InsaneJournal

Current mood:	dorky
Current music:	Architecture in Helsinki--The Disco at the End of the World

dancing at the disco at the end of the world
Assignment: Write a paper on theoretical state of the USA after a supposed disaster, based on the state of Europe after Rome fell.

This Is Not About a Zombie Apocalypse
(But That Would Have Been Neat)

The place is the former United States of America. The time is indeterminate, because stating a solid date in speculative fiction is a good way to get laughed at by your peers thirty years down the road. The situation...is the end of the world.

Well, that's what they say, but maybe it's not the end of the world. Maybe it isn't even the end of the country, although that probably isn't the right label anymore. Granted, there was a snowballing series of events that started with a disturbing incident involving a duck and a bottle rocket (or so the rumors say, at least) and ended with a mild nuclear armageddon, and now the USA is feeling a little less united and more in a state lately, but I haven't given up hope in the old girl yet. Although, things are a little...bleak.

Take Old Alaska, for example. With Canada officially politely not speaking to any US territories after Snowballing Event #42 (they say it's got something to do with a bowling ball, a turnip, the Prime Minister, and 2.1 metric tons of high-grade fertilizer) and the continental US being rather busy ripping itself into a series of warring feudal states, they're stranded. Too damn cold to grow what they need, and no trucks to take it to them, and nuclear winter coming on...oh, yes, there's going to be a reckoning out there. In a few years, though, once the weak ones have been culled out and the tough ones have worked out a way to get back down here, there'll be a high trade in furs and fish, especially with Canada having shut its doors. Might be a little hard to understand them, though, if their accents go wild enough.

We'd be having the same problem over here in Steeltown, of course, except we've got the shit worth trading for--the day the bombs dropped, our factory doors slammed open. We've got the war machines, we've got the tanks and the Jeeps and the armored vans. Armored trucks, too, for hauling trade goods over rocky territory when the Carolinans get uppity. We've got the rail guns and the shotguns and the rocket launchers, in three convenient sizes for Mommy, Daddy and Baby Bear. We've got the heavy metals, and that's important these days. Teeth-eating mutant porcupines don't care much about political discourse.

The Carolinans are a problem, of course. The two states dissolved together when the union broke instead of bitching about separate names like everyone else, so they've got a lot of land, good land, not irradiated like The State Formerly Known as Texas or Smokin' Oklahoma or the two Dakotas (Rootin' and Tootin', respectively, although neither of them are doing either anymore) or the remaining five-eighths of Kansas. And they're on the sea--granted, so is the entire Midwest since that last attack, but their fish don't come with eight legs whether they're octopussies or not and their boats don't melt four minutes into the voyage. They're intercepting a good sixty percent of the foreign aid, they don't like our trucks trying to get down to Marginally Less Rowdy Georgia for our produce, and while they haven't figured out how to touch us yet, the things they've been doing to Marthaland and The Happiest State on Earth are downright rude.

They're busy deflowering the Virginias right now--poor bastards didn't have as much foresight to play the "sister states" card, last I heard one was trying to claim itself as Awesome Virginia and the other one wanted to be the Mushroom Kingdom 'cause the senator was a bit of a Nintendo nut--but they're still close enough to make us a little uneasy. We may be on good terms with the Newest York faction, all the way from Former Pennsylvania to Wasn't Maine Here a Second Ago, but that's because we supply their implements of destruction. If the two butt heads...

Well, it's not up to me. I'm planning my escape route all the way over to H Prefecture before the shit hits the fan...again. They snuggled up to Japan as soon as this mess started, and they're untouchable for it. They're even far out enough in the ocean that they missed the bulk of the fallout. They have a higher class of mutants, the kind that only nibble your teeth, and in a polite manner. Granted, air travel isn't exactly reliable right now, what with the fallout messing with the global positioning units and the radiation storms and El Nino and the Winscowsinites and their dairy-based anti-aircraft missiles, but I've been working late at the factory and I think my gyrocopter is almost ready. I'm even picking up the language from old recordings, and I must say I'm a dab hand at it.. Ore wa inu desu ka? Gyuu gyuu manko-kun, nana desu ka chibi mimizu! Oh, yes...I'm ready.

That's the news from the Broken States of America, where all the men are losing their teeth and vomiting blood, seventy percent of the women are chemically infertile, and all the children are growing second eyelids.


Half of Del's brain: That was taken in the loosest possible sense of the assignment, was extremely silly, and was researched for a tenth of the time you took making up state names.
Other half: But it's done.
First half: ...carry on.


Thanks to Zeiss for the Dakotas and Georgia.