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If the United States were to collapse


jurble

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The Great Lakes Federation: Pop. 46.5 million. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan (minus Upper Peninsula), New Scandinavia (Upper Michigan Peninsula), Ohio, Wisconsin.

I have to admit, that's got a nice ring to it.

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I've lived most my life in SW Virginia - Roanoke and Blacksburg. Boyfriend is from Tazewell/Richlands. And I'd say that it's Allegheny, not Southern. Local identity is with the Appalachians and Blue Ridge Mountains. Probably the best dimensions of regional similarity follow the Blue Ridge along the national forest line - from the Chattahoochee to George Washington and Monogahela.

That's true. I had a very close friend in college who was from that area (her dad was a professor at a small college - she was one of like two in her town who actually went to college - and she made it to Oxford and Berkley). I visited her there once and, yeah, it was very much Appalachia - she even specifically told me it was like that as we were driving down from New York, I recall.

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A full quarter of Arizona (the NE corner) is Navajo Nation (and Hopi), along with portions of New Mexico. Hardly anyone goes there besides people driving through on I-40. I would imagine they would succeed in gaining independence from Arizona (no one really goes there anyway and there's nothing in it worth fighting for).

Map

The Lakotah (Sioux) also claim a pretty big territory, although I imagine the people in it would be way more willing to fight them.

Map

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Yeah, I've been trying to figure out what the next step for all this work would be. It feels like a first step in something. I was thinking along the lines of a game, but I haven't even begun to think about what sort or how it would work.

(Hey, I've also got a great idea for a variant of Clue based on Hamlet called "Murder Most Foul" that I started working on several months ago but it's been kind of stalled ever since. Could use help with that, too, if interested.)

Well, a fairly easy thing to do would be to glom it onto an already-existing roleplaying game framework. You could convert this into an alternate world sourcebook for World of Darkness or maybe even Cyberpunk. People like the ones in my college roleplaying game group would eat this up.

Risk or some variant thereof would also be a natural way to go. One could also take it in the direction of a game like Diplomacy, or the Game of Thrones board game... You could even make a collectible card game out of it. Really, the difficulty may be in picking which direction to go. I tend to find that when you have source material as rich as the map and writeup you've put together, game mechanics almost write themselves. ;)

The idea of working with you to help bring your ideas to fruition is tempting, despite my own back-burnered creative projects... Maybe send me a PM and we can chat...

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A full quarter of Arizona (the NE corner) is Navajo Nation (and Hopi), along with portions of New Mexico. Hardly anyone goes there besides people driving through on I-40. I would imagine they would succeed in gaining independence from Arizona (no one really goes there anyway and there's nothing in it worth fighting for).

Map

The Lakotah (Sioux) also claim a pretty big territory, although I imagine the people in it would be way more willing to fight them.

Map

Could a similar Native American enclave be carved out of Oklahoma, to resist the march of the Texans?

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Could a similar Native American enclave be carved out of Oklahoma, to resist the march of the Texans?

The big advantage for the Navajo and Hopi is that they're sitting on land nobody wants. They are also a long way from the population centers of Arizona (they actually outnumber neighboring Coconino County) I wouldn't mind taking Antelope Canyon for myself but really, nothing grows there and there is no water. The natives in Oklahoma and the Lakotah lands are outnumbered about 50 to 1 and sitting on prime farmland. Their best bet would be to try to get their current reservations confirmed by the new governments with some level of autonomy (like a race-exclusive county or something), because if Texas set itself to conquest they wouldn't stand a chance.

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El-A., when I was thinking about this yesterday I had meant to address the issue of the Indian reservations - your Souix Nation reminded me of that. Totally forgot that by the time I got to making the map, though. I'm thinking now maybe some of the bigger reservation areas should maybe become totally autonomous and maybe even expand some? The Souix, of course, I know there are some big ones in the SW and I think in Oklahoma still, too (I know Oklahoma was originally supposed to all be reserved...).

Yeah, those could easily be smaller nation-states in this scenario. Have to think about that.

Love your map, by the way - even more fanciful than mine, but some of it makes real sense.

Thanks.

I envision a rough alignment with the "conservative" powers of Deseret, Greater Texas, and the C.S.A. stacked up against the "liberal" states of the California Confederation, the People's Republic of Boston (with its satellite states of Connecticut and Rhode Island), and Mexico.

The Free Republic of the Rockies joins itself with Deseret against the socialist menace, but the alliance between the libertarian mountaineers and the servants of the Restored Gospel is an uneasy one.

The "United States of America" still exists, but is the weakest of the major powers, being made of widely dispersed territories. It tries to chart a middle course between the two great power blocs, as its armyless generals stalk the corridors of the half-ruined Pentagon dreaming of retaking the continent for Old Glory. :)

Also neutral are the relatively intact states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky, which together form the "Central Powers" pledged to a peaceful restoration of industry and commerce in the Northeast.

And notice the four city-states: Las Vegas, a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" probably soon to be smitten by the Mormons; New Orleans, home for many refuges from the Confederacy; Erie, a maritime republic whose galleys are the scourge of the lower Great Lakes, and New York, which controls the city proper, Long Island, and the Hudson shore of New Jersey.

I was kinda cheating with the "Sioux Nation", of course - after filling in all the more in interesting places around the borders the whole heartland remained empty, so I thought I'd give it to a huge nomadic horse-based empire in the tradition of the Huns and Mongols. The vast hordes of the Sioux remain aloof from either side of the struggle on the peripheries, knowing soon the time will come to drive the last White Man from the land of the Original People, in which shall dwell the Great Spirit and His braves alone.

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I was kinda cheating with the "Sioux Nation", of course - after filling in all the more in interesting places around the borders the whole heartland remained empty, so I thought I'd give it to a huge nomadic horse-based empire in the tradition of the Huns and Mongols. The vast hordes of the Sioux remain aloof from either side of the struggle on the peripheries, knowing soon the time will come to drive the last White Man from the land of the Original People, in which shall dwell the Great Spirit and His braves alone.

I am not really sure that I agree with the lay out of the Sioux Nation, alot of the states you suck into it are pretty stable economically and utilize very little in federal tax dollars to subside. They are also more populated than the native tribes in the area. (I am thinking states like Minnesota and Wisconsin. Iowa could live without the corn subsidies. I think North Dakota could be included in that statement as well.) Illinois is a highly populated state and I don't think Chicago would drift away that easily.

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