P&S: What about Western New York?

[Emperor Norton I]

Not even "Upstate New York", as that's too vague a term and includes the blasted Eastern Upstaters (who will be properly conquered in the post-atomic world).

Western New York is my region, and I was wondering to what extent it has been covered in the P&S Universe, and beyond where it has been covered, what the outcome would be for the region? I'm interested in things like what happens to all the small towns and especially the Erie Canal towns after the war. The Canal seems like an asset, although maintenance and radiation seems like a potential problem. Similar things can be said about the Great Lakes and the communities around them. Western New York really seems to be based on water ways.

 

[Zoom]

If you consider Buffalo, NY to be western New York, I believe there was a spinoff done about that area. I think the author got banned for whatever reason, so the story was never finished, but if you go on the wiki you should be able to find it.

 

[Mumbles]

Post snipped as it got into the wrong thread.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

Depending on whether or not NZ was struck (and no-one is really sure if that would have happened or not, now or then, and the people who know for sure aren't telling), I'm either fine, living within sight of one of the targets, or otherwise impoverished. I would have to have been very unlucky to have been killed outright.

I think your escape raft got caught in a current.

 

[Lord Grattan]

If you consider Buffalo, NY to be western New York, I believe there was a spinoff done about that area. I think the author got banned for whatever reason, so the story was never finished, but if you go on the wiki you should be able to find it.

By Stalkere (now retired to Coventry):
Don’t turn your back on the Wolfpack - A Spinoff of the Protect and Survive TL

 

[Mumbles]

I think your escape raft got caught in a current.

Yup, not sure how that happened

 

[Emperor Norton I]

By Stalkere (now retired to Coventry):
Don’t turn your back on the Wolfpack - A Spinoff of the Protect and Survive TL

Could I get a lazy bastard's summary?

 

[Zoom]

Could I get a lazy bastard's summary?

It focuses on a (former?) member of the Army and his son who survive the nuke that was dropped on Buffalo. They meet up with a well-educated Iranian family (the father is a doctor of some sort, the kind that deals with physics) and eventually they travel to the Army man's parents house 20 miles or so away from Buffalo (forgot the exact direction).

The story abruptly stops there.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

It focuses on a (former?) member of the Army and his son who survive the nuke that was dropped on Buffalo. They meet up with a well-educated Iranian family (the father is a doctor of some sort, the kind that deals with physics) and eventually they travel to the Army man's parents house 20 miles or so away from Buffalo (forgot the exact direction).

The story abruptly stops there.

Does it describe anything, or just almost describe what happens to the regime before not ever forever never?

 

[Emperor Norton I]

(Point out if I'm talking out my ***)

The region, outside the cities, would be heavily unscathed. Again, nice little canal towns and the like. It's very much more Midwestern than New York City would have you believe New York could be, except it's not landlocked and has access to numerous waterways, with a climate to compliment that.

The biggest issue would be how the outside world affected the region. That includes any fallout, as well as nuclear pollution in the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal. I don't know what would happen there; if anyone could, please explain what would happen.
It also includes supplies. The region would have more industrial capacity (even outside the cities) in the 80s than it does now, and it has a heavy agricultural base, but I'm not sure if it would be capable of self-sustainable production in the 1980s. At most, one would hope for something that survives at an ok level; something that in many ways reverts to a pre-Industrial society but still has some trappings of the modern (electricity run things when they can find gas or maybe rig up a windmill or something). At worst, it'd be a bunch of abandoned marshy forests with a lot of dead people.

I think the hardest thing to get over would be the winters. People are used to it, but they wouldn't be used to living through it like the Amish (there's another group that exists in Upstate New York, btw; also the Iroquois reservation) and I suspect there'd be a lot of exposure and freezing deaths before people got used to living within the limits of nature.

EDIT:

Another problem is also likely refugees from the New York city region moving north. The city would probably treat Upstate like Londoners and other British city dwellers treated the countryside in WW2.
There's certainly enough land on the face of it, but the problem is the land that's exploited already, and the limitations of resources.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

So here's what I can gleam from "Don't Turn Your Back on the Wolf Pack":

• Buffalo was hit with what was likely a neutron bomb in an air burst, which killed the masses but didn't damage infrastructure, and radiation seems to be at a minimum. The snow drifts seem to have absorbed the fallout as well. I don't know how that science works or really whats going on with the radiation there. Buffalo and the surrounding suburbs are desolated but do not seem totally decimated if I read correctly.

And I'll quote this

He waved at the ceiling above them. “I didn’t do a LOT of recon. Only up to the third floor in one house, and that was pretty rickety. And it’s hard to see much with binoculars in this mask. But everything I saw was consistant with what I expected – airburst – 1000 meters, 1 megaton, probably over the Peace Bridge Area.”

