AH Map Challenege

Does anyone have the ability to produce a map that would show this:


From: Robert J. Gill (rjcgill@g2a.net)
Subject: The Great Nebraska Sea (was: Isolated America)


View this article only
Newsgroups: alt.history.what-if, soc.history.what-if
Date: 2001-11-29 15:09:33 PST


"Rassleholic" wrote in message news: What if the US disappeared?(Idea came from
strange twist in the WI:Iowa destroyed thread in
alt.history.what-if)All fifty United States and its territories(US
Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico,
> etc...) suddenly vanish off the face of the Earth, leaving 100 mile deep
> underwater holes where they once were. Meanwhile on an "alternate Earth"
> with only ocean, no land whatsoever, large blocks of ocean equal to the size
> and shape of the US and its territories disappear and the US appears in the
> empty spaces left by the ocean blocks. How would the Americaless Earth
> react? How would the US react to being isolated from everyone else? Please
> discuss.


This reminds me of a 1963 short story I once read, by Allen Danzig,
called "The Great Nebraska Sea." To make a long story short, the
American Heartland (not California) falls into the sea, due to an odd
geologic anomaly called the Kiowa Fault, running from about twenty
miles east of Denver, to the Arkansas River. The land east of the
fault begins to subside rapidly in Spetember-October 1973, at first
causing massive earthquakes, and prompting disorderly evacuations;
eventually, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, Arkansas (except for the Ozarks,
which become an archipelago), Kansas, the Texas panhandle, a small
part of Missouri, and the Gulf Coast, are submerged by an immense
inland sea, causing 14,000,000 deaths. This, however, has the opposite
effect as your scenario, with the introduction of a new sea to the
American interior expanding trade/contact (not isolating the U.S.)
with the rest of the world; 100 years later, Roswell, NM., Lincoln,
Nebraska, Kansas City, Fargo, ND, Denver, Colorado, Dallas, Texas, and
Memphis, Tennessee are major ports, commercial fisheries appear in
Missouri and Wyoming (which becomes an American Riviera), Colorado is
beachfront property, trade across the Great Nebraska Sea is done by
ferry, offshore oil rigs still remove oil from Oklahoma, and there are
endless political squabbles on Capitol Hill, over whether or not
unsubmerged pieces of states deserve to have representation in the
Senate. In fact, to demonstrate just how dated the story is, a
Governor Wallace type in Alabama makes a last defiant stand against
the encroaching sea (George Wallace as a latter-day King Knute, or the
sea as a metaphor for the coming triumph of integration?), then
abandons his state as the waves roll in!


Let's treat this as an AH scenario, folks; what if the events of that
short story actually had happened in 1973? When Mr. Danzig wrote it in
1963, it was future history, but let's have a little fun, having this
catastrophe actually occur in 1973, just as the U.S. is dealing with
Watergate, the end of the Vietnam War, an energy crisis, the Cold
War/detente (most missile silos have been submerged), Apollo and the
U.S. space program (more spending on colonies in space to accomodate
the displaced millions from the U.S. interior?), etc.

This has gotta mess with the Mississippi River big time, those MO and IA could become like an island.

emperorharry86, you have to upload your map onto the board, then it will show up. What happens to northeast nebraska when this all happens?

Thanks emperorharry86 its just what I was looking for.I was born in KC,MO in 1974 and moved to Denver CO in 1978.We used to go back to visit KC in the summer.I have to say that sailing across the Great Nebraska Sea would have been much more exiciting than driving across Kansas every summer .I'm also trying to imagine Denver as a costal port city-pretty wild.

Of course, "The Great Nebraska Sea" included a fair amout of prediction about what would happen, including political factors (what was eventually done in congress about the states that either disappeared under the water or were now only tiny Monaco-sized slivers of land, the economic developments created by the inland sea, etc.) Would we have to assume these in our ATLs, or start from only the disaster itself?

Regarding the map. I don't remember the big island although parts of the Ozarks were mentioned But what's with Iowa? I also remember all the western tributaries of the Mississippi reversing their courses as the ground subsided in the Plains. One would imagine the mississippi being a much less significant river deprived of 1/2 its drainage basin.

BTW, this was one of the absolutely best and most interesting SF/quasi AH things I've ever read. My recollection was that only my home state Oklahoma completely vanished (sigh).

Extension of ASB Great Nebraska Sea

Too bad it doesn't extend to Hudson's Bay. A warm current going north would warm up Hudson's Bay no end, with really beneficial effects on the climate.

