Let's talk about something super exciting and interesting:
Farming.
Here's some thoughts on food production in Wormy America.
First off,
cities. As observed in canon, people are apparently flocking to the cities, even though the cities we see all kinda suck by modern standards. Why are people moving to them or staying in them? There isn't much work. Crime is bad and getting worse.
My thesis is that as bad as cities are, the countryside must be worse.
Why would the countryside be worse? In our world the country is usually safer than the city.
The major difference between Earth Bet and reality is the existence of parahumans, specifically criminal parahumans. Out in the countryside, PRT / Protectorate response time is not fast. A criminal could get away with much more -- and much worse -- if far enough away from protected population centers.
The rural or suburban areas may not have an adequate camera system for tracking perpetrators, either, necessitating more expensive equipment sent out to accompany law enforcement officers -- or making the perp's getaway even more trivial than the high response time alone would indicate.
What this means is that crime out in the countryside might be less organized, but also worse when it does happen. You don't get gangs extorting businesses and selling drugs, you get gangs on wheels who drive through, pillage, burn, and take your daughter when they leave.
An unpowered gang can do this. Groups with superpowers are going to be worse.
The
countryside must be pretty desolate by now.
In our world, farms are becoming more and more mechanized. On Earth Bet, the mechanization faces the endemic issue of all Earth Bet industry: economies of scale are failing, infrastructure and trade are failing, and the industrial base is eroding faster than it can be rebuilt. Let's break down what each of those factors means.
-
Trade is failing: food will be grown more locally. It will be more difficult -- and thus expensive -- to get "out of season" produce. Above a certain size, cities become less viable very quickly, as their population outstrips the local food supply.
-
Economies-of-scale are failing: agribusiness may not remain viable, mainly because it presents a large single target for subversion or theft. Masters are a thing, so any single-point-of-failure can expect to fail at some point.
-
Infrastructure damage is another potential factor against modern farming techniques: your water service is sporadic, you suffer brown-outs, gas prices are high, transportation costs are high, and all that's in addition to whatever you're paying for security.
-
The industrial base is failing: specialized equipment isn't being built or maintained. Innovations are less frequent in the civilian sectors as the economy becomes more slanted towards security and militarization.
- - -
So, the Worm world sucks, but people still need to eat. Since there are people around in Worm canon, farming is going to have to happen anyway. What new innovations / techniques / organizational structures are going to be present on Earth Bet to allow farming to continue, in spite of the state of the world?
Some thoughts:
- The danger of raids by rural road gangs is not entirely unlike the risk of raids on early American settlers by Native Americans. The American settlers obviously prevailed. What lessons can we learn from history?
- I think there are places even on our Earth in which people successfully farm in spite of ongoing hostilities from nearby groups. Maybe in Africa or Israel? Anyone know about farming in one of those places?
- Parahumans are the problem, but they may also offer solutions. Specifically, a drone Tinker could project law enforcement farther than expected, protecting a larger swath of land from criminal predations. What other types of superpowers could be disproportionately useful?
Final thought: rural desolation may be part of why the S9 was so hard to catch, and part of why more mid-sized cities exist on Earth Bet (like Brockton Bay) in spite of the Endbringer disincentive.
