As I continue to flush out this article, I need an opinion on a few potential targets:
- Alton: known for its steel mills, might have been destroyed anyway by the strike(s) on St. Louis
- Champaign: hub of the IL "silicon praire" though I am not sure if that mattered in 1983
- Decatur: has some significant industry
- Rockford: 2nd largest city in IL, manufacturing and industry
- Zion: nuclear power plant?
Mitro 15:42, March 1, 2010 (UTC)
- Closer to Chicago, you have Fermilab and the Argonne National Laboratory, almost certain targets whose impact zone(s) would cut off Chicagoans fleeing westward. The naval air base in Glenview would effectively block the escape route to the north. I'm not so sure about Decatur or even Rockford, but since this TL is based on the idea of a "worst of the worst case scenario" both are probably likely. Alton, however, is too far from central St. Louis to be hit by its impact, and too small to be a target on its own IMO. Benkarnell 16:04, March 1, 2010 (UTC)
Chicago area population[]
70% of Illinois' people are in the Chicago area? Is this statistic from the 1980s? Because in the last 25 years the suburbs have grown while other cities have declined, so I'm surprised if the numbers were already so skewed in the 80s. Benkarnell 17:34, March 1, 2010 (UTC)
- Hmm...good point. That statistic is from the present, I will have to check and find the proportion in 1983. [EDIT] Well I did find a source from 2000 that put the percentage as 65%, so that is evidence that it is unlikely to be over 70% in 1983. I will change the line accordingly. Mitro 17:37, March 1, 2010 (UTC)
- 1980 was a census year, so I'm sure the information is *somewhere*. Benkarnell 17:55, March 1, 2010 (UTC)
Southern Illinois[]
If you'd like any clarification on the status of Southern Illinois let me know :) --GOPZACK 02:22, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
How much territory in Illinois is explored
Chicagoan 00:35, November 19, 2010 (UTC)
Survivor States[]
Nukes only detonate and destroy within a 20 mile radius, so anything farther could have survived the bombing. And are there still unexplored areas in Illinois? I also have a question on what I could create.
I know of a town 30 or 45 miles south of Chicago called Homewood, do you think that could be added as a territory in Illinois? A territory that would not have been destroyed and did not have super strong connections to the Chicago Metropolis. It also contained a small population so it would have lots of Space for refugees.
Chicagoan 00:04, November 19, 2010 (UTC)
The Chicago region was looked at by Superioran explorers in 1991, and determined to be largely wasteland.
And while that may have been far enough to be safe from nukes by your radius - wrong, btw, as there were several detonations smaller in radius over the region, not a single one - the refugees from the city would have overwhelmed anything so close to the city, even if it had a lot of room.
All things considered, Illinois can likely be considered to be explored thoroughly.
Lordganon 00:12, November 19, 2010 (UTC)
Wait, does that mean that it could have survived?
Chicagoan 00:34, November 19, 2010 (UTC)
No. What I'm saying is it may have survived the nukes, but would not have survived the aftermath. Just too close to the urban center, especially with the findings of Superioran explorers in the area.
Your town, homewood, is 25 miles (on mapquest, so maybe like 20 miles as the bird flies) from downtown Chicago. With that, its gone - heck, with that close, the nukes prolly got it. But either way, not realistic to survive, especially given the findings by Superior.
Lordganon 00:40, November 19, 2010 (UTC)
I live in Chicago and I have been through Homewood plenty of times, it makes a bad spot for a survivor states. Considering the multiple strikes in the area, plus the destruction caused by the social disorder would mean that the entire Chicago metro area would be a wasteland. Mitro 01:44, November 19, 2010 (UTC)
I've been doing some work on the subject of Survivor states and I believe that more States should be inside unwasted areas of Illinois. I believe this because of the following reasons.
- People in the U.S I don't think would spend much time walking around in Nomadic tribes. I think that they would eventually form small towns that would then form cities. A good example of this is the Chicago Fire.
