How would a modern city manage after the Great Disruption?

[jian]

Even if they have sufficient hydro power generation within whatever sized bubble this situation puts them in... you can't EAT electrical power.

A typical modern city depends upon a constant flow of incoming food, rather than stockpiles, and has about three days worth of food in its local grocery stores and warehouses. After that, people start to go hungry.

Agriculture is seasonal - fisheries, ranches, and local farms don't put out food at arbitrary times you need them, and pretty much nobody in the modern world has ways to harvest or process food without the power provided by hydrocarbon fuels, which will have also stopped flowing.

Yup, that’s all quite right. Even an agricultural powerhouse is not prepared for the rest of the world and its supply chains to suddenly just go away. Thanks to its oil refineries and industry, BC has quite a lot of fossil fuels in the tank compared to other similar cities, but you’d definitely have to ration them and make sure the priority is essential industries like food production and distribution.

Basically, I think money as we know it is basically going away and being replaced by government scrip (mostly electronic) to manage resources and keep everyone fed and looked after. Chip Wilson’s billions mean absolutely nothing in this new world.

 

[MarkB]

One question about radio - if a given surviving modern state (or one from the last 100 years) is using radio, how far away can they expect to pick up signals from another similar state doing so?

Depends on the radio. At the right frequencies you can bounce signals off the ionosphere to be picked up thousands of miles away. Those frequencies aren't the ones commonly used for commerical radio or radio communication these days, but plenty of amateur radio enthusiasts use them to communicate internationally, so the knowledge would be common enough that people would be tuning into them to see who's out there.

 

[MarkB]

Basically, I think money as we know it is basically going away and being replaced by government scrip (mostly electronic) to manage resources and keep everyone fed and looked after. Chip Wilson’s billions mean absolutely nothing in this new world.

Seriously, you think anyone's going to accept electronic currency in a setting where anytime your electronic device wears out or breaks it's gone for good? Nope, cold hard cash will be the thing that holds out the longest before things break down to a barter system.

 

[jian]

Seriously, you think anyone's going to accept electronic currency in a setting where anytime your electronic device wears out or breaks it's gone for good? Nope, cold hard cash will be the thing that holds out the longest before things break down to a barter system.

Yes, that’s fair. I think you’d do electronic initially for convenience but then switch to cash once you’d got everyone used to the new scrip.

 

[sevenbastard]

100 miles if Vancouver is the center is going to get a lot of the US Navy in the area north of Seattle.

 

[jian]

100 miles if Vancouver is the center is going to get a lot of the US Navy in the area north of Seattle.

Yes, that’s true. Honestly if you want the food in the Okanagan and the hydroelectric dams, though, you want the centre to be more to the northeast of Vancouver somewhere, like Merritt or Boston Bar. This is a very convenient temporal apocalypse.

 

[sevenbastard]

This is a very convenient temporal apocalypse

I mean sometimes you need that for a good setting.

 

[Kaodi]

I think you guys might be cheating the scenario somewhat if you are trying to use customized settings on your starting location, : D .

But anyway I feel like prepping would be more appealing if not for that whole getting imprisoned (or executed) for hoarding aspect.

 

[Tonguez]

I think you guys might be cheating the scenario somewhat if you are trying to use customized settings on your starting location, : D .

But anyway I feel like prepping would be more appealing if not for that whole getting imprisoned (or executed) for hoarding aspect.

Well I'm just using Vancouver and my home area, though admittedly I havent been to Vancouver in over 20 years ...

 

[jian]

Heading away from the Pacific Northwest, I wonder what would be most interesting elsewhere in the world. Let’s set some basic but negotiable parameters:

• The zones are about 300 miles across.
• Their shape and centre are basically where you want them to be.
• The default zone is prehistoric, any time up to 10 000 BCE or so, probably just on statistics. Yes, dinosaurs are an option.

So, for instance, what about imperial capitals and iconic rulers?

• Dadu/Beijing, Kublai Khan, 1270 CE
• Niani, Mansa Musa, 1300 CE
• Luoyang, Wu Zetian, 690 CE
• Rome, Hadrian, 120 CE
• Moscow, Catherine the Great, 1770 CE
• Istanbul, Suleyman the Magnificent, 1530 CE

So the upshot of most of those is that the emperor or empress of vast dominions is suddenly reduced to ruling a city of about 100-200k people and about 150 miles in all directions after which their former empire abruptly becomes prehistoric wilderness. Mansa Musa’s vast wealth becomes nothing with nothing to buy; Hadrian the great consolidator has lost all he consolidated, including that wall in Caledonia he’d just started. Most of these aren’t anywhere near each other initially; the exceptions are the two Chinese monarchs who are a mere 400 miles apart.