There Is No Depression: Protect and Survive New Zealand
- Thread starter Tsar of New Zealand
- Start date
Read On the Beach about six or seven years ago. Had a similar opinion to Noel Coward.
A common mistake I've seen made in P&S threads is to forget that while oil production will go down, so will consumption.
Oil use in agriculture accounts for just a few percents of overall use nationwide in the United Kingdom and the situation will be the same in New Zealand.
Private transportation will cease post-strike and this will release huge amounts of petrol for use.
Major oil-producing regions would be a big target for any kind of neo-colonialism in order to get production restarted.
What's more New Zealand has plenty of natural gas supplies which can be transformed into liquid fuels. Our friend Roger Muldoon even built a synthetic oil plant in Motuni as part of its "Think Big" projects.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/8935/motunui-synthetic-petrol-plant
OTL production stopped in 1997 but TTL it'll keep churning the stuff out well into the 2010s, what's more the stuff might even be exported overseas!
Having said that I expect that petrol will probably remain just as expensive as it was during OTL oil crises. Production will likely be a monopoly of some kind, with prices kept high to maintain the profitability of the process.
Overseas travel and consumer goods availability are the things that will remain quite depressed.
The airline industry will definitely not be deregulated TTL and flights to Australian while likely frequent and common will be relatively expensive. The only destination left in Asia will be Hong Kong and the most I can see are a few weekly flights nothing more. Flights to Europe and the United Kingdom may happen once a week by TTL 2017, likely serving other cities en-route. TTL airline industry in 2017 will be what it was OTL in the 1960s that is growing fast but offering still expensive products.
Consumer goods manufacturing won't be off-shored overseas TTL so prices will be higher but they might be more durable, sturdier and easier to repair than today. Smartphones and tablets won't exist. Computers will be slow and clunky and be at the 1980s levels.
An Aussie friend of mine who has worked in HQ ADF has recently passed on this bit of information that might be relevant to P&S NZ and Australia.
I'll cross post this on the main P&S thread.
I'll cross post this on the main P&S thread.
Making burnable fuel for petrol/diesel powered vehicles is not all that hard. IIRC one of our members was an EPO back in the day and plans were drawn up to produce fuel locally.
The problem with EVs is generating capability. It's reckoned in @ that the UK National Grid as it currently exists will not be able to cope with the plans for increased use of EVs never mind a badly damaged jury repaired grid.
Indeed, this occurred ITTL; the Government research project from 1986-87 gave a very useful summary of fuel usage and broke it down by area. Most long-haul freight in the country was still rail-borne (thanks to regulations), and the NZRC will likely remain the sole carrier well into the future. TTL is pretty great for anyone working in a state-owned enterprise. Shame it took a nuclear war to make Taihape prosper.
Again, I agree - weirdly, Think Big and Robert Muldoon (though I do like to imagine there's a Roger Muldoon somewhere who spent the 1970s being mistaken for Piggy) are almost singlehandedly responsible for New Zealand doing so well; working towards autarky is uncannily good doomsday prepping on a national scale.
Australia also has quite reasonable oil and gas fields, as well as surviving refinery complexes at Clyde (western Sydney, outside the radius of a 1MT airburst over downtown Sydney), Kurnell (southern Sydney, also out of range; Sydney is truly a bloated hydra that cannot be slain with only one stroke), Port Stanvac (South Australia), Bulwer and Lytton (Brisbane area), Geelong, Altona, and Westernpoint (Melbourne area; Westernpoint closed in '84 but might be useful for parts if it's well and truly clapped-out, particularly since it has the smallest capacity of the three so isn't as useful in the long run).
Most NZ oil is light-sweet and exported to Australia for refining, with Marsden Point refining imported heavy-sour. There's at least a vestigial government in peninsular Malaysia, and God alone knows what's going on in Indonesia, but there may also be room to re-expand into Southeast Asian deposits.
All of which is a very roundabout way of saying: yes.
Sounds plausible to me. In Australasia the Pacific will remain the go-to tourist destination, not least because going somewhere which didn't get nuked even once (well, south of the Equator, anyway) will be a pleasant trip down memory lane.
Meep. That's a pants-soiling thought for NZ and Australia.
In the interests of sticking with canon and actually leaving enough of the Antipodes to write a story which isn't just Mad Max with less leather, let's handwave that nightmarish thought by saying the war escalated too quickly (about six hours from accidental tactical exchange to full-fledged strategic Exchange) for this fun gem to kick into action.
On the plus (?) side, it does lend the idea of lobbing a couple of "why not?" devices at New Zealand. I'll note it for rewrites. Does your ADF mate have any sources?
Did a quick google and raided the National Library Australia's Trove search engine to see archived newspapers etc. and can't seem to find anything on this. Not to say the Soviets didn't have such a plan but TBH, I'm not sure I buy it being more than a paper plan...
I mean, they launch missiles at Aus and NZ and the US detects the launches... Well, the Seppos have to make a call then and there: Is this an attempt to destroy their C3I assets in Australia? Is it the start of an all out strategic strike by the Sovs?