Well what would be the first innitail effects on the climate?

Search Result 3
From: Duke of URL (macbenahATkdsiDOTnet)
Subject: Re: Bushwa
View: Complete Thread (197 articles)
Original Format
Newsgroups: soc.culture.scottish
Date: 2003-11-04 05:06:19 PST


"Josiah Jenkins" <scs-informer@pap.com> wrote in message
news:kqsdqv05su38ujq4cus564auonpk590vdt@4ax.com
> On Mon, 03 Nov 2003 19:25:53 -0500, I read these words from
> MacRobert <MacRobert@th.hoose> :
>
>> That's it! I remember, you turn left to go West past the badlands.
>
> With adverts for "Wall" for *at least* 120 miles before you get
> there.
>>
>> Nothing but lonesome as far as the eye can see.
>
> That's the place !
>
> Strange posting for a Coastie, they reckon the sea disappeared
> around
> 2.000+ years ago. Just exactly how old are you, Methusalah ?

Oh, it's worse (and he's older) than that...

Anywhere from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 years ago, Nebraska was the
bottom of an inland sea that swept up from the Gulf of Mexico and
covered the Mississippi valley. We know it was the bottom of such a
sea because sea animals, shell-fish and corals and crinoids, hundreds
of kinds of them, lived and died, and dying left the imprint of their
bodies in the soft, slimy sea bottom. Today that sea bottom is part of
the limestone rocks of eastern Nebraska and all along the Nemaha, the
Weeping Water, the Platte, the Blue, the Missouri and other streams
which have cut valleys in the limestone hills the quarryman works in
the cemetery of the past, blasting and carving out the skeletons of
former inhabitants to serve the purposes of present ones. This was the
great coal-forming or Carboniferous Age when the deep beds of coal in
Iowa, Kansas and Missouri were being created.
=-=-=-=-=
The Great Nebraska Sea
by Blake Hodgetts
(Inspired by Allan Danzig's 1963 story by the same name)
=-=
Come and gather round, my children, come and listen to a tale
of the shifting of a large tectonic plate
Though it may seem full of terror there is beauty in its wake
and it's part of what has made our nation great
=
It's an epitaph for those who went to glory for its sake
and a chapter in our nation's history
For the proof of nature's power, sure, there's nothing can compare
to the forming of the Great Nebraska Sea
=
And the land sank down and the ocean hurried in
and we lost a fifth of our geography
More than 14 million souls found their ways to heaven's rolls
with the coming of the Great Nebraska Sea
=
Twenty miles east of Denver ran the old Kiowa fault
North to Canada and south to Mexico
No-one'd ever taken notice, with no reason to suppose
that the land might take a mind to up and go
=
Nineteen-seventy three it was, an August hot and dry,
when a cloud of dust appeared above the plain
But scarce a man could see it for the augury it was
of the changes that our country would sustain
=
Soon the tremors started shaking Colorado with a will
and geologists converged upon the scene
and they found that old Kiowa was the one who was at fault
with a subsidence like none there'd ever been.
=
As the eastward earth sank lower, to the west great cliffs appeared,
and many were of house and home bereft.
"Get out quick!" the leaders cried, "there'll be far worse yet to
come,
"When it's over you can find whatever's left."
=
By September 23rd it reached Wyoming to the North,
and to Kansas and Nebraska to the east.
South of Masters, Colorado, the Platte River glittered forth,
now a waterfall of sixty feet at least.
=
On October 4, North Platte, Nebraska, plummeted eight feet,
and the Governor claimed help was on the way,
But his optimistic attitude could hardly save his state
Which was averaging, straight down, one foot per day.
=
Soon the great Missouri River found it had no place to run
and across the muddy fields it gently flowed
and the refugees made chaos as they hastened to escape
and were mired by the millions on the road
=
And all through that dread October ran that exodus from Hell
and one might have thought they couldn't take much more
There was rioting and looting and the troops were all called out,
but that was nothing next to what still lay in store.
On the twenty-first October, Lubbock, Texas heard the roar
of the fractured earth's substrata giving way
And the state of Oklahoma started sinking through the crust
every hour six feet closer to Cathay.
=
On the southern coast, the shoreline disappeared into the gulf
and a tidal wave swept in upon the earth
and the swath of devastation that was launched with that event
was like nothing ever seen since Eden's birth
=
From Montgomery the Alabama governor proclaimed
That the Southland would forever stand its ground
But he had to eat his words as he fled the coming flood
And anyone remaining there was drowned.
=
Still the land it kept subsiding as the waters rushed along,
With their load of wreckage, mud, debris and silt,
And though Memphis would be spared, it tipped west nearly three
degrees:
that's the reason for that famous "Memphis tilt".
=
Most of Arkansas went under, Mississippi sank as well,
and the panhandle of Texas disappeared,
And those who hoped the Ozarks might hold back the ocean's rage
Found the situation worse than they had feared
=
As the surf crashed in New Mexico and washed Nebraska down,
And cast doomed Oklahoma to its fate,
So Lawrence and Topeka ceased to be as Kansas towns,
And the governor, he went down with his state
=
At last the waters settled as their energy was spent
and they came to rest upon a ragged Lincoln shore
Having laid eight states to rest a thousand feet below the waves,
At a cost of human life far worse than war
=
There were tales of daring rescues, of miraculous escapes,
and of strength that made us smile through our pain
And as years went by we proved that we could rise above our woes
And America would triumph once again
=
Looking back now from our vantage of a hundred years or so,
It's a challenge to recall those bygone days
To imagine Minnesota having been an arctic clime,
or Montana as an arid, empty place.
=
From the beaches of Wyoming to the ports of Tennessee
With the islands of the Ozarks floating free
Here's to our internal ocean as it warms our nation's heart
from sea to shining sea to shining sea

