Why Chicago?

JMS nuked San Diego in the Babylon 5 TV series as would go to the comic con there. If DW likes the Cubs, then why not Chicago. Especially, with its history of corruption and the SL's history of corruption.

Personally, I've always thought it was David honoring Doc Smith in a very subtle way.

dreamrider

One word. They still have the best Pizza.

phillies wrote:Textev for Cheyenne Mountain?

For that matter, rationale? It currently barely holds what used to be called NORAD.

AoV, Chapter 19 wrote:And, truth to tell, the Pit had never been able to match the frenzy which must, for example, have gripped the Western Alliance's war room under what had once been a huge chunk of granite called Cheyenne Mountain back on Old Earth during the Final War. Then again, no enemy had ever successfully invaded the Manticore Binary System, even on a high-speed, hit-and-run basis, so no one in the Pit had ever had the doubtful pleasure of seeing a deep penetrator, two-hundred-and-fifty-megaton warhead headed directly at them.

Computers probably save on a lot of admin staff/paper/storage. But I didn't dream it up!

phillies wrote:Textev for Cheyenne Mountain?

For that matter, rationale? It currently barely holds what used to be called NORAD.

FLHerne wrote:

SWM wrote:Or perhaps it was a control center for the winning side of the Final War.

Seems unlikely - the HQ for the Western Alliance was under Cheyenne Mountain, until it got wiped out by a kinetic strike near the end of the Final War.

QUICKEDIT: Maybe that was solely military, and civilian leadership was in Chicago and not hit in the same strike. Or civilian leadership was destroyed in that strike, but in other cities, and Chicago was the largest city still generally intact?

Who did win that, anyway? (well, no-one, but...).

Funny acronymuse floating around for NORAD...
NO RADiation.

Weird Harold wrote:

phillies wrote:nthropogenic global warming will do very little to the Great Lakes, which are self emptying as there is more rain. Polar cap melting is good for less than 350 feet level increase. This would leave my town as the largest city in Massachusetts and in New England. Tsunamis hit two mountain ranges and quit.

There is evidence that the Great Lakes have been at times The Great Lake. Chicago would need a very big snorkel at those times.

Chicago is on the watershed between the Great Lakes basin and the Mississippi River basin. However much rainfall you add to Lake Michigan, it's going to flow out without drowning (much of) the city.

There was a brief time when the location was covered by water -- between when it was covered by glacier and when the melted ice cut a way through the moraines around the glacier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chicago

--snipping, hopefully in the right pieces--

Bill Woods wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:There is evidence that the Great Lakes have been at times The Great Lake. Chicago would need a very big snorkel at those times.

Chicago is on the watershed between the Great Lakes basin and the Mississippi River basin. However much rainfall you add to Lake Michigan, it's going to flow out without drowning (much of) the city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chicago

Just to assist, I looked it up and Chicago is listed at 176m above sea level so it would take a 500+ foot rise to inundate the city.

Niagara Falls would likely move back towards Lake Erie at a pretty spectacular erosion rate, for a while, until it was submerged, that is. Lake's Ontario and Erie would get REAL big in the mean time, flooding some pretty good chunks of that section of the continent.

I still Chicago survived best only because a) it was the best place left to get pizza. , b) tranship beer (nearby) and... c) because some loyal space-port builder felt sorry for the Cubs...

Don't forget the Gulf Coast:
Houston, New Orleans, Tampa Bay, etc., also Vera Cruz.

HTM

Ensign Re-read wrote:I nominate global warming and/or some sort of tsunami type event that wiped out the East and West coast cities.
i.e.: No Los Angeles, No San Francisco, No New York, No D.C., etc., etc., etc....

That leaves Chicago as one of (if not THE) largest US City that is NOT near the coast(s).



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Weird Harold wrote:
Personally, I'd expect South America, Australia, or some other southern hemisphere center of civilization would dominate a post-apocalyptic recovery, but I'm not writing the series, so my expectations don't matter.

Anything that had a mojor effect of Sea Levels would rule out most major cities in Oz, except Canberra. I wouldn't inflict Canberra on anybody.

Annachie wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
Personally, I'd expect South America, Australia, or some other southern hemisphere center of civilization would dominate a post-apocalyptic recovery, but I'm not writing the series, so my expectations don't matter.

Anything that had a mojor effect of Sea Levels would rule out most major cities in Oz, except Canberra. I wouldn't inflict Canberra on anybody.

I don't think I'd count a sea level change into any post-apocalyptic scenario I'd write, just to preserve English as the Lingua Franca in my dystopia. Even tho' Spanish or Portuguese is more logical, if not the dominant Chinese dialect (Mandarin?)

In a "Final War" scenario, all major population centers in the Northern Hemisphere -- over, say, 100,000 population -- would be destroyed, leaving the Southern Hemisphere as the last population centers.

Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand would be the last bastions of English speakers, but vastly outnumbered by Spanish/Portuguese South America and poly-glot India/Malaysia/Southern China.

The choice of Chicago is strictly Ameri-centric because the author is American.