Global Peak (Part 11.0 up 05/29/09).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Ah...and here I was expecting Utah to be the independent republic of Deseret...

What about Texas? Squeezing any blood from the Permian Basin?

The Republic of Deseret was a member of the FSU, and is now more or less entirely occupied, save the eastern uranium fields, by the FedGov. Which suppressed the multi-month siege of Salt Lake City with massed bombardment by artillery, including poison gas shells.

[Illuminatus Primus]

What is the governmental form of the FedGov? Is there any direct relationship to the U.S. and Canada legitimately? Are any of the former governmental bodies or constitutional law still in effect?

And judging from the terms, is the FedGov prepared to allow some of the FSU remain independent, or are they really aiming to fully assimilate the entire former U.S. and Canada into their state?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

What is the governmental form of the FedGov? Is there any direct relationship to the U.S. and Canada legitimately? Are any of the former governmental bodies or constitutional law still in effect?

Both governments essentially signed away--using clauses in their constitutional bodies which give treaties equivalent status to constitutional amendments--their independence into a common "Union Government" institution with exceptionally broad discretionary powers to deal with the current crisis. The Free States proceeded to revolt on the grounds that was an incorrect interpretation of the constitution and that they their rights were being oppressed and destroyed as states as well as the citizens within them. Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta joined them. Then a bunch of liberal cities in FSU states counter-seceded.

The Union Government consists of the plenary council of the Union Parties of National Emergency, comprising the Canadian Social-Democrats, Canadian Left-Liberals (the party split in the 2030s), Bloc Quebecois, the Democratic Party of the United States (leftist; the party splintered, but they refused to change the name. The other half of the party is called the Loyalist Party and is defunct in the FedGov), and the International Worker's Faction, a Trotskyist Fourth International union group made out of several splintered trotskyist parties. The minor IWW (International Worker's World) and American Socialist Party are also members. Essentially the Canadian and American governments dissolved themselves and then appointed the members of their legislatures to a single common unicameral legislature.

There is a Union President and a Union Premier in what is nominally an arrangement not dissimilar to that of France. As a practical matter, however, the Union President, an American, has ended up a figurehead to the Union Premier, a Canadian (at all times, as stipulated by the treaty), who is, in this case (to keep them from seceding as well) a member of Bloc Quebecois. Elections are held every two years by an Emergency Legislative Assembly which consists of the members of all the registered political parties. No new political parties can be formed, because the existing political parties will have them banned as threats to the state. As a practice, the Union Government has nonetheless declared its intention to follow the 2030 revision of the UN Declaration of Human Rights in all its actions, but as a practical matter they violate it like a cheap doll every other minute.

The Premier is in charge simply in representing the Party Apparatchiks, who control the actual legislative process. The secretaries, etc, are just yes-men, and the legislature is more of a rubber stamp. The chief ideologues of the political parties jointly decide policy and then cause their members to execute it, making them the real power in the state.

There is a strong factional divide, however, between the East and the Western Governorate, which is more or less dominated by an Asian technocratic clique which transcends party lines, and is operated on an entirely autonomous basis from the eastern part of the FedGov due to the lack of land connections except the obviously impractical Canadian Arctic. In both cases the inner city Black populations are heavily relied upon as enforcers. Since the ill-defined crime of "hoarding" is punishable by death under certain circumstances, the morality of the security services is rather.. Vague. The Quebecois have come to dominate the federal security rather than the local goons, however, and have acquired a ruthless reputation in doing so. The Generals in the east are less competent, and more politicized, than the generals of the west, where there are six Army-level commands, of which Catherine Tang's is the largest and most prestigeous (and she is the seniormost of the Generals). Four of them are Asians, the other two are white.

Though nominally a paradise for the average member of this board in legal forms and the stated intent of the government--and in some ways, it's true, considering the likes of Catherine Tang reached high military command--as a practical matter the FedGov is a brutal state in which you can potentially (though not necessarily) be summarily executed for stealing boards off a fence to keep your hearth-fire burning. Usually the punishment for virtually all crimes we consider felonies today is 3 - 15 years in a "labour camp of strict regime", as is the more usual punishment for the aforementioned camp. Which means constant forced labour to keep society going, in rather worse conditions than the conscripted labour battalions digging canals by hand in the east or the central valleys of California experience.

The state in short operates broadly along the same lines as Russia in the Civil War, and is suffering from the same conditions on the same scale, up to and including Felix Dzerzhinsky's CHEKA. A good thing to keep in mind is that millions of people are still trying to immigrate to it despite all of that; it's better off than what they're trying to leave.