the soviets would gain a major advantage in the cold war. Euro-communism would suceed in western europe and large parts of africa. Chinese communism would take hold in many asian nations. I can even see mexico being split in 2 between pro-soviet communists. As of 2004 the world would be divided into the union of free nations(think alliance of democracy from stirling),the USSR,the USSR's direct allies,finlandized soviet vassals,china,chinese allies,finlandized chinese vassals,euro-communist,euro-communist allies and findlandized euro vassals. Ouside of the british isles,northern mexico,the yucatan,cuba,the USA,canada and iceland communism of one sort or another holds sway. The communist regimes are economically liberalizing while retaining dictatorial powers. The UFN is paranoid and only now recovering to the point where it can hold its own agaisnt the communist economies in terms of production.

SurfNTurfStraha said:

the soviets would gain a major advantage in the cold war. Euro-communism would suceed in western europe and large parts of africa. Chinese communism would take hold in many asian nations. I can even see mexico being split in 2 between pro-soviet communists. As of 2004 the world would be divided into the union of free nations(think alliance of democracy from stirling),the USSR,the USSR's direct allies,finlandized soviet vassals,china,chinese allies,finlandized chinese vassals,euro-communist,euro-communist allies and findlandized euro vassals. Ouside of the british isles,northern mexico,the yucatan,cuba,the USA,canada and iceland communism of one sort or another holds sway. The communist regimes are economically liberalizing while retaining dictatorial powers. The UFN is paranoid and only now recovering to the point where it can hold its own agaisnt the communist economies in terms of production.

Click to expand...

A possibility, to be sure, but I am less optimistic than either you about this really helping the USSR.
.
In 1973, the Soviet Union and much of the 3rd world was a major importer of US wheat. With the flooding of the main wheat-producing states (OK, KS, NEB, the Dakotas) critical food shortages would appear throughout the food importing world, possibly leading to economic and political collapse before the newly temperate Canadian plains could take up the slack. I agree the US would suffer a significant loss in economic/military power, but I'm not sure it would be accompanied by a corresponding rise in Soviet power. In general the whole world would go through a long economic decline as the US lost its agricultural heartland and focused almost its entire economy on resettling the displaced millions and reconstruction of damaged areas near the new sea. Instability would increase everywhere. It has been also pointed out that a lot of the US nuclear deterrent would be suddenly underwater, which could result in very unpredictible behavior by the Russians, Chinese, - and Americans - in foreign policy. Possibly, the Soviets would want to get the majority of the Nebraska Sea declared international waters as it lies ouside the 12-mile limit from the "new" US coast. Fascinating potential for war there. I suspect the threat of WW3 would be quite high in the 10 years or so following the disaster, either from Soviet pushyness or US paranoia. Remember, the Yom Kippur War happened in 1973. The US might be more willing to either (1) abandon Israel to its fate or (2) lob off nukes at Cairo and Damascus in such an uncertain geopolitica climate.