AH Map Challenege

[Michael E Johnson]

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.