The Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap/Washington

Part of the Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap Project.

Seattle

Seattle gets nuked, one way or another. But the warhead doesn't go off until after it's plunged into the Sound and detonates, nearly harmlessly, underwater. The radiation kills off the surrounding suburbs (and fucks over the already shat-on local orca population), but leaving the cities mostly intact. Survivors try to reestablish in bands of scavengers living high up in the tallest buildings to avoid radiation. Once the food runs out, radioactive fishing efforts in the Puget Sound lead many to eventually flee to Vancouver Island for better fishing. The Space Needle is first inhabited by a humanitarian effort, hoping to bring the local radiation down to a habitable level. Their plans crumble as a mad scientist guns down the effort and uses their research to turn the Space Needle into a giant, radioactive death ray. The only ones who remain in Seattle is a large population of Neckbeards drawn by the presence of a Games Workshop bunker in Bellevue that somehow survived. IF GW DIDN'T DEMOTE AND DOWNSIZE IT FIRST.

Notably, a large portion (about 30%) of the population took to the water and islands in the sound. There are many so-called "Puget Pirate" fleets (deridingly called "Mosquitoes" after both the insect and the independent ferrying vessels that trawled the Sound before the state ferry system existed); 10-30 sailing ships moving in tight formation. Not all of said fleets live up to the name, however - only about 20 of the roughly 100 fleets actively hunt other fleets, but they tend to stick close to shorelines and be larger in numbers, so they are usually the ones you encounter first. Many harbors, islands, and bays use these fleets for trade; notable is Eliott Bay Marina, home to the elite Eliott Mariners and center of most of the trade in Washington.

Joint-Base Lewis-McCord stands despite all of this, becoming a new bastion of civilization in the madness surrounding Tacoma. Bangor Missile Base also survives (with the nuke that hit Seattle presumably heading for it but missing). Naval Air Station Whidbey Island suddenly becomes incredibly important, and the electronic warfare aircraft and sub-hunter squadrons formerly there are quickly pushed aside for refugees and later civil war-involved military craft.

Most of the world didn't notice, because it's fucking Seattle.

Surrounding Area

Outside Seattle, the Pacific Northwest rainforests absorb a lot of the radioactivity carried on the fallout-laden winds, and will eventually flush it out via the watersheds. Not, of course, before it kills many species slowly over the course of months and years through slow radiation poisoning. The backwoods rednecks who lived there still do, except they now actually farm stuff. Aside from the ones who decided Mad Max was the best movie ever, and used their pickups as tacticals before eventually running out of fuel and starving to death (or being eaten by radioactive bears).

At least one of the Cascade mountains goes off. Probably St. Helens again.

Redmond quickly becomes a technotopia ruled mostly by Microsoft, who's campus quickly expands to encompass practically the entire city.

Spokane

Spokane advances out to begin farming operations in the surrounding area after being cut off from outside trade for too long (the various passes through the Cascade mountains being closed for various reasons, obviously). Eventually, Spokane and northern Idaho begin a profitable trade operation.

The Kennewick bomb went unnoticed, because even Seattle doesn't care about Kennewick.

Other Stuff

• One cool thing is that the ferries, which transported most of the Seattle population, were colonized by entrepreneurs looking to cash in on transport needs. When that falls through due to lack of customers (duh) the ferries become retrofitted into slow, steam-powered dreadnaughts armed to the teeth and used as a hoarding cache by the now-shore-raiding entrepreneurs. They still take passengers across in exchange for food, which they try to farm grow on the upper decks (which they covered in dirt).

• Notably, the internet servers in the city would be fine, and provided enough power could be located (say, the Grand Coulee Dam survived, which it probably would), the internet would still remain intact (or at least the Seattle servers).

• About a year before the bombs went off, some scientist in Seattle rigged up coffee plants to grow in Pacific Northwestern conditions. The only downside was that the caffeine levels were lower in the new plants. When somebody found the lab overgrown with coffee plants, he took to planting these things all over the place. The Seattlites who were still left decided that this was a great idea and planted coffee on every available patch of dirt. This has lead to a weak cash-crop export: people want coffee outside Seattle, but the ground and concentrated coffee is all everyone really wants, and it is difficult to extrude the weaker levels of caffeine from the bean.

• Kirkland was far enugh away from the blast zone that it only got hit with a pressure wave. Because of the minimal radiation kirkland is now one of the most important outposts in the new seattle.

• Lake washington is now a dry crater now because of the pressure wave almost instantly evaporated it now there are small pools formed at the bottom of the crater. After the lake almost instanly evaporated there was a major rainstorm that lasted for several days. It eroded parts of various structures like parking garages and basically erased away some of the roads. now the already wet weather is WORSE now and there is even more snow in the winter in addition to the ash from the bomb. now if you want to go anywhere in the winter you'll need a flamethrower to tunnel through the 10-12 sometimes as high as 19-20 feet of snow. in the summer the heat is in excess of 70 degrees except at night where the weather is as low as ten degrees. and it snows almost 3-4 feet in one night and then when the scortching heat hits it all melts instantly and flows in a deluge through the streets to the waterfront where it fills up the pools at the bottom of the great dry lake.

• The radiation in the water mutated the local orca population (resident pods J,K, and L) from being simple large dolphins into fully sentient psionic cetacean overlords...and they are NOT pleased about all the noise, pollution, and lack of fish for their young that the human population of the Sound resulted in.