I mean something along the lines of the WMiT? Expanded Universe thread, just a place for fans of the TL to flesh out aspects that take their fancy without clogging up the main thread. It could illustrate areas that require further clarification or (in rare cases) be good enough to be canonized to the main thread.
Separated at Birth: America and Drakia
- Thread starter Ephraim Ben Raphael
- Start date
I've been wondering if SaB:A&D has its own equivalent to Walt Disney.
Cheap suits easy to sew like the Gorka for cold climates (these are really cheap, even Jihadis and Idlib are able to produce their own using probably low quality sewing machines in reality)
Using lighter gear/armor compared with "western" tactical gear, mostly upgrading older rifles with tactical railings and minimal changes toward operation.
Bondsmen probably a mix of surplus and modern gear, a mix match of sorts, older rifles and whatnot. (these are Russian proxies, with slightly inferior gear towards actual russian forces, so I figure it would be the same way for Bondsmen.)
Draka families I would assume have colonial style apartments/housing like this
State owned Draka bondsmen perhaps inside really shitty high rise apartments like these Hong Kong ones for undocumented immigrants but worse and also "enforcers" guarding.
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So I was thinking on how ecologically bad the Congo Lake would be and man, this may be a pretty extreme scenario, I think this could be a huge disaster.
So first, while I've had a hard time figuring out the exact number, I'm pretty sure that the Congo River has a sediment load several times larger than the Colorado River, and sedimentation is an issue for all dams. So while the dam is probably a sight to behold, it might not be one to last terribly long (at least in comparison to the Hoover Dam), as tens of millions of tons of sediment just accumulate at the base of the dam and it would eventually clog the generators and overflow. Just as well, all of that sediment is going to deposit on the flooded forest, which will create a real deadly cocktail in the future.
Next, the lake will probably increase the already considerable evaporation that the rainforest produced, which would result in nasty floods for most of Africa and possibly increased downpours for the North Atlantic (fun fact: rainforests produce a lot of clouds that eventually provide the mid-latitudes with rain during the summer!). So no there's no doubt that malaria and other nasties are exploding out of control in Drakia, and infrastructure will be heavily impacted by the colossal storms the lake produces. Maybe the only "good" thing for Drakia is that the Bonded will be the ones who suffer the most, and the establishment would barely care.
And finally, the buried forests are a time bomb. All of that carbon has been buried under shifting sediment, and it won't stay under there for that long. The lake is probably be saturated with dissolved carbon dioxide and occasionally there will be huge releases of carbon dioxide when the sediment becomes too unstable. Not only is it bad for Drakia in terms of climate change, but it's also bad for Drakia in a more direct way. First, the burps will likely cause massive algae blooms that would rapidly create anoxic zones in the lake and result in fish kills that will negatively impact any fishing industries and gross out lakegoers. But perhaps more worrying for Drakia, sometimes those burps will be full blown limnic eruptions, where a huge amount of dissolved carbon dioxide will blast out of the lake, and you will probably get a catastrophe that would be multiple times worse than the Lake Nyos Disaster. Drakia may truly regret their decision to dam the Congo over the coming decades.
So first, while I've had a hard time figuring out the exact number, I'm pretty sure that the Congo River has a sediment load several times larger than the Colorado River, and sedimentation is an issue for all dams. So while the dam is probably a sight to behold, it might not be one to last terribly long (at least in comparison to the Hoover Dam), as tens of millions of tons of sediment just accumulate at the base of the dam and it would eventually clog the generators and overflow. Just as well, all of that sediment is going to deposit on the flooded forest, which will create a real deadly cocktail in the future.
Next, the lake will probably increase the already considerable evaporation that the rainforest produced, which would result in nasty floods for most of Africa and possibly increased downpours for the North Atlantic (fun fact: rainforests produce a lot of clouds that eventually provide the mid-latitudes with rain during the summer!). So no there's no doubt that malaria and other nasties are exploding out of control in Drakia, and infrastructure will be heavily impacted by the colossal storms the lake produces. Maybe the only "good" thing for Drakia is that the Bonded will be the ones who suffer the most, and the establishment would barely care.
And finally, the buried forests are a time bomb. All of that carbon has been buried under shifting sediment, and it won't stay under there for that long. The lake is probably be saturated with dissolved carbon dioxide and occasionally there will be huge releases of carbon dioxide when the sediment becomes too unstable. Not only is it bad for Drakia in terms of climate change, but it's also bad for Drakia in a more direct way. First, the burps will likely cause massive algae blooms that would rapidly create anoxic zones in the lake and result in fish kills that will negatively impact any fishing industries and gross out lakegoers. But perhaps more worrying for Drakia, sometimes those burps will be full blown limnic eruptions, where a huge amount of dissolved carbon dioxide will blast out of the lake, and you will probably get a catastrophe that would be multiple times worse than the Lake Nyos Disaster. Drakia may truly regret their decision to dam the Congo over the coming decades.
What's that quote from Mr. Nancy in the American Gods Starz series?