And to further quote

“Knowing the Russian love of Irony, they probably did that on purpose.” Agreed Steve. “But that would take out the Conrail marshalling yards, the Bethlehem Steel Mills, the Woodlawn Engine Plant, Tonawanda Powertrain, the Erie Canal terminus and probably do a good bit of damage to the Welland Canal.”

“Looking north” continued Steve, “I couldn’t see much, but I expect they put another one over Niagara Falls, to take out the Robert Moses Power Complex and the Air Base.”

• Radiation is low in Buffalo, and drops considerably once out of Buffalo.
• There is civilization outside of Buffalo and they seem ok, if gobsmacked by WW3 and dealing with the breakdown of civilization.
• A major problem was that when the bombs hit and the electric went off, people froze to death.
• Jamestown, New York was nuked with a 2 megaton nuke in a Soviet error. I guess Lockport is ok, if that's where the parents live (I don't know if I read that part right).

“The EMP knocked a lot of the electricity off line, the blast wave and the first storm took down electricity in almost every home in the county.” Said Mike. “Places with emergency generators came on line, I guess the Power Project is pretty much up and running again – trouble is, something like half the people in the County froze to death in the storms, they think.”

“Damn.” Said Steve.

“A lot of the farmers, folks with wood stoves and such, they pulled through.” Said Carl. “But folks that need electric for their furnaces – they froze – if they couldn’t get to someplace warm. Some people froze in their cars, trying to get somewhere warm.”


Mike shook his head. “Lot of people’s cars won’t work now – them electronic ignitions – the bombs scrambled the electronics in them.”

 

[Emperor Norton I]

The culture of the region should be discussed as well. I'm not sure the specifics of it for the 80s, but I do know what it is now.

Outside of the cities at least, which are all depopulated anyway in this timeline, it is extremely Conservative. People are for small government, very pro gun and there is a very strong gun culture and it may even be a majority of families that hunt, and they honestly believe that anything left wing is socialist. Basically, anything Liberals may think they're only stereotyping Conservatives as saying or doing, I have seen first hand and it is true. The people are very nice besides that, but their politics are vitriolically Conservative. I think I relayed the story before about how my town's Republican mayor (allegedly) posed for transvestite porn, and (allegedly) was involved in drugs and (allegedly) had a daughter involved with them, and so far as I know he got reelected.
A post-war Upstate, and especially one where it loses the metropolitan populations, is going to be very Conservative. And honestly that could become problematic in many ways. An example I'll give is that my area, at least every other year or so, has at least one day where the powerlines freeze and fall over and we're without electricity for days. Years back, they offered to put the powerlines underground, which would have solved all those problems. It would have cost everyone 1 more dollars, just 1, in taxes, and they refused. Imagine how much money is has cost over the years to maintain and fix those powerlines ever time they went down. Our infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc) is the same sort of deal.
I don't know how they'll deal with the situation afterward, because at least some money is going to need to be spent in a serious way.

It is also in the Rust Belt; industrial jobs during this period are steadily going away, and the region is very seriously suffering as a result. That made people move away, it harmed the local economy, it hurt small towns because a worse element moved in and crime is linked to lower pay or joblessness, etc. That's not just the cities; that's also all these small towns with factories that relied on those jobs that went away. I do wonder how that will be affected after the war, because those factory buildings would still stand, and they'd offer the area the chance to have an industrial capacity and whatever is lost out of Buffalo and Rochester could be made up for by those small town factories.

There is also a resentment towards New York city, which I would prescribe to economic reasons; Albany is concerned with New York City, and all the tax money goes to the city rather than things like helping Upstate, building infrastructure, keeping roads in good condition, etc. I don't think even the fact that NYC is Liberal whereas a lot of the state is Conservative even matters. I do think it's all very much a feeling that the city takes away focus and takes away resources and gives nothing back, is the reason for the high cost of living, etc. And feel free to argue that New York City actually helps the region; that's not the point. The perception is the point.
That's all well enough as it is, because it doesn't hurt anything, but I think when you see refugees from New York City and Southern New York start to come into the Upstate Region, that will become a problem. I think the locals will see them as outsiders, despising whatever differences they have and the ways they act, believing and hating with an almost racist passion the New York City stereotypes, and viewing them as stealing jobs and resources. I think you would see fighting and riots and violence if there are enough citydwellers left to swamp the north (I'm not sure how many people survive from the south in the P&S universe). Hell, you'd probably see similar things to anyone who is perceived as an outsider.

