Time of Monsters - The Crisis of the 21st Century (OOC)

[The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz]

Your NS nation: The Hobbesian Metaphysician.

Your RP territorial entity's name: Commonwealth of Virginia.

Entity type (sovereign state, corporation, subnational state, etc): Subnational state.

Location: Virginia, upper southeastern United States, American Atlantic.

How is your entity (government or corporation) organised?: In the same manner, the constitution of Virginia (1971 edition) has provided for the past several decades. However, the government is reserved when it comes to dealing with people from the federal government, and some news agencies might even use the word "hostile". The Virginian government believes only it can solve the problems plaguing their state since one governor was quoted as saying "Washington cannot even find its ass even if you gave it a mirror".

If a sovereign state, is your government unitary or federal? For now, this is not applicable, but one day it may very well be.

If applicable, what political ideology does your entity uphold?: Currently loyal to the United States, there is a growing amount of discontent, and political separatism which has begun to take over parts of Virginian Society. The major political party that has come into power is the National Democratic Party. A schismatic branch of the southeastern wing of the democratic party which left following contentions with the Beto O'Rourke presidency, and his policies. The newcomer into policies is the recently formed Commonwealth Party, a somewhat powerful force-feeding on the discontent of those who feel betrayed over the government's failure to resolve the depression.

Instead, they turn inward, focusing on restoring the status of Virginia, and are rumored to have secessionist sympathies, but their supporters claim the party advocates for increased state autonomy.


How is your territory's electricity currently generated IRL, by source?:
https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=VA
*This is provided by the United States energy information administration, but admittedly some changes will have happened by this new decade.

Describe the cultural and ethnic character of your territory in the current RP year:

(Image)

Virginia has always had an important place within the U.S socio-political sphere due to its prominence as one of the original thirteen colonies. From the time of the revolution to the war of the states to today things have changed greatly. Regardless Virginians carry on distinct identity one that has become increasingly despondent with the federal government's role in solving the issues plaguing the country. Virginians have their take on literature, and the fine arts, and are a religiously diverse populace. The state is responsible for several contributions it has made to general southern cuisine, and American dining in general.

The hope remains, at least for Virginians that its various traditions, rites, and peoples will unite, and overcome what an impossibly bloated D.C cannot.

If in Eurasia, what was your territory's approximate population in 1800?: Not Applicable.

What is your territory's population projected to be in 2050?:
https://demographics.coopercenter.org/s ... elease.pdf

Going off this the populations projected for 2050 could be eleven million following the percentage increase of a million every decade. Also for some estimates on racial makeup click the link below.

https://news.virginia.edu/content/popul ... state-2040

A brief history of your entity between 2019 and 2047: In 2019 things began to a turn following the tariff spats between the Trump administration, and the Beijing. Yet many could thank that they weren't directly affected at first, but would by 2020 become a national spotlight as entire towns were ravaged by the "Williamsburg Fever". An antibiotic-resistant bacteria born from when the wrong person met the wrong tourist while exploring colonial Williamsburg. Regardless of how people met the incompetence of the Northam governorship would leave 100,000 dead in Virginia alone. As the fever burned itself out killing a million U.S citizens across the Atlantic states people buried their dead, and Virginians raged at the electoral office come 2021.

With the democratic party humiliated former trump affiliate Corey Stewart held the governorship until 2029 promising tough reform in key areas especially places of entry. He stoked fears that rightly existed but also turned some Virginian republicans to questioning the trump administration due to his firing back in 2017. He ran big on claiming that Trumps inability to work with parts of the government distracted both the government and ultimately the CDC from ending the fever much sooner. Experts these days claim while governor Stewarts claim did have a basis, in reality, it is not entirely plausible to blame the government for the deaths of a million people.

Crenshaw's presidency was viewed as a failure due to his status as a one-term, and with the succession of Beto O'Rourke, some began to question current political directions. By 2032 the Virginian Democrats in an act of complaint against executive overreach officially splintered from the party under the name "National Democratic Party". The National Democrats would go on to form a patchwork in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. As mainstream democrats and the NDP fight it out in these states the wave of political fracturing hasn't spared republicans either. The lack of a potential republican presidency in the future and the ever-widening depression of 2034 has caused a complete collapse of the party in Virginia.

