tried seaching for how many neopagans are there in Poland, and the best the Internet could come up with was "maybe several thousand", so I'm not quite certain how much of that would be immune and/or survive the initial Rash outbreak. If they do make it through, we could end up in a situation where Christianic and Slavic approaches to the Rash coexist somehow - I'd argue Poland is much more Christian (in terms of believing and seriously churchgoing population) than Scandinavian countries, so I don't think neopaganism would push Catholocism away completely.
I'd be curious if it got cold enough in Poland in the winter? Maybe around Gdansk there'd be some survivors?
Utah, eh? Cold when it isn't blazing hot, by my recollection. Might be a really good place to survive!
Utah, eh? Cold when it isn't blazing hot, by my recollection. Might be a really good place to survive!
I really don't think that veterans would reenlist, unless it was immediately necessary for the survival of America. IMHO, nmuch wouldn't reenlist no matter what.
My brother who got out of the US Army a month back said that he pretty Oh, and MOPP suits. The US military should have enough, though we've never had to deploy CBRN gear enmasse before. I'd say that the US should, if the military kept its giant stockpile of Hazmat/MOPP gear from the Cold War. I mean, we were basically prepared for all-out nuclear warfare, in addition to some chemical/biological warfare on the side too.
T Plus 60 Days - I'd say that the military would just bury the coma victims in mass graves. It's certainly not humane or anything like that, but these are dire circumstances. I'd imagine that they'd want to conserve petrol, with the apocalypse and all that. The psychological cost of doing so in such a seemly efficient and logical manner is a different story.
Somewhat related—I'm doing a story on some US soldiers trying to survive the apocalypse, whilst maintaining cohesion as a unit. It'll basically explore some variations of PTSD and the theme will be hope—or rather, the lack of it.
Re petrol, and fuel in general: we might get steam cars again, some of which were wood or coal fired. America should still have the tech to revive some few steamships/steam trains for transport. I'd be curious to see if anyone tried to revive the 1950s/60s attempts to make oil from cultures of algae - that looked quite promising for awhile, until the oil industry lobbied to have funding withdrawn from such a 'wasted' effort. And even some nuclear plants might survive for awhile. The big hydro schemes would likely all go down as the dams failed over a generation or two, but I reckon there might well be some solar (until the panels broke down), maybe some farm or small town or survivalist communities with local small-scale hydro power, or wind turbines, for quite awhile. Longer, if military engineers were involved.
Neither do I actually. Should have been more clear about that - I meant the veterans would VOLUNTEER to help in droves. Working in the Hospice Camps, shipping supplies to the quarantined nuclear reactor workers... ect. They have a higher volunteer rate then average.
As a side note, America would really just deteriorate into a sad state of affairs worse than the Late Bronze Age Collapse.
<snip>
I understand that not all Americans are dumb, but it would seem a lot of the anti-science stuff typically comes from the United States and they have a lot of followers. Even in the fairly liberal, forward-thinking area I'm in, I've seen some people who think that GMOs are all bad, vaccines cause autism, etc. Therefore, the Rash could have an easier time spreading through the US due to these types of people.
As a side note, America would really just deteriorate into a sad state of affairs worse than the Late Bronze Age Collapse. I mean—if the monsters seem to have a hard time surviving in Scandinavia, but are still strong enough to pose a significant threat to the survivors, I wouldn't want to see the Americas.
Er.... huh? Scandinavia is NOT warmer then the continental USA.
why would America be blasted back to bronze age?
I was trying to say that most of the Americas would be hotter than most places in the various Nordic countries. I worded that post a lil' weird, should have been more clear.
On the other hand, didn't know that some places in the US (Nebraska, South Dakota, etc) were colder than certain places in Scandinavia. I actually had to go look that up because I couldn't believe that. Guess you were right.
Er, worded another thing weird again I guess. I mean it wouldn't necessarily go back to the bronze age, the destruction that would occur in the US would be worse than the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Like the total collapse of international society that happened in the Bronze Age Collapse would pale in comparison to the turmoil caused by the Rash. Complete collapse of the world's biggest superpowers (The UK/US/Russia/Canada/etc would die out a lot worse than the Hittites/Mycenaean Greece did), destruction of society, mass migrations of people trying to escape, etc. The Sea Peoples could essentially be the Rash in this context as well, though not quite as terrifying.
(Hey popping in) So I agree that the east coast of the US is pretty much screwed, but have you considered the islands along the coast? There are quite a few that you either have to ferry to, or only have one road entrance that could be very easily defended. A lot of them are also nature reserves so there's the bonus of no existing structures for trolls to hide in, but the drawback of possible beasts overrunning the island. Assuming you have boats you could also eventually form some kind of island community. Maine seems like it would be especially good for this since you have some islands big enough that if you stay inland you should be safe from sea trolls, and it typically gets nice and frosty in the winter.
That's the only real thing I can think of though, your analysis is very nice. Also can you tell the islands are my go-to apocalypse plan?
Kin, immunity seems to be a simple homozygous recessive trait, per the Dangrenning info poster. It explicitly says that two immune parents will always produce an immune child.
Ok, who's up for an obnoxiously long post?
So here’s a sort of scenario explaining how I think you can get these elevated but incomplete levels of immunity.
Initial immunity rates are low, probably in the region of 5% or whatever...
<snip>
I'm sorry to anyone who read all the way through that, please tell me if any of it doesn't make sense or is confusing. I think this should explain what I mean better but I think I slightly melted my brain in writing that so… <snip>
Er... not quite. It says that two immune parents picked by the Dangrenning program will always produce an immune child. Could still be a single allele trait. Anyway the post I took my 5% initial immune rate from assumes a double allele trait. Apparently the math works out nicely for it. I'm posting the link again so you can check his numbers.I stand corrected.
I stand corrected.
Community survival depends a lot on how you can protect the community from disease vectors. And since a disease vector can be as small as a field mouse, you really want a combination of water and people.
You need the water to protect against beasts, big and small, and you need people to protect against sick refugees and the odd sea-beast. This means that any community that is *not* on an island have to be quite lucky to survive. We so far know only of a few places in Norway that has succeeded, and they are generally protected by water on one side and mountains on another.
So it is possible that communities could have survived in the alps, but by no means guaranteed, as you will also need arable land, and that means you need to farm in the valleys, and they are not as inaccessible as you might think. :-)
Islands that are too large, such as Japan, are also unlikely to isolate themselves. Not only is is highly likely that somebody infected already had arrived in Tokyo, the distance to the continent is much smaller, so they are likely to get a flood of refugees trying to get in. And in only takes one boat to land undetected...
There will be plenty of surviving communities in the Polynesian islands, and in isolated but arable islands all over America. New Zealand would be a good candidate for a community like Iceland, if they had shut down international travel fast. But they aren't shown as doing that. Denmark shut it down on Day 3, and that was not enough to save more than Bornholm, but then again the disease could have come over land via Germany in that case. But likely it's too large and would, just like Japan, have gotten infections in already before closing down borders. But if not, then it's certainly far away from anything else, meaning that they should be able to protect against refugees.
Yeeees, I read it? I'm not sure what your point is with this comment.
My post was not a direct criticism of you or your ten page document, but just a note about how the isolation of islands help and which kinds of islands could have successfully survived. And yes, North America has plenty of islands like that. If you want me to make a detailed criticism I can do that, but I'll only do that if you really want.
Great idea! I'd like to have a play with Central Australia, specifically the area around the Schwerin Mural Crescent. Won't be for awhile, because at present posting things more than a few paragraphs long isn't working, but eventually.I knew I could count on you to have some great ideas ^_^ Well I look forwards to it whenever it pops up
This is a wonderful idea! Just the other day I saw two very interesting documentaries about Siberia and I am *sure* people must have managed to survive there.Siberia sounds like it could have a heckova lot of potential, and I'd love to see anything you did on it :D and not to worry, this is fantasy, there's room for getting it a little wrong if you do it correctly ^_^ also considering how scattered over the globe we all are, and how many people here are interested in mythologies and cultures anyway I wouldn't be surprised if someone would be willing to help you if you wanted
Unfortunately I know zero about the indigenious cultures there and how they mix with Russians and Chinese, so I might not be able to actually contribute something here, without doing serious research beforehand (and getting in wrong nevertheless XD ).
