Settling in the North?

[Blackwater Sniper]

Why did the Coalition States choose upper Mississippi valley to locate as opposed to the southern states?

I happen to live right in the middle of "Coalition Territory" and I can tell you they would have a much easier time if they had taken over territory from any of the states from southern Missouri to the Atlantic; better weather patterns, not as good farm land but still grows food, and warm water ports year round.

Look at where a majority of the military bases are today and that's where I'd research why they were located in those places.

I haven't purchased a Rifts book since the Siege on Tolkeen, but I sure hope they expand their territory soon.

[Braden Campbell]

The CS was based around the Chicago area because that is where the various surviving NEMA groups all met up. Although what transpired next is lost to the Dark Ages, we can surmise that they had to eventually retreat from Chicago proper (because of all the ley lines and monsters, would be my guess) and settled 85 miles to the south-west near Colfax, IL.

Obviously, there was some incentive to stay there - maybe a combination of fresh water and surviving Pre-Rifts industry that allowed Chi-Town to be founded and to thrive.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Why did the Coalition States choose upper Mississippi valley to locate as opposed to the southern states?

I happen to live right in the middle of "Coalition Territory" and I can tell you they would have a much easier time if they had taken over territory from any of the states from southern Missouri to the Atlantic; better weather patterns, not as good farm land but still grows food, and warm water ports year round.

Look at where a majority of the military bases are today and that's where I'd research why they were located in those places.

I haven't purchased a Rifts book since the Siege on Tolkeen, but I sure hope they expand their territory soon.

The timeline had advanced a century prior to the coming of the rifts, Chi-Town is built at the sight of a major NEMA stockpile of golden age technology and a golden age bunker.

[Blue_Lion]

Because the first city was chi town making it the first city of the CS. Making it the foundation in the north. Chicago is a major industry hub home of 29 of the fortune 500 companies. Has major transportation and manufacturing hubs. Meaning it had a good amount of infrastructure even without the stock pile in a pre Rifts bunker. The near by territory have good farm lands.

It expanded as they convinced other towns to join. The easiest to get to join it was areas around them.

Missouri is a CS state that was added, but is not considered a southern state. Texas is a southern state and the CS has a state there.(the CS has four states.)

Actually the weather in the southern states is not that good, to hot and humid, making physical labor needed to rebuild much harder. Then there is the issue of the swamp lands.

[Blackwater Sniper]

I understand these are "the book" answers, but what I'm looking for is more of a real world reason why.

Today the US is in a post-industrial age (manufacturing jobs are being replaced by service jobs) and economists don't see that trend changing. Abroad labor is cheaper, mining and refining materials don't face our regulations, and the US doesn't seem to care as long as we get cheap goods.

Chicago is the headquarters for a half-dozen major pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Greens, United Airlines, and some really bad baseball. While it is technically a part of the Rust Belt, Peoria is the closest major industrial manufacturing hub with both Caterpillar and Komatsu plants. John Deere has major plants in Moline and Waterloo.The civil aviation (Piper, Cessna, Beechcraft, etc) is centered in Witchita, KS.

These hubs would be destroyed within a few dozen years of abuse and weather. Some of the major sites may still be identifiable, but the environment is always tearing things down.

I'm just wondering why the game designers wouldn't chose a place farther south. With everything fluid they could do whatever they want.

[guardiandashi]

the reality is that while cold and snow in the northern states are issues, part of the year, its actually in my experience easier to warm up than it is to cool down when the weather is in climate.

Part of the considerations are resources and construction equipment. also the more southern states have more hurricanes and tornadoes which frankly do a lot more damage than s little (few feet) of snow fall, as long as you aren't dealing with glaciers, and even then when you have things like MDC lasers you could melt and push back glaciers.

[Nekira Sudacne]

I understand these are "the book" answers, but what I'm looking for is more of a real world reason why.

Today the US is in a post-industrial age (manufacturing jobs are being replaced by service jobs) and economists don't see that trend changing. Abroad labor is cheaper, mining and refining materials don't face our regulations, and the US doesn't seem to care as long as we get cheap goods.

Chicago is the headquarters for a half-dozen major pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Greens, United Airlines, and some really bad baseball. While it is technically a part of the Rust Belt, Peoria is the closest major industrial manufacturing hub with both Caterpillar and Komatsu plants. John Deere has major plants in Moline and Waterloo.The civil aviation (Piper, Cessna, Beechcraft, etc) is centered in Witchita, KS.

These hubs would be destroyed within a few dozen years of abuse and weather. Some of the major sites may still be identifiable, but the environment is always tearing things down.

I'm just wondering why the game designers wouldn't chose a place farther south. With everything fluid they could do whatever they want.

I think one part to remember is that Rifts is in a way the product of it's time, and you have to remember the book is almost 30 years old. The Rust belt was relatively new and had more to do with Northeastern manufacturing deline which hadn't yet spread into the Heartland, NAFTA was relatively new, and it was not yet a settled question that the US was transitioning to Post-Industrial. There were large hints and people were saying we were, but we wern't actually there yet, people could still argue that new technologies would be invented that would reignite a new wave of manufacturing jobs.

