Post by Catsmate on May 7, 2016 12:19:09 GMT
The ShakeOut Scenario was a project to examine the effects and results of a major earthquake in southern California carried out by the US Geological Survey in 2008-9. It was intended to be used as the basis for planning for emergency responses and preparedness and was based on a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in the southern San Andreas Fault, probably the most plausible such event, though earthquakes of up to M 8.3 are possible. The latter might lead to the formation of the 'Los Angeles Crevasse' mentioned in Doctor Who.
It's a fascinating and detailed insight into the effects of such a catastrophe. The scenario files are available here, with the main file being a 312-page, 10-20MB PDF (depending on quality).
In minutes after the main event, the shock waves travel across the state of California, levelling older and weaker buildings, disrupting roads and severing electricity, telephone, water, gas and sewage lines. As with the 1906 San Francisco, the earthquake this only the beginning, with hundreds of fires started; because roads are blocked or impassable and the water system ruptured firefighters are unable to extinguish many of them. Soon the smaller fires merge larger ones, and soon entire sections of Los Angeles are burning. Almost every water, gas, telephone, data, water and sewage connection into Los Angeles crosses the San Andreas fault; they're shattered and won’t be fixed for months. While Los Angeles keeps a water supply on it's side of the San Andreas fault, the reservoirs are low due to the current drought, even if they the quake survive intact.
Most modern buildings will survive the shaking, but many are rendered structurally unsafe and unusable by the damage.
Aftershocks continue to buffet the state in the following days, continuing the destruction.
If the hot, dry, dusty Santa Ana winds are blowing when the event happens the fires will be even worse; the winds blow air from inland toward the coast, igniting numerous wildfires.
Within a day about two thousand people are dead, fifty thousand are injured and hospitals are unable to cope. Food shortages are beginning (few shops have more than a couple of days supplies due to 'just in time' supply chains) and looting, violence and panic are widespread. So far the damage is around a quarter-trillion dollars.
It's going to take years to rebuild; everything a city relies on to function, water, sewage, gas, electricity, telecomms, roads, is severely damaged.
This assumes that the will and the money to rebuild exists. Could Los Angeles be abandoned?
Gaming possibilities.
Before
What is the quake isn't a natural disaster? Could someone (human, alien or something even more different) be planning to deliberately trigger the catastrophe? How? Why? Who?
Perhaps it's an accident. Someone (mad scientist, group of college students, amoral corporation, quirky billionaire, government agency et cetera) has discovered an artefact (crashed spaceship, portal to elsewhere, large piece of machinery, strange pocketwatch, et cetera) and activates it. Trouble ensues.
And then, when the players think they've saved the day, the ground starts to shake as the quake erupts...
During
The PCs arrive just before the quake, or within a few hours or days of the event. They're greeted by scenes of destruction, roads twisted, fire, injured and panicking people. What do they do? What can they do? Do they have the skills and equipment to assist? Can they take the risk of intervening to help the thousands of injured, but possibly changing history and rupturing the Web of Time? Can they stand around and do nothing (or pursue whatever brought them to LA).
If they have a mission, can they complete it while beset by the troubles of the post-disaster city; lack of supplies and communications, ill coordinated emergency responses, trigger-happy civilians/police/military/security people, looting, humans preying on other humans, shocked people milling about, aftershocks, fires, collapsed and collapsing buildings, damaged roads and lack of transport, et cetera.
After.
If the PCs arrive months or years after the disaster then there are possibilities. Is Los Angeles a hive of activity as the city is rebuilt, with people coming together to help one another? Or is little happening, with people still living in tent cities with endemic violence and disease while politicians talk and the rich quietly leave. Or has the decision been made (overtly or not) to abandon the city in much the same way parts of Detroit have been abandoned and Perth may be?
And who (or what) is living in the abandoned city? Criminal gangs? Mad scientists experimenting on the survivors? Zygon separatists? Silurians awoken by the quake? Psychopathic sadists taking advantage of the breakdown in law enforcement to indulge their proclivities? A time duplicated Magnus Greel establising power base?
Complications.
1. Shortly after arriving one of the PCs interacts with a child. Unfortunately the child is a Jonbar Hinge and that brief connection has altered history by preventing the child from being killed in the disaster. The PCs have to go back and fix the problem, while not interfering with their previous selves and pondering the ethics of killing a child "for the greater good".
2. Lady Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17 lived (as a boy) on the edge of the "Los Angeles Crevasse". When was s/he born? Could she acquire time travel capability and travel back there? Perhaps she's there, before the crevasse was formed, to see "Old LA" one time before it's abandoned.
3. Disaster Tourists. A favourite of mine but if there are bored, amoral, thrill seeking time travellers around then the destruction of Los Angeles would be a major event to draw them in (right up there with the Paris Rock).
Of course this provides a number of options; clueless tourists being robbed in LA in the days before the disaster, attracting the attention of criminal gangs, paranoid Homeland Security agents or curious teenagers. Are they armed? Have they security of their own (robotic or human)? Have they attracted the wrong attention and ended up in jail, dead, in hospital (where scans might find some interesting oddities) or on the run?
Equipment can be lost or stolen (no-one seems to properly secure such devices); what happens when a stunner, tablet (loaded with "Great Historical Disasters 2000-2050"), vortex jumper, alien pet or other twonky is misplaced? Who finds it? What do they do?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
It's a fascinating and detailed insight into the effects of such a catastrophe. The scenario files are available here, with the main file being a 312-page, 10-20MB PDF (depending on quality).
