The Fallen Continent: Wisconsin
The Fallen Continent: Wisconsin
From troubled origins comes America's strongest left-wing state.
Population: 680,000
Largest City: Green Bay
We fought for the future, destroyed the invaders,
And brought to our Homeland the Laurels of Fame.
Our glory will live in the memory of nations,
And all generations will honor her name!
Introduction
Wisconsin is another state dominated by a single, powerful faction: the American Socialist Federative Republic, in this instance. It was preceded by the United States of America (Green Bay), which was itself predated by the rump state government following the Great War. Much is afoot here in Wisconsin, but before recounting the Green Bay Revolution or the Red-White War, it is necessary to digress for a moment about a different topic.
The Eastern States
Having come all the way from Hawaii to Wisconsin over the course of this series, it is worth taking a moment to describe the general state of America east of the Mississippi River, as the country can and has been split into two broad halves since the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Prior to the Great War, the east was home to most of the United States’ population, industry, and infrastructure. This naturally made it a greater target for nuclear attack during the war. More cities meant more targets and more destruction. The larger population meant there were more immediate survivors and thus more mouths to feed and refugees to house after the nuclear exchange, leading to greater strife and conflict over the fewer remaining resources. Radiation is worse all across eastern America, especially along the coasts, which have been mostly rendered uninhabitable for a time span ranging from decades to centuries to potentially thousands of years.
There are more tiny factions in the east and more states where government authority has totally collapsed. There are only a handful factions east of the Mississippi that can truly be described as large, and several medium ones. There are no states in the east that can boast of a population over one million inhabitants, though some states come close to that number. Whereas eastern America housed most of the country’s population and industry before the war, now the heart of America lies in the west.
This does not mean, however, that the east is unimportant. There are some very powerful eastern factions, and many more that have great potential for expansion, from petty warlords, to democratic republics, to military juntas, to communist dictatorships, to fascist regimes. Recovery and reunification is coming to the east, only a little slower than in the west.
The United States of America (Green Bay)
It was not the nuclear warheads destroying Madison, Milwaukee, Kenosha, or several other cities that brought Wisconsin to such an extreme situation. It was the teeming hordes of refugees from these cities, accompanied by even greater masses of Chicagoans heading north. The government could not feed, let alone house the millions of starving, desperate refugees, and found themselves locked in combat with warlords who had risen to power among the refugee columns.
The remnants of the Wisconsin State Assembly gathered in Green Bay, the state’s largest remaining city, to establish a rump government. They elected assemblyman Cassian deWitt as Speaker and Acting Governor. Once in charge, deWitt set the admirable goal of trying to save as many refugees as he could, using Green Bay’s meat packing industry as a cornerstone of the new rationing program. While his effort was sincere and earnest, and many people owed their lives to his tireless endeavor, he still could not beat back the rising tide of starvation, especially when the region’s already cold weather made the nuclear winter unbearable. This situation was further worsened by expectations that federal authorities in Minnesota were going to provide food and supplies that, in fact, never came.
Like the rest of the Upper Midwest, Wisconsin was hit with an especially bad nuclear winter and suffered from persistent mass hysteria which believed the nuclear winter was only going to get much worse. Many thought that it would never end at all, or would at least persist for centuries, leaving greenhouses as the eventual last-remaining source of food. This hysteria caused great unrest in Iowa and Minnesota, but nowhere was it more pronounced than in Wisconsin.
During the Starving Time’s “Cold Summer,” when black, sooty snow fell in late July, the Green Bay government had had enough with the Acting Governor deWitt’s bleeding-heart quest to prolong the inevitable. Green Bay’s localist faction ousted him from power and established a new, dictatorial government. They even proclaimed a national US government in Green Bay. The rebels installed a puppet Acting Governor to appoint two leading putschists to the US Senate, one of whom elected the other President Pro Tempore of the Senate and thus Acting President of the United States (a common tactic among postwar US claimants). The new regime enforced extremely strict rationing and vagrancy laws, trying to expel the refugees beyond their borders and save themselves.
