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dewlineSomething caught my attention in the latest issue of JSA All-Stars. It's something that, if not ret-conned, could provide useful plot fodder for editors and writers across the DC Universe line of comics for years to come. I'd like to share it with you, provided you're willing to allow for a bit of spoiler info...
Okay...we have a villain calling himself Regal trying to wreck the northeastern Atlantic seaboard of the USA. The software AI calling herself "Roxy" at the All-Stars' ranch HQ in "upstate New York" has managed to put that in check, but cannot stop him from wreaking some degree of havoc despite her best efforts. She mentions two different disaster scenarios as being the end result. I managed to map them out in rough form with the help of Microsoft Streets and Trips 2000:
This was the scenario that Roxy and company successfully averted, if I understand the script as published. It was the one the JSAers feared the most, as embodied in the outer circle on that first map. Central Canada, along with the Northeastern Atlantic states and the eastern half of the Great Lakes states as well.
However, to the best of my knowledge at present - very much subject to correction from informed sources! - she wasn't able to save this chunk of real estate:
This is what they've ended up losing. According to the published account, most of the people in this area were successfully evacuated - in nine minutes, with maximum assistance from the superhero population at large at the time! - but the land itself has apparently been "reduced to quantum foam". Whatever that means.
If I understand at least some of the consequences likely in play here correctly(and if Flashpoint doesn't render it all "never was" via retroactive continuity) in four months' time...
At least ten counties of New York State are gone. The people are mostly still alive and in refugee camps of some sort in the surrounding neighbourhoods. The cities, towns and villages inside the Syracuse-Albany circle are gone.
The Erie Canal is indefinitely disrupted.
Amtrak's Empire Builder line is in the same shape.
Several historic battlefields from the American Revolutionary War are possibly gone. Literally wiped off the map. (I know there were more than three major battles in the region, just picking three at random for notability here.)
Several major aquifers feeding cities along the Atlantic Coast are likely damaged or gone as well. Boston, Providence, Metropolis, New Haven, Hartford, Charlton Point(from Son of Vulcan), NYC, Newark, Gotham-Bludhaven...and as many points in between that I haven't named...are going to have drinking water troubles within days. And those troubles will be long-term.
The power grid...well, we all remember the great cross-border blackout of 2003, right? We'll certainly have seen a repeat of that here.
Is there anything missing here that we ought to be discussing as well?
Like I said: all of this could be plot-springboard fodder for dozens of writers, for years to come. I hope it gets exploited like Ferengi relatives per the Rules of Acquisition!
Okay...we have a villain calling himself Regal trying to wreck the northeastern Atlantic seaboard of the USA. The software AI calling herself "Roxy" at the All-Stars' ranch HQ in "upstate New York" has managed to put that in check, but cannot stop him from wreaking some degree of havoc despite her best efforts. She mentions two different disaster scenarios as being the end result. I managed to map them out in rough form with the help of Microsoft Streets and Trips 2000:
This was the scenario that Roxy and company successfully averted, if I understand the script as published. It was the one the JSAers feared the most, as embodied in the outer circle on that first map. Central Canada, along with the Northeastern Atlantic states and the eastern half of the Great Lakes states as well.
However, to the best of my knowledge at present - very much subject to correction from informed sources! - she wasn't able to save this chunk of real estate:
This is what they've ended up losing. According to the published account, most of the people in this area were successfully evacuated - in nine minutes, with maximum assistance from the superhero population at large at the time! - but the land itself has apparently been "reduced to quantum foam". Whatever that means.
If I understand at least some of the consequences likely in play here correctly(and if Flashpoint doesn't render it all "never was" via retroactive continuity) in four months' time...
At least ten counties of New York State are gone. The people are mostly still alive and in refugee camps of some sort in the surrounding neighbourhoods. The cities, towns and villages inside the Syracuse-Albany circle are gone.
The Erie Canal is indefinitely disrupted.
Amtrak's Empire Builder line is in the same shape.
Several historic battlefields from the American Revolutionary War are possibly gone. Literally wiped off the map. (I know there were more than three major battles in the region, just picking three at random for notability here.)
Several major aquifers feeding cities along the Atlantic Coast are likely damaged or gone as well. Boston, Providence, Metropolis, New Haven, Hartford, Charlton Point(from Son of Vulcan), NYC, Newark, Gotham-Bludhaven...and as many points in between that I haven't named...are going to have drinking water troubles within days. And those troubles will be long-term.
The power grid...well, we all remember the great cross-border blackout of 2003, right? We'll certainly have seen a repeat of that here.
Is there anything missing here that we ought to be discussing as well?
Like I said: all of this could be plot-springboard fodder for dozens of writers, for years to come. I hope it gets exploited like Ferengi relatives per the Rules of Acquisition!
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-15 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-15 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-16 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 08:42 am (UTC)Schenectady.
Remember, the canonical answer when you ask a writer "Where do you get your ideas?" is "Schenectady". Thus, all writers in the DCU are in *big* trouble.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 09:44 am (UTC)