They have 15 minutes to half an hour to make the call about if they shoot back, not the hour or more needed to ascertain it was a limited strike intended for demonstration purposes only, that their C3I installations are intact and that the Sovs have sent through a diplomatic communique saying in effect "So, wot now m8?".
I strongly suspect an attempt to pull off such an operation instead turns things directly into a general exchange before it has a chance to scare the west off...
Pre-Exchange National Bank ad (1981):
https://teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/42140/parnell-village-backdrop
I can't even...
https://teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/42140/parnell-village-backdrop
I can't even...
I'm going to drop him an email.
Well all plans are paper until they are executed.
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Pre-Exchange National Bank ad (1981):
https://teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/42140/parnell-village-backdrop
I can't even...
Well. That was...twee.
Of course, Parnell and anybody who thought this ad was a good idea are, ITTL, dispersed across the South Pacific.
@Petike @Tsar of New Zealand It's been a while since I've wanted to shoot someone. But that advert...
I do remember when credit cards were used that way though.
I do remember when credit cards were used that way though.
Click the link in my post. Then quote my post in that other thread and write an "I second..." text based on the description in the opening post of that nomination thread. The template goes:
"I second the above nomination for:
Best Cold War to Contemporary Timeline: Title of nominated work (with Hypertext Link); author"
For that template, you just copy the hyperlinks to the TL and the author from my nomination post.
Oh oh
The Almighty has withdrawn his hitherto effusive regard for me and struck me down. My flight out here last Sunday was peaceful and uneventful. I read Nevil Shute’s new book On the Beach, a grisly description of a group of people left alive in Australia when the rest of the world has been annihilated by H-bombs. They are waiting for the spreading radioactivity to spread to them and wipe them out which, eventually, it does. It’s written with his usual fluency and is a good idea, but all the characters are so sickeningly decent and ‘ordinary’ and such good sorts that personally I longed for the slowly approaching ‘fall-out’ to get a move on. He is suffering from a sort of spiritual diabetes in whicheverything turns to sugar.Marlene...
https://vickielester.com/2015/07/17...iary-of-noel-coward-1957-sunday-4-august/amp/
Since this TL was nominated for a Turtledove (after the deadline closed, but that's beside the point), I've been wanting to ask what readers thought made this piece work.
I want to be very clear in stating that I am not fishing for compliments; quite the reverse. I'm my own harshest critic and, upon reflection, I find the vast majority of this story to be an absolute mess. This can be explained by many factors:
This isn't to say I hate my own work: I'm extremely happy with how the last few chapters turned out and I think the whole project was a good exercise in improving my writing skills (even if I am embarrassed at my output from a few years back).
In that vein, and to cut to the chase, what I'm asking for or about here is feedback on what worked, what didn't, and what could do with improvement as I look forward to other projects that I might turn my hand to.
As always, comments and questions are appreciated.
And - though I find the sentiment a little bit twee - thanks for reading.
I want to be very clear in stating that I am not fishing for compliments; quite the reverse. I'm my own harshest critic and, upon reflection, I find the vast majority of this story to be an absolute mess. This can be explained by many factors:
- Not doing the research: I took far too long to actually do some good background reading and made up a large portion of the first half on the fly. This leads into...
- Plausibility: an issue from the outset. In a rush to stake a claim on New Zealand in the extended canon, I neglected to think through many plot elements (more on that one later) and the result leaves some embarrassing gaps (such as, well, Geoffrey Palmer becoming PM: plausible under the right circumstances, but the ground was not prepared so as to make it the natural conclusion of preceding events).
- Tone: I'm more circumspect about this one; P&S is a verse which tends to overwhelming darkness but leaves room for moments of humanity, absurdity, and positivity. I feel I got better at this as time went on. In addition to this, there's a large element of capturing the tone of the era and, again, I became better at this with practice.
- Plot: Jesus. I clearly had no idea what I was doing for most of the first two-thirds, and it's only after then that what might generously be called a cohesive and coherent plot begins to make itself seen. By the last few chapters, I was quite pleased, but there's too much handwaving and rule of cool in the first third or so for my liking. If I ever get around to those rewrites, they'll be very thorough.
- Characters: Hit-and-miss. Another area where I find research and growing skill helped. There was a turning point at which I find the characters begin to go from plot vehicles to actual distinct entities within the story, but even at the good end I find them forced and a bit amateurish.
This isn't to say I hate my own work: I'm extremely happy with how the last few chapters turned out and I think the whole project was a good exercise in improving my writing skills (even if I am embarrassed at my output from a few years back).
In that vein, and to cut to the chase, what I'm asking for or about here is feedback on what worked, what didn't, and what could do with improvement as I look forward to other projects that I might turn my hand to.
As always, comments and questions are appreciated.
And - though I find the sentiment a little bit twee - thanks for reading.
Pangur
Donor
I know next to nothing about NZ at the time and not that much about it right now so if there was errors that more research would have picked up,I`ill take your word for it as it had zero impact on my enjoyment of the tale. Plot, it did not see anything that stood out as odd TBH. Plausibility,in the case of NZ there is little enough in cannon which again allows you to go pretty much where ever you want. To sum it all up, it was/is a bloody good story and thanks for writing it