A popular revolt erupted across Wisconsin, bent on restoring Governor deWitt and his fair rationing program. The revolt escalated as many State Police and National Guard troopers that were sent to quash the refugees ended up joining their cause instead. The situation was something like a reversed Louisiana; the elitist rebels controlled the capital, while the refugees sided with the rightful Governor, who had been taken away to Oshkosh by his supporters. A revolutionary fervor developed among deWitt’s supporters, and by the time Green Bay had fallen to the populists, the deWitt himself was mostly forgotten, carried around by his handlers as a propaganda symbol.
The Green Bay Revolution
Like in Louisiana, where the Louisiana Transitional Government gave way to the Acadian People’s Republic, the populist faction split soon after defeating the localist USA-Green Bay. The more conservative loyalists wanted to restore deWitt to power (under their guiding influence) and forge closer ties with the USA-St. Cloud over in Minnesota. Liberals wanted to hold new gubernatorial elections, end the emergency government, and join the USA-Grand Rapids in Michigan. Green Bay’s growing revolutionary movement challenged both proposals and wanted Wisconsin to take its own direction, championing the cause of poor, displaced people throughout the country.
It was initially the liberals who won out, achieving their demands for democratic elections, while failing to gather sufficient support to recognize the USA-Grand Rapids. Cassian deWitt did not stand for re-election and retired to Sheboygan as a civilian. By this point, most of Wisconsin had been lost to warlords and other rebellious elements, and state-controlled territory had been relegated to the eastern ridges and lowlands bordering Lake Michigan. The elections ended in deadlock, and liberals were forced to form a coalition with the revolutionaries to get anything done. The delicate balance of power was shattered by the July Plot, which led to the second major socialist revolution in American history.
This plot concerned three working elements: the conservative faction, the right-wing militia regime that had taken over Wausau to the northwest, and the USA-St. Cloud in Minnesota. Only a handful of the members of Wisconsin’s Republican Party were active conspirators, and their plan had barely reached the drafting stage (St. Cloud was distant and unresponsive; only select elements of the Minnesota National Guard were open to Green Bay’s concerns), but it ran somewhat thus: they would launch a coup in Green Bay while Wausau’s Wisconsin Sons of Liberty staged an invasion, and call on the St. Cloud government to help them retake the rest of the state from the warlords.
The betrayal of this plot to the public ears outraged the ruling coalition, especially the socialists. The Republicans’ hand was forced and they launched their half-baked plot too early; in response, the Revolutionary Socialist Party staged a counter-coup and instigated a socialist revolution in Green Bay. The State of Wisconsin was no more, and the American Socialist Federative Republic rose from its ashes.
Poor Cassian deWitt, who had no knowledge of the July Plot or any role in the conspiracy, was warned at the last moment by a right-wing sympathizer and fled over Lake Michigan to Muskegon, Michigan. There, the USA-Grand Rapids installed him—again, against his will—as Governor-in-Exile of Wisconsin. He held the position for eleven years until the recent socialist victory in their national elections. The American Council Republic (formerly the USA-Grand Rapids) then extradited deWitt to Green Bay, where he was executed by firing squad.
American Socialist Federative Republic
Capital: Green Bay
Classification: Left-Wing Ideological Faction (Revolutionary socialist republic)
Wisconsin Autonomous Socialist Republic
Capital: Green Bay
Classification: Left-Wing Ideological Faction (Devolved socialist government)
Allegiance: American Socialist Federative Republic
Since the days of the Green Bay Revolution, the American Socialist Federative Republic has expanded to become the largest socialist state in American history. Unlike other left-wing states across the Midwest, it is less rooted in Marxist political theory and more of a revolutionary workers’ dictatorship, galvanized by the hardship of the Starving Time and its accompanying refugee crisis. Wisconsin certainly suffered its own Red Terror, though it pales in comparison to Blanchard’s Acadian National Revolution. Most of Wisconsin’s refugees had died or achieved living standards comparable to the rest of the population by the time the revolutionaries seized power, alleviating the food concern that Blanchard was so worried about. The Red Army, meanwhile, has been locked in a serious enough war that Chairman Ian Dillard does not want to deprive his troops of competent officers by launching a paranoid purge. Dillard likes to say that the ASFR is “socialism with the fat trimmed out.” Indeed, he’s more of a pragmatist who justifies his rule through leftist propaganda, sometimes mixed in with “apple pie communist” rally-round-the-flag patriotism.