In its stead, the highly autonomist, and some would say resentful Republicans, independents, and ideologues have formed the "Commonwealth party". Lead in fashion by Francis Albright they seek to claim the governorship one of these days, but slowly spread their populist message across the state. Fueled by popular speeches given on issues of governance, and the abject failure of the federal government many have turned to the party out of some hope. You can watch it on the news, and read it in the papers as Albright's name continues to gain more prominence. The man might just make things right or is just an opportunist playing the long game like so many others.




Are you willing to post at least once every two days?: Most certainly am willing to do so.

Accepted

This describes the situation expediently well

You gonna post or what?

Gonne do it now.

[The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz]

Aight got a first post up, sort of establishing the mood for the US. Tower Industries is arguably going to benefit from this, as is anyone focused on the extraction of industrial metals in the US. the President is going to start implementing more protectionist measures pretty soon in an attempt to stop US manufacturing from contracting as quickly as the rest of the world's, but will be sure to make new exceptions with the US's Anglosphere (including Britain, which is a player) allies.

[The Felan Federation]

Aight got a first post up, sort of establishing the mood for the US. Tower Industries is arguably going to benefit from this, as is anyone focused on the extraction of industrial metals in the US. the President is going to start implementing more protectionist measures pretty soon in an attempt to stop US manufacturing from contracting as quickly as the rest of the world's, but will be sure to make new exceptions with the US's Anglosphere (including Britain, which is a player) allies.

I got a question. Is it possible for some cities to survive as high-tech enclaves similar to what happened in Deus Ex: Invisible War?

Like Detroit?

[Plzen]

I got a question. Is it possible for some cities to survive as high-tech enclaves similar to what happened in Deus Ex: Invisible War?

Like Detroit?

I imagine that the better-off regions of the developed world would end up looking like cyberpunk dystopias. Technology and knowledge are resilient things, very difficult to lose even in a severe crisis like the one that will eventually come in this RP.

Infrastructure, industry, and social organisation necessary to take advantage of that technology, however, are far more fragile things.

Techno-barbarians in he very literal meaning of that phrase.

[Labstoska]

Aight got a first post up, sort of establishing the mood for the US. Tower Industries is arguably going to benefit from this, as is anyone focused on the extraction of industrial metals in the US. the President is going to start implementing more protectionist measures pretty soon in an attempt to stop US manufacturing from contracting as quickly as the rest of the world's, but will be sure to make new exceptions with the US's Anglosphere (including Britain, which is a player) allies.

I got a question. Is it possible for some cities to survive as high-tech enclaves similar to what happened in Deus Ex: Invisible War?

Like Detroit?

I don't see why cities would exist as they are the product of an industrial world, in a situation such as this where food and water become invaluable you're gonna want most of your people out in the fields and tearing apart those old cities to get to the soil beneath.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

Technology is not just something you have; it needs to be maintained as well. In order to have a sophisticated technological base you need a large economy and population. You cannot have a hyper-technological marvel if you become isolated from the economic world at large.

[The Felan Federation]

Technology is not just something you have; it needs to be maintained as well. In order to have a sophisticated technological base you need a large economy and population. You cannot have a hyper-technological marvel if you become isolated from the economic world at large.

Not necessarily. You would need access to the mineral resources needed to produce such technology and skilled labor for it. Granted a large economy and population does make it easier to maintain it, than going full isolationist.

[Nea Byzantia]

Your NS nation:
Your RP territorial entity's name: Third French Empire
Entity type (sovereign state, corporation, subnational state, etc): Sovereign State
Location: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, Spain
Capital: Paris
How is your entity (government or corporation) organised?: Military Dictatorship
If a sovereign state, is your government unitary or federal? Unitary
If applicable, what political ideology does your entity uphold?: Imperialism
How is your territory's electricity currently generated IRL, by source?: Coal, Oil, Nuclear
Describe the cultural and ethnic character of your territory in the current RP year: WIP
If in Eurasia, what was your territory's approximate population in 1800?: WIP
What is your territory's population projected to be in 2050?: WIP
A brief history of your entity between 2019 and 2047: WIP

[The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz]

Technology is not just something you have; it needs to be maintained as well. In order to have a sophisticated technological base you need a large economy and population. You cannot have a hyper-technological marvel if you become isolated from the economic world at large.

Depends what kind of technology. You can argue that in this regard there are two kinds of technology - small-scale technology and organisation-dependent technology. Small-scale technology is technology that can be used by small-scale communities without outside assistance. Organisation-dependent technology is technology that depends on large-scale social organisation. Historically regressions of small-scale technology have been much less common, but organisation-dependent technology always regresses when social organisation break down. Look at the Romans - their small-scale technology survived because any clever village craftsman could build, for instance, a whatever wheel, any skilled smith could make steel by Roman methods, and so forth, but the Romans stopped being able to build their trademark roads and aqueducts once the large-scale social organisation required to develop it collapsed.