And judging from the terms, is the FedGov prepared to allow some of the FSU remain independent, or are they really aiming to fully assimilate the entire former U.S. and Canada into their state?

All of Canada, and all of the United States except for Hawaii (declared independence), Florida (declared independence, occupied by FSU), and the other historic Confederate States of the first Civil War in addition to Florida, + Kentucky, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico, which they are willing to allow to become independent as the FSU. They are also willing to hold a plebiscite over the fate of Colorado. Their goal is the consolidation of the rest of the nation into a single unitary state.

FedGov troops currently occupy Baha California.

[Lonestar]

The Doctrine and composition of the FedGov army seems mixed. On one hand, you have combat battalions("6 weeks of rifle training, then off you go") drawn from immigrants and (presumably) the less lucky. At the same time there are references to AFVs and tanks(I assume that air support, besides small electric motor UAVs, is more or less a distant memory).

Does the FedGov's military resemble a leg-infantry force where they walk/ride trains everywhere? Howabout the Navy? If the USN mostly sided with the FedGov, do you have high-tech CGNs in addition to fire support monitors?

What about the Free States? Judging from the raiding that goes on between the states, I find it hard to believe that a substantial unified command is fighting the FedGov(Virginia is fighting it's own war, Kentucky is fighting it's own war, Texas is busy putting down La Raza insurgents or something...more or less free of FedGov interference after seizing the assets at the Pantex facility).

[Illuminatus Primus]

And judging from the terms, is the FedGov prepared to allow some of the FSU remain independent, or are they really aiming to fully assimilate the entire former U.S. and Canada into their state?

All of Canada, and all of the United States except for Hawaii (declared independence), Florida (declared independence, occupied by FSU), and the other historic Confederate States of the first Civil War in addition to Florida, + Kentucky, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico, which they are willing to allow to become independent as the FSU. They are also willing to hold a plebiscite over the fate of Colorado. Their goal is the consolidation of the rest of the nation into a single unitary state.

I guess they don't think they have the muscle to strongarm the old Confederacy into their new North America. Either that or the old Confederacy doesn't have much in the way of resources or industry (its sum history of built-up development being suburban hypertrophy while cars were available), but more mouths to feed. Since they got West Virginia and are looking to seize most of the other meaningful resource pools (such as the Utah uranium sites) and the Midwestern agricultural belt, they really could not care less. Also, in the first vignette you made Hawaii a loyal state.

How far forward are you going to shift?

[Alferd Packer]

OK, so call me dumb, but why hasn't the war escalated to a nuclear conflict? The FedGov is a brutal government by most standards, so why hasn't every city in the FSU been simply blasted flat? I can understand not wanting to render barren swaths of arable land, of course, but why chew through millions of lives to accomplish the same goals? Are ABM shields cheap and effective in this day and age, or is the FedGov simply trying to burn off some of its excess population (after all, you don't have to feed a dead person, and he might have killed one or two of the enemy before being killed)?

[Illuminatus Primus]

OK, so call me dumb, but why hasn't the war escalated to a nuclear conflict? The FedGov is a brutal government by most standards, so why hasn't every city in the FSU been simply blasted flat? I can understand not wanting to render barren swaths of arable land, of course, but why chew through millions of lives to accomplish the same goals? Are ABM shields cheap and effective in this day and age, or is the FedGov simply trying to burn off some of its excess population (after all, you don't have to feed a dead person, and he might have killed one or two of the enemy before being killed)?

Why are they going to initiate over their own soil and further screw up their environmental and sustainability problems? Civil wars are for control of one's own country; you don't generally use WMDs, because you'd like to have a country left to rule when you win.

[Lonestar]

Why are they going to initiate over their own soil and further screw up their environmental and sustainability problems? Civil wars are for control of one's own country; you don't generally use WMDs, because you'd like to have a country left to rule when you win.

They could still blast, say, Charleston or Norfolk(although since Virginia seems to be one of the more sane FSU members, maybe not).

[Alferd Packer]

Why are they going to initiate over their own soil and further screw up their environmental and sustainability problems? Civil wars are for control of one's own country; you don't generally use WMDs, because you'd like to have a country left to rule when you win.