That isn’t to say that there are no left-wing policies in the ASFR. There is not much, if anything, remaining in the way of private enterprise; all industry is government-owned and operated. The plan is ostensibly for the means of production to return to the hands of the workers and labor unions once the Revolution is safe and the PAAG defeated (much like how rump USA regimes promise to return state-owned enterprise to private hands once the national emergency is ended; whether or not they’re telling the truth remains to be seen). To that end, all workers belong to state-owned unions, the successors of the AFL-CIO that had become interwoven into US government machinery in the years preceding the Great War.
As can be expected of extreme ideological regimes, the ASFR is no stranger to terror. The Red Terror has left its mark on Green Bay as it has in Santa Rosa, California, Orangeburg, South Carolina, and Lafayette, Louisiana. It’s less ideologically-consistent than California, not racially charged like South Carolina, and not as targeted and bloodthirsty as Lafayette; rather, it is mostly an outpouring of revolutionary violence from the days of the USA-Green Bay and the July Plot. The main opponents of this Terror are holdouts from the old regime, uncooperative military formations, survivalist militias, anyone and anything to do with localism, and religious movements and ideologies thought to be affiliated with the above (which naturally consists of most religious movements and ideologies, period).
After many years fighting of the largest conventional war currently waged on American soil, the American Red Army is getting the better of the Provisional All-American Government in St. Cloud. The Red Army started off strong with early victories against the right-wing militiamen in Wausau (the Sons of Liberty of July Plot fame), the National Guard stronghold in Eau Claire, the Milwaukee-born warlord of La Crosse, and the legitimist, self-proclaimed Governor of Minnesota in Winona. More recently, they’ve successfully instigated revolutions in northern Minnesota and southwest Michigan, gained a foothold in Iowa, and trapped tens of thousands of White Army troops in northern Wisconsin. The ASFR has its share of enemies and it will not simply be smooth sailing ahead, but if they can keep a steady course, Green Bay may be home to a new, communist America.
As a purported successor to the United States of America, the ASFR retains a federal model—it is the socialist federative republic, after all. The federal model has yet to really be seen in action, as the Wisconsin Autonomous Socialist Republic is weak compared to the federal government, and the other ASRs are small military occupation zones that have yet to be placed under party rule. Still, the ASFR does show a genuine desire to implement a real federal model with devolved state governments. Time will tell if they will, in fact do so—or if they will be able to survive that long at all.
Wisconsin Protection Organization
Capital: Prairie du Chien
Classification: Warlord (Warlord state)
The Wisconsin Protection Organization is the largest warlord regime in Wisconsin, and is also the only one founded by and for Wisconsinites, rather than refugees. The WPO originated as a vigilante gang founded by, of all people, a medieval LARPers association, who attracted local survivalists to their ranks in the wake of the Great War. With government forces distracted by refugee invasion and local infighting, the WPO presented the most desirable local alternative to Chicago street gangs or Dubuque’s right-wing extremists, and they soon expanded to rule the entire area surrounding the convergence of the Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers.
The medieval influence of the WPO has shaped its structure, which is feudal-like in its promotion of a well-trained warrior elite that rules over the agricultural, serf-like core of the population. It’s one of those warlord factions that’s on the verge of achieving legitimist status but isn’t quite there yet.
While other nearby factions like the American Salvation Coalition and the Northeast Iowa Emergency Administration cling to dear life in the fight against the ASFR, the WPO hopes it can get by through nonconfrontation. They’ve reached an agreement where they’ve allowed the ASFR to navigate its waterways in return for a guarantee of their independence. They aren’t complete fools, however, and know this situation can’t last forever. Both the socialists and the Iowan rightists are anticipating the moment when the WPO stops fence-sitting and chooses a side, potentially turning the tide of the Iowan front of the Red-White War.
