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Damage from the Great Ghost Dance

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Theoretical Anomaly

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« on: <10-21-20/1323:42> »
Is there any documentation of how many people died or what the devastation entailed when multiple volcanoes on the Pacific Northwest erupted as a result of the Great Ghost Dance?  Feel free to point me at which books to read!

Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #1 on: <10-21-20/1458:25> »
I don't think there is any meta, objective source.  Anything you like would find is subject to the unreliable narrator factor that is inherent to all in-universe sources.

As for specific numbers ever given... the only one coming to mind off the top of my head is the 40,000 that Alamos 40,000 claims died in Los Alamos.
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

CanRay

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« Reply #2 on: <10-21-20/1754:51> »
The idea of even how to count the lives would be problematic as it is with any natural disaster (or unnatural disaster in this case.).

Do you include only the people killed directly by the volcanos?  How about the asthmatics that couldn't breathe the sooty air and was turned away from overwhelmed ERs?  How about the ones that starved/dehydrated to death because of the roads being out?  How many people died for lack of power, communication, so on, so forth.

That's why news reports go, "Deaths number in the..." as they can't give actual, concrete numbers, even well after the fact.
Si vis pacem, para bellum

#ThisTaserGoesTo11

Theoretical Anomaly

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« Reply #3 on: <10-21-20/2224:21> »
I don't think there is any meta, objective source.  Anything you like would find is subject to the unreliable narrator factor that is inherent to all in-universe sources.

As for specific numbers ever given... the only one coming to mind off the top of my head is the 40,000 that Alamos 40,000 claims died in Los Alamos.

LOL - clearly hyperbole, since Los Alamos and surrounding areas didn't have more than 20,000 people total, and it's highly unlikely every single person was killed.

Theoretical Anomaly

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« Reply #4 on: <10-21-20/2226:08> »
The idea of even how to count the lives would be problematic as it is with any natural disaster (or unnatural disaster in this case.).

Do you include only the people killed directly by the volcanos?  How about the asthmatics that couldn't breathe the sooty air and was turned away from overwhelmed ERs?  How about the ones that starved/dehydrated to death because of the roads being out?  How many people died for lack of power, communication, so on, so forth.

That's why news reports go, "Deaths number in the..." as they can't give actual, concrete numbers, even well after the fact.

Yeah, I'm not looking for exact numbers - a ballpark figure would be helpful.  Like, hundreds? Thousands?  Hundreds of thousands?

FastJack

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« Reply #5 on: <10-22-20/0819:12> »
The idea of even how to count the lives would be problematic as it is with any natural disaster (or unnatural disaster in this case.).

Do you include only the people killed directly by the volcanos?  How about the asthmatics that couldn't breathe the sooty air and was turned away from overwhelmed ERs?  How about the ones that starved/dehydrated to death because of the roads being out?  How many people died for lack of power, communication, so on, so forth.

That's why news reports go, "Deaths number in the..." as they can't give actual, concrete numbers, even well after the fact.

Yeah, I'm not looking for exact numbers - a ballpark figure would be helpful.  Like, hundreds? Thousands?  Hundreds of thousands?
As many as you need. The answer everyone is giving is that it's never been discussed officially.

CanRay

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« Reply #6 on: <10-22-20/0942:09> »
Whatever suits your game best.  In fact, the numbers will depend on the organization giving them.

UCAS?  Hundreds of thousands.

NAN?  "Mere" thousands.

England?  "There was a Ghost Dance?  Did my Great Aunt Mimi show up?  She used to love to dance..."  *Rambles On In British Stuffiness*
Si vis pacem, para bellum

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Theoretical Anomaly

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« Reply #7 on: <10-23-20/1106:43> »
Okay, thanks, everyone.  I think I know where to go from here.

Nath

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« Reply #8 on: <11-07-20/1845:40> »
As for specific numbers ever given... the only one coming to mind off the top of my head is the 40,000 that Alamos 40,000 claims died in Los Alamos.
LOL - clearly hyperbole, since Los Alamos and surrounding areas didn't have more than 20,000 people total, and it's highly unlikely every single person was killed.
I guess you can find a common ground, considering the fact the group actually goes by the name "Alamos 20,000".

Theoretical Anomaly

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« Reply #9 on: <11-17-20/0310:13> »
I think in this case, either the writers didn't really research the area, or the racist hate group likes to exaggerate. I'm going to go with the latter in my game. 

(Warning: thought experiment ahead)

In the real-world timeline, Los Alamos had less than 12k registered residents around the same period, and that was only four years after the VITAS plague in the SR timeline, which would have further reduced populations in the area by a quarter or more (NM has notoriously bad health care).  Additionally, the area around Los Alamos is (and was) very sparsely populated - one reason it made a good place for labs and test sites.  And, we should probably remember that there are a lot of Native Americans in that area of New Mexico (Redondo is just southwest of the Jicarilla Apache Reservation), who would have been removed to a "re-education center" (and thus, why the volcano blew up to begin with).

All things considered, even with no warning, and assuming that the blast effect was able to bury Los Alamos almost entirely with no warning, the death toll would still have been under 10k.  Such a sudden and violent eruption would have devastated trees and buildings as far away as Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and denuded an area at least 30 miles in diameter, and would have made the area uninhabitable for years.  I can only imagine the background count there if that happened.

It's a fun thought exercise, and gives me a great hook for messing with the A20k people.