Poll

What do you think the state of things is beyond Scandinavia?

More of the Silent World: Trolls, beasts and giants everywhere
7 (16.7%)
A few groups of humans, but mostly wilderness
14 (33.3%)
USA and other superpowers are relatively intact
0 (0%)
Scorched Earth: nothing, not even grosslings, is alive
0 (0%)
Plenty of places like Scandinavia, but isolated
21 (50%)

Total Members Voted: 37

Voting closed: July 03, 2015, 03:28:37 PM

Author Topic: Survivor communities outside the known world  (Read 256110 times)

Mayabird

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #435 on: March 13, 2015, 09:13:32 PM »
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). 

ruth

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #436 on: March 13, 2015, 09:22:23 PM »
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). 

it is true! though sadly the mainers haven't gotten much screen time. they're a bit peripheral to the main focus of the story, but they made it. :)
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Richard Weir

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #437 on: March 14, 2015, 01:40:13 PM »
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!
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FinnishViking

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #438 on: March 14, 2015, 01:54:06 PM »
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!

Well depends on if we are talking about the inland islands or the ones in baltic sea.

Inland isles rarely have any large mammals and while there are seals the isn't really large numbers of them left since as of 2013 there were only 310 of them left and of that are split to western population that shouldn't at least any more be a threat to humans, but in the east the population happens to live just in the area where there are many isles that could be used by survivors.

Udodelig

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #439 on: March 15, 2015, 01:26:28 AM »
Inka Enclaves: population ~10,000 in 12 enclaves across Peru.
Immunity in all enclaves 99.9%
Map of Salcantay Enclave, largest and greatest of the Apu.



One of the New Inka Enclaves, Salcantay was the first Apu (greater mountain spirits) awoken by the survivors of Cuzco.  Immunity is 100%, and llama are like cats; immune to the infection and capable of providing competent infected defense through instinctive magic spells.  White on the map is Apu Ground: sacred, snowbound, only to be visited to summon Apu through blood sacrifice of a Llama.  Blue overlay is Llama Herding and riverbeds.  Green is the terraces Salcantay formed in year 1 to keep hir worshiper's alive.  Terraces were formed in a single night after a great llama sacrifice, sprouting out of the mountains fully formed and planted with hundreds of varieties of potatoes.  Red overlay is patrolled by trained condor squads (think the eagles from Lord of the Rings) granted purpose by Salcantay to guard hirself from the dangers of the Supay (giants) and the denizens of Ukhu Pacha (trolls and beasts). 

Magic to the Inka is almost exclusively defensive; endurance, camouflage, and agriculture.  Aggressive Inka magic is used exclusively by llamas, and consists primarily of petrification.  Because of this llama are only sacrificed to greater Apu in times of desperate crisis, like an extremely warm summer or earthquake.  With the resurgence of Inkan beliefs Chakana symbols became powerful forces of conformity (Chakana symbology gives 12 rules of life) and communication (the hole in the Chakana is a pathway to the spirit realm). 

John Candlebury

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #440 on: March 15, 2015, 06:49:47 PM »
I havent read through all the thread yet, so I don't know if this idea as been thown in an earlier page. But here I go anyway:

While the odds don't seem to favor settlements in continental US at all, I think it would be quite likely that a fragment(perhaps even sizable if the government acted quick) of the us Navy would be capable of dodging the initial onslaught and docking somewhere in the southern Canadian archipelago. Where they could pretty much survive as Iceland did.

If particularly daring, they could even try to reclaim naval bases around Canada and the US, as they would probably have enough firepower to turn the cities around them to blazing infernos, especially if they do that while they still have limited air power. That way securing resources to maintain their ships. With some luck and decent planning they would be able keep their nuclear navy and some planes operational 90 years after the outbreak.

At the very least all the US nuclear submarines would be bound to eventually end shipwrecked (purposefully or accidentally) somewhere, perhaps if situations were favorable they could establish small settlements after that.

Vafhudr

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #441 on: March 16, 2015, 01:53:05 AM »
So. I saw a few posts on the topic of survivability in Canada. Some of these posts were very well done, and I thought I might as well pitch in. For reference, my experience is with Quebec, Nunavut, Ontario, the Northwest Territories, and British Columbia. I can't really speak for much else, but I thought I might as well share some of the stuff I think and daydream about.