And that was, basically, the premise of the Golden Age, that new technologies ushered in a new era of manufacturing, and the economy never went fully post industrial, it was just a decline before sprouting up again. In hindsight, it's clear that isn't how it would work, but it wasn't so clear at the time of writing, and many serious thinkers thought that new technology could make the industrial factory jobs boom again in 1990.

[Mack]

And keep in mind that with everything involved in writing and launching a new RPG, I doubt Mr. Siembada devoted a ton of mental energy into where to base the CS.

Maybe he had an ex-girlfriend who lived in Chicago, so he made Chi-Town evil.

[Natasha]

Kind of where he lives, too.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Kind of where he lives, too.

Kevin lives in Detroit, which makes his casting of Old Detroit as a post apocalytpic, ruined wasteland infested with monsters a matter of casting shade at his home town in a different way.

[Natasha]

Maybe he has a sense of humour, too. My point is that it's not odd to make the region where you live the centre of your fictional Earth world.

[glitterboy2098]

Chi-Town is built at the sight of a major NEMA stockpile of golden age technology and a golden age bunker.

[Citation Needed]

[Nekira Sudacne]

Chi-Town is built at the sight of a major NEMA stockpile of golden age technology and a golden age bunker.

[Citation Needed]

I can't remember the exact page number, but it was somewhere in the Revised & Updated Sourcebook One's stuff on the Republicans, and how Chi-town was founded by the remaining NEMA officers who uncovered the Library of Chi-Town and it's designs for SAMAS and such that started the Coalition States, and how the remnants of the old NEMA command structure remain as a secret society within the Coalition States who are rather unhappy that the Prosek's managed to seize control of their puppet state.

[Blue_Lion]

I understand these are "the book" answers, but what I'm looking for is more of a real world reason why.

Today the US is in a post-industrial age (manufacturing jobs are being replaced by service jobs) and economists don't see that trend changing. Abroad labor is cheaper, mining and refining materials don't face our regulations, and the US doesn't seem to care as long as we get cheap goods.

Chicago is the headquarters for a half-dozen major pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Greens, United Airlines, and some really bad baseball. While it is technically a part of the Rust Belt, Peoria is the closest major industrial manufacturing hub with both Caterpillar and Komatsu plants. John Deere has major plants in Moline and Waterloo.The civil aviation (Piper, Cessna, Beechcraft, etc) is centered in Witchita, KS.

These hubs would be destroyed within a few dozen years of abuse and weather. Some of the major sites may still be identifiable, but the environment is always tearing things down.

I'm just wondering why the game designers wouldn't chose a place farther south. With everything fluid they could do whatever they want.

In the golden age much of the hub was likely rebuilt in MDC, that could take a lot longer for mother nature to destroy. There are underground bunkers that have not been upkept since WWII that still exist. Think about it military structures, underground civil defense structures would be outfitted with MDC. Heck many manufacturing plants where probably rebuilt with MDC machines that require less upkeep. MDC machines could be scavenged from under the sdc building wreckage and rebuilt. Much of their earlier tech was from scavenged pre-rifts, there where several active military bases(at the time the book was written) including an army depot within 200 miles so salvage options where ripe. The proximimty to the great lakes means they could send out salvage ships to other cities along the coast and salvage from them. In addition they could trade with other cities on the great lake that where being rebuilt.

At the time it was first written it was a major hub. It is as logical place to build a city as any other.

The gulf coast and Atlantic coast states would be prime areas for slaver barges from Atlantis. That means much of the states Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georga, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Texas that is not part of the CS loan star would place them in direct conflict with the spoogorth raids, and other aquatic powers. (the only southern states left are Kentucky and Tenesee.) So they would not be as much of an expansionist threat. Hard to expand when atlantis is breatahing down your neck.

[Blue_Lion]

Chi-Town is built at the sight of a major NEMA stockpile of golden age technology and a golden age bunker.

[Citation Needed]

I can't remember the exact page number, but it was somewhere in the Revised & Updated Sourcebook One's stuff on the Republicans, and how Chi-town was founded by the remaining NEMA officers who uncovered the Library of Chi-Town and it's designs for SAMAS and such that started the Coalition States, and how the remnants of the old NEMA command structure remain as a secret society within the Coalition States who are rather unhappy that the Prosek's managed to seize control of their puppet state.

PG 117 source book 1 revised.
(talking about actions by the NEMA rescue teams and where the fell back to.)Others headed to Chicago, Toronto, Mexico City and other places to take a stand.

PG 120
(On republican affect of NA Political land scape)
They claim they were the first to unearth the Great Library of Chi-Town and share it with the world. They helped found Chi-Town, pushed the idea of a human nation, encouraged the idea of forming a union of similar "states," and when the time was right, they planted the pre-Rifts schematics and data that would become the foundation of the Coalition military.


It hints that the library was found near chi town. A force in Marry land arranging the rise of the CS. NEMA forces fell back to Chicago to take a stand there should have been some sort of military fortifications and stock pile for them to use. As well as way to maintain there gear.