I accepted from the early days that my dear Wales was probably not going to survive without a miracle, but Japan seems pretty likely to me from what I've seen so far so I think I'm going to work on that. Heh, I am going to be asking the absolute weirdest questions at work for the next few days :PSounds interesting, Gwenno! What do you think? Revival of pre- or post-WW2 bushido? Would they use more specific names for beasts and trolls based on the many, many creatures from folklore? I can definitely see the potential for Kappa there!
Hmmm. I wonder whether some people could have built a wall blocking off Bluff Point, otherwise bounded by the two branches of the Y of Keuka Lake, and possibly have held out there.Quite possible, I'd say! I don't go out that way much~ I live in Rochester. Also, there could be survivors out somewhere in the Adirondacks.
Not sure what the current mix is of people living there; it's in my very general area, but not somewhere I usually go to. If they've had the Old Order Mennonite influx that much of the rest of the area has had, they'd have a fair chunk of people pretty well equipped to deal with disaster.
I'm thinking that most American mages would go back to the original Native American (Haudenosaunee for that area, right?) traditions if they follow the pattern of going back to the old religion.
Im currently thinking up a middle east scanerio, so far the tone is MUCH darker than the comic!
Its going to be VERY fantasy.
Yup, no survival unless excessive use of heavy/nuclear bombs and atrocities in general.
And even then, its not a happy-cooperativy world either: the groups hate one another as well and they fight each other.
So yes, screwed one way or the other :P
Sounds interesting, Gwenno! What do you think? Revival of pre- or post-WW2 bushido? Would they use more specific names for beasts and trolls based on the many, many creatures from folklore? I can definitely see the potential for Kappa there!If I'm going to imagine a post apocalyptic Japan there's no way I'm not going to involve ninjas, samurai and the whole shebang from pre WW2 Japan :P You know more than me about the role of cats in Japanese mythology, do you think you can work with anything there?
(If you want me to join in with asking weird questions, feel free to tell me which ones and I'll make an effort)
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3909/15160406199_60f0c61fe7_s.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/p6F3zM)
SSSS · 日本 (https://flic.kr/p/p6F3zM) by ruthszulc (https://www.flickr.com/people/124103985@N06/), on Flickr
here's my take on japan! keep in mind this is just one way it might pan out, and i've been somewhat harsher than most as far as population and cleansed land are concerned for the sake of a different kind of story. either way, feedback and critique is definitely appreciated!
—
it would be easy to see the statistics and think that japan, among all the nations to survive the rash, is among the more fortunate. while less than 2% of their population has survived the ravages of the deadliest disease that has ever struck humankind (to say nothing of other mammals), the large majority of japan's northern island, hokkaidou, has remained pristine and untouched by the hideous monsters created by the rash. but scratch deeper than surface level and darker truths emerge of the survival of the country.
it begins with the system of government. while the nation of japan before the fall ranked among the world's most prominent democracies, the people who live on its soil today are by no means free. there are some vague gestures at the system, of course; it is hard to revoke a right that has already been granted, after all, but the people's advisory council is widely understood to be powerless compared to the real source of power: the daimyou, and above all the shougun.
japan was the first nation to seal off its borders after news of the rash became public. japan soon found, though, that even as they escaped the first pass of rapidly escalating chaos of the disease, their problems would not be solved with this unilateral act. the most pressing, and most dire situation, was the state of their food supply. on a caloric basis, japan was roughly 40% self-sufficient. and as the months dragged on, even with brutal rationing, millions began the slow, agonizing process of starvation. but this, the japanese would soon find, would be the most merciful part of the long dark period of their nation.
in march 2015, with the nation in the throes of the greatest famine in its history, dozens of whaling vessels left port, intent on bringing back as much as they could carry, to feed the nation with whatever they could. what they encountered in the open sea, however, were not whales but something entirely different. though one was brought on board to attempt to identify it, it was quickly determined that the mutated, deformed creatures were simply not edible. starving, isolated, and entering a desperate stage of disconnection from reality, the whalers did not make the connection between the deformed whales and the rash that had covered the planet in its entirety. the sailor generally identified as japanese patient zero (JP0) visited tokyo four days later, and the inevitable fall began.
by the time the national government realized what had happened, establishing a quarantine cordon around tokyo was impossible. hundreds of thousands of people were dying every day, if not from the rash illness, then from the famine that became even more entrenched as communication and transportation of food between different areas became impossible. it grew so desperate that the governor of the most isolated northern prefecture, hokkaidou, shut down all traffic into the province and established a strict quarantine zone in the densely-populated capital, sapporo, and the southern port town hakodate, and not a moment too soon: though isolated cases would crop up in the countryside, the most severe outbreaks were held to sapporo and hakodate.
however, the aftereffects of this absolute seclusion, within the boundaries of the two quarantine zones, were nothing short of disastrous. cut off from all outside food, and with the self-defence force soldiers shooting any attempting to escape, more than two million died in what would later come to be known as the "sacrifice zones." the government ordered the total razing of sapporo and hakodate, and though they likely saved the rest of the island from infection, their tenuous authority crumbled as the populace became aware of the scorched-earth techniques used. an alternative provisional government based in asahikawa, supported by a large contingent of disgruntled SDF soldiers and—most importantly—makiko sen, a descendant of emperor taishou and distant member of the royal family, organized a largely bloodless coup, declaring sen empress and assuming responsibility of what is, for all they know, the last remaining safe area on earth.
having the legitimacy of someone on the chrysanthemum throne is an immense psychological boost for a population desperately needing something to cling to, and through this the new provisional government of asahikawa is granted sweeping powers to allow it to begin the slow process of reorganizing japan to survive and sustain itself. however, the immense centralized power of the new government starts to show signs of totalitarianism. armed with the impeccable credentials of restoring the monarchy, few are able to stand in its way as rights and freedoms are slowly rolled back to make way for aggressive de-industrialization, and a return to immense investment in agriculture. those with money and power are able to consolidate it, and those without slide inexorably into what is really a glorified neo-feudal society. it takes some time, but eventually even the government comes clean, adopting the archaic terms of medieval japan to describe their new state. the military junta is headed by the seii taishougun, the commander of the japanese self-defence force and overlord of the ten daimyou, who each rule over a fief contiguous with the old pre-meiji provinces.
though much of the technology of the modern world remains, many of the ideas have been cast aside to make way for the new order. the nation has returned to the old policy of sakokuron, or "isolation doctrine," which prohibits any outsider from landing in japan and prohibits any citizen from leaving. with the abbreviation of the country to the northern island, with the exception of a small military base in mutsu, everyone beyond the tsugaru strait separating hokkaidou from honshuu (the main island), is unwelcome in the empire of japan. a small class of military nobility known as bushi or samurai enforced the social contract, swearing loyalty to a daimyou. while the weapon of a samurai today is a rifle rather than a longsword, there are many eerie parallels with the japan of hundreds of years ago, and the idea that all people are equal has long since given way to the notion that everyone has a given place in society. if you're one of the common folk in year 90, it probably isn't a great living. but the harsh, stark decisions made by the asahi shougunate have also made japan one of the safest havens in the world from the rash.
Purple Wyrm, do you think you could link that fic here as well?