"...Shit, you all don't know you black yet. You think you just people. Let me be the first to tell you that you are all black. The moment these Dutch motherfuckers set foot here and decided they white, and you get to be black, and that's the nice name they call you. Let me paint a picture of what's waiting for you on the shore. You arrive in America, land of opportunity, milk and honey, and guess what? You all get to be slaves! Split up, sold off and worked to death! The lucky ones get Sunday off to sleep and fuck and make more slaves, and all for what? For cotton? Indigo? For a fucking purple shirt? The only good news is the tobacco your grandkids are gonna farm for free is gonna give a shitload of these white motherfuckers cancer. And I ain't even started yet. A hundred years later, you're fucked! A hundred years after that, fucked! A hundred years after you get free, you still getting fucked outta jobs and shot at by police! You see what I'm saying? This guy gets it. I like him. He's gettin' angry. Angry is good. Angry gets shit done. You shed tears and call for Anansi, and here he is, telling you: you are staring down the barrel of 300 years of subjugation, racist bullshit and heart disease. He is telling you there isn't one goddamn reason you shouldn't go up there right now, and slit the throats of every last one of these Dutch motherfuckers, and set fire to this ship!"
I imagine there's a lot of Bondspeople that perfectly well know the climate patterns of the rainforest and the sediment levels of the Congo basin aren't going to stick their necks out for the Societist overseers that forcibly relocated their villages, conscripted their young adults, and destroyed their way of life. Why should they, when they're already dead people walking in Drakia?
"...Shit, you all don't know you black yet. You think you just people. Let me be the first to tell you that you are all black. The moment these Dutch motherfuckers set foot here and decided they white, and you get to be black, and that's the nice name they call you. Let me paint a picture of what's waiting for you on the shore. You arrive in America, land of opportunity, milk and honey, and guess what? You all get to be slaves! Split up, sold off and worked to death! The lucky ones get Sunday off to sleep and fuck and make more slaves, and all for what? For cotton? Indigo? For a fucking purple shirt? The only good news is the tobacco your grandkids are gonna farm for free is gonna give a shitload of these white motherfuckers cancer. And I ain't even started yet. A hundred years later, you're fucked! A hundred years after that, fucked! A hundred years after you get free, you still getting fucked outta jobs and shot at by police! You see what I'm saying? This guy gets it. I like him. He's gettin' angry. Angry is good. Angry gets shit done. You shed tears and call for Anansi, and here he is, telling you: you are staring down the barrel of 300 years of subjugation, racist bullshit and heart disease. He is telling you there isn't one goddamn reason you shouldn't go up there right now, and slit the throats of every last one of these Dutch motherfuckers, and set fire to this ship!"
I imagine there's a lot of Bondspeople that perfectly well know the climate patterns of the rainforest and the sediment levels of the Congo basin aren't going to stick their necks out for the Societist overseers that forcibly relocated their villages, conscripted their young adults, and destroyed their way of life. Why should they, when they're already dead people walking in Drakia?
Would the snakes try and dredge up this sediment for agricultural purposes and to preserve the dam?
I wouldn't be surprised if such a Lake Nyos Disaster on steroids is what triggers the collapse of Drakia.
However, with the region not really being Drakia's bulkwark, we could have Orwellian tactics as a viable alternative.
Gosh, with WMIT's America's respone to Old Mexican soot, I wonder what unique shit EBR is cooking rn.
I think "hundreds of thousands of pounds of CO2 suffocating everyone around" is plenty unique, personally.
If there's an enormous blob in the middle of your continent spanning empire where no one is allowed to go because reasons, even if most people toe the Societist line at least a significant minority will be suspicious, even if only privately.
At this point in time I kinds expect most major cities in the US to resemble the CW's version of Gotham (sans the supervillains) with its blend of modern and retro. (If you haven't scene it I highly recommend it!)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Gotham
This is maybe much more appropriate for the Western States, seeing that it would be the site of Japanese aerial bombardment.At this point in time I kinds expect most major cities in the US to resemble the CW's version of Gotham (sans the supervillains) with its blend of modern and retro. (If you haven't scene it I highly recommend it!)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Gotham
Well I guess it could turn into some kind of Chernoby-like catastrophe if the limnic eruption is sustained, but it probably wouldn't affect enough of the continent to bring about its immediate collapse. But yeah, there are somewhere between 25 and 30 billions tons carbon in the entire Congo, and even if a proportionally tiny eruption happened, that could release millions of tons of carbon into the region. I was thinking you may have an incident where a sizeable lake town gets wiped out. If we want to get real mean, the town had a shitty nuclear reactor where all the technicians have just suffocated and we really can lean into the Chernobyl reference
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The question is whether this lake is mere for hydroelectric power, or could the surrounding land become winter houses for high ranking members of the goverment?Well I guess it could turn into some kind of Chernoby-like catastrophe if the limnic eruption is sustained, but it probably wouldn't affect enough of the continent to bring about its immediate collapse. But yeah, there are somewhere between 25 and 30 billions tons carbon in the entire Congo, and even if a proportionally tiny eruption happened, that could release millions of tons of carbon into the region. I was thinking you may have an incident where a sizeable lake town gets wiped out. If we want to get real mean, the town had a shitty nuclear reactor where all the technicians have just suffocated and we really can lean into the Chernobyl reference