I just checked and if I amnot mistaken, the only line in operation in 1984 was Paris-Lyon. I don’t knowif a speedlink makes sense there afterwards…
However, in the long run, Francemight revive the project. I am sure that railway traffic earlier regainsimportance than flight. Hard to think of cities to link. Bordeaux will be one,as Dunois seems hell-bent to let it survive. And then…?
The LGV line will be less impacted by the strikes than the normal line which goes through via Dijon. I could therefore perhaps see it as becoming less and less of an high speed line but more a normal line.
As for Bordeaux no decisions are made yet, but it is worth remembering that in Britain comparatibely large cities like Leicester, Gloucester, Swansea have survived either by virtue of not being a target or by virtue of having a lucky miss, Portsmouth's miracle being the best illustration of this. Compared to Britain on the other hand, France will likely lose more her steelmaking, refining and general industrial capacity. The first two of which are critical to get any kind of industry going again.
To be fair though, in France Paris's importance in all spheres is a gigantic and its irreplacable loss will have huge effects on France. Effects which are very hard to predict, especially when society enters a stage away from survival and into recovery. France will have lost part of her soul I think, something made many times worse by the fact that as far as I am aware, no preparations existed to evacuate the major artworks in the Museums.
In the very long term I think that French identity itself will be changed somewhat due to the effects of the war. In Britain, a lot more people have survived the war in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland than in England. England's won't therefore have the same weight in the post war United Kingdom and this will have consequences down the line.
In France, the post war borders in say 2011 might be different from the pre war one's after all, especially if Germany is heavily depopulated. Most of the population in France has always lived in the Eastern parts of the nation, but post war this will shift dramatically to the west. Heavily populated regions like the Pas de Calais, Lorraine, Alsace and the Marseilles area won't have the same weight in TTL 2011 France compared to OTL. Brittany if it has been lightly hit might represent 10% of the French population for example, unlike the present 5%. To which extent this will change French culture I am not sure, but I can easily see the dishes of surviving regions (especially if they don't require imported produce) becoming the new mainstream dishes of French cuisine for example. The mainstream French accent could also change slightly, away from Parisian towards the Loire valley and general western accents.
What is also interesting is what will emerge from the war philosophically speaking decades down the line. In surviving albeit badly mauled places like Britain, France, Italy or America. This will have been the third major war in a century. Nihilism could take hold on a truly unprecented scale along the lines of "why bother rebuilding if it will be destroyed again in twenty years time". Pacifism could gain huge traction, especially if associated with a religious revival of some kind think about something like "the answer to war, is peace under the cross and Jesus ...". Science could get discredited or alternatively enhanced especially if recovery is swift (which I believe it can be with the right policies and decisions).
Some people have said that one the effects of the Black Plague in Europe, was to raise wages and allow the conditions for the industrial revolutions down the line. Might we see something similar happening there but with robotics, forty or fifty years down the line (robots could also clean up black zones)?
This is fascinating stuff in a way I find!
