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.pngI'm afraid it's not the best map I could find, so if something's unclear, help yourself with Google maps.
First of all, we can write off Szczecin, Gda?sk, Warszawa and Kraków with their whereabouts. First two are major ports, so well - dead. Warszawa, as capital city one million strong, is double dead. Kraków lies in the mountains and as such could have some protection, but it's THE tourist destination in Poland. So I wouldn't count on it.
The pros, then: first of all, we've got a lot of rural areas, which makes it hard for trolls to hide, and easy for small groups of people to feed. Second, there's a lot of small cities (5-15 houses) that have little to barely any contact with outside and are pretty much self-sufficient.
As to wildlife, the only big predator in Poland is linx, and that's a feline. There are some wolves in the mountains south, but I doubt you could make more than one giant if you amassed them all.
Of course, the biggest problem would be refugees, especially from Germany to the west, so I don't see much chance for any community on the west bank of Vistula river (it's not very visible on this map. It goes through Kraków, makes a big half-circle east of Kielce, then goes through Warszawa, Bygdoszcz and Gda?sk). Vistula and Odra (it makes our west border) would be big refugee-stoppers, limiting number of potential Rash carriers that'd make it to the east.
So, to sum up, possible places of survival in Poland would be:
- Mazury: on the map, those are the lakes east of Olsztyn, and there's a lot more of them than map would indicate. People there live mostly by fishing and some tourism, and there's a lot of smallish islands. Moreover, everybody there has yachts of motorboats.
- West of Rzeszów: it's a valley surrounded by mountains, and not very popular with visitors.
- Tatry mountains: it's this vaguely triangular shape extending southeast. The highest mountains in Poland, with snow every winter and few and scarce forests. There were people living there for centuries. The green patches on the map are
hala, or the giant mountainside meadows. OTOH, people there live by tourism and sheep breeding, so that's kind of a con.
- Katowice region: seeing how it's on the west of Vistula and on one of the main highways, it may seem strange, but consider that it's also a major coal, iron and other metals mining place, as well as main steel- and ironworks of Poland, which makes it capable of churning out tech and equipment as necessary. On the con side, it's the best connected and the densest-populated region in Poland, so maybe not...
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
Poll