The major issue for Canada is that most of its production capacity, agricultural capacity, and population are all jammed in narrow corridors of arable, high-pop density land. Cascadia (The Victoria-Vancouver-Seattle triangle), Upper and Lower Canada (Roughly from Quebec to Toronto - largely flat-land, very arable, very open - the center of Canadian trade for a reason), the Red River Settlement area (old Manitoba), and the Calgary-Edmonton corridor, as well as largely island of civilization in that sea of geography we call our country. These are all maximum overdead. They are all modern cities - flat, grid-like, largely unholdable and extremely porous. Quebec City is the only exception, but being the last fortified city in North America will do little against the infection. So the Woodlands of Southern Ontario and Quebec, as well as the open plains of the prairies and the valleys of British Columbia are screwed.

This leaves basically all settlements entrenched in the, in context, apply-named Canadian Shield. The problem with the Canadian Shield is that it's roughly 8 000 000 square kms of garbage - for civilization as we know it. It's extremely rugged, marshy, and comes with two seasonal settings - Cold and Mosquitoes. Most major settlements and aboriginal reservations situated within the Canadian Shield are not self-sufficient in the matters of most staples and food.

For instance, I work at a major grocery store in Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories. We receive major shipments of food from Edmonton, and in turn we supply the smaller communities. Collapse of the south means collapse of food stock. Almost immediately. A lot of people adopt a survivalist mindset up in the North. After all - you just need a bad blizzard or a very bad forest fire season and all communication of the south can be cut for a few days or even a week. Many people will have cache. But those will be spent sooner than later and should not be accounted seriously. Some agriculture is possible. Kale, potatoes, cabbage, rhubarb - those can grow very well during the very short but luminously intense summer season.

A return to the land won't be easy either. Needless to say that the average Canadian is not much of a survivalist, even less a hunter-gatherer, though a lot of us do supplement the usual supermarket fare with some game. Even aboriginals will have a hard time -a lot of traditional knowledge has been lost and eroded in just the last 100 years. Inuit kids of my generations will not know how to hunt without a skidoo or a gun, if they will know how to live off the land at all. The land may be harsh enough to stem the beasts and trolls, and the likelihood of giants is more or less nil, but that goes both ways - the land will kill us too, if we aren't careful.

So survival, to use the model proposed by user Hrolfr - I think a lot of Northern Canada, while isolated and should be able to resist phase 1 well enough, will stumble pretty hard by phase II - actually handling the apocalypse.

In the Northwest Territories, if civilization survives at all, it will be concentrated around Yellowknife and the Great Slave lake. In summer and winter the lake can be used to connect with other communities around it (the lake is massive) by boating and sledding. Hay River could be a small agricultural hub. The culture would be largely Dene with some European, Philipino and Vietnamese touches, if the current demographics are anything to go by.

Population: 15 000. Maybe. If they have recovered. If they can get something stable going, they will not have to fear much, beside the night, a sudden outbreak among the bisons or the cariboos, or the arrival of some kind of monster in the region. Due to a return to largely pre-industrial living conditions, in a harsh land, reproduction rate will remain low. High child mortality, not to mention the odd case of Rash, combined with the looming threat of starvation and the fact that they are only one bad harvest or infected herd away from being snuffed out, another light going out in the dark.

Nunavut and Nunavik, and everyone living around the Hudson's bay, will probably go down to 2-3000 souls. At most. No cities can be sustained without intervention from the south. They would have to revert to traditional hunting and survival techniques. The problem with this is that they relied heavily on sea mammals - especially seal, and to an extent, whales. If infection levels are low, they can thrive, if they are not, I can't imagine the horror of paddling a kayak out there with a leviathan lurking below. 1000 at most or nil/displaced and the frozen wasteland they call home is abandoned.

Now Quebec provides a few interesting opportunities.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/124103985@N06/14943835818/

This image, provided to us by user ruth is solid - and I would just make some additional suggestions:

- I think I case could be made for the inclusion of Sept-Iles as a major surviving settlements. With it's eponymous islands, it could set up a system similar to Mora. Plus, its access to aluminium, ores, and electricity would be invaluable to the technological efforts of the New Canada.

- The Saguenay River, as well as some of the major settlements on it such as Saguenay, could still be intact and probably the core of the Quebec economic engine. The high population density makes it unlikely, but I would make the argument that considering that it's probably on the cusp and cutting line between isolated/hospitable to agricultural civilization, that it would probably have been a major effort from Canadian/or even Quebec Forces - to make their stand there. Saguenay is the Reykjavík/Mora (outside of St.John) that civilization in Canada would need to be able to re-assert itself and at least keep the Silent World at bay. But this is about as far down as it is possible to do so.
So, again, I follow Hroflr on this.