Based on the most recent installment and posts by the Dutchess, it seems to me like FedGov is only interested in getting its territorial integrity back, and is willing to cede large portions of the Southern U.S. to the FSU. If they're only interested in the three Prairies provinces, and say, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona, why not blast the shit out of the rest of the states? It's not as if you were getting their crops, anyway. Hell, even if you create a humanitarian crisis, you can essentially enslave the refugees and work them to death in the forced labor battalions. This kind of brutality doesn't seem out of line with the behavior of the FedGov so far.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I guess they don't think they have the muscle to strongarm the old Confederacy into their new North America. Either that or the old Confederacy doesn't have much in the way of resources or industry (its sum history of built-up development being suburban hypertrophy while cars were available), but more mouths to feed. Since they got West Virginia and are looking to seize most of the other meaningful resource pools (such as the Utah uranium sites) and the Midwestern agricultural belt, they really could not care less. Also, in the first vignette you made Hawaii a loyal state.

How far forward are you going to shift?

Probably the furthest out I'll go is the 2180s.

And I fucked up with Hawaii this time; you're right, they're Loyalist.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Why are they going to initiate over their own soil and further screw up their environmental and sustainability problems? Civil wars are for control of one's own country; you don't generally use WMDs, because you'd like to have a country left to rule when you win.

Based on the most recent installment and posts by the Dutchess, it seems to me like FedGov is only interested in getting its territorial integrity back, and is willing to cede large portions of the Southern U.S. to the FSU. If they're only interested in the three Prairies provinces, and say, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona, why not blast the shit out of the rest of the states? It's not as if you were getting their crops, anyway. Hell, even if you create a humanitarian crisis, you can essentially enslave the refugees and work them to death in the forced labor battalions. This kind of brutality doesn't seem out of line with the behavior of the FedGov so far.

Well, they used up a lot of their nuclear arsenal turning southern Mexico into a radioactive stain on the map when the Mexicans made a grab for the southwest just as the war started. More about that is coming later, but suffice to say the population of Mexico City was subjected to the Claw of Death, which scratched 10 million urban dwellers right off the map.

Everyone has fairly effective anti-missile weaponry around fixed installations where they can pump enough power in it; those are energy weapons which require fixed emplacements. Basically, they're sitting next to major powerplants. That means that, among other things, there's the "Tennessee Valley Line" of particle beam emplacements which can intercept overflying ICBMs coming in against the Deep South. Of course they're getting more and more worried as the water levels in the dams decline..

But area defence near nuclear reactors is also quite possible.

It's best to say that the armies are a strange mix of mass conscripts and some limited high technology. There are a very limited number of fighters in service: For example, there's about a wing of aircraft (48) attached to each Army in the west, evenly divided between recon birds and fighter-bombers. They however are not just expensive to operate, but dangerous to fly, as every so often someone shows up with one of the old US Army 2030s-vintage point defence lasers that can chop through a squadron of Mach 5 jets in three seconds.

The thing that's really been hit hard, in short, is the electronics industry. They're churning out the equivalent of 1970s-vintage Soviet war machines just fine, but our "smart weapons" deployed in the 1980s, and the far more advanced stuff developed in the coming 30 years? That might as well be the equivalent of Lostech in the Btech setting. Most of it was simply used up in the first two years of the war and never replaced.

If the whole remaining nuclear arsenal of the FedGov (the US arsenal continued to decline in the 21st century on top of everything else) was used on the FSU they'd probably get about--at most--80 successful strikes which would simply fuck up the ecosystem and not completely destroy the fighting power of the enemy. And they might get less. And they sort of want a strategic reserve to warn off potential entanglements.

Tanks and AFVs are still being used for breakthrough purposes, but again, in rather limited numbers. Not like eastern Utah and Colorado are precisely an area one wants to be fighting over, anyway.

The key right down is that the FSU is seriously threatening the integrity of the eastern United States region of the FedGov.

As for the internal integrity of the FSU, they DO have a unified military command. The raids were launched independent of that, and have damned near bright the Union crashing down. There's a Union Government in Texas, but it's a joke with very little powers. Their only reason for being together is "We can't let them beat us like they did last time!" Which is why the Virginian raid on Tennessee had been so surprising; before that the Confederate States had seemed by far the most solid block in the FSU, but the God's Will party has gotten progressively worse as time has gone on.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Water going down from increased agricultural use alone, or is there sustained subtropical dry season and severe drought issues because of global warming and overuse?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Water going down from increased agricultural use alone, or is there sustained subtropical dry season and severe drought issues because of global warming and overuse?

It's both. Increased agricultural use on one hand, coupled with some effects from sustained dry seasons and drought issues. Mayabird is going to do a guest short about the water problems in the deep south.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Water going down from increased agricultural use alone, or is there sustained subtropical dry season and severe drought issues because of global warming and overuse?

It's both. Increased agricultural use on one hand, coupled with some effects from sustained dry seasons and drought issues. Mayabird is going to do a guest short about the water problems in the deep south.