EDIT:

There's also a lot of Confederate stuff up here. People fly Confederate flags all the time, wear Confederate symbols, and there's a Confederate reenactment group up here. I don't know when Confederate stuff just became rural instead of Southern.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

The only way to stop me from quadruple posting is to post. I've been meaning to post, but I've been trying to avoid quadruple-super-posting, but screw it. And bear in mind, the following is going with the idea of the Upstate Region as a surviving area where refugees could flee to.

Concerning people fleeing to the region like it's the English countryside during the Blitz, I think a major issue will be that as soon as people Upstate hear people who talk with a foreign accent or dress in a different way, and New York city is a cosmopolitan city so you are going to get things like immigrants from Mozambique and second generation Italians and so forth, the Upstate people are going to lose their minds. There is going to be a lot of "who do they think they are?" that will manifest into racism and bigotry that could get very malicious and violent.
And it may not just be New York City; it'll probably be Buffalo and Rochester and possibly even Canadian cities if those inhabitants cross over. I'm not sure how diverse they were in 1984 compared to now; I know there's a lot of diversity now, and I can see how certain people react to it, and I know the area well enough to tell you how the rural and small town crowd reacts and would react to it.

The region today is not without diversity already, but the diversity is pretty much white people and black people and hispanic people, who in the rural areas are largely migrants who work on the farms. And there still is an undercurrent of racism between white people and black people, and its worse in regards to hispanics because there is a sense of "who do they think they are" racism. It's not Klan levels; those people do exist but they're a minority where their total racism is either one of their faults or they're just terrible human beings on the whole with no redeeming qualities. And not everyone has any sort of racism to their character. But on the whole there is an undercurrent to the region like, say, an average white person in 1967; a sort of mild racial ignorance and bigotry, albeit it can evolve into something depending on that person. It's hard to explain something like that because it tends to generalize people, but it's the collective outcome when you average everyone together. And really, it's a racism where there are general bigotries about the race, but people get along with the individuals; that's the best I can explain it.

It'd probably be worse in the 80s than it is now; I wasn't there (about a decade off) so I can only assume from what I've heard and the people I know who were there and how they act or what they say happened. The non-city areas of the region are sort of these quaint towns (albeit with deindustrialization and increasing social rot), and they would be gobsmacked by anything foreign to them coming in en masse. So it would shape up to be a tough time of people getting along. They probably will after decades enough, but it'll be rough early on.

*****

Getting off the topic of racial tensions, I would wonder at the cultural effects it would have on the region if refugees from downstate move into it, if Canadians or people trapped in Canada when there is war move into it, if people from the cities disperse into the surrounding region, etc. The people from Buffalo and Rochester and so forth wouldn't be much of a change; the region already exists with those cities, the people of those cities and the surrounding regions interact all the time, so the only change would be bringing some urban sensibilities to the surrounding region.

People coming from downstate and people coming from Canada would be another thing entirely. Frankly, though, Canadians may be closer to Upstate New York culturally than the New York City region. Albeit they would still bring with them different culture and sensibilities, and probably more Liberal sensibilities. People coming from New York City would be much different from the people in the Upstate Region. The culture is much different. I do wonder at the cultural diffusion there.

I do also wonder at how the accent will be affected. As it stands, it's a generic accent with a bit of a Mid-West and even Western twang to it (depending on who you talk to). The people closer by would probably only have a minor effect on the accent, albeit there would be one. The further away people are, the more effected the accent would be.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

I do also wonder at how the accent will be affected. As it stands, it's a generic accent with a bit of a Mid-West and even Western twang to it (depending on who you talk to). The people closer by would probably only have a minor effect on the accent, albeit there would be one. The further away people are, the more effected the accent would be.

Buffalo/Niagara? Standard? The things they do to "ou" vowels are horrifying. Seriously, I met a guy with the nickname of "Mouse" and I was sure for about a year that it was the German "Maus" the vowel was that far back.

But aside from that, ya, it's pretty standard.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

Buffalo/Niagara? Standard? The things they do to "ou" vowels are horrifying. Seriously, I met a guy with the nickname of "Mouse" and I was sure for about a year that it was the German "Maus" the vowel was that far back.

But aside from that, ya, it's pretty standard.

I've never heard anyone pronounce it all German accent style. Then again, maybe we get more Rochester culture than Buffalo. Or maybe I don't notice.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

I've never heard anyone pronounce it all German accent style. Then again, maybe we get more Rochester culture than Buffalo. Or maybe I don't notice.

Or maybe you just don't notice it. Being Canadian (with a front and back 'ou' vowel), hearing the Buffalo/Niagara Falls sound was just weird - one 'ou', even way further back than usual. I never noticed the lilt a lot of Canadians have until after I moved south of the border for a decade.