In minutes after the main event, the shock waves travel across the state of California, levelling older and weaker buildings, disrupting roads and severing electricity, telephone, water, gas and sewage lines. As with the 1906 San Francisco, the earthquake this only the beginning, with hundreds of fires started; because roads are blocked or impassable and the water system ruptured firefighters are unable to extinguish many of them. Soon the smaller fires merge larger ones, and soon entire sections of Los Angeles are burning. Almost every water, gas, telephone, data, water and sewage connection into Los Angeles crosses the San Andreas fault; they're shattered and won’t be fixed for months. While Los Angeles keeps a water supply on it's side of the San Andreas fault, the reservoirs are low due to the current drought, even if they the quake survive intact.
Most modern buildings will survive the shaking, but many are rendered structurally unsafe and unusable by the damage.
Aftershocks continue to buffet the state in the following days, continuing the destruction.
If the hot, dry, dusty Santa Ana winds are blowing when the event happens the fires will be even worse; the winds blow air from inland toward the coast, igniting numerous wildfires.
Within a day about two thousand people are dead, fifty thousand are injured and hospitals are unable to cope. Food shortages are beginning (few shops have more than a couple of days supplies due to 'just in time' supply chains) and looting, violence and panic are widespread. So far the damage is around a quarter-trillion dollars.
It's going to take years to rebuild; everything a city relies on to function, water, sewage, gas, electricity, telecomms, roads, is severely damaged.
This assumes that the will and the money to rebuild exists. Could Los Angeles be abandoned?
Gaming possibilities.
Before
What is the quake isn't a natural disaster? Could someone (human, alien or something even more different) be planning to deliberately trigger the catastrophe? How? Why? Who?
- The How could be; an alien (Mi-Go?) mining machine, summoned Chthonian, Tesla oscillator, orbital gravity beam
- The Who could be; Silurians, creatures from another dimension, generic aliens, humans with an Evil Plan, Cybermen, the Rani, Magnus Greel (or similar exile)
- The Why could be; establish a base free of humans, create a Zygon dominated settlement by manipulating the rebuilding, harvest humans in the chaos (for conversion or chemical extraction), fix spaceship and get home
Perhaps it's an accident. Someone (mad scientist, group of college students, amoral corporation, quirky billionaire, government agency et cetera) has discovered an artefact (crashed spaceship, portal to elsewhere, large piece of machinery, strange pocketwatch, et cetera) and activates it. Trouble ensues.
And then, when the players think they've saved the day, the ground starts to shake as the quake erupts...
- Hopefully they've packed supplies...
During
The PCs arrive just before the quake, or within a few hours or days of the event. They're greeted by scenes of destruction, roads twisted, fire, injured and panicking people. What do they do? What can they do? Do they have the skills and equipment to assist? Can they take the risk of intervening to help the thousands of injured, but possibly changing history and rupturing the Web of Time? Can they stand around and do nothing (or pursue whatever brought them to LA).
If they have a mission, can they complete it while beset by the troubles of the post-disaster city; lack of supplies and communications, ill coordinated emergency responses, trigger-happy civilians/police/military/security people, looting, humans preying on other humans, shocked people milling about, aftershocks, fires, collapsed and collapsing buildings, damaged roads and lack of transport, et cetera.
After.
If the PCs arrive months or years after the disaster then there are possibilities. Is Los Angeles a hive of activity as the city is rebuilt, with people coming together to help one another? Or is little happening, with people still living in tent cities with endemic violence and disease while politicians talk and the rich quietly leave. Or has the decision been made (overtly or not) to abandon the city in much the same way parts of Detroit have been abandoned and Perth may be?
And who (or what) is living in the abandoned city? Criminal gangs? Mad scientists experimenting on the survivors? Zygon separatists? Silurians awoken by the quake? Psychopathic sadists taking advantage of the breakdown in law enforcement to indulge their proclivities? A time duplicated Magnus Greel establising power base?
Complications.
1. Shortly after arriving one of the PCs interacts with a child. Unfortunately the child is a Jonbar Hinge and that brief connection has altered history by preventing the child from being killed in the disaster. The PCs have to go back and fix the problem, while not interfering with their previous selves and pondering the ethics of killing a child "for the greater good".
- Given the usual tone of Doctor Who a reward for players who come up with a less lethal solution is recommended. Or, for a darker tone, a reward for whoever does what is necessary.
- Perhaps there's someone else there from the future (maybe from the altered future) or the Reapers are coming to clean up.
2. Lady Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17 lived (as a boy) on the edge of the "Los Angeles Crevasse". When was s/he born? Could she acquire time travel capability and travel back there? Perhaps she's there, before the crevasse was formed, to see "Old LA" one time before it's abandoned.
3. Disaster Tourists. A favourite of mine but if there are bored, amoral, thrill seeking time travellers around then the destruction of Los Angeles would be a major event to draw them in (right up there with the Paris Rock).
Of course this provides a number of options; clueless tourists being robbed in LA in the days before the disaster, attracting the attention of criminal gangs, paranoid Homeland Security agents or curious teenagers. Are they armed? Have they security of their own (robotic or human)? Have they attracted the wrong attention and ended up in jail, dead, in hospital (where scans might find some interesting oddities) or on the run?
Equipment can be lost or stolen (no-one seems to properly secure such devices); what happens when a stunner, tablet (loaded with "Great Historical Disasters 2000-2050"), vortex jumper, alien pet or other twonky is misplaced? Who finds it? What do they do?
- Another layer of complication could have someone else aware of the tourists, and plotting to steal a time travel device from them. Perhaps, years earlier, they interacted with someone and she (or a descendant) is waiting for them. What's her plan? Save a loved one? Something more sinister and selfish?
- Some previous disasters they might have visited; the St. Francis Dam collapse of 1928, the LA Flood of 1938, the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the 2002 710 Freeway pile-up. Or maybe it was elsewhere, like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?