[glitterboy2098]

That doesn't support the claim it is over a bunker full of tech.just that nema went there (spelled out in chaos earth as due to the midwest not having been wiped out by natural disasters yet) and there was some big repository nearby of records they salvaged centuries later. Which could just be a datacenter or library. especially since SB1Revised establishes that the contents of the Great Library was a ploy by The Republicans to give the CS an edge, so it is highly probable that the contents were salted into some pre-rifts site well after the cataclysm.

[Axelmania]

better weather patterns .. warm water ports year round.

Are we sure that's still the case centuries later after the Coming of the Rift and race-traitor Air Warlocks summoning Alien Intelligences to our plane?

[glitterboy2098]

Chi-Town is built at the sight of a major NEMA stockpile of golden age technology and a golden age bunker.

[Citation Needed]

I can't remember the exact page number, but it was somewhere in the Revised & Updated Sourcebook One's stuff on the Republicans, and how Chi-town was founded by the remaining NEMA officers who uncovered the Library of Chi-Town and it's designs for SAMAS and such that started the Coalition States, and how the remnants of the old NEMA command structure remain as a secret society within the Coalition States who are rather unhappy that the Prosek's managed to seize control of their puppet state.

if you can find it again, i'd love to see it.

as far as i can remember though, SB1r didn't say that NEMA built Chi-town (though that has been a popular inference since Chaos Earth Came out, but CE and RUE both establish that NEMA died out not long after the cataclysm, and that even pre-fortress Chi-town was a far newer thing), and on pg120 it says that The Republicans were the first ones to find the great library and helped create Chi-town as a human supremacist nation and encouraged the creation of the Coalition States.. which means their meddling started only a few decades before the start of the PA calendar. the republicans also seeded the CS with pre-rifts technologies like the samas, which indicates that the CS wasn't sitting on some ancient tech-cache.

certainly the idea of their city having been built on top of some repository of ancient knowledge and technology is the story the CS tells its own people and the rest of the world. that the Republicans had been covertly supplying the early Coalition with technology is a secret few even in the CS would be aware of, beyond the Republican's own agents at least.

honestly, given that the Republican's first attempt at rebuilding america (their "new republic", pg121) was located beneath the ruins of Washington D.C., i'd guess the Great Library was literally the library of congress's protected archives (both physical and digital) and they'd been holding onto it since a few decades after the cataclysm, even through the loss of their "new republic" 60 years after the cataclysm.

[Blue_Lion]

That doesn't support the claim it is over a bunker full of tech.just that nema went there (spelled out in chaos earth as due to the midwest not having been wiped out by natural disasters yet) and there was some big repository nearby of records they salvaged centuries later. Which could just be a datacenter or library. especially since SB1Revised establishes that the contents of the Great Library was a ploy by The Republicans to give the CS an edge, so it is highly probable that the contents were salted into some pre-rifts site well after the cataclysm.

I never said they did. But making a stand there would kind of lead to a bunker full of tech. those statements can lead people to believe there something of value there.
A bunker full of tech does not mean a stock pile of weapons. It could be jus an advanced command center with designs for gear the CS adapted. (we do know that CS gear is based off nema tech that was lost to most places.) A bunker can be as small as a bedroom.

I do not have any interest in chaos earth so never purchased any of th books. But we do know the identity of a large repository of records that was found. The Chi town library.(this means we can logical extrapolate that the library is likely the repository of records. (the records themselves could have bee called tech, in a way.)-The library would defiantly gone a long way to help the survivors build up their tech and advanced skills leading to the city being better able to rebuild after the dark ages.

Chi town is not built on the ruins of chicargo.-near by but not there.

[Jorick]

With robots and 3d printing, they could have been in a post-post-industrial age.

The NEMA forces did what they could to find pockets of people in relatively safe areas. They were pushed from where they wanted to be by chaotic forces constantly. People ended up where they could survive in a world where all the volcanos, earthquakes, storms, powerplants, and magical holes in the universe were exploding. It's a bit hard to predict where all that would happen. Even if all that didn't happen, if it's hard to predict a "post-industrial" economy thirty years ago, it's extra hard (impossible) to predict what the distribution of manufacturing facilities and military forces would be a century from now. Thus any location makes sense. Just say "location X is where all the unpredictable and chaotic variables allowed for some people to do some stuff."

"Real world" reasons are easy. Climate change causes the shores of Lake Michigan to be lined with palm trees. It's the new California. All those pharmaceutical companies become bio-tech companies. Robotics and other tech companies join them. Chicago becomes the heart of the North American Golden Age.
Older military bases, mostly unnecessary in the Golden Age, are understaffed and in disrepair. NEMA manages defense along new lines unencumbered by things like coastlines and mountains and political borders (but a lot of the coastline and mountains, for instance, are destroyed in the cataclysm--which is a "book" answer, but I think the exercise requires at least some acknowledgement that stuff that hasn't yet happened did happen).

Alternatively, large concentrations of military force would either be targets for demon hordes, or would proactively move to attack demon hordes, or would move to protect significant resources and be targeted. What was left was the people in the middle of nowhere.