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[GoombaGeek]

So this is my hypothetical scenario for you Bay12ers. Try to give interesting cases and reasons

We're going to make a few assumptions here.
1. It's a "quiet apocalypse" where all non-regionals vanish without a trace for no explained reason. No harmful supernatural or natural consequences remain from this event. All buildings and geography remain.
2. "Home region": use your better judgement. If you live in Russia, don't just say "Russia" because it's huge. Same with Canada, Brazil, the US, any large country... keep the areas pretty small. A rule of thumb: bigger than country, smaller than country (although most European countries could probably get away with it).
3. Assume that all buildings inside your region remain intact, and so do all the books, vehicles, knowledge, etc... it's just like any other day, except today everyone else is gone.

So, here's the case for Alberta, the best province:
For:
- Oil Abundance: The vast amount of petroleum products being mined and refined in-province means that the generators will keep going and our current wasteful system of energy can continue, keeping civilization pretty much where it is.
- Tons of Farmland: The place is covered with prairie and farmland. With the aforementioned gas, our farms would manage the food situation pretty effectively.
- Two Major Learning Centers and Loads More Schools: With lots of trade schools and two major universities, we'd have plenty of knowledge recorded for the future.
Against:
- Right-Wing Nutters: Almost everyone favours the Conservatives. We have lots of hicks with guns, possibly ready to form rifle-toting gangs, although most people seem pretty nice.
- Two Equally Large Cities: Edmonton and Calgary are almost equal in population. When it becomes apparent that outside society has collapsed, we'll either continue to work together OR become warring city-states. Option 2, unfortunately, seems likely. It is unknown where Red Deer stands on this issue, although it would probably become a war-torn wasteland. Meanwhile, fleeing peasants would probably re-populate the especially fertile valleys of BC, forming mountain keeps when appropriate. The teachings of classical civilization will remain written down, unless military action by one city ends up destroying the libraries. However, the rusting refineries and dams will possibly remind us of higher tech-levels.

Verdict:
We're lucky enough to have vast areas of farmland and mostly self-sufficient fuel and engineering, so society would probably remain fairly stable in the decade immediately after the Event. However, the sudden cutoff of international trade would probably cause panic - but the airports would allow us to colonize outlying areas easily. Unfortunately, we are totally unsustainable and if things don't change we'd end up in our own Dark Ages. If things go wrong, we have two equally matched parties at war, and a general mindset of "I don't need to help anyone" for those living in remote areas, leading to terrible things. And the climate is cold, making tech-slippage have large consequences for those without any wood-burning heating systems. However, we'd do okay in the long run, if we keep our aviation knowledge (since the largest boat in Alberta can seat almost thirty drunken frat boys at once and could only get to an ocean if we melted it down and made tractors out of it). Potash, should we ever need it, can be easily stolen from the rusting cities of Saskatchewan along with even more flat land, and in the long run we could reclaim the Great Lakes and the general cultural area of Toronto, Montreal and New York before we sail/fly over to Europe and Asia to re-found the cities.

Remember: there are no human international survivors of any kind!

[Flying Dice]

Kentucky: We're fucked.

[Wrex]

Pacific Northwest:
Pro: Lots of farmland in the east, lots of townland in the west, tons of consumer goods. Electric Dam.
Con: Right wing nutjobs to the east, Bears, wolves, Me.

[mainiac]

I'm in Maryland.  We have enough agriculture to feed ourselves, enough of a manufacturing base to scale up production of any manufactured item we need, a great academic infrastructure and have a very large number of people who do the real work of government living in Bethesda, Maryland.  I think it would take us about a week to completely recover.

[Eagle_eye]

Austin:
Pro: University of Texas, so we've got nearly all of civilization's knowledge preserved. Being extremely selective in who gets to continue existing means that we get the farmland and oil of Texas without the right-wing lunatics. Easily accessible fresh water from the river/aquifer.
Con: Not much in the way of mineral resources other than oil, or industrial capacity.

Texas: Yeah, we're dead. I give it a year until the dark ages set in.

[Skyrunner]

What are non-regionals?

[Wrex]

What are non-regionals?

Everyone from outside your region. In your case, everything but South Korea (That is where you live, right?) would be wiped off the map.

[Kilroy the Grand]

- Right-Wing Nutters: Almost everyone favours the Conservatives. We have lots of hicks with guns, possibly ready to form rifle-toting gangs, although most people seem pretty nice.

Oh geez I didn't realize canada has conservatives waiting for a flimsy excuse to get their guns and rape and pillage the landscape too. Last week the flights flickered a little and inbred hicks swarmed out of the hills cannibalizing school children.

Gosh dang conversatives!

[Scelly9]

Missouri: Rather screwed.

[Criptfeind]

I think the biggest thing to think about when answering this is does your area have a source of oil. The world is so dependent on it, if the rest of the world disappearing means you don't have any, you are fucked.