4) Communication between settlements is very difficult, and rather than rely on frequent trade, they need to become largely self sufficient. Hawks are trained to sent messages and hunt smaller grosslings
6) The east coast (Tokyo down to Osaka) is home to the country's largest giant. It is a huge mess of infected people bigger than a house. It hides underwater by day (due to it's size), and roams the streets after dark. It is known as "Godzilla", a reference few alive now understand :P
Did someone say post-rash Japan? I think someone said post-rash Japan.
That's a clever take on the Kappa. The original in folklore, as shown in the drawings, looks something like a cross between a European Näkki and a giant salamander. The giant salamanders were probably responsible for at least some the the killings attributed to Kappas - they are quite big enough, and frequent the sort of clear shallow waters where one might let a child play. Scary stuff.
Here you go (http://wyrmlog.wyrmworld.com/?p=7432) (this is the Revised Edition on my blog :) ). I keep meaning to create AO3 account to make it a bit more accessible.Hahah, that's some excellent linguistic mess-up shenanegans you have happening there :P It's exactly how I'd imagine a meeting of foreign countries to go communication-wise, although fair play to them, they were definitely trying. Fun stuff ;D
For some reason I had a sudden vision of Japanese settlements communicating by heliographs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliograph).
I'm sure you mean 'Gojira' ;D
The Kappa is excellent!
*squeeeeeeee*
Many many head cannons accepted ;D Although, having lived in a fairly mountainous area of Japan I'd like to think that there would be regions beyond Hokkaido with stable surviving populations. Hokkaido isn't as rural as people make it out to be (having lived there for three months I should know), and there are many other prefectures which are far more isolated, although I think Hokkaido has the coldest winters. Hokkaido does have the advantage of being the source of most of Japan's home grown food however, and if the population was cut off from Honshu I could see it being almost self sufficient food-wise, whereas the other areas I'd consider saveable don't have a lot of defendable agricultural land. This could cause a difference in governance in Hokkaido and the settlements down south seeing as the shogunate originally accumulated power by owning more food growing land waaaaaay back in time. I'd like to think that the main island of Honshu, rather than being ruled under a central power would be a scattering of clans too far separated to rule over efficiently with the technology at hand.
Anyway, the fact that you're putting the new shogunate in Asahikawa gives a lot of cool potential though, as it's at the outskirts of the Daisetsu mountain range, which has a lot of spiritual significance in both Ainu and later Shinto religions, therefore any magic re-discovered could have three routes to stem from (Bhudism (which is everywhere anyway), Shinto and Ainu). Tying in with Helia's mention of religious bear hunts, the Ainu also have a bear hunting ritual which was a very central part of their culture which follows along a similar theme of releasing the bear's spirit so it can be reborn again (will need to do some more research).
I also freaking love the parallels with Japan's historical closing of it's borders and the post rash closing of it's borders ^_^
From a writing standpoint I was considering a North Korean bunker, reserved for the Kim family, with huge stockpiles and facilities for indefinite survival, where the Kims never made it and the staff sealed inside just kept waiting until it became a quasi-religion among the descendants that they were waiting for the Leader to arrive.
Someone had once mentioned a thought about if people could survive in Cheyenne Mountain if the facility was sealed in time to keep the Rash out.
...
Of course, if a place didn't have its own supply of water and food and something to keep the lights on and the air circulation running, it wouldn't last in the long term, but if a place was already set up with hydroponics and its own power plant, etc., might there still be tiny pockets of survivors holed up in a bunker (hope they can produce Vitamin D supplements), thinking they're the last people on Earth?
Stand Still, Stay Silent (https://flic.kr/p/oLx4KG) by ruthszulc (https://www.flickr.com/people/124103985@N06/), on FlickrThis is an old post, but would you mind reuploading this please? The link seems to be dead.
here's a little project of mine looking at what survivor communities outside the known world might look like! of course, everyone else's "known world" is going to be different if they haven't made contact. canada hasn't fared as well as iceland, and the largest community in the otherwise safe island of newfoundland—st. john's—fell early to the rash. isolation has been cold and lonely for its survivors, who aren't quite as keen on cleansing as the swedes, but nevertheless by year 90 there are a few projects to expand into the boundaries of the silent world. and the legacy of france lives on with its tiny colonial province. :)
Here you go (http://wyrmlog.wyrmworld.com/?p=7432) (this is the Revised Edition on my blog :) ). I keep meaning to create AO3 account to make it a bit more accessible.
"We Have Always Lived in the Bunker" wasn't working out, but I did put together a few vignettes about survivors around Lake Superior if anyone is interested. I had traveled up there for a vacation and noted how suitable a lot of it was for surviving the Rash.
This is actually the second Lake Superior vignette, but since the first one is a bit dark, I thought I should post this one instead.
The Radio Operator
(...)
I’m imagining people living underneath Moscow in it’s rabbit warren of underground shelters and spaces. There is not one community, but many enclaves and they all live in loose alliances based on need and resources.
Specialist skills are hard to come by, so the enclaves have their own individual coveted resources. Doctors are especially needed, next come technicians and then come everyone else.
The monsters that live above are hungry and equally covetous of their spaces. Sometimes an entire enclave would disappear, only to reappear in another space later. Some times new enclaves are discovered.
Not everyone fears, not everyone is an enemy. Not every enclave fear the monsters, not every enclave is human anymore.
I wonder if radiation would mutate trolls even more or kill them. I'm highly interested in what fantasy elements you have thought up for it. Don't know if I'd want to read all of it if it's super dark, real news is dark enough. :-\
I’m imagining people living underneath Moscow in it’s rabbit warren of underground shelters and spaces. There is not one community, but many enclaves and they all live in loose alliances based on need and resources.
Specialist skills are hard to come by, so the enclaves have their own individual coveted resources. Doctors are especially needed, next come technicians and then come everyone else.
The monsters that live above are hungry and equally covetous of their spaces. Sometimes an entire enclave would disappear, only to reappear in another space later. Some times new enclaves are discovered.
Not everyone fears, not everyone is an enemy. Not every enclave fear the monsters, not every enclave is human anymore.
Solokov, go for it. The only Pacific kinda-writeup I've seen was Ruth's map of the new Japanese empire.
ButterflyWings, yeah, those are strongly held beliefs by the Lake Superior folks but may not have any basis in fact. I'm working on another vignette about a person who personally new Pope Mary and what she really did and was capable of, but it's been a little rough making it work. It's a different take on returning magic.
I think I should give a little more explanation, since I probably won't be able to have characters info-dump all this realistically. Marquette (which is the largest city on the Upper Peninsula, though still not very large) in my story's history became the capital of Michigan after the fall of the lower peninsula/most of the rest of the world. It held out for a few years before it fell also due to refugees moving in, bringing illness and Rash-monsters following. Due to that psychological line in the sand that got drawn for everybody between pre-Illness and post-Illness times, everybody except for a few educated priests remembers Marquette as the glorious capital which was lost.
The Church is Christian, though the religion has changed a bit what with the end of the world, and has elements from Catholicism, Lutheranism, and others that all got mashed together to make a kinda-sorta unified belief system. The Church isn't just for religion but also handles most education and medicine and unofficially acts as the overarching American civil government, as the American 'government' consists of the military, which is focused entirely on fighting Illness-monsters and scavenging, and village councils (sometimes elected representatives, often democratic votes of all the adults in the village) which only manage a small area; if the Church hadn't become powerful as it did rather early on, it's possible a congress might've been convened later with representatives from the villages (the new Canadian Parliament at New Ottawa on Lake Nipigon works this way - the Church didn't penetrate into there as quickly). It really is too powerful and that will cause issues in the future beyond the time of these vignettes.
Death Zones (or sometimes called Dead Zones) are rebranded Exclusion Zones, where there are just too many Illness-monsters to go. Marquette was the smallest of them, since it was a much smaller city than the others that became Lake Superior Death Zones (Duluth, Thunder Bay, and Sault Ste. Marie) even after the refugees had poured in, so the military figured it would be the least difficult to reclaim. When that went terible wrong, they became even more terrified to go to the Death Zones because holy crap if they found that abomination in the smallest one, what would they find in the bigger ones? Or the huge ones, like Chicago? (Sure, Key Eshbach went there and survived but she snuck in and snuck back our quietly, and God obviously tipped the scales for her more.)