You do raise a very good point. What technology is small-scale enough to be made by somebody crafty in the middle of nowhere, and what technology is dependent on big multi-level supply chains to continue existing? How far would you say things regress? I don't think nuclear power has much of a future without large-scale social organisation, nor do solar pannels which require rare Earths to be manufactured, obviously things like automobiles which need fuel are pretty much gone in places that experience a collapse of the system even if a single person can make them with enough know-how. The real question is, can you make very simple electric generators without large-scale social organisation? They made them in the late 19th century and up until the 1930s were used for electricity on farms not hooked up to any grid, so they seem like a good candidate for small-scale electrical technology. Although there will probably be some scarcity of the required materials, it does seem like simple batteries, turbines and thus generators aren't out of reach, and if so you could use wind and water for very small-scale electrical power generation. What do you reckon?

[Plzen]

-snip-

All you really need for an electrical power system is a couple magnets and a length of wire. Towns and villages might not be able to manage it, but any polity with any level of reasonable social organisation should be able to put together enough of a system to make electricity available, if not necessarily commonplace.

[The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz]

-snip-

All you really need for an electrical power system is a couple magnets and a length of wire. Towns and villages might not be able to manage it, but any polity with any level of reasonable social organisation should be able to put together enough of a system to make electricity available, if not necessarily commonplace.

I was under the impression that this was the case. What exact level of social organisation has to survive for generators to be on the table? Anything resembling a state that can put together a large number of settlements during the transition on the level of pre-modern state entities?

[Plzen]

I was under the impression that this was the case. What exact level of social organisation has to survive for generators to be on the table? Anything resembling a state that can put together a large number of settlements during the transition on the level of pre-modern state entities?

It really depends on what you mean by generators. I wasn’t joking earlier; two good bar magnets, a metre of flexible copper wire, and I can build you an electrical system to power an LED reading lamp or something in two minutes. It’s a classic middle school science demonstration.

Consistently producing a large amount of power that adapts to grid load at a fixed standardised voltage the way a real modern power grid has to do is quite another matter, of course.

[Reverend Norv]

I was under the impression that this was the case. What exact level of social organisation has to survive for generators to be on the table? Anything resembling a state that can put together a large number of settlements during the transition on the level of pre-modern state entities?

It really depends on what you mean by generators. I wasn’t joking earlier; two good bar magnets, a metre of flexible copper wire, and I can build you an electrical system to power an LED reading lamp or something in two minutes. It’s a classic middle school science demonstration.

Consistently producing a large amount of power that adapts to grid load at a fixed standardised voltage the way a real modern power grid has to do is quite another matter, of course.

The Regulators, at the moment, are pushing microgeneration for ideological reasons (a general ethos of self-reliance), and in order to deal with unreliable grids in areas where the electrical infrastructure is most of a century old. It doesn't have to provide more than a fraction of their electrical needs for either of those purposes. But it lays in some useful experience with alternative forms of power generation: wind turbines to run farm irrigation, microhydro units that use the flow of streams and creeks, maybe even just a "turbine" driven by a mule walking in a circle. None of that can serve the function that the grid does, but it may help to ease the shock of its failure compared to a lot of other places.

[Reverend Norv]

Also, I appreciate the variety of writing types that this RP has already produced, from academic history to news reports to oral history to conventional character-driven writing. Each is ideally suited to the character of the country or group involved.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

Technology is not just something you have; it needs to be maintained as well. In order to have a sophisticated technological base you need a large economy and population. You cannot have a hyper-technological marvel if you become isolated from the economic world at large.

Depends what kind of technology. You can argue that in this regard there are two kinds of technology - small-scale technology and organisation-dependent technology. Small-scale technology is technology that can be used by small-scale communities without outside assistance. Organisation-dependent technology is technology that depends on large-scale social organisation. Historically regressions of small-scale technology have been much less common, but organisation-dependent technology always regresses when social organisation break down. Look at the Romans - their small-scale technology survived because any clever village craftsman could build, for instance, a whatever wheel, any skilled smith could make steel by Roman methods, and so forth, but the Romans stopped being able to build their trademark roads and aqueducts once the large-scale social organisation required to develop it collapsed.

