Jack of Harts

The Indian Nations commanded real political and practical power during the Second Great Depression. Many called for full independence from the United States of America, and there was little the reduced Feds could do to stop them. But most believed a more measured option was appropriate. Whether they liked it or not, our worlds were intertwined far more than in the past, and fully divorcing themselves from America would result in even more chaos. So when the States moved to reform the Federal government, the Indian Nations sent their own representatives to the Constitutional Convention. Most were quickly accepted by the State delegations they nominally belonged to, though some fought for their own separate acceptance. Despite their lack of official Statehood. Constitutional scholars continue to point to their acceptance by the convention as a major point for challenging the reformed Constitution that came out of it, but court cases based on that did not succeed in the decades that followed.

One of the more interesting aspects of the various State divorces that occurred during the Second Great Depression concerned the matter of infrastructure. Many cities were vastly powerful concentrations of industry and knowledge, but most of them relied on the rural areas around them to survive. And not just for food. That is a common trope that is not entirely true. Many cities also require power stations to survive that are outside their borders. Nuclear power plants. Major hydroelectric dams. Coal plants. Power made the cities bright and shiny, and they relied on power transmission lines traveling sometimes hundreds of miles over farms and ranches. City folk drove from place to place on highways built in the middle of territory once owned by middle class Americans. Most cities required major installations outside their own borders to survive, and they did not take kindly to said installations seeking to leave them behind. Many cities took to the courts to stop the secessions. Others took more direct action. Those situations rarely ended with everybody happy or, far too often, alive. It would be decades before all the ramifications of those various actions and disagreements came to light.

When the supermarkets ran out of food during the Second Great Depression, it started a migration as the city folk marched out and tried to get their food from the local yokels. Maybe it was more a stumble in many cases. A shuffling. Kinda like zombies. Well, they learned that game hunters are perfectly okay with hunting long pig if said pigs are trying to take their land and food. I’m not going to say it was one sided. Many parts of America survived the depression with few or no problems at all. Others collapsed under the weight of their problems. Some groups of farmers, hunters, and retired veterans shot looters until the cows came home and had awesome barbeques. Some got snowed under by the weight of desperate cities looking for any way to feed their people. Some States came out of the depression golden and having fun. Others completely shattered. Though I will note that in even the worst of the States, some Sanctuaries of normality survived. Many never lost broadband internet or full network television and got to see the chaos on all their screens as they shook their heads and happily drove into work each day without a care in the world.