As for the Omega Horror - I do not believe one exists in every former city, but when there's some sort of unpredictable mega-mutation thing going on, something will go even more spectacularly wrong. Copenhagen got murderghosts, and this little city got a super-giant that can call others to it, assimilate them, and got so big that it buried itself underground.
on top of the Americans and Canadians I wrote in my notes that there is a separate Ojibwe/Chippewa nation where magic returned first, only I don't know much about them and don't want to be a racist jerk so I'm a little scared to write about it.
Juniper, hope you don't mind that I killed Marquette and then filled it with unspeakable horror. I had hypothesized before that, rather than collapsing in one fell swoop like Sweden and Norway and clawing their way back up/barely holding onto survival since, Finland may have initially survived better but had declined to the current state in SSSS. Decided to use that idea here, that the U.P. survived much better than most the rest of the U.S., but that meant survivors converging on the place. Heck, they may even have kept the most powerful radio station on to bring in survivors, in an understandable attempt to save them from being picked off one by one, but which ended up being disastrous.
Also I got an idea for these vignettes when I took a trip to the Kewanee Peninsula with my boyfriend to see his grandmother and his large, extended, very blonde, Finnish family. They had (what I'm going to continue to call) a compound with a sauna on a sandy beach. Traveling around, I couldn't help but notice how 1) isolated and 2) accidentally defensive the area was, above and beyond the rest of the U.P. even. There's only one bridge to the northern half and it can be lifted! It's an artificial island! Their snow is ludicrous!
As for the Native American culture, I agree, and on top of the Americans and Canadians I wrote in my notes that there is a separate Ojibwe/Chippewa nation where magic returned first, only I don't know much about them and don't want to be a racist jerk so I'm a little scared to write about it. Might help if I had any sort of art or Photoshop skills so I could make a proper map.
The Atacama and the mountains could be very good protection. Power might need to be wind and solar. The temperature range might be a defence in itself. You'd likely have more trouble from small burrowing vermin beasts than big stuff.
That's true, besides, apart from Llamas, and a few Cougars, there isn't really any big mamal that could pose a threat in there... We do have Condors (enourmous two meter's long bird of prey)... But I've never seen a flying troll, there can't be, can they???
Yes, I know condors, beautiful creatures. I think all birds are immune. I wonder if condors could be tamed and make an alliance with humans as cats have done in the SSSS world? And doesn't the southern part of South America have those tiny cats that eat moths? Geoffroy's Cat? And that lovely silver-furred Andean Cat.
As for the matter of bats, I suppose it depends on whether one considers extra-textual stuff to be canon. (Some people don't.)
I think it was something Minna said in the comments -- I'll have to check the thread to see if someone captured that.
I consider anything Minna says to be canon :)
Yes, I know condors, beautiful creatures. I think all birds are immune. I wonder if condors could be tamed and make an alliance with humans as cats have done in the SSSS world? And doesn't the southern part of South America have those tiny cats that eat moths? Geoffroy's Cat? And that lovely silver-furred Andean Cat.
I don't think trolls can fly....yet.
Minna did say that Rashed bats were too deformed to fly, I think as part of a discussion on the Keuruu and Mora fortifications in the comments. Mind you, I'm waiting to see some troll or beast rediscover gliding membranes - Leaftroll looked like a step in that direction. And, Yeii, Minna has also said that yes, the big cats are immune.
Failing that, the survivors might flee to the Gila River Indian Reservation, which is both very isolated and close to Phoenix, considering that its border with Phoenix is probably a 2-minute drive from my house.
Its not isolated if its a two minute drive from the suburbs of Phoenix. Everywhere in Arizona (and the rest of the west) that can't be closed off by bombing out a mountain road is done for
So, I don't know if this has been posted already, but I spent pretty much my entire afternoon run thinking about this. I expect that the largest place, outside of Iceland, to have survived could be the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido. (Indeed, by population Hokkaido could be the largest concentration of people left alive in the world.) We already know from the introduction that Japan was the second country (after Iceland) to close its boarders, and Hokkaido is only connected to Honshu (the biggest island) by a single tunnel. The climate is also quite suitable: cool summers, icy winters, and the northern half of the island is basically tundra. Not to mention this is the historic homeland of the Ainu, who, I imagine, would be not unlike Finns in their aptitude for magic.
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3909/15160406199_60f0c61fe7_s.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/p6F3zM)
SSSS · 日本 (https://flic.kr/p/p6F3zM) by ruthszulc (https://www.flickr.com/people/124103985@N06/), on Flickr
here's my take on japan! keep in mind this is just one way it might pan out, and i've been somewhat harsher than most as far as population and cleansed land are concerned for the sake of a different kind of story. either way, feedback and critique is definitely appreciated!
—
it would be easy to see the statistics and think that japan, among all the nations to survive the rash, is among the more fortunate. while less than 2% of their population has survived the ravages of the deadliest disease that has ever struck humankind (to say nothing of other mammals), the large majority of japan's northern island, hokkaidō, has remained pristine and untouched by the hideous monsters created by the rash. but scratch deeper than surface level and darker truths emerge of the survival of the country.
it begins with the system of government. while the nation of japan before the fall ranked among the world's most prominent democracies, the people who live on its soil today are by no means free. there are some vague gestures at the system, of course; it is hard to revoke a right that has already been granted, after all, but the people's advisory council is widely understood to be powerless compared to the real source of power: the daimyō, and above all the shōgun.
japan was the first nation to seal off its borders after news of the rash became public. japan soon found, though, that even as they escaped the first pass of rapidly escalating chaos of the disease, their problems would not be solved with this unilateral act. the most pressing, and most dire situation, was the state of their food supply. on a caloric basis, japan was roughly 40% self-sufficient. and as the months dragged on, even with brutal rationing, millions began the slow, agonizing process of starvation. but this, the japanese would soon find, would be the most merciful part of the long dark period of their nation.
in march 2015, with the nation in the throes of the greatest famine in its history, dozens of whaling vessels left port, intent on bringing back as much as they could carry, to feed the nation with whatever they could. what they encountered in the open sea, however, were not whales but something entirely different. though one was brought on board to attempt to identify it, it was quickly determined that the mutated, deformed creatures were simply not edible. starving, isolated, and entering a desperate stage of disconnection from reality, the whalers did not make the connection between the deformed whales and the rash that had covered the planet in its entirety. the sailor generally identified as japanese patient zero (JP0) visited tokyo four days later, and the inevitable fall began.
by the time the national government realized what had happened, establishing a quarantine cordon around tokyo was impossible. hundreds of thousands of people were dying every day, if not from the rash illness, then from the famine that became even more entrenched as communication and transportation of food between different areas became impossible. it grew so desperate that the governor of the most isolated northern prefecture, hokkaidō, shut down all traffic into the province and established a strict quarantine zone in the densely-populated capital, sapporo, and the southern port town hakodate, and not a moment too soon: though isolated cases would crop up in the countryside, the most severe outbreaks were held to sapporo and hakodate.
however, the aftereffects of this absolute seclusion, within the boundaries of the two quarantine zones, were nothing short of disastrous. cut off from all outside food, and with the self-defence force soldiers shooting any attempting to escape, more than two million died in what would later come to be known as the "sacrifice zones." the government ordered the total razing of sapporo and hakodate, and though they likely saved the rest of the island from infection, their tenuous authority crumbled as the populace became aware of the scorched-earth techniques used. an alternative provisional government based in asahikawa, supported by a large contingent of disgruntled SDF soldiers and—most importantly—makiko sen, a descendant of emperor taishō and distant member of the royal family, organized a largely bloodless coup, declaring sen empress and assuming responsibility of what is, for all they know, the last remaining safe area on earth.
