USA without planet Earth

[DinoDoc]

I'd go looking for extinct animals to eat. I'd be curious what dodo tastes like.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Harder for them to jump into a society with modern sanitation and healthcare.

Are you talking about the US?

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Arrian

Oh, btw, what happens to Puerto Rico, Guam, etc? Did the OP specify?

-Arrian

Alaska and Hawaii being states get a ride, other territories stay in our world.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


since they know where all the good resources are, they can presumably try to avoid being on the straightest transportation route to important ones.

OTOH USA really needs labor, and scale economies. So we either trade with them peacefully, or bring them back by force.

Businesses can do plenty of things to encourage people to seek gainful employment rather then just use force.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Arrian


Oh, ok, I get it. That makes more sense.

I dunno if all those people are really going to like being restricted to "dominion" status indefinitely, though. I rather doubt it...

-Arrian

Esp. in the long-term, it wouldn't take that long for the dominions to outweigh the US vastly in population, I have a felling that extra growth would leave the US rather than produce a NA with 1 billion people living in it.


Completely unrelated idea , well maybe not. I think I have found a use for the US’s vast atomics… eh .. I mean nuclear stockpile. Nobody would dare challenge the Washingtonian Emperor or the Landsraad if they were preserved.

[Whoha]

The extra growth would have to stay with the existing infrastructure. Until there is a clean water system for example, not a whole lot of people are going to be all that enthralled with living there.

Once infrastructure gets built up is another matter of course.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


Esp. in the long-term, it wouldn't take that long for the dominions to outweigh the US vastly in population, I have a felling that extra growth would leave the US rather than produce a NA with 1 billion people living in it.

USA doesnt just have NA, we've got several overseas states as well. All in the most strategic locations, in terms of resources and transport.

If it turns out we missed one or two, we can over statehood status to the most important dominions. Man, you have to be flexible, you cant just apply any of this formulaicly. Think a combo of a really well - functioning feudal regime (like William the Conqueror) the British empire in the mid 19th c, the French neocolonial thingie, the cold war US at its most Kissingerian, and a few other things as well. Holding a global hegemony intact may not be a sure bet, but I think in these circumstances its far from impossible.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Whoha



Businesses can do plenty of things to encourage people to seek gainful employment rather then just use force.

which is why i said "or trade". There will be a strong argument against force.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


USA doesnt just have NA, we've got several overseas states as well. All in the most strategic locations, in terms of resources and transport.

If it turns out we missed one or two, we can over statehood status to the most important dominions. Man, you have to be flexible, you cant just apply any of this formulaicly. Think a combo of a really well - functioning feudal regime (like William the Conqueror) the British empire in the mid 19th c, the French neocolonial thingie, the cold war US at its most Kissingerian, and a few other things as well. Holding a global hegemony intact may not be a sure bet, but I think in these circumstances its far from impossible.

And I've just found a fail-safe. Make nuclear technology off limits to individual states.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Heraclitus

Completely unrelated idea , well maybe not. I think I have found a use for the US’s vast atomics… eh .. I mean nuclear stockpile. Nobody would dare challenge the Washingtonian Emperor or the Landsraad if they were preserved.

Too easy - just keep the nuke monopoly and nuke any dominion that challenges it.

Id like to see if we can hold hegemony without doing that.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


Too easy - just keep the nuke monopoly and nuke any dominion that challenges it.

Id like to see if we can hold hegemony without doing that.

In the long term? No. I'd give you 200 years at most. With nukes and if you keep a static tech level, things could remain in you're control for millenia.

[Cort Haus]

Now if George III had nukes ....

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


In the long term? No. I'd give you 200 years at most. With nukes and if you keep a static tech level, things could remain in you're control for millenia.

its going to be difficult to prevent technological advance, especially in such an environment. Still, nukes won't be obsolete for quite a long while as it is.

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Now if George III had nukes ....

Journal entry
July 4th, 1776: Nothing of event happened today, because I pwnzored those nubs with nukes lol!

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Igloodude
Actually the consequences would be fairly boring. The economy would rattle a bit, and the military would suddenly be virtually unnecessary, and I suppose the real estate market would flatten, but otherwise ho hum.

Agreed.

I would forsee an era of unparalleled technological advancment, prosperity and peace as suddenly the world has far, far, far more natural rescources then our society can use up in short order and no real competition for them.

