Trinity RPG - Why is France so fucked?

[Asbjørn]

From what I can find in the core book and Shattered Europe, France was doing relatively ok until Esperanza fell down. The Aberrant war had taken it's toll, and a lot of cities were in ruins, but the nation still existed, and was doing relatively ok. Right?

So what was it about Esperanza that turned France into a wasteland? Was it full of nuclear warheads or reactors that contaminated the area? Was it just huge, and riddled the countryside like a meteorswarm? Or is France less of a wasteland than I think? SE does say there are still about 13 million people there (about a 4th of its population today), in small settlements, so maybe it's not 'mad max country' at all... it's still more densely populated than my country is today... ::blush

If anybody knows, thinks or wonders about something that would shed more light on this, I'd be grateful.

[VictorHFrost KSC]

i'm assuming that a large portion of why its souch a lousy country now is social and economic collapse after the crash. that and the esperanza probably landed with several hiroshimas worth of force, and anything that size would screw up a lot of territory.  the population figure in shattered europe is also 6 years or so after the crash itself, meaning that some people have actually moved to france, doing relief efforts and the like.  the number does seem a bit off, but then i suppose that depends on what their pop was like before the station fell, which we don't really have a good grasp of.

jake

[operations]

I seem to remember that the crash set off the Paris Power grid in a nasty chain reaction with other regional grids (another disadvantage to centralized government controlled utilities, them being all hooked together) that caused about 2/3rds of the country to go up like tinfoil in a 3000 watt microwave. In simplier terms, fusion domino effect.

Not pretty.

[notsoangrydave]

don't forget, kt, to keep a station of that size up and running, they probably need a few hyper-fusion reactors.  now, a couple of those falling at terminal velocity, entry into the atmosphere and impact on earth probably triggers something, and i'm guessing that something is catastrophic explosive meltdown.  

that's why the rayonnaires are all over france, why the paris power grid went up, and why much of the country is still uninhabitable. at least, in my opinion.

[Asbjørn]

...and anything that size would screw up a lot of territory.

...to keep a station of that size up and running...

Am I the only one here who doesn't know what kind of size we're talking about? How big was it, in tons, square kms or population?

My guess is that France's problem is mainly organizational and infrastructural. The radiation can't be that bad (like instant cancer bad), since the french are spread rather thinly across the country. The fact that there are thousands of small settlements suggest that radiation is bearable (but lethal over time) in most of the country, and that the towns limit themselves to that size because they lack resources to grow. In addition to unsafe roads, lack of fuel, dangerous neighbours and crazy abberants, of course.

[notsoangrydave]

well, this is just off-hand knowledge, i don't have any of my books in front of me, but i know that many of the orbital stations, especially the big ones at the lagrange points, house up to 200,000 people, and i think it was stated that teh esperanza was the biggest at the time.

i assumed that to mean close to 300,000 residents, which means massive power requirements, especially when one considers backup systems and life-support, grav crystals and such.

of course, the only way to go for energy is hyper-fusion, especially in space, so that's what you can expect in epseranza.  and anything that involves nuclear reactions is very dangerous if uncontrolled.

also, from what i read, much of france is uninhabitable, much like the blight zone in nordamerica, just in smaller pockets where radioactive material struck and irradiated the surrounding area.  

i do agree that that probably represents a smaller area of france, and that lack of infrastructure and organization are holding the french back from recovery, but there are also physical limitations, and i think a lot of those are due to the crash and subsequent radiation.  perhaps the best road to take is now crossed by a significant rayonnaire, or an aberrant, who can probably survive a rayonnaire, is using it to stage attacks on local towns and retreating anytime it encounters resistance.  also, the crash ruined much of the natural resources of the country by wrecking/irradiating/mundanely polluting all the farmland and vineyards, lakes and rivers.

i think there are a lot of factors keeping france down, but the biggest is still the physical legacy of the esperanza crash.

