A.T.Hagan
Inactive
The story thread already being so big I'd like to keep from cluttering it up but I'm in somewhat of a quandary about a particular phase of the story. For you folks that have been reading it maybe you'd share some thoughts with me and I'll craft something out of them or maybe they'll give me an idea.
We're 29 days into the story now. There's all sorts of long-term implications to still be explored but the initial shock of the impact is passing. The nature of Man being what it is he's going to try to regroup and rebuild and it's starting to become time to examine that aspect of the story. There's still plenty of forces trying to maximize entropy but there's forcing trying to minimize it too.
A background info refresher:
It's the greatest disaster in recorded history. The Eastern Seaboard has been largely devastated for a couple of hundred miles or more inland except for Florida with it's broad, shallow continental shelf which has only been devastated for ten to twenty miles on both coasts. This is bad enough since that's where the majority of our population is. Miami pretty well washed across the Everglades into the Gulf thanks to the deep water channel that comes very close to shore there.
There's been a 6.1 earthquake along the New Madrid fault line and a 7.3 earthquake along the southern San Andreas fault in the Los Angeles area. The tusnamis that essentially scattered the East Coast cities across the continental shelf also hit the Gulf coast and West coast but to lesser extents essentially doing serious damage but not inflicting devastation on the West coast. The Gulf coast was largely a loss but not as far inland as on the East coast.
Impact induced rainfall averaged seventy inches of precipitation across the greater portion of the U.S. in twenty one days. A major dam failure occurred on the Tennessee river along with severe damage to flood control structures along the lower Mississippi but ports from Memphis northward are still usable as river levels begin to fall.
Estimated death toll: Roughly 40,000,000.
Economic loss: In the hundreds of billions.
In spite of all this the U.S. still stands as a nation. Many portions of the country still have at least limited electrical power, much of the telecomm network still functions outside of the devastated areas. Fuel is in critically short supply due to damage to port terminals and refineries in coastal areas. Most of the major food stores are found in the Midwestern and Western states and little of it was lost but lack of transport is a serious impediment.
Here's the questions:
#1 - What is the government doing to get the nation back on its feet and productive as quickly as possible?
#2 - For those areas where it has been possible to maintain electrical power and telecomm how long do the respective companies continue to provide these services when so many people are out of work and may not be able to pay for them? Does the government involve itself in this?
#3 - Obviously the bottom has been well and truly blown out of the economy but how about folks with mortgages on real property, and other loans on tangible goods? Do the lending institutions try to demand payment? Does the government involve itself?
How does the nation pick itself up again?
I've tried to keep the story as realistic as I could so lets keep our ideas to things that have actually been done in the past or might actually be tried in view of the extraordinary circumstances of the story. Lets hear some ideas!
THANKS!!!
.....Alan.
We're 29 days into the story now. There's all sorts of long-term implications to still be explored but the initial shock of the impact is passing. The nature of Man being what it is he's going to try to regroup and rebuild and it's starting to become time to examine that aspect of the story. There's still plenty of forces trying to maximize entropy but there's forcing trying to minimize it too.
A background info refresher:
It's the greatest disaster in recorded history. The Eastern Seaboard has been largely devastated for a couple of hundred miles or more inland except for Florida with it's broad, shallow continental shelf which has only been devastated for ten to twenty miles on both coasts. This is bad enough since that's where the majority of our population is. Miami pretty well washed across the Everglades into the Gulf thanks to the deep water channel that comes very close to shore there.
There's been a 6.1 earthquake along the New Madrid fault line and a 7.3 earthquake along the southern San Andreas fault in the Los Angeles area. The tusnamis that essentially scattered the East Coast cities across the continental shelf also hit the Gulf coast and West coast but to lesser extents essentially doing serious damage but not inflicting devastation on the West coast. The Gulf coast was largely a loss but not as far inland as on the East coast.
Impact induced rainfall averaged seventy inches of precipitation across the greater portion of the U.S. in twenty one days. A major dam failure occurred on the Tennessee river along with severe damage to flood control structures along the lower Mississippi but ports from Memphis northward are still usable as river levels begin to fall.
Estimated death toll: Roughly 40,000,000.
Economic loss: In the hundreds of billions.
In spite of all this the U.S. still stands as a nation. Many portions of the country still have at least limited electrical power, much of the telecomm network still functions outside of the devastated areas. Fuel is in critically short supply due to damage to port terminals and refineries in coastal areas. Most of the major food stores are found in the Midwestern and Western states and little of it was lost but lack of transport is a serious impediment.
Here's the questions:
#1 - What is the government doing to get the nation back on its feet and productive as quickly as possible?
#2 - For those areas where it has been possible to maintain electrical power and telecomm how long do the respective companies continue to provide these services when so many people are out of work and may not be able to pay for them? Does the government involve itself in this?
#3 - Obviously the bottom has been well and truly blown out of the economy but how about folks with mortgages on real property, and other loans on tangible goods? Do the lending institutions try to demand payment? Does the government involve itself?
How does the nation pick itself up again?
I've tried to keep the story as realistic as I could so lets keep our ideas to things that have actually been done in the past or might actually be tried in view of the extraordinary circumstances of the story. Lets hear some ideas!
THANKS!!!
.....Alan.
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