[Darth Fanboy]

Water going down from increased agricultural use alone, or is there sustained subtropical dry season and severe drought issues because of global warming and overuse?

I sense the potential for the states up north to mess up the states further south by diverting or mucking up a lot of the water the flows down that way possibly also.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Water going down from increased agricultural use alone, or is there sustained subtropical dry season and severe drought issues because of global warming and overuse?

I sense the potential for the states up north to mess up the states further south by diverting or mucking up a lot of the water the flows down that way possibly also.

The Tennessee Valley isn't fed by any Old Union rivers, I think.

[Darth Fanboy]

The Tennessee Valley isn't fed by any Old Union rivers, I think.

I have to reread, I think the uppermost part is in Kentucky and for some reason I thought that's where the border between the two big factions was at.

[Lonestar]

The Tennessee Valley isn't fed by any Old Union rivers, I think.

I have to reread, I think the uppermost part is in Kentucky and for some reason I thought that's where the border between the two big factions was at.

Seeing as the FedGov is slaughtering Baptists by the tens of thousands in Indiana and Ohio, I suspect the Midwest is very much a disputed zone.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The Tennessee Valley isn't fed by any Old Union rivers, I think.

I have to reread, I think the uppermost part is in Kentucky and for some reason I thought that's where the border between the two big factions was at.

Seeing as the FedGov is slaughtering Baptists by the tens of thousands in Indiana and Ohio, I suspect the Midwest is very much a disputed zone.

I thought I mentioned the FSU's "Festung Gary" which prevents resupply of Chicago from the east by land? And that they're launching an offensive into Minnesota at the moment? Whereas the FedGov is preparing a countervailing offensive in southern Illinois to relieve the Siege of St. Louis...

[Alferd Packer]

Well, they used up a lot of their nuclear arsenal turning southern Mexico into a radioactive stain on the map when the Mexicans made a grab for the southwest just as the war started. More about that is coming later, but suffice to say the population of Mexico City was subjected to the Claw of Death, which scratched 10 million urban dwellers right off the map.

Everyone has fairly effective anti-missile weaponry around fixed installations where they can pump enough power in it; those are energy weapons which require fixed emplacements. Basically, they're sitting next to major powerplants. That means that, among other things, there's the "Tennessee Valley Line" of particle beam emplacements which can intercept overflying ICBMs coming in against the Deep South. Of course they're getting more and more worried as the water levels in the dams decline..

But area defence near nuclear reactors is also quite possible.

It's best to say that the armies are a strange mix of mass conscripts and some limited high technology. There are a very limited number of fighters in service: For example, there's about a wing of aircraft (48) attached to each Army in the west, evenly divided between recon birds and fighter-bombers. They however are not just expensive to operate, but dangerous to fly, as every so often someone shows up with one of the old US Army 2030s-vintage point defence lasers that can chop through a squadron of Mach 5 jets in three seconds.

The thing that's really been hit hard, in short, is the electronics industry. They're churning out the equivalent of 1970s-vintage Soviet war machines just fine, but our "smart weapons" deployed in the 1980s, and the far more advanced stuff developed in the coming 30 years? That might as well be the equivalent of Lostech in the Btech setting. Most of it was simply used up in the first two years of the war and never replaced.

If the whole remaining nuclear arsenal of the FedGov (the US arsenal continued to decline in the 21st century on top of everything else) was used on the FSU they'd probably get about--at most--80 successful strikes which would simply fuck up the ecosystem and not completely destroy the fighting power of the enemy. And they might get less. And they sort of want a strategic reserve to warn off potential entanglements.

Tanks and AFVs are still being used for breakthrough purposes, but again, in rather limited numbers. Not like eastern Utah and Colorado are precisely an area one wants to be fighting over, anyway.

The key right down is that the FSU is seriously threatening the integrity of the eastern United States region of the FedGov.

As for the internal integrity of the FSU, they DO have a unified military command. The raids were launched independent of that, and have damned near bright the Union crashing down. There's a Union Government in Texas, but it's a joke with very little powers. Their only reason for being together is "We can't let them beat us like they did last time!" Which is why the Virginian raid on Tennessee had been so surprising; before that the Confederate States had seemed by far the most solid block in the FSU, but the God's Will party has gotten progressively worse as time has gone on.