You do raise a very good point. What technology is small-scale enough to be made by somebody crafty in the middle of nowhere, and what technology is dependent on big multi-level supply chains to continue existing? How far would you say things regress? I don't think nuclear power has much of a future without large-scale social organisation, nor do solar pannels which require rare Earths to be manufactured, obviously things like automobiles which need fuel are pretty much gone in places that experience a collapse of the system even if a single person can make them with enough know-how. The real question is, can you make very simple electric generators without large-scale social organisation? They made them in the late 19th century and up until the 1930s were used for electricity on farms not hooked up to any grid, so they seem like a good candidate for small-scale electrical technology. Although there will probably be some scarcity of the required materials, it does seem like simple batteries, turbines and thus generators aren't out of reach, and if so you could use wind and water for very small-scale electrical power generation. What do you reckon?

I think that, aside from your two categories, we need a third category: demand-dependent technology. Some technologies require cost-efficient production in order to be affordable, which can only happen with increased demand. Take, for example, the electric toothbrush. It uses no resources that are particularly rare, and the tech is quite simple, but while we do know how to make them, there might not be a demand to justify the production. The same goes for high-grade mobile phones. Aside from using rare earth minerals, they can only exist if there is a demand for their creation. If there isn’t, we might know how to make them, but we won’t. Now, this basically applies to everything. Automated farming implements are easy to make, but if there is an abundance of labour there won’t be a demand for them. And demand is a direct result of population size, so as a rule of thumb, I think that you can easily count back how far technology will regress. If half of humanity dies, then we will regress back to 50’s tech, give or take. Of course, we will have all the scientific knowledge still, that’s won’t go anywhere. But putting the theory into practice will regress significantly.

[The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz]

Depends what kind of technology. You can argue that in this regard there are two kinds of technology - small-scale technology and organisation-dependent technology. Small-scale technology is technology that can be used by small-scale communities without outside assistance. Organisation-dependent technology is technology that depends on large-scale social organisation. Historically regressions of small-scale technology have been much less common, but organisation-dependent technology always regresses when social organisation break down. Look at the Romans - their small-scale technology survived because any clever village craftsman could build, for instance, a whatever wheel, any skilled smith could make steel by Roman methods, and so forth, but the Romans stopped being able to build their trademark roads and aqueducts once the large-scale social organisation required to develop it collapsed.

You do raise a very good point. What technology is small-scale enough to be made by somebody crafty in the middle of nowhere, and what technology is dependent on big multi-level supply chains to continue existing? How far would you say things regress? I don't think nuclear power has much of a future without large-scale social organisation, nor do solar pannels which require rare Earths to be manufactured, obviously things like automobiles which need fuel are pretty much gone in places that experience a collapse of the system even if a single person can make them with enough know-how. The real question is, can you make very simple electric generators without large-scale social organisation? They made them in the late 19th century and up until the 1930s were used for electricity on farms not hooked up to any grid, so they seem like a good candidate for small-scale electrical technology. Although there will probably be some scarcity of the required materials, it does seem like simple batteries, turbines and thus generators aren't out of reach, and if so you could use wind and water for very small-scale electrical power generation. What do you reckon?

I think that, aside from your two categories, we need a third category: demand-dependent technology. Some technologies require cost-efficient production in order to be affordable, which can only happen with increased demand. Take, for example, the electric toothbrush. It uses no resources that are particularly rare, and the tech is quite simple, but while we do know how to make them, there might not be a demand to justify the production. The same goes for high-grade mobile phones. Aside from using rare earth minerals, they can only exist if there is a demand for their creation. If there isn’t, we might know how to make them, but we won’t. Now, this basically applies to everything. Automated farming implements are easy to make, but if there is an abundance of labour there won’t be a demand for them. And demand is a direct result of population size, so as a rule of thumb, I think that you can easily count back how far technology will regress. If half of humanity dies, then we will regress back to 50’s tech, give or take. Of course, we will have all the scientific knowledge still, that’s won’t go anywhere. But putting the theory into practice will regress significantly.

bruh
the EROI
a hannah montana vibrating toothbrush is not as demanding to implement as mechanised agriculture
there isn't the easily accessable oil or coal for it

[The Hobbesian Metaphysician]

While the fever only killed a million (in the U.S) it disillusioned a lot of people with just how extreme the reaction was to it. I also wanted to give a modern frame of reference to justify both ongoing secessionist discontent and the growing power of the regular movement. At the end of the day while both have very different goals they have the same common origin. Albright more or so focuses on the fact D.C betrayed the U.S population in its attempt to save it, the extremists went too far.