Lousiana. If it's down to us, say bye-bye to human civilization.
Pro: We have local food production (rice, wild/farmed seafood, etc.) within the state.
Con: If we're talking a zombie apocalypse or an S. M. Stirling Change situation where the lights go out for good, we won't be able to actually harvest/process/distribute the crops, let alone keep production going.
Pro: We learned a lot from Katrina. (Levee failures. Levee failures. LEVEE FAILURES, BITCHES.)
Anybody who is unaware of the levee failures and makes any comments about Katrina will be punched. In the groin. With a chainsaw. Also, fun fact: 985/504 cellphones were useless during Katrina. You could be standing next to a working cell tower in Tennessee, and you could not call one. Took us a good while to figure out that texting worked, because nobody we knew used text messaging in 2005.
Pro: There are some decent human beings here. We won't immediate descend into rape and cannibalism. Since Katrina, less of our National Guard troops are off in that explode-y sandbox called Iraq. (Driving north in the days after was at once heartening and horrifying: Yay, they're going to help! WTF? It's been over three freaking days now, and they're only just passing us in Tennessee?)
Con: Our government is corrupt and inept and generally rotten to the core. At every level. In every party. I have no faith whatsoever in any ability of the government to maintain order, long-term, in the absence of the feds. And as bad as government is... the cops are worse. A few small communities have decent forces; the NOPD sucks. It sucks worse than you'd believe; I've actually had to deal with them as a professional. I cannot overstate how very, very much the NOPD sucks. I'd give them less than a year After Apocalypse to either abandon their duty and disband, or turn into a junta-type militia.
Pro: Lots of local energy production.
Con: The oil and natural gas industry doesn't run itself. Since we're talking localized survival, this might not include the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and we'd be stuck with the fracking adventures in northern Louisiana. A lot of the personnel personally involved in the industry are no longer located in the New Orleans area, and are in Houston or farther abroad. Keeping the
spice gas flowing would depend on us having enough of the people needed to keep it going, and we'd have to keep the platform workers happy, which would be hard if we can't even get food out to them. We have the knowledge, but it's fractured among various contractors and Entergy, and for them to consolidate in the face of zombies or what have you, they'd have to be supported and protected while doing their thing. See above con about incompetent government and rotten cops.
Pro: Skills. We still have a good chunk of energy industry professionals, and some good medical schools, and LSU has a nice Ag Dept.
Con: There's no respect for intellectuals here. Bobby Jindal is a vile, smarmy little shit who's carrying out a campaign of systematic destruction against anything that looks vaguely like a public hospital. Unless this apocalypse happens tomorrow, we'll be fucked.
Pro: Labor. Some energy industry professionals live here. Post-Katrina, we've had a boom in Latino immigrant labor, legal and not. We have some people with knowledge and skills, and some with truly terrifying work ethics.
Con: Legality and communication with day laborers. Lots of racial tensions here. Getting everyone to work together would be iffy.
Pro: Southern Louisiana is a low-lying, swampy area... wait, my bad; that's a con.
Con: Southern Louisiana is a low-lying, swampy area. We rely on levees and pumps to keep our homes dry, and keep the Mississippi River from making the natural changes in its course that would have occurred by now otherwise. In an apocalypse scenario, even managed in the best way possible, maintaining this control over the water level would likely be impossible in the long term.
Some people would survive. Those used to the heat, those living rural--they'd have the best odds. They wouldn't be overrun by zombies/starving refugees.
In the end, however, we'd almost all die. Energy, social issues, food--forget all that. We've got mosquitoes. We've got a shit ton of mosquitoes--and that's with the government regularly spraying all the neighborhoods with pesticides from government vehicles.
Malaria. Yellow Fever. West Nile. We might not even have to wait for the cholera. I'd put money it, if money would be worth anything after the apocalypse.
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Topic: In the apocalypse, would your home region survive? (Read 13183 times)