having the legitimacy of someone on the chrysanthemum throne is an immense psychological boost for a population desperately needing something to cling to, and through this the new provisional government of asahikawa is granted sweeping powers to allow it to begin the slow process of reorganizing japan to survive and sustain itself. however, the immense centralized power of the new government starts to show signs of totalitarianism. armed with the impeccable credentials of restoring the monarchy, few are able to stand in its way as rights and freedoms are slowly rolled back to make way for aggressive de-industrialization, and a return to immense investment in agriculture. those with money and power are able to consolidate it, and those without slide inexorably into what is really a glorified neo-feudal society. it takes some time, but eventually even the government comes clean, adopting the archaic terms of medieval japan to describe their new state. the military junta is headed by the seii taishōgun, the commander of the japanese self-defence force and overlord of the ten daimyō, who each rule over a fief contiguous with the old pre-meiji provinces.
though much of the technology of the modern world remains, many of the ideas have been cast aside to make way for the new order. the nation has returned to the old policy of 鎖国論 sakokuron, or "isolation doctrine," which prohibits any outsider from landing in japan and prohibits any citizen from leaving. with the abbreviation of the country to the northern island, with the exception of a small military base in mutsu, everyone beyond the tsugaru strait separating hokkaidō from honshū (the main island), is unwelcome in the empire of japan. a small class of military nobility known as bushi or samurai enforce the social contract, swearing loyalty to a daimyō. while the weapon of a samurai today is a rifle rather than a longsword, there are many eerie parallels with the japan of hundreds of years ago, and the idea that all people are equal has long since given way to the notion that everyone has a given place in society. if you're one of the common folk in year 90, it probably isn't a great living. but the harsh, stark decisions made by the asahi shōgunate have also made japan one of the safest havens in the world from the rash.
Finally, there are at least a few suburbs that are just randomly out in the middle of the desert down towards Tucson. If a wall got put up around them, I think those suburbs might be decent places to live in. I saw that a few pages back, someone came up with a sort of return to the Wild West era, with little towns sprinkled all across the desert. Maybe one of those is a fortified suburb? (Preferably Ahwatukee, since, y'know, that's where I live. =P)
Hello! Newbie here!
Just an idea, but what about Vancouver Island? Though it is pretty close to both British Columbia and Washington.
Maybe, its north enough to have the weather on its side, and the inner parts of the island seems pretty isolated.
Oh and ClockworkDawn why don't you introduce yourself at the interdiction thread over on General Discussions
Has anyone discussed Greenland yet? I have a feeling that with the cold weather over there they might be able to handle the crisis better than other nations.I always figured there had to be a few people alive in Greenland, but I don't know enough about Greenland to speculate anything specific. It's big, cold, mostly empty. Probably there weren't even enough people infected to create much of a troll population but really I don't know.
Also would depend on the weather. The little ice age around a thousand years ago killed off the Viking settlers there (the plague didn't help), but some Inuit have always lived there, or at least used the place for hunting. If the climate has kept warming from our time people might well survive in Greenland - the ice is melting there at present, making for some fascinating archeology as the buried Viking settlements are uncovered.
Hello! I'm a newbie here, so please, be forgiving.
So,
I guess it's not uncommon to wonder what your country looks like in the Minnaverse. I've been wondering too. So has anyone survived in Poland?
Hello! I'm a newbie here, so please, be forgiving.
So,
I guess it's not uncommon to wonder what your country looks like in the Minnaverse. I've been wondering too. So has anyone survived in Poland?
On the one hand, I doubt it. Poland might have many assets but good organisation and effectivness in action are rarely ones of those. Also unity can be a chink in our armour. Poles would probably just keep arguing until everyone had been infected by the Illness.
On the other hand though... I like to think that perhaps we would have a chance. Poland's climate allows to harvest good crops to feed the people, but also can provide a really harsh winter (So-called "100 years' winter" of 1978 and the entire 17th century to prove my words), which would make a great setback for trolls and beasts. Moreover, Middle Ages left us quite a fortress lands, full on various holds, keeps, castles, some fortified manors, and many other places to hide and live in. It brings me a nice thought - the words "Poland has not yet perished/ so long as we live" being fullfilled by people defending places such as Wawel or Malbork Castle from the grosslings.
I do know that it's just a fantasy that would be unlikely to happen, but sharing it was fun anyway.
Hi! I will have you know that Poland has been (https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg4546;topicseen#msg4546) considered before (https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg120911;topicseen#msg120911). ;) I don't think Wawel or Malbork are likely to survive - too many people around the former, and too many tourists from all over the Europe in the latter - but you have a good point with castles, keeps and other thingamajigs that we have, I somehow failed to think about it.
P.S. "(...)we have(...)" --> We? Am I lucky enough to meet another Polish person here?
If the Australian climate can't kill us I doubt anything can! I reckon there would have to be survivors on the Irish and Scots coastal islands (main problem there would be seals), or in the highlands. I wonder what would happen to 'the ruined abandoned Blaskets' off the coast of Kerry? They might suddenly become very desirable real estate, once the political reasons to depopulate the islands were gone.
And since in many of the Celtic areas the magic never really disappeared in the first place, it might come back quite strongly.
I queas they would easly become allys :3
Technically, yeah. It's got a nice rocky landscape and everything.Okay, it seems that the things required for a chance at life are as follows:
But I dunno, it doesn't seem as islands are really all that safe.
Okay, it seems that the things required for a chance at life are as follows:
1. Defensable terrain.
2. Reliable ways to exterminate beasts/trolls/giants etc.
3. Enough other people to form a sustainable gene pool.
4. Enough natural resources to survive on.
Given that, how about the Rocky Mountains in America and Canada? Or maybe the Andes, in South America? These mountain chains harbour enough people currently that some would have to be immune/lucky enough to have survived the Rash. Most of the population lives in the highly sheltered valleys of the mountains (so that the cities could be abandoned, once they became unsafe, fairly easily), but going into the mountains themselves, at least the Rockies have good ground for growing orchards, there are enough rivers to generate hydroelectric power (also a fair number of coal deposits, for the communities that couldn't harness the water), they have lots of trees, marble, granite, basalt, sandstone (lots of sturdy building materials), plenty of animals herds get raised on the peaks and brought in a few times a year (it wouldn't be hard to hem the farm/grazing land in enough to defend it). All in all, it seems feasible. :)
Personally I rather like the idea of survivors in our Australian deserts, with their extremes of heat and cold. There is water if you know where to look, and once there were too few humans to tap the artesian waters as extravagantly as at present, the aquifer should regenerate quite fast.
I can imagine people taking refuge in places like Kata Tjuta, Uluru or Mount Conner, or the caves under the Nullarbor, where there is water in good plenty. Mount Conner maybe not, because although it is quite defensible, and has water, as well as nearby good resources of minerals and wild food plants, even in our world the place is famous for the hostility of its landspirits. Though a lot would depend on whether or not marsupials are sufficiently 'mammals' to beastify. If they are, we're all doomed!
Looks good. Alice Springs has plenty of resources. Unfortunately, also lots of people, many of them transients, because it's a hub of tourism, as well as being an air hub for a lot of people travelling out to remote sites to work, though once cleansed it shouldn't be all that hard to hold, or to defend. I'm wondering how climate features, like the periodic flooding of the Todd River, would affect things - would it sweep the grosslings away from the walls, or bring in a mass of ravening camel and buffalo beasts from further north? And again, marsupials - any settlements out there would be in huge strife if marsupials beastify. Sure, the big ones like kangaroos would be a hazard, but in the long term I think the little ones would be a much greater danger. Consider that for every kangaroo there are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of the little guys - desert mice, hopping mice, dunnarts, marsupial rats and all that lot. Echidnas. Quokkas. Quolls. Tasmanian Devils. Wombats. And, gods help us, the Antechinus. Those things are tiny, yeah, but they already behave like a shrew on speed, and if they beastified, or fused - would be nasty.