There are no external threats and the U.S. is a coherant enough political entity that even under such bizzare circumstances the country would not splinter, our national identity is too strong. Give the U.S. all the rescources it could want, no external competition for rescources and no external threats?

Utopia, or close enough.

I think many of you are grossly overestimating the labor shortage issues. We could set up our heavy manufacturing fairly quickly. The U.S. is a net EXPORTER of wheat, there would be no food shortages, though we do import a fair chunk of our produce, it would take time to replant that but there would be no starvation.

We have the materials we need to rebuild our manufacturing industries, it is just not economical to do it here. Just because we don't for example, produce as much steel as we used to, does not mean we cannot do it, it simply means we have no economic reason to do so. There would not be a "shortage" of any of the key essentials to life.

The only thing I can really see as an issue is a TEMPORARY shortage of petrochemical products and gasoline, which would be gone within less then 5 years, we can go to Mexico and tap the rich surface wells which were long since depleted.

All the natural rescources we import now, such as various metals and ores, today, are dug from "harder to get" deposits. We have dug up and used up the easiest to acess rescources long ago, the loss of infastructure to obtain rescources if offset by the fact that the surface deposits and easy to acess rescources, are now all back.

Really, the OP sounds like a blessing and something that would be good, not bad.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Nope, until a religious civil war breaks out between fundamentalist evangelicals (who see in the transport of another planet a work of god who lead them to the promised land and think that he wants them to form a religious state where the theory of evolution is banned and not alowed to be taught, gay people are seen to be mentaly ill and there is only the King James bible as the only allowed bible) the catholics (which of course disagree with the protestants, but also want a small church state for themselves, where, in the absence of the pope on earth, they can determine a new pope), the muslims (which of course want to establish a fundamentalist islamist state wherre the Sharia is law) and the atheist (who disagree with all other 3 groups and want to keep the new planet secularist)

The majority of Americans are still the same "law and order" sort who voted for Nixon 30 years ago, albeit a tad more socially liberal today and less politically active. Most people just want the trains to run on time and their bellies full. Fundamentalists don't stand a chance, our armed forces are loyal to the goverment and to the populace, who the hell is going to put up a fight, a handful of people in the bible belt with small arms?

You are grossly overestimating the number of religious fundamentalists in the United States.

Even most of the Christian fundamentalists are pro democracy and pro secular goverment. Only a very small fraction are a real "problem" and they are statistically insiginificant. No matter how much I try to convince foreigners of this, they never seem to believe me.

I think there would be a rally around the flag effect from this bizzare transportation and very few people who want to "leave" American society. I would think most groups that left the territorial U.S. would still want to be part of it politically. The U.S. now has all the rescources it could ever want, a pristine planet and no threats-why would you want to leave what is soon going to be a utopia, to go scratch out a living in the wilderness?

"Radical" sepratists groups don't have the neccesary rescources or organization to split off on their own. For example as cited above, how would the black or white fundamentalists leave the body of the state? The best they could do is eke out a substance farming living.

Oh, we also need to dismantle most of our nuclear stockpile and destroy our biological and chemical war programs, what the hell would we need them for anymore?

Originally posted by Heraclitus
I can even imagine a group of Jews trying to resettle the "promised land". Come to think of that would the Jews, Christians and Muslims consider the points where Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem are, sacred? There might be several views, with a wide range of possibilities.

Interesting idea. To be honest, I think they would. You need to keep in mind however that well, Jews love the U.S. We do. Really. Very few Jews in the U.S. dislike it. We have done great here, why wouldn't we like it? How many Israelis have duel citizenship with the U.S.? A fair number do. Going back to resettle Israel is an intriguing idea.... given the chance, I think I would want to go along myself, though not with the original pioneers. I would think those Jews going to Israel would want to stay as part of the U.s., which is now the defacto global goverment. Pre civilization, Israel was actually a pretty nice place, much more forested then it is today, smaller desserts too and more fresh water.

Most Jews do not want to rebuild the temple, they are waiting for a cue from G-D, the (very)small minority who want to rebuild it now, are mostly in Israel. Most of the Jews others might label as "fundamentalists" are in Israel, so they would of all dissapeared too, which would make life, a lot easier. I think a compromise over what to do with the temple mount could be reached, perhaps something along the lines of "The Jews build their synagouge here, the Muslims build their mosque here and lets all get along".

The meteoritic rock that is at Mecca would be gone anyway, but who would want Mecca or Medina, which are now in the middle of remote and desolate dessert? If small groups want to go set up tents out there, who would want to stop them heh?