How much of Florida was left?

[Rigil Kent]

The thing that really gets me about the aftermath scene is the reference to Venezuela being hit. Isn't there someone who looks at the final product and compares the FX to the dialog? It'd be like them having the port nacelle getting hit (that's the left one, by the way), and then cutting to a scene on the bridge where someone announces that the starboard nacelle got damaged. Panama is not Venezuela...

I guess I'll have to write in an explanation. See, during WWIII, Venezuela annexed whole swaths of South and Central America, including Panama. Yeah, that's the ticket.

[CoffeeCat]

Sometimes I really enjoy coming up with explanations for their continuity fuck-ups. It really gives my imagination the exercise it needs.

[Emberchyld]

I can't help them on Venezuela. Unless the beam whipped around, took it out, and the Venezuelan government was REALLY good at filling in the trench and planting the trees. The US and Panama, on the other hand, are a bunch of slackers.

Mountains? OMG. As a New Jersey native (no jokes here, please), I'm already used to wild inaccuracies about my state, but I've never seen anything as bad as that. With all of their f-ups, I could easily work as a fact checker in Hollywood (see the whine thread today for an example of total stupidity in Hollywood).

[blacknblue]

I am continually amazed at the level of general geographic illiteracy in the US. For instance, my son-in-law grew up in Denver. When my daughter went there to visit his folks she told me about meeting people who vaguely considered anything east of the Mississippi as "east coast". On this end, I have met people who honestly believe that Arizona is west of the Rockies. I realize that our country is big, but come on. How hard is it to look at a globe?

[Linda]

Cool, Rigil, you have the same idea I had. That trench should be filled with water. Just let the ocean in, which is what I had Trip suggest in a story I wrote two years ago for Soval's Annex. Can you see them trying to put bridges across that ditch to facilitate transportation? No, ferries and such would be needed. Florida is low land. Have you seen the projections of how much of Florida would disappear if the polar ice all melted?

Also, when they show the view of the weapon carving a straight line down Florida from space, I thought it would carve a wider ditch than they showed when Trip and Malcolm where standing beside it. And yes, 7 million seems a bit large for immediate deaths, as it does not seem to have hit the heavy population areas. Population in Florida is concentrated along the coasts, not in the center of the state. My parents in Stuart, my cousin in Lutz, and my sister in Talahassee would have survived!

[Rigil Kent]

It's my belief that a lot of the coastal cities would be rendered uninhabitable by the resulting environmental damage and inevitable tsunamis. Realistically (even though I know we're talking about Trek), most of Florida would be pretty FUBARed after this hit, and it would take many years to fully recover, I think.

As to the trench, I'm not sure I'd want it filled in with water. I do acknowledge that doing so would be the easiest solution, but I'd rather it remain there like an open, ugly wound to remind future generations to remain vigilant, that, no matter what our intentions are Out There, not everyone is going to share them. I wouldn't want to erect statues or monuments or any of that sentimental stuff, because in almost no time at all, nothing will be remembered about what happened and it'll just be one of those days like Memorial Day or Veteran's Day where people celebrate it without knowing why they do so.

But then, I'm a cynic.

[CoffeeCat]

Well, I'd think they wouldn't want the trench to be filled with water anyway because of the erosion it would cause.

[Navigator]

You may wish to start writing as there were some rather HIGH hills in a couple of backgrounds in Carpenter Street, which is supposed to be in Detroit.

[CoffeeCat]

Vulcan's beam them suckers in?

(never been to Detroit)

[blacknblue]

You ain't missed a whole lot. All of the land around the west end of Lake Erie is flat as a table top.

[JadziaKathryn]

I guess I'll have to write in an explanation. See, during WWIII, Venezuela annexed whole swaths of South and Central America, including Panama. Yeah, that's the ticket.

This works well for me!

Can I add a thought regarding the trench? In time, it would naturally fill in unless measures were taken to prevent that. Take the trenches of WWI. They were snaking gashes slicing through the earth, and now you'd never know by looking at them. And that hasn't even been 100 years. So if, say, Barclay were looking at the trench, I'd expect it to be smoothed over and not as deep.

On this end, I have met people who honestly believe that Arizona is west of the Rockies. I realize that our country is big, but come on. How hard is it to look at a globe?

Um, isn't Arizona west of the Rockies? Or most of the state anyway? (Reference this map)

[Rigil Kent]

Can I add a thought regarding the trench? In time, it would naturally fill in unless measures were taken to prevent that. Take the trenches of WWI. They were snaking gashes slicing through the earth, and now you'd never know by looking at them. And that hasn't even been 100 years. So if, say, Barclay were looking at the trench, I'd expect it to be smoothed over and not as deep.

But the WWI trenches weren't quite as deep. You do have a valid point, though. I do kind of wonder what kind of long term environmental effects it would have on Florida as a whole ...

Something else that occurred to me though (and people who actually know science can correct me if I'm wrong) - would the heat of the beam cause the sand in the immediate vicinity to become glass? Obviously, I know very little about glassmaking, but I seem to recall heat + sand can equal glass.

[JadziaKathryn]

I didn't mean to imply the trench would be gone, but that it'd be less pronounced.

Re: glass, if there were some, maybe someone would use it to make things, like Sweet Home Alabama...

[Emberchyld]

I am continually amazed at the level of general geographic illiteracy in the US. For instance, my son-in-law grew up in Denver. When my daughter went there to visit his folks she told me about meeting people who vaguely considered anything east of the Mississippi as "east coast". On this end, I have met people who honestly believe that Arizona is west of the Rockies. I realize that our country is big, but come on. How hard is it to look at a globe?

Seriously, this happens within my own state. There are plenty of people who believe that anything south of them is South Jersey, even if it's still way above the state's center line. It's painful being a true South Jerseyite living (part time) around these people.

And don't get me started on world geography. I'm Portuguese and it amuses the hell out of me when people go: "Oh, it must be so hot and nice there"... thinking that Portugal is a tropical island... or in South America. My sister's Greek boyfriend has gotten similar queries about the location of Greece. Eesh.

[Linda]

Never been to Arizona. But from the map, couldn't you say the southern part of the Rockies are IN Arizona?

Yes, the Xindi weapon would have caused tsunami waves that hit the Florida coast populations and cause many of the deaths. Tthe initial deaths from the weapon moving across Florida would not have been the major cause of death. Anyone take a guess on the initial deaths? I have no idea but I will take a stab at less then a million. And as has been said, there would be more sickness and death just because of environmental damage and infastructure damage.

Can you imagine what a ditch down two thirds of the state would do to transportation? There would just be no getting around it. You would have to fly over it, so air travel would be the new way to get around in Florida until bridges or flooding the ditch were accomplised. And like we have seen in New Orleans, many places might just be abandoned.

Those WWI trenches...are they filling in naturally or have people been filling them in? Or both? How many inches a year naturally? A lot may have been filled in right away so they could drive farm tractors over the land again, or filling them just so they did not fall into them all the time? I have heard that if you dig much in the area of those trenches, you can still find bones. And bones work their way up out of the soil too. Being a couple of generations past that war, it is hard to realize just how much carnage there was concentrated on those battlefields. Hindsight is good for seeing how an event fits into the overall historical flow, but like my father said of the Great Depression..."kid, if you didn't live through it, you just cannot fully understand it". Well, I guess not, at least in the visceral way he did.