- The areas of Northwestern Illinois, Far Eastern Illinois. and Far Western Illinois I believe would have unwasted areas ideal for Habitation.
Chicagoan 21:56, November 19, 2010 (UTC)
You comparison to the fire is not valid, for starters - there is no help from outside here, like they received then.
Northwestern Illinois is the domain of the Quad Cities. The southern half (roughly) is part of Kentucky. And in the center-east you have Charleston. I believe that there's also a couple proposals for other areas of the state in being at the moment, though I don't quite know where.
I encourage you to make a proposal for a city-state somewhere in the state - but not anywhere near Chicago.
Lordganon 02:20, November 20, 2010 (UTC)
I'm thinking of creating an area in the north of Kentucky that has been aided by League of nations and has successfully set up small towns and City-States. This could be possible. I also think that I would like to some city-state to emerge sometime in 2004 when one of the warlords in other regions of Illinois successfully takes over some of the others and establishes somewhat of a nation.Chicagoan 03:04, November 21, 2010 (UTC)
As I said, make a proposal and we'll go from there.
I'm sure you mean to the north, and that really wouldn't fly - anyone in said area would have been under Kentucky for a while now, and the LoN has not permeated the area enough as of yet for this to be possible anyway.
Northern Illinois is out for a state - all decent areas have already been used. Southern Illinois is part of Kentucky, for all purposes.
Basically, you're stuck with a small city-state in the middle. There should be a number of communities in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Illinois for a state to work. I would go with your second idea, but only a county or two at most.
Lordganon 03:21, November 21, 2010 (UTC)
The probelm with Central Illinois is that a good chunk of it (at least that along I-74) has already been written off as a lawless area in canon. I also have two current proposals that will expand on this idea. Mitro 01:45, November 22, 2010 (UTC)
Adopt[]
I finally feel ready to do some work on my own home. I'd like to adopt this page (and likely do some work in the towns and states therein). I don't think anything needs to be changed, but there's much more to be done on the survivors and how they got that way. False Dmitri (talk) 17:43, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
- This is my idea for a map. It started out as a really rough sketch on my phone. I was planning on making a more normal-looking map, but instead made the sketch nicer, I liked the look of it.
- Basically this follows canonical locations in Illinois, showing them alongside strikes and nuclear plants. A little cooling tower means a meltdown, a radioactive symbol means an uncompleted plant that's probably leaking fuel. The purple dot on the rock river is the Byron nuclear plant, which was under construction but most likely had no fuel on the premises.
- The canonical list of surviving states and settlements is reasonable given all of that: a very wide belt of land running from Chicago to St. Louis was basically made uninhabitable, and with two nuclear meltdowns on the upper Illinois River, the river itself is probably still a formidable barrier today. Survivors then congregated to the northwest and the southeast of this belt. That's the Quad Cities and (Kentuckian) Southern Illinois, respectively.
- I added a few minor settlements. The Lowden settlements are centered on the town of Oregon and can be traced back to a small concentration of refugees from Rockford and Chicagoland. By 2007 they were certainly within the QCA's orbit. Wateska I see as a descendant of a refugee-centered community around Kankakee, whose center of gravity gradually moved southward. Macoupin is a small agrarian community along the same lines as Vandalia. But the most significant addition is "Forgottonia," which I am going to propose. Officially it calls itself the State of Illinois; Forgottonia is just a nickname dating from a protest movement of the 1970s, but it's become widely used because of the need to distinguish it from other pieces of Illinois. It's a counterpart and a junior partner to Hannibal across the river, essentially a dependency.
- I made the map show 2007 because that earlier history is going to be my focus. I don't want to say how Illinois has developed since then because it will require more attention to the wider region, and the recent history of many of the important players are not yet known. False Dmitri (talk) 02:03, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
I've made contact with Mitro off-site and got his go-ahead (can provide screenshots if needed). So I'm going to start to edit the page without waiting the full week. False Dmitri (talk) 05:04, 13 February 2022 (UTC)