If I were setting up such a refuge, I might raid Alice Springs, but would be more likely to do fortified permanent bases at Kata Tjuta, Mintabie, Woomera (the old Rocket Range), Pimba (Spud Murphy's Roadhouse would make a pretty good base), Copper Hills, maybe Uluru or Coober Pedy if there weren't too many tourists there when things fell apart. But my first choice would have to be Giles. In part because the climate is extreme, in part because, being as it is the most isolated settlement in Australia, most people either don't even know it's there, wouldn't think to go there, or are likely to die on the way there. Last time I was there, on my way out to Lake Christopher and the Tanami Desert, the population was 5, I think now it has dropped to 3. But my main reasons for Giles are that if you know what to look for that land is rich - the Warlpiri did pretty well there for thousands of years; and that inland, north of Giles, is a lot of really broken country, within the curve of the Schwerin Mural Crescent, much of it still only superficially explored, or not explored at all. Very few people, and you only have to walk on that land to feel how alive it is. If magic came back anywhere, it would be there. South of there are the Mirning/Myrning people, down where the Nullarbor meets the sea, and they are folk who still have a very active tradition.
Have you read John J. Alderson's 'The Simple Farmers of Galley's Gully'?
It's unfortunate that the SSSS comic doesn't explore the lore around nations (Germany, the UK) other than the "Nordic Council" memberstates....... yet. We've seen a Checkov's armory aimed at China, for example (though that is highly unlikely to come to fruition anymore due to other circumstances).
It's unfortunate that the SSSS comic doesn't explore the lore around nations (Germany, the UK) other than the "Nordic Council" memberstates.
Although, looking at the map of the "Known World", there are apparently several Scottish isles that are declared as cleansed areas. If people still live there, that is questionable.
ZGU, if Minna has not yet had much to say about other countries, you can always read the fanfic writers. I especially liked Wavewright's take on a mage finding water in the American desert.
Then it's a fortune we have fanfic authors to fill out the gaps of the non-Scandinavian lore, eh?
I actually had own intentions on writing a fanfic with a setting somewhere else in the post-Rash world, but that devolved into a ultra-pessimistic research mission after two friends complained about lore irregularities in my own setting.
Now it's those two and me conducting massive background research to solidify our theory that the middle east and north Africa are the new bastion of civilisation. Of course, this theory can be reduced to rubble with what was mentioned: the comic is still going and yeah, Minna still has things to say about that whole deal.
The Middle East & North Africa (returning to) being the bastion of civilisation is fascinating. Supposedly, the Rash hit Europe via a boatload of refugees (Patients 0) landing in Spain. Although it's never stated, they are presumed to be from North Africa. But, I set the story Róisín mentioned (https://archiveofourown.org/works/14038047) in a desert, thinking that the conditions would be too hot and arid for trolls, and No. Africa certainly has plenty of those conditions.
(Although I must admit my story is NOT exhaustively researched; I left actual engineering to Minna-esque hand-waving. Fun fact - the first drafts of the story were set in the Middle East, because I had a vague idea of our intrepid crew out exploring post-mission and figured California or Mongolia was too blimmin' far even for crack fic.)
You and Onnenlintu have both done interesting stuff with other traditions. I would love to see more. I plan to do more myself, since there are already examples in the local traditions of magic for dealing with man-eating monsters, or people who have become something else. I touched on it in 'Year 95, Very Far to the South' and plan eventually to write more in that setting. I'm particularly keen to work more with the idea of interactions between the Myrning people and whatever mages may have turned up among the great whales, since the our-world-our-time Myrning marngits already have a tradition of singing to and with the whales. The whole idea of magic in other cultures and traditions could do with more exploration.
XoX XoX Mage Whales XoX XoX Yes, please.[a wild Kadecean surfaces] >:D
JoB, you have the cheeriest thoughts!Which one, Kim or Chloe?
Now I have a mental image of a large outrigger canoe-type craft, with Roisin's Furneaux Islander mage-scout, Onni, and Sigrun taking on the malevolent Kadecean!
Then it's a fortune we have fanfic authors to fill out the gaps of the non-Scandinavian lore, eh?I feel like hotter climates wouldn't thrive all that well. Not sure about deserts, but to get a good civilazation going you need a good mode of transport and maintenence, and unless Trolls are as succesptible to hotter temperatures than they are to freezing ones, they'd end up thriving in place of survivors. I imagine that countries closer to the tropic would be harder to settle because of that, since winter wouldn't be much help. Not to mention how close to ground zero the mediterranean was, seeing that the first known patients of the disease appeared on Spain, I reckon most of the european south and african north got hit very hard and were almost completely wipped out. Higher altitude and more isolated regions might have a better chance, like the Basque country and the swiss alps, but I'd still put my bets on mostly islanders surviving, like the Portuguese islands of Azores and such.
I actually had own intentions on writing a fanfic with a setting somewhere else in the post-Rash world, but that devolved into a ultra-pessimistic research mission after two friends complained about lore irregularities in my own setting.
Now it's those two and me conducting massive background research to solidify our theory that the middle east and north Africa are the new bastion of civilisation. Of course, this theory can be reduced to rubble with what was mentioned: the comic is still going and yeah, Minna still has things to say about that whole deal.
I feel like hotter climates wouldn't thrive all that well. Not sure about deserts, but to get a good civilazation going you need a good mode of transport and maintenence, and unless Trolls are as succesptible to hotter temperatures than they are to freezing ones, they'd end up thriving in place of survivors. I imagine that countries closer to the tropic would be harder to settle because of that, since winter wouldn't be much help. Not to mention how close to ground zero the mediterranean was, seeing that the first known patients of the disease appeared on Spain, I reckon most of the european south and african north got hit very hard and were almost completely wipped out. Higher altitude and more isolated regions might have a better chance, like the Basque country and the swiss alps, but I'd still put my bets on mostly islanders surviving, like the Portuguese islands of Azores and such.
EDIT: Read the rest of the ideas, now not so sure about this post I made, but I still think it contributes a bit to the conversation.
After thinking about this more while at work I've come to the definitive answer that I don't have a definitive answer for Africa and Australia's state of life in year 90.I'd wager that non-natives still would be able to survive together with the natives, in a post-apocalyptic scenario its rather unlikely that humans wouldn't all band together to survive, and non-natives would probably ask for the natives' help in the first years of the new world. In 90 years, with two generations past, they'd probably be one at that point, all sharing their knowledge with one another. I'm not sure about languages, however, most likely that natives who still stick to their languages would teach their children and maybe it would survive in a few families, but most likely that people would still keep using english, if anything just as a lingua franca.
With both of those place their position on the scale of no human life to reclaimed cities comes down to the individuals who survive and their attitudes towards each other. In both regions you have natives that understand survival but would have no real reason to take back cities, and non natives that wouldn't understand the nuances of the regions survival and thus may either vastly help or hurt the natives.
I'm considering making a map that we can up date with agreed upon survivor colonies and what areas we consider more dealer choice in their survival.
North Korea would be almost surly destroyed
Quetanto, I think you are quite likely right.
I'm pretty certain this has been discussed already, but I'm pretty certain that Japan (and maybe Madagascar?) survived, based on this (https://prnt.sc/n977xo) (from pg.13) indicating they closed, or otherwise restricted access to their borders on Day 3.
In particular, Hokkaido (the northernmost Japanese island) is likely to survive, due to its a) isolation and b) cold winters.
Historically, Japan closed its borders for over 220 years between the period of 1630 and 1850. They have abundant natural resources, although the fishing industry would surely take a hit, manufacturing, electric generation, etc. Moreover, they have a common language throughout the island, and a strong national identity. The only thing lacking is a strong military, due to the influence of the United States post-WWII. But I still think they would have the ability to defend themselves from the threat of epidemic.