[Asbjørn]

Operations is right. I checked the core book again, and there's a note about a chain of explosions in the power grid, killing 11 million, destroying the powerinfrastructure and irradiating the country. That in addition to all the Esperanza-impacts all around explains why the catastrophe is the most important thing in the french consciousness. And the timing, of course. But that also means that at least 50 million frenchmen have been killed in the aberrant war and the decades before the Esperanza. Tough. And just when things were improving, they get a goddamn spacestation dropped on them.... ::crazy  ::wacko

[notsoangrydave]

funny, the way problems just seem to keep getting heaped on when you're down.  nordamerica had similar problems, with aberrants obliterating areas, and then the blight, and more obliteration, and then the blight doesn't go away, and then the fsa... that seems to be something of a theme in trinity, problems heaped on when you're down.

at least, it is in my aeonverse  ::devil

[ezekiel]

I never asked myself this question 'cause it really doesn't take very big objects to make a big "boom" when they fall...And there's not just the boom but the fallout after. Think of volanoes, most damage is from the ash, not lava. A lot of dust would rise from a meteor impact.

Just think of the Tunguska meteor in 1908:

http://www.s-d-g.freeserve.co.uk/tunguska.html

"The blast is now thought to have been caused by a stony body some 50 meters in diameter, that exploded with the force of 15-30 megatons of TNT, 6 km above the ground, at a spot 60o 55’ North, 101o 57’ East."

"70 kilometres away, in the town of Vanavara, people were knocked to the ground by the force of the blast."

that's 70 KILOMETERS!! away. 50 METER diameter meteorite.

Imagine now if a whole station fell on france in fragmented pieces...I think the chain reaction of the power grid is just overkill...

[Alistaire]

they probably need a few hyper-fusion reactors.  now, a couple of those falling at terminal velocity, entry into the atmosphere and impact on earth probably triggers something, and i'm guessing that something is catastrophic explosive meltdown.  that's why the rayonnaires are all over france,

And,

of course, the only way to go for energy is hyper-fusion, especially in space, so that's what you can expect in epseranza.  and anything that involves nuclear reactions is very dangerous if uncontrolled.

I know that this probably sounds like nit-picking, but I just wanted to clear up one point about fusion reactions. I think that people assume that because fusion reactions provide so much more power than our traditional fission reactions, that a fusion reactor accident would be that much more catastrophic than a fission one as well. But, you have to keep in mind two things: 1) Is that the fuel for fusion is usually some variety of hydrogen or helium, no more dangerous than your average blimp, really, so no nuclear explosion is likely to result simply from a lack of containment. Fusion bombs today only have a radiation effect because of the fission reaction necessary to start them. 2) is that fission reactors are all about keeping the reaction from a "run-away" effect, meaning without proper controls, the neutrons just make more reactions, and either you get a melt-down (a la chernobel), or boom! But fusion reactions today are very hard to make at all, and require rather exceptional circumstances to even work. Thus, if those careful conditions were to no longer exist (like a power shutdown or other accident), the most likely event would be that the fusion reactions would simply stop. Nice and safe, really.

Now of course this is all based on current fusion technology, and not cold-fusion technology. Whatever techniques are used in the future to produce fusion power at low tempuratures gives enough uncertainty that sci-fi writers can say anything they like, and thus I cannot say for certain that fission catastrophies will not be possible in the future. All I can say is that based on what *is* known today, it is still unlikely that we will have what happened to Hadley Station in the movie "Aliens".

So really, I like what ezekiel said about the Tunguska meteor of 1908. You don't need fusion to set off such large problems. The only remaining question is, where does all the radiation come from? Shattered Europe tells us that the Esperanza's "fusion core detonated in the low atmosphere, spreading a cloud of deadly gases across the countryside, accompanied by a rain of radioactive metal shards." (p.28) So I guess they are taking their writer's liberties after all.  

[Alistaire]

BTW, I would just like to say that you know Trinity has to be a good game for me to play it. I was quite ticked off at WW when I found out that they had trashed my two favorite countries; France and Canada. ::smiley4

Of course, this situation ended up spawning two very interesting (if somewhat emotionally damaged) characters (one from each country). I suppose that was the goal of WW all along, darn them!  ::dry    

[VictorHFrost KSC]

and remember kids, a french canadian is just as bad as the real thing....

just kidding friend just kidding

jake

[Alistaire]

Ooooh, that's bad. Funny, but bad!  

[harlequin]

i've actually been thinking about setting a future game in france or the surrounding shatter... i pretty much have it all figured out, but does anyone have any ideas/favorite moments from one of their games to share? ::thumbs-up