Fallout: Florida , The Sunshine State's Post-Apocalyptic Wastes Options

[RaderOfTheLostArk]

Well, I never thought I'd be posting in this particular subforum before now. But with all these ideas bouncing in my head of what post-Great War Florida would look like in the Fallout universe, I have taken to jotting them down and (hopefully) making a cohesive guide to it. I don't really write fiction, so I don't think I'll be writing actual stories like you all do, but I suppose we'll see. For the time being, it's really going to be a guide of sorts, somewhat like a wiki or what textbooks would say.

This will obviously attempt to adhere to Fallout canon as much as possible. I chose Florida as the setting not only because it is my home state (though that is definitely the biggest reason) but because, from what I can tell, so little about the Southeastern United States is talked about in Fallout lore, giving me a lot more room to operate in. And, of course, it's the state I know best and would love to see the most as a setting for a Fallout game.

So here's the plan for all this:
[*] I'm going to break up each section of the guide into its own post to separate it sufficiently. This one will be the introduction to the setting.
[*] I may include some incomplete information on here for several reasons. For one, it'll be an easy repository to refer to just in case the Word doc I am using has something go screwy or that my computer messes up or whatever. Two, it can be a little taste of what's to come. Three, I just want to get down as much content as comes to me.
[*] The tentative list of sections to have here include, but are not limited to (and not necessarily in this order):

[*] General overview of the setting and how I am breaking up the parts of Florida
[*] The Bestiary
[*] The Timeline
[*] The Factions
[*] Profiles of each of the regions I am making

Some of the stuff you see will definitely be subject to change if needed to make it cohesive. I'll try to document what I change to make it clear.

And most of all, I hope you all like it and I'd like to hear whatever feedback you have. Presenting and communicating information is one of the things I enjoy most, although I'm more used to doing so for real-life content (particularly political science).

First section of the guide coming up!

The Setting - Basic Overview

While not experiencing the same level of nuclear barrage as places such as Southern California, New York, and D.C., Florida was plunged into nuclear fire just like virtually everywhere else in the world. This was especially true of the Tampa Bay Area, Orlando and its surrounding areas, and South Florida, centers of great economic and political importance in Pre-War America. Being the 3rd-most populous state in the country, the Great War extinguished far more lives than average here and left plenty more to pick up the pieces in the post-apocalyptic, anarchic wastes. The exceptional biological, geographical, and human diversity of Florida led to a far more varied impact on the former Sunshine State when the bombs fell.

Nevertheless, many settlements started to crop up in the decades just after the Great War, even in those once-densely populated cities and metropolitan areas. In time, former towns and cities were beginning to be resurrected and reclaiming their old names, and brand-new ones started to form. But post-War Florida--and the rest of what used to be the country's Gulf Commonwealth, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi--was still highly fractured. In the 22nd century, the first of many ambitious attempts was made to reunite this once-thriving landscape. While extraordinarily difficult at first, a string of successes in reunification gave birth to the Gulf Coast Union, a nation similar in concept to the future New California Republic (NCR). The so-called Great Reunification--a somewhat hyperbolic title, at least currently--started extending through Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and even some of southwestern Georgia, though it has yet to reclaim the whole of any of these former states.

The process is far from completed, however, and many other factions both big and small struggle with the Gulf Coast Union for dominance in the former Southeastern United States. Many of the conflicts take place in what used to be the Sunshine State. The Gulf Coast Union was successful in claiming virtually all of Northern Florida and has made inroads into the Central Florida wastes. Major and minor powers violently feuding with each other and with the Gulf Coast Union have made the GCU's grip on these lands somewhat tenuous, preventing any attempts at expanding into South Florida.

As of this guide, it is currently the year 2130, over a half-century since the world was irrevocably changed. To most easily understand the lands that were once called Florida, it is best to divide the area into ten distinct regions--even if the divisions are a bit crude, arbitrary, or too convenient. Each have their own set of conflicts being waged, major and minor players vying for power, and civilizations trying to carve out a life in these harsh wastes. Welcome to the Sunshine State's post-apocalyptic wastes.

The Ten Regions and Their Counties

County Map
Here's how some coasts in Florida got their nicknames, though not all are explicitly mentioned here

Though these broken-up zones are somewhat crude and arbitrary, it'll be easiest to understand post-apocalyptic Florida this way. However, major conflicts in one region can definitely spill over into another.

1) Panhandle (13): Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Holmes, Washington, Bay, Jackson, Calhoun, Gulf, Liberty, Franklin, Gadsden
2) Big Bend (8): Leon, Wakulla, Jefferson, Madison, Taylor, Lafayette, Dixie, Levy
3) North Central Florida (8): Hamilton, Suwannee, Columbia, Baker, Union, Bradford, Alachua, Gilchrist
4) The First Coast (6): Nassau, Duval, Clay, St. Johns, Putnam, Flagler
5) The Space and Treasure Coasts (7): Volusia, Seminole, Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin, Okeechobee
6) Central Florida (8): Marion, Sumter, Lake, Orange, Polk, Osceola, Hardee, Highlands
7) The Tampa Bay Area (6): Citrus, Hernando, Pasco, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee
8) The Gold Coast (3): Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade
9) Southwest Florida (7.5): Sarasota, De Soto, Charlotte, Glades, Lee, Hendry, Collier, Monroe (mainland only)
10) The Keys (0.5): Monroe (Keys only)


Just a quick side-note: The Panhandle West/East dichotomy is one I totally made up for my own purposes. They are, as far as I know, not referred to as such in real life. It is just the Panhandle, and the real-world Panhandle doesn't necessarily include all of the counties in Big Bend.