I wonder if the emergence of the Rash in Japan would lead to a resurgence of traditional Shintoist spiritual beliefs and practices, in the same way it did for Scandinavia?
Worse, imagine the cities. There are 13 million people in Tokyo at the moment. That's going to be a veritable hive of decay.
Well, you could always use WMD to solve those kinds of problem.
Well, you could always use WMD to solve those kinds of problem.You don't even need them. Just let a few strategic nuclear reactors go critical. Even magic can't counter radiation.
You don't even need them. Just let a few strategic nuclear reactors go critical. Even magic can't counter radiation.
I would be curious to see what happened around Chernobyl.
I would be curious to see what happened around Chernobyl.I saw a video recently where the area is reforesting and has become a de facto nature reserve. I should look up a link.
I would be curious to see what happened around Chernobyl.
You're again still forgetting animal vectors. Borders won't stop those.
The thought of North Korea going MacArthur on itself to keep out the trolls is actually really innovative, do you think that that strategy could be used elsewhere as well?
The thought of North Korea going MacArthur on itself to keep out the trolls is actually really innovative, do you think that that strategy could be used elsewhere as well?
I think you'd have a lot of survivor communities in the middle east, especially the southern and western parts of the Arab Peninsula and in Iran. Those areas are hot, dry, and mountainous. Lots of linguistic continuity in the two regions (not between them) and plenty of ability to isolate themselves through natural barriers.
You know those movies where the hero is driving a car and suddenly crashes into a bomb and the car makes a somersault in the air and then lands on a helicopter and the hero chases down the bad guys with the helicopter-car? The physics in this comic are sometimes a little like that, except no somersault (and no bomb, car or helicopter).Source: Adventure I, page 163
Personally, my priorities on survivor communities are less based on logistics and more based on what gives me fun ideas to play around with. While my opinion is... probably not ideal for this thread, I do feel validated by Word of Minna:Source: Adventure I, page 163
Food never runs out entirely while the sea is around them. And in that picture I see lots of areas where one could put in a few potatoes or onions well mulched with seaweed, or plant a few boxes of lettuce, radishes, cabbage or suchlike. Might be both safer than the mainland, and if I remember correctly it was a Pagan holy place for even longer than it has been a Christian one. That might help, and Michael was supposed to be one of the protecting saints..... it is good that the causeway has been removed.
Food never runs out entirely while the sea is around them. And in that picture I see lots of areas where one could put in a few potatoes or onions well mulched with seaweed, or plant a few boxes of lettuce, radishes, cabbage or suchlike. Might be both safer than the mainland, and if I remember correctly it was a Pagan holy place for even longer than it has been a Christian one. That might help, and Michael was supposed to be one of the protecting saints..... it is good that the causeway has been removed.
Those are all excellent points. Maybe it's more viable than I thought!
Pulling a bit of thread necromancy here, but saw some pics of Mont-Saint-Michel in France on Twitter today and can't help thinking what an awesome place it would be to hold out against the rash in - particularly now that they've removed the causeway to allow all the accumulated silt to wash away and make it into a real island again.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EU4Rfd3XYAIF5oB?format=jpg&name=large) (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EU4RfgaX0AAFzWV?format=jpg&name=medium)
Of course food would run out in no time...
I love the idea, though maybe it wouldn't be as impregnable as it seems. The Mont Saint-Michel is surrounded by water when the tide is high, but you can easily access it by walking on the sand when it's low tide. There *are* dangerous areas with quicksand, but nothing a big troll or giant couldn't escape. Also there are a lot of people living close to the shore in this area, so lots of trollified menaces are to be expected.
On the other hand, the walls are high enough to protect the population for a good while, so it would probably still be a pretty safe place. I'll believe so anyway, I really want a few Bretons and Normands to have survived the Rash!
"The year is 90. France is entirely occupied by trolls. Well, not entirely... A small island of indomitable Bretons and Normands still holds out against the infected."Well we have our SSSS/Asterix crossover! XD
I love the idea, though maybe it wouldn't be as impregnable as it seems. The Mont Saint-Michel is surrounded by water when the tide is high, but you can easily access it by walking on the sand when it's low tide. There *are* dangerous areas with quicksand, but nothing a big troll or giant couldn't escape.
Also, it depends on the population. They could even concentrate on the higher houses and demolish most buildings near the wall, creating a green ring for farming and protection.
"The year is 90. France is entirely occupied by trolls. Well, not entirely... A small island of indomitable Bretons and Normands still holds out against the infected."
Pulling a bit of thread necromancy here, but saw some pics of Mont-Saint-Michel in France on Twitter today and can't help thinking what an awesome place it would be to hold out against the rash in - particularly now that they've removed the causeway to allow all the accumulated silt to wash away and make it into a real island again.
And after all this conversation, and Wyrm "hell yes", here is an inspiring picture...
(https://i.postimg.cc/LYdXPF8t/Mont-Saint-Michael-Y90.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/LYdXPF8t)
(click on the image to see a bigger version)
It seems that they did manage to survive quite well :)
Edit: forgot to add guns to the wall... maybe later...
And after all this conversation, and Wyrm "hell yes", here is an inspiring picture...That's truly awesome!! Definetely a new headcannon for me x)
(https://i.postimg.cc/LYdXPF8t/Mont-Saint-Michael-Y90.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/LYdXPF8t)
(click on the image to see a bigger version)
It seems that they did manage to survive quite well :)
Edit: forgot to add guns to the wall... maybe later...
God, I was living for this ! Maybe Breton and Norman would have finally arrived at some kind of armistice and they would have lived in peace at Mont Saint-Michel (such a beautiful fiction)Yes, *fiction*. Even in year 90, there would still be quarrels to know which region Mont Saint-Michel belongs to.
That's amazing! :D
EDIT: Oh, and we should not be surprised that there are survivors in Normandy, when you consider their flag (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/Flag_of_Normandy.svg/1200px-Flag_of_Normandy.svg.png)* ;D
* One of them
That's truly awesome!! Definetely a new headcannon for me x)
Yes, *fiction*. Even in year 90, there would still be quarrels to know which region Mont Saint-Michel belongs to.
*draws sword* Peace was never an option.
also the flag of Bretagne is way cooler than the Normand flag, just sayin' c:
"And who would have thought just how invigorating the "herbal tea" can become, when brewed by the crazy, bearded old man who keeps muttering to [insert old Normandian or Breton deity]"?
Thanks, Gaelle! (may I call you just Gaelle?). My headcannon is also loaded with that idea! :DYes, of course you can call me Gaelle! (which is a very Breton name btw, so you know on which side I stand c:)
Those quarrels could be* a good starting point for a story. Imagine that one faction in dominant and lives in the old abbey, while the others live on the lower areas... Peace is nice but usually isn't good fuel for stories. :)
* : Will be! I already have a file name "Mont Saint Michael" on my stories directory. It has just that initial "Asterix" line, but damn that's a great start line!
Yes, of course you can call me Gaelle! (which is a very Breton name btw, so you know on which side I stand c:)
haha sorry, my patriotic breton side is coming out, i'll go back to eat crêpes and Ploumilliau sausages ^^"
What could be better than a few separatists on a piece of land lost at high tide? :p
But yeah, the Breton mages may have some peculiarities. Always want to find mistletoe, wearing a white dress and a superb red cape!
The concern of Mont Saint-Michel is that it is really small. Strictly speaking, there would be two Norman and Breton families . If they do not decide to mix the blood, it risks to lead to some inbreeding.
The concern of Mont Saint-Michel is that it is really small. Strictly speaking, there would be two Norman and Breton families . If they do not decide to mix the blood, it risks to lead to some inbreeding.Mont Saint Michel is small, but I'm guessing they would have been able to welcome more people in by making the old shops and hotels into houses. People could also live in the abbey, like the monks do today.