Makes sense. Why waste a perfectly good nuclear warhead if it's probably going to be shot down? What about nuclear-powered subs, then, and the arsenals they employ? Do they exist anymore? They could strike the FSU from the rear, so to speak. I only belabor the point because it seems to me that the goals of the FedGov are being accomplished with a total war doctrine in mind, and this would include what nuclear arsenals remain to flatten population centers and cripple FSU industry. Unless I've been reading this wrong, FedGov doesn't particularly care how much of the FSU population lives or dies, yes?

[CmdrWilkens]

"You know the government's terms. Surrender Iowa, Missouri, your recent advances into Minnesota and Ohio, all of Illinois and Indiana that you control, the same with Maryland and West Virginia.. Abandon the siege of D.C. Cede to us Wyoming, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Montana, and all of Canada. We retain Idaho and Nevada, Arizona and Utah, by right of conquest. Plebiscite in Colorado about whether or not to rejoin the FedGov. Withdraw from Florida and recognize its independence."

So out of curiosity as I'm still hoping to get into the story around the Maryland/Virginia/DC area just what is the situation there. I mean the C&O plus all the trackage out to Harper's Ferry and beyond obviously makes it a huge battleground area but I'm kinda curious as to what FedGov is still holding and what the FSU have managed to take.

Based on Maryland's own proclivities I'd rather suspect that the whole of the Eastern shore went over while Western Maryland would be as tight and fractured as West Virginia. Give the topography in central Maryland its easy to see a serious effort for Fed Gov to hold north and west of DC but especially the Amtrak and CSX trackage which is (at least for Amtrak) already electrified and triple tracked as far south as New Carrollton and quad tracked north of BWI into Baltimore and the absolute mess that citie's rail network is. Still if even half of the proposed rail and transit initiative slated for the Balt-Wash area have taken effect by time the war hits the region should be well set for a stalemate across the Patuxent/Patapsco rivers as lateral communication is crap but vertical favors FedGov.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

"You know the government's terms. Surrender Iowa, Missouri, your recent advances into Minnesota and Ohio, all of Illinois and Indiana that you control, the same with Maryland and West Virginia.. Abandon the siege of D.C. Cede to us Wyoming, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Montana, and all of Canada. We retain Idaho and Nevada, Arizona and Utah, by right of conquest. Plebiscite in Colorado about whether or not to rejoin the FedGov. Withdraw from Florida and recognize its independence."

So out of curiosity as I'm still hoping to get into the story around the Maryland/Virginia/DC area just what is the situation there. I mean the C&O plus all the trackage out to Harper's Ferry and beyond obviously makes it a huge battleground area but I'm kinda curious as to what FedGov is still holding and what the FSU have managed to take.

Based on Maryland's own proclivities I'd rather suspect that the whole of the Eastern shore went over while Western Maryland would be as tight and fractured as West Virginia. Give the topography in central Maryland its easy to see a serious effort for Fed Gov to hold north and west of DC but especially the Amtrak and CSX trackage which is (at least for Amtrak) already electrified and triple tracked as far south as New Carrollton and quad tracked north of BWI into Baltimore and the absolute mess that citie's rail network is. Still if even half of the proposed rail and transit initiative slated for the Balt-Wash area have taken effect by time the war hits the region should be well set for a stalemate across the Patuxent/Patapsco rivers as lateral communication is crap but vertical favors FedGov.

The FSU occupies the Frederick-Monocacy area and has launched a series of attacks that sometimes have reached as far as Baltimore before being repulsed, and Washington D.C. has been under an intermittent state of siege. The tracks south of Baltimore are completely wrecked, though continuously being repaired to bring in fresh supplies to the garrison of D.C., just for another attack to bring artillery within range of them, etc, etc, back and forth. The Eastern Shore has been cleared of resistance by FedGov Marines at this point, including the Virginian tip, in one of the few bright spots for the FedGov in the eastern theatre.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

What I want to know is how many people went ahead and actually found and listened to Shostakovich's Opus No.119, because I damn well want all my readers to do so.

[PeZook]

What I want to know is how many people went ahead and actually found and listened to Shostakovich's Opus No.119, because I damn well want all my readers to do so.

Will you pay me 70 dollars and find me half an hour so that I can do it? Because if yes, then I'll go for it

[The Duchess of Zeon]

What I want to know is how many people went ahead and actually found and listened to Shostakovich's Opus No.119, because I damn well want all my readers to do so.

Will you pay me 70 dollars and find me half an hour so that I can do it? Because if yes, then I'll go for it ;)

Oh right, you're a man, and men can't multitask, so I guess you're incapable of appreciating classical music while browsing SD.net.

*crooked grin*

Seriously, get the Emusic free trial. You can keep the MP3s after the trial is up; it's on there, along with many other excellent compositions.