This post has been edited by RaderOfTheLostArk: Jun 9 2020, 01:30 AM

[RaderOfTheLostArk]

Background Lore: The Federal Versus Florida State Government, Pre-War and Post-War Iterations

Prior to the Great War, the federal government and Florida’s state government were constantly at each other’s throats and there was extraordinary hostility between the two. This had a significant impact on the lead-up to the Great War and will also play a big role when the Old Guard and the Enclave (remnants of the state and federal governments, respectively) are introduced in Part 2: Big Bend.

The start of the enmity is not known (because I have not thought it out yet, though I may just leave it ambiguous on purpose). But it manifested itself in many different industries and facets of day-to-day life. Here are some of the issues:

• Nuka-Cola vs. Fusion!: Everyone knows about Nuka-Cola. They were THE soft drink in basically the whole country (with perhaps at least the exception of the Mojave, where Sunset Sarsaparilla was highly popular). In Florida, the soft drink king was Fusion! They had a large variety of flavors, one of their most popular being Key Lime, as Key Lime Pie was the state pie (and yes, that is the case in real life) and the Key Lime flavor is very Floridian. The state government also back Fusion! with tax breaks and other favors, having a very friendly relationships with the latter’s lobbyists which certainly led to some corruption. To spite Florida’s government, the federal government backed the expansion of Nuka-Cola into Florida with their own tax breaks and other favors. Fusion! was still the bigger of the two in Florida when the bombs dropped, but Nuka-Cola did make some major inroads into the market.
• Poseidon Energy vs. Florida Utilities: In real life, Florida utility companies are a very powerful player in state politics. The same goes for the Fallout: Florida universe. As with Nuka-Cola, Poseidon Energy made attempts at expansion into Florida—but by buying out the competition instead. While Nuka-Cola only had Fusion! to deal with, Poseidon had a bunch of state and local utilities to play hardball against. They were more successful in buying out local companies, though they did buy out at least one state company. Some of Poseidon’s primary adversaries included East Coast Power and Gulf Electric and Gas Company. (NOTE: Neither of these are real companies. I debated whether to include actual companies in my story, but I decided to make them up instead. Gives me more freedom to decide what to do with them.)
• Company Subterfuge: Companies backed by the federal government and those backed by the state government engaged in a lot more than market warfare. They routinely attempted to infiltrate and sabotage each other from the inside, and leak real and fake stories about each other’s shady, unethical, and downright illegal dealings to the public.
• Secret Experiments: While the Enclave engaged in their own horrible experiments, mostly with the FEV, the Old Guard had been doing their own secret experiments. Despite the hostilities, both sides were able to mostly hide their actions from each other on this front. (NOTE: And look out, because later in the Fallout: Florida storyline these experiments are going to become highly relevant.)
• Foreign Affairs: The U.S. federal government focused pretty much solely on China in the Sino-American War, annexing Canada for its resources in 2059 to fight China and then fighting to reclaim Alaska from the Chinese. But China would also ally itself with Cuba in an attempt to further pressure the U.S. and from a completely different direction than Alaska. Thus came the “Second Cuban Missile Crisis” (the First one being the one that happened in real life). It was mutually beneficial: Both countries had similar political ideologies, and China could use Cuba’s strategic location while Cuba’s struggling economy would be propped up by China. The U.S. left Florida mostly to its own devices, partially because it didn’t regard Cuba as a real threat and partially to spite Florida’s government. As you can imagine, this only deepened the hatred between the two governments. These events will play a big role in the Gold Coast storyline for Fallout: Florida, though it is a long ways away. (NOTE: The stuff about annexing Canada and reclaiming Alaska is all established as canon. All the lore about Cuba is from my own headcanon.)

Hostilities reached such a boiling point that some Florida politicians and citizens started openly advocating for secession from the United States. Some Floridian politicians even tried to coax the other members of the Gulf Coast Commonwealth to join them in seceding. It didn’t come very close to fruition when the Great War happened, but it would have been inevitable if the bombs had not dropped.

Many of the politicians and citizens who hated the federal government for its intrusions on state affairs did not push for secession, however. They were sympathetic to those who did support it, but they tried to find other ways to counteract federal actions. It wasn’t just about what they felt was the federal government eroding the state’s sovereignty, but not wanting to be associated with the federal government in the war. Aggressions with China were not in the state government’s interests for the most part, though the issues with Cuba did change that a lot.

And in the Post-War world, these long-standing resentments between the federal and state governments lived on and arguably became even worse. And that’s what you’ll start seeing when Fallout: Florida reaches Part 2: Big Bend.

This post has been edited by RaderOfTheLostArk: Aug 23 2020, 05:21 PM