The Great Nebraska Sea

[JSmith]

This is a short story (info posted here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Nebraska_Sea) that has some alternate/future history implications.
I found the whole story is actually posted in this thread https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=64000
.
Any ideas about what US/world history would be like post this event?

 

[The Doctor]

The 80's will be very different and the Breadbasket will be affected not to mention so many other things.

 

[The Professor]

I can't picture this in my mind. Do you a rough map?

 

[B_Munro]

Here's the map Dutchie did for the previous thread...

Bruce

 

[Michael B]

It is going to be tricky going them wagons to California. I am sure John Wayne will manage it though.

 

[B_Munro]

The 80's will be very different and the Breadbasket will be affected not to mention so many other things.

Yeah, US food production will take a huge hit - I don't think there will be starvation, since the Europeans have a surplus we can buy, but the loss of the US as an exporter for a while at least will have negative effects on the third world (food prices will go up sharply) and on the Soviet Union, which won't have US wheat to buy for a while.

The US will become less dependent as time goes on: I can imagine some heavy government subsidies to grow food in areas outside the breadbasket (a lot of the US used to be major food producers before being outcompeted by large-scale industrial farming out west) - those which haven't been covered with suburbs and parking lots, anyway. And what remains of US agribusiness will probably invest in increased production outside the US, in Latin America for instance. European production will also probably increase somewhat.

Not sure how the USSR will handle it. Oil prices are still low in 1972: does anyone know how much of its food the USSR was importing by 1972? And speaking of oil prices, with the US temporarily crippled, they may be rather less willing to go to bat for Israel. If there is a *Yom Kippur war, Israel might go with the nuclear option. Add in a destabilized USSR and a struggling US - oy.

Anyhoo, geologically impossible. Goes to ASB.

Bruce

 

[Strategos' Risk]

It is going to be tricky going them wagons to California. I am sure John Wayne will manage it though.

Think of all the oxen that are gonna die when they attempt to ford that thing.

 

[The Doctor]

Maybe we could discuss how this would not be asb? I'm of the opinion that just cause something is unlikely and never happened in OTL doesn't neccessarily mean impossible and therefore must need ASB intervention. So lets think of a way to keep this fault line active and have this event happen earlier than the story, and the affect later on in history. Alright, what would be needed to make this fault line remain active and lower the elevation of the plains?

 

[AdirondackSeperatist]

I seem to recall reading a review of a book once, in which the sundance sea never dissapears, and when the Europeans arrive to North America they find a large "Dinosaur-ish" population cohabitating with the Amerindians... The book takes place around the mid 19th century, although I can't for the life of me remember the title

 

[B_Munro]

Maybe we could discuss how this would not be asb? I'm of the opinion that just cause something is unlikely and never happened in OTL doesn't neccessarily mean impossible and therefore must need ASB intervention. So lets think of a way to keep this fault line active and have this event happen earlier than the story, and the affect later on in history. Alright, what would be needed to make this fault line remain active and lower the elevation of the plains?

The earth's continents essentially float on top of the denser mantle rocks beneath. There is no geological evidence of a huge chunk of one suddenly sinking below sea level, no known mechanism for how this could happen, and no explanation for what happens to the huge mass of underlying rock that would be displaced in this case. A massive fault breaking loose could split the continent and let in a thin arm of the sea, but it wouldn't cause huge areas of the plains to suddenly "drop."

Bruce

 

[The Doctor]

How the Earth was made.

-I think it was the Sierra Nevada mountains. You have the continental root and then the rock above that. In one spot along this moutain chain the root broke off and caused an uplift of that one section while the other half of it went down like a see saw.

 

[JSmith]

What I'm really looking for is an idea of how this event would change the United States- climate,culture,politics and economics. Of course the most interesting changes would be with the areas that border the new sea but it would also be interesting to explore how it would change the rest of the nation.

 

[The Doctor]

Its a thing among many of this board, including myself at times, to analyze a senerio and try and rationalize how ASB things like this could realistically happen or not and then look at the affects.

 

[JSmith]

Its a thing among many of this board, including myself at times, to analyze a senerio and try and rationalize how ASB things like this could realistically happen or not and then look at the affects.

I have also noticed in my time here thats its also a thing among many here to pelt a thread to death with all the resaons its implausible. I was hoping that wouldnt happen here but its probably too late

 

[B_Munro]

How the Earth was made.

-I think it was the Sierra Nevada mountains. You have the continental root and then the rock above that. In one spot along this moutain chain the root broke off and caused an uplift of that one section while the other half of it went down like a see saw.

What is a "continental root?" And going down into what? A seesaw is elevated about the ground so it _can_ swing: perhaps you are thinking of subduction zones? And are you seriously arguing for the scientific validity of a story written by an obscure science fiction writer some years before the general acceptance of continental drift? This could be fun as an ASB scenario, and I have not trouble running with it as such, but trying to make it non-ASB is a waste of time.

Bruce

 

[B_Munro]

I seem to recall reading a review of a book once, in which the sundance sea never dissapears, and when the Europeans arrive to North America they find a large "Dinosaur-ish" population cohabitating with the Amerindians... The book takes place around the mid 19th century, although I can't for the life of me remember the title

"The Year the Cloud Fell", by Giambastiani.

Bruce

 

[The Doctor]

I'm not trying to make his story plausable, just the senerio. Totally different. A continental root is the main section of a continent. Its is what the rocks above rest on and what floats on the mantle. Think of it as the concrete foundation of a building, but possibly not one whole piece. Junks of which can under certain senerio's fall off and sink into the mantle. This is what is believed happened to the moutains I mentioned. The root broke off, the land above rose as the weight below broke. The other section sank slightly in relation to the second as the weight became uneven. Think of a ship on the water, front end of a ship sinks below the surface more as the back end with less cargo becomes lighter.

 

[B_Munro]

I'm not trying to make his story plausable, just the senerio. Totally different. A continental root is the main section of a continent. Its is what the rocks above rest on and what floats on the mantle. .

But if it floats on the mantle, then it wouldn't sink...oh never mind. I'm outta here.

Bruce

 

[The Kiat]

Wow, I want to play Oregon Trail for that world.

 

[The Doctor]

Forget all I said. What if the mantle currents create the fault zone into a rift and over several years split open that region of the nation even going up into the new madrid zone into a new sea? That would be a possibility. See not impossible just very unlikely.