Fallout plot noodling- I think I have it.

[camwyn]

- Told a friend of mine who doesn't use DW about the plot situation
- Friend is familiar with the Fallout setting
- First words out of friends mouth: "There's a lot of chemical plants in the area"
- Cheerful description of chemical industry in MD/DE area followed
- Did some Google Maps searches and poked a few things on Wiki
- Found out about RL plans for liquid natural gas facility stupidly close to the city line
- Proposed scenario: bombs/sabotage result in collapse of Baltimore Harbor Tunnel
- Bombs/missiles that were meant for DC but failed to discharge at appropriate time were unleashed on either Annapolis or Baltimore
- 1/2 to 2/3 of city reduced to below sea level
- Sparrows Point LNG Terminal had already developed serious cracks/leaks which went undetected because you can't add an odorant to liquid natural gas
- Also this is Fallout, the only world that makes Black Mesa look like a demonstration of ideal workplace safety standards
- Anyway the fire/explosion risk from Sparrows Point was bigger than anyone realized
- Pretty much the first bomb to go off touched off the gas
- There goes anything on the eastern side of the city that might have survived
- As for the northern/western side of the city, six or seven different chemical companies within the city limits got hit by the bombs
- Also the scarier portions of Johns Hopkins University's chemistry/biochemistry research facilities
- What was left above water was rendered less habitable than Bhopal
- No offense to the Pitt or anything but the Reds weren't trying nearly as hard to destroy Pittsburgh, so not as much stuff got unleashed there
- People have tried on occasion to get back into the parts of Baltimore that are above water
- They tend to find untouched/undecayed deathclaw corpses and realize they have made Horrific Errors of Judgment
- A few areas around the city edges retain signs of previous efforts to warn survivors away
- I am moderately inclined to have a Stringer Bell-type figure wandering the edges of the Charm City Exclusion Zone
- Mostly because I really wanna use the words 'exclusion zone'
- And you know Future!Fifties Baltimore would push a nickname like 'Charm City' so hard
- So, yeah; what wasn't destroyed was so badly poisoned that you don't even get trogs
- Radiation has a half-life and a decay rate; horrifying chemistry is forever


And that, cats and kiddies, is why you don't hear about Baltimore in the Capital Wasteland.

Comments

[cameoflage]

I am also a big fan of the name "Charm City Exclusion Zone". And I kind of want to have this quote:

- Also this is Fallout, the only world that makes Black Mesa look like a demonstration of ideal workplace safety standards

on the tumblrs.

[lienne]

Radiation has a half-life and a decay rate; horrifying chemistry is forever

:D