Mont Saint Michel is small, but I'm guessing they would have been able to welcome more people in by making the old shops and hotels into houses. People could also live in the abbey, like the monks do today.
Yeah, and maybe over time they could have managed to arrange some foraging on the mainland to supplement the food grown on the island? Still, it would be a small community (well, two small communities). Perhaps some of them could be tourists stranded there who have very different heritage to add to the mix, Asian for example?
(this is BTW something I feel we should see in Iceland of the comic, blended in a bit by now, but still showing in some of the population. There are always loads of tourists there, some of whom certainly got stuck, and also the NATO base has rotating troops who may have stayed)
Perhaps some of them could be tourists stranded there who have very different heritage to add to the mix, Asian for example?
(this is BTW something I feel we should see in Iceland of the comic, blended in a bit by now, but still showing in some of the population. There are always loads of tourists there, some of whom certainly got stuck, and also the NATO base has rotating troops who may have stayed)
That's really cool ruth!
I've been trying one myself since yesterday (over 9000 hours inpaintGIMP, do not steal :P), but I still can't find the right place for the settlements...(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41908692/Maps/Iberia/Untitled.png) (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41908692/Maps/Iberia/spain.png)
(Click for a biger one)
Something's clear though: It shouldn't be bigger than Mora, it should be away from the coast (The most densely populated areas, specially in the mediterranean, after the capital's surrroundings), and it should be In the northwest and north, because of the temperatures. Then there's things like castles, small walled towns, little villages in the mountains... The only two places I've found are Almeida (Portugal) and Ciudad Rodrigo (Spain), one next to the other, and I hope to find something in the Pyrenees...
Care to share any tips?
hello, can you link your map again? I'd very much like to see itI would suggest a few more places in Portugal.
The Azores also have a NATO airbase (Lages, at "Terceira" island)Huh. For some reason, I thought it was "Lajes" Field.
Huh. For some reason, I thought it was "Lajes" Field.You are correct. My bad! :-[ In my defense it's a frequente mistake because both sound exactly the same and some defend that both are right in etymological terms. But officialy "lages" doesn't exist.
Too bad they didn't call the others "Quarta" - Fourth, "Quinta" - fifth and so on, because Geography students would have a much easier task :)Nah, that's reserved to historians focused on the Roman Empire.
Nah, that's reserved to historians focused on the Roman Empire.(https://images7.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED927/5e2ab1d7afdd0.jpeg)
(What, you thought that "Octavian" was a perfectly normal first name?)
(https://images7.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED927/5e2ab1d7afdd0.jpeg)Good thing she introduced herself with her first name, rather than as "Ms. Miller" ... ;D
Valaam monastery, on an island in the middle of lake Lagoda, and Solovetsky monastery, in the middle of the White Sea, both seem great places for surviving communities!
So upon request ppl from the art thread asked me to put this map I made a while ago here.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4f859ad9-5405-47ee-8f62-5b4a07afeebc/deabirh-12da4b05-8f17-4795-b046-5cd82abc7bdd.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3sicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNGY4NTlhZDktNTQwNS00N2VlLThmNjItNWI0YTA3YWZlZWJjXC9kZWFiaXJoLTEyZGE0YjA1LThmMTctNDc5NS1iMDQ2LTVjZDgyYWJjN2JkZC5wbmcifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6ZmlsZS5kb3dubG9hZCJdfQ.bIfDlmszfN1E_n6xDhYglRYrZKg07ZDIT9PlD_6yPfk)
I'll paste the writeup I put on my deviantart page (on a spoiler because I'm not an evil evil person) and feel free to ask, criticize or add to this little setting.Spoiler: show
You did this?Thanks! I have some plans on doing a few other maps for South America but I'd need to do more research into the places I'd imagine other clusters of humans surviving since the region of the subcontinent where I live is very flat, very warm and in this context very dead.
This is Amazing!
Are you planning to do more in the future?
Thanks! I have some plans on doing a few other maps for South America but I'd need to do more research into the places I'd imagine other clusters of humans surviving since the region of the subcontinent where I live is very flat, very warm and in this context very dead.
I have some plans on doing a few other maps for South America
Ah, might I be able to make such maps.Hey I'm not good either, don't worry about it, I just screenshotted Patagonia from Google Earth and traced over it a lot.
I wanted to make a similar map of the Mediterranean region, but unfortunately I'm bad at drawing.
Any plans on the other regions in the world?Not really but I've seen a lot of SSSS fanmaps floating around the internet, here's a few I found
Though that would probably depend on how many, if any, native species turned out to be immune.
The UK does have the Isle of Man, which even nowadays has its own culture which is a mix of Scandinavian and Celtic, as well as its own style of magic. I would be curious to see how that played out.
And I have had a go at some fanfic set in Australia. I’m Tanist on Archive of Our Own. In the real world I live in country South Australia, but I have lived all over Australia as well as in other parts of the world. See what you think. I think deserts as well as islands might have a good chance.
I suppose sea beasts are an issue wherever there is marine mammalian life (mammalian marine life? I can usually tell the order but not this time), so dolphins and porpoises, seals, sea lions, sea otters etc are a concern too in addition to the great whales and walruses etc. In a way the smaller ones are easier to stop (try to imagine a sea defense capable of withstanding and attack from a whalebeast) but also harder because they can get through small cracks.
Japan currently imports some 60% of its food; so they'd have to make it through a very bad famine at the start. By year 90 I expect that would have sorted itself out; though with a much smaller population than they currently have.
What the societal repurcussions would be of having such a huge chunk of the population starve to death, plus malnutrition effects on the children of year zero and those born in the generation after , is an interesting question (interesting from a safe distance, of course, especially the safe distance of a fictional context.)
Can you imagine if a blue whale or orca managed to grow limbs and climb ashore? They are giants naturally, and would be truly frightening as beasts.
dreki, yes, those are some of my stories.
They have the food stores, the self-reliance, and the building ability -- but the attitude towards contagious diseases, at least among the local-to-me Old Order Mennonites, is "God will protect his Church". Both accidental and disease-caused deaths and injuries are taken as being God's will. Vaccination rates are very low and masking was only practiced when legally required and often not then unless strongly enforced by authorities outside the church.
How they would react to the appearance of what appears to be in effect actual demons I don't know. But I very much doubt that any effective reaction would be fast enough -- unless, of course, in that universe their version of God actually spoke to them, before it was too late, to warn them and tell them what to do.
Not to forget vermin beasts and other animals.
Yeah, rats can swim, suprisingly large distances.
Human trolls seem to have endless mutational abilities and many would retain their ability to swim even if they weren't a sjødraug per se. So they are big enough to get caught out by the picket reef systems we saw in the Saimaa flashback, but unfortunately many still have use of their thumbs.
Oh god. I just realized.
Raccoon trolls
Nothing in north america survived. Nothing at all.
I have the seeds of something in my head that involves (with the aid of local gods) the reappearance of bobcats and The Cat of Many Names (one of which is mountain lion).
-- bobcats definitely exist in this area, though they're not common. Cat of Many Names is reputed and rumored to still survive here, though officially denied.
a beastified skunk, which as well as teeth and claws retains the ability to spray…….Minna stated that bats etc. cannot fly when rashed due to the deformities throwing their wing-generated lift out of balance.
Minna stated that bats etc. cannot fly when rashed due to the deformities throwing their wing-generated lift out of balance.
Rocket propulsion may be a different beast ... ;)
Dare we descend into discourse over the lift/force generated by gaseous emissions of various beasts?There are ... possibilities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle#Mechanism_of_defense). :P
(ignoring that IRL the skunk scent gland emission does not have a lot of force associated with it)
There are ... possibilities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle#Mechanism_of_defense). :P