Such as. Maryland. Gl with agriculture without oil to make fertilizer and to run your machines. Gl with manufacturing without power.

[Frumple]

Florida: We're fucked.

It's a freaking swamp. There is no real reason to be down here except maybe the beaches (i.e. aquatic resources). Best case scenario everyone packs up and goes north. Poor academic base, poor industrial base, poor non-organic resources (We've got limestone! And apparently phosphate. Huh.), middling farmland and too many people for it to support on its own. Heavy criminal element throughout the state, which may or may not be a good thing depending on how things went.

We probably have oil! But wouldn't really have the infrastructure et al to do anything about it if everyone else went kapoof. Also getting to the oil would probably go even further toward wrecking the gulf's biosphere, so good luck with that~

[misko27]

New YorK:

Depends. If it killed off a alarge number of humans, then absolutley. It has a absolutely massive reserve of materials, infrastructure, and other materials. It has fresh water, trees, and all sorts of good stuff. It doesn't ge tthat cold in the winter, and a short walk north will take care of summer heat.

If not, No, not really. We are all going to die. The upstaters are all going to be ****ing fine. They've got everything they need, and wiill be in driving distance from a city, where mechanics and electronics may still exist.

So yes, New york is screwed. Staten island will be fine. No one cares aout staten island. Up staters will inherit the state, unless some New yorkers are dead, in which case The city will quickly rebuild.

Its interesting answer, If say about half or probably more of the city dies,the rest of the state and the city will be able to easily and peacefully rebuild. We're pretty damn industrious. If most of the city survived, I'll go hide out in Maine for a few months, come back, and there will be enough dead to rebuild, though as what remains to be seen.

[Itnetlolor]

Florida: Uncertain.

Besides not going out enough these days, I still feel rather uncertain the fate of Florida. It seems plenty of people in the general area are self-sufficient enough to make good use of the resources (provided enough education in fishing and etc. from the veterans of the area); and we have plenty of good fishing spots and wildlife variety to keep our food sources rather diverse enough, and we have a fair amount of farmlands as well (though as explained above; may be far too low in area to support the area comfortably).

Considering we have plenty of national parks, we have plenty of fresh well-preserved land we can use to expand, if need be, and for various reasons. For example, the national park I live nearby is well-known for being a good source of shellfish and turtles; and we also have plenty of good fishing spots for all kinds of fish ranging from Grouper to Whiting. Plenty of rivers and coastline to work with.

If anything, I don't think too much would change post-apocalypse with us. Our society is always rather twisted to some degree, so the Apocalypse won't really do much damage at all; and as for keeping ourselves in good condition, as long as the sea-level doesn't rise, or at least, too quickly, then we'll fare well enough until such a time comes that our land gets swallowed by the sea, and our usual issues with gators and sharks becomes a major issue. However, we have more than enough less-than balanced people who can keep those populations in check, while also feeding everyone with them.

[mainiac]

Such as. Maryland. Gl with agriculture without oil to make fertilizer and to run your machines. Gl with manufacturing without power.

We have coal to tide us over in the short term and produce both solar panels and wind turbines for export so long term we'd just keep those and go green.  Yes we'd need to ration our power carefully in the first few months once the natural gas on hand ran out but you know who could really help us with that?  The employees of the Energy Information Administration, most of whom live in Maryland.

Gasoline would be a bit of a tricky problem but not insurmountable considering that rail transportation already connects our two largest communities and we have the largest seaport on the east coast as well as waterways that connect to most of the farmland.  Only about 15% of the state population isn't nearby to either rail or sea transportation, ships and trains are very efficient.  Having a major seaport also means that we have a lot of gasoline on hand and it would last a long time with a sensible transport policy that saved the gas for rail and sea transport along with agriculture until we could scale up ethanol production.  But you know who'd be good at throwing together a transportation policy in a hurry?  The employees of the Department of Transportation.  Guess where they live.

Gasoline isn't a necessity, it's the cheapest of many alternatives.  If gasoline isn't an option anymore you just lay rails on the highways (We have steelworks in Baltimore along with a bunch of old steel mills throughout the state that could be re-opened if we needed them.)  Trains can run on electricity which you can get from coal or wind or solar.  Compared to the economic benefits of a transportation network or world class education or agriculture or steel I think oil ranks pretty low on my list of priorities.  This country was well industrialized before people even started using oil for transportation.

[Levi]

Lower Mainland BC:

Pros: 
- Lots of decent farmland
- Fishing
- Fresh water
- Weed
- Lots of natural resources to exploit to the north and east.
- Temperate climate.

Cons:
- Coffee shortage would ruin our hipster culture.
- A lot of our tourism/computing/office work type jobs wouldn't be needed, giving us a shortage of labour and skills.


Hmm.  There is probably a lot more cons that I can think of right now, but I think all and all we'd be in a pretty good state.  Food and temperate climate counts for a lot.  Our biggest problem would be getting people to switch from white-collar jobs to blue-collar jobs before we starve to death.