The Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap/California

Part of the Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap Project.

Livermore, CA

Because of the national lab here it was quickly put under martial law within days of the event. skipping to "present" time one now requires clearance to enter or exit the city which has been "evacuated" (in reality the government forced citizens not related to lab activity to leave). What the current government (what's left of the old one) does there now is anyone's guess.

==Irvine, CA== (Clean this up for me if you wish, inb4 "mostly harmless"

Immediately following the exchange, mass panic struck Irvine as did everywhere else; people sought to seek shelter where there were none to be found, and the highways became permanently clogged with vehicles as they were abandoned. Fires followed in the wake of looting, consuming much of the communities and rendering more uninhabitable, while the commercial districts were stripped bare and defaced, if not burned. Within two weeks, the looting has died down as pickings became slim. Looters have mostly eliminated each other in armed confrontations or formed roving bands of bandits, which found the looted Irvine unattractive and out of the way (as the highways are pretty much useless as they were clogged).

Population gradually dwindled over the months following The Exchange as conditions slowly deteriorate, and some people left Irvine (Reasons being starvation, the need to seek relatives and close friends, etc.). Agriculture was attempted with partial success as irrigation was unreliable, which was in turn due to the fact the power grid was unreliable following The Exchange and the ensuing chaos.

In the first Summer following The Exchange, great fires raged all across California, ravaging millions of acres and claiming many lives. The sky was a perpetual red-orange in much of So-Cal, and ash fell like snow. As the year entered the Fall, the Santa Ana winds began, pushing the fires deep into previously inhabited areas and bringing the first great dust storm. Only with the coming of Winter were the last of the fires extinguished, leaving a scorched land open to desertification. When the civil war broke out, military convoys from both sides, little better than the bandits, abducted all the bright and famous they could find then left for good, leaving dead those who stood up to them and were deemed of no use to them. From this incident alone, the remaining residents of Irvine have little love for either side.

After three years, Irvine has been reduced to a small farming community in a largely forgotten corner of the world. With a much reduced population, an equilibrium has been reached in relation to the scarcity of water from the ground water facilities (unreliable, as the power grid is no longer reliable), the crops irrigated by ground water, and the population sustainable with the limited resources.

Unlike before where harvests could be had all year round, agriculture in Irvine has now become very seasonal, with the Santa Ana winds and dust storms making it next to impossible to raise crops in the fall and winter months. The rows of great eucalyptus trees mostly endure, but being no longer trimmed semi-annually, some have been blown down by the more powerful winds, and it is foreseeable that more will be blown down in the future. The residents of the town of Irvine are, as before The Exchange, comparatively young, and thus are not that hard-hit by diseases (the low population and population density helps), and though cases of cancers have risen, they aren't as numerous as many other townships in the area (though this may change as the people age).