Another cool thing is that it would probably be the hub of something else - relations with the Cree nations. Their territories lie mostly in sparsely populated land and connect themselves upward through most of the Canadian shield. You could, in fact, travel your way through Cree territory up to the Northwest territory. The pocket of civilization I described in the Northwest Territory could, in theory, be connected to the rest of Canada through the Cree-controlled river systems of the CS. A French-Canadian/Cree Alliance would not be surprising, nor would be a Newfoundland/Inuit alliance.

Just like post-apocalyptic Norway saw the rise of a sort of neo-Viking culture, post-apocalyptic northern Quebec could see the return of the voyageurs. Whereas the Newfies will be the masters of the sea, the Canadiens and their Cree allies will be masters of the land, capable of traveling through the complicated and hazardous river system that makes up the true and alternative circulatory system of Canada, connecting pockets of civilization within the Shield, trading for the various staples these communities would be generating for the sake of sustaining human life a bit longer. The voyageur, no longer carrying pelts and pemmican, but spare parts and mail and other necessities, little flickers of light in the deep darkness of the Canadian night.

- The Cree nations would in fact become a serious player, being the most populous first-nation group in Canada and largely located well within the "safe-zone". The Canadian Shield is their turf.

- it's rather generous to give St. Pierre and Miquelon their own part of the alliance. They would probably fall under the dominion of the french Canadians. ;P Canada will remain a nation of two solitudes, even in the post-apocalyptic future!

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. A lot of French-Canadians come from northern France/Bretagne, which was famously colonized by Norse raiders (hence the Normans). A mix of Norse, Celtic (French populations have the famous Gauls to boast about, while the Newfies have a sizeable heritage of Irish ancestors), and aboriginal religion could be fostered. Anticousti would not be so much a settlement as much as a sanctuary with a sizeable, intact herd of deers and other mammals. A mix between a holy sanctuary and Svalbard. Maybe Newfoundland could be renamed Vinland and Quebec will revert to Canada. I mean, there is no point in calling it Quebec if the rest of Canada does not exist anymore. The Newfies will get to keep their Grade A War Dogs, to boot. Invaluable while out in the literal sea of monsters that will be the Gulf.

Total population - between 70 to 150 000 for Neo-Canada, including Crees.

- On the topic of BC, I think Deadlander's analysis is dead-on and very cool.

One day I will write this fan side-adventure. Canada has a bunch of untapped folklore and imagery that could lend itself nicely to a story and setting like SSSS.

So yeah. Food for thoughts, I suppose.
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cynicalos

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #442 on: March 16, 2015, 03:39:40 PM »
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.

Which is something to consider for Russia and Ukraine as well - the Kievan Rus', Novgorod, etc. Although, East of the Urals I doubt there would be much in the way of survival. Westwards, though.....

ChristopherMcCauley

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #443 on: March 19, 2015, 02:40:19 PM »
Africa and Asian regions might have a really good time with their big cats down there.

snotra

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #444 on: March 30, 2015, 05:50:06 PM »
Although the chances might be rather slim anything remotely like it actually survived, there is a stretch of coastline going from the west coast of North Holland to the south coast of Denmark that might harbour survivors, even if they're just small pockets. These islands are usually remote in Dutch standards, you need to approach the islands by boat or via the north sea, and part of the sea on one side is partially drained due to tidal workings, creating various treacherous waterways and swamp-like conditions which can give one the possibility to walk there, but it's basically suicide to go there without a guide. Secondly, the islanders have for a long time learned to fend for themselves, although they have been inundated with tourism in the past decades. Take away the ferries though, and the accessability of the islands drops to about 5% of the normal influx, considering you need detailed knowledge of the local sea bed and safe passages or a window of some 6 hours to walk across a swamp. This general region is called the Wadden (plural) in the local language (both Frisian and Dutch).
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Adge

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #445 on: March 30, 2015, 07:01:07 PM »
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...
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kapitod

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #446 on: March 31, 2015, 02:05:08 PM »
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?

Koeshi

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #447 on: March 31, 2015, 02:23:56 PM »
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.  And even if they have now been cleared, why create an isolated population area that will have to rely on support from the major settlements when there isn't exactly a lack of space elsewhere.

ruth

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #448 on: March 31, 2015, 02:29:01 PM »
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?

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.
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kapitod

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Re: Survivor communities outside the known world
« Reply #449 on: March 31, 2015, 02:45:53 PM »
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.

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.

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.

A mass evacuation of the already small population, likely reduced by starvation, infighting and sea monster attacks makes more sense.  And also why there would be a "base" on the northern Shetlands, probably a semi-permanent way-station/resupply area.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2015, 03:02:23 PM by kapitod »