VVizard VVarriors
Capital: Monroe
Classification: Warlord (Skinhead gang)
The VVizard VVarriors are a white nationalist skinhead gang based in the town of Monroe, Wisconsin. While many midwestern warlords have roots in prewar criminal organizations, the VVarriors were founded among the legions of refugees who streamed north from Illinois out of its extensive seclusion zones. These displaced emigrants came into southern Wisconsin in such great numbers that they plunged the region into a chaos from which it has not yet recovered. The VVarriors’ clan tag is a wizard waving a magic wand with a glowing tip (the tip is a euphemism).
Black Disciples
Capital: Beloit
Classification: Warlord (Displaced street gang)
Straddling the border with Illinois, the Black Disciples hold onto the town of Beloit, whose population has swelled with Chicagoan refugees, displacing most of the original inhabitants, who themselves fled to Green Bay. The Black Disciples are one of the many midwestern factions that descend from prewar Chicagoan street gangs, or at least claim to. Most of these factions are extremely miniscule, with less than a few dozen fighters, but some are hundreds of fighters strong and control entire towns or counties.
La Raza Nation
Capital: Janesville
Classification: Warlord (Displaced street gang)
La Raza Nation is another former Chicago street gang, allied to the Black Disciples through the old “Folk Nation” alliance. La Raza guards the Disciples’ northern flank in Janesville, while the Disciples focus on fighting the King of Rockford and the Almighty Gaylords further south. Neither the Black Disciples nor La Raza will last much longer, however. The Red Army is soon coming south, and will have little difficulty in quashing these petty gangsters with their conventional army. The Folk Nation doesn’t have anywhere to run, with enemies and fallout on all sides.
The Outfit
Capital: Waukesha
Classification: Warlord (Mafia organization)
The Outfit is the last remnant of the once-mighty Chicago Mob. The Mafia just couldn’t transition very successfully into the warlord era, as demonstrated by their current pitiful condition. Cast out of Chicago and unable to carve out an empire in Illinois like some other gangs, the Mafia now sits in the hollowed-out town of Waukesha, downwind of a good deal of Milwaukee fallout.
The fallout has kept the Green Bay government and its Red Army away for now, but eventually the Reds will come south to reclaim the city. It’s clear that the Mafia’s attempt at warlordism has failed. Some in the mob propose getting out of dodge and finding someplace new to set up shop. Others recommend going back underground to establish a new black market in communist territory. The boldest young lieutenants have even suggested coming clean and approaching the communists to work on their behalf as their liaison with the outside world. Whatever the case, the Mob must adapt or die in the extreme post-apocalyptic climate.
State of Wisconsin
Capital: Rhinelander
Classification: Local Government (Re-founded state emergency government)
Already stranded from the Green Bay government, Oneida and Vilas Counties never cooperated with the USA in Green Bay. In fact, although they were no friends of the Revolutionaries, they banded together to proclaim their own rival State of Wisconsin and maintained nominal recognition of St. Cloud. The Rhinelander government was forced to make good on that promise when the PAAG invaded. Things looked bright for Rhinelander, who hoped to gain much from the war. They were sorely disappointed when it became clear that the White Army wanted to keep their conquests under military control without giving anything to Eagle Falls.
Now that the war has turned in Green Bay’s favor, they’ve withdrawn their recognition of St. Cloud and have entered into negotiations with the communists. Their bad blood with St. Cloud and shared hatred of the old USA-Green Bay might help them get a good deal and ensure their safety. If not, at least it’ll buy them some time to try and escape for Upper Michigan.
Park Falls Militia
Capital: Park Falls
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Local militia regime)
Allegiance: Provisional All-American Government
The Park Falls Militia is one of the few local regimes in northern Wisconsin that has not bailed on the PAAG and is resolved to stick with them to the end. Despite their small size, the Park Falls Militia are seasoned fighters and have given a better account of themselves in battle than the PAAG initially expected. Still, they are only light infantry, and cannot do much more than defend their own territory.
Army of Northern Wisconsin
Capital: Bayfield
Classification: Military Faction (Military occupation zone)
Allegiance: Provisional All-American Government
The Army of Northern Wisconsin is the cream of the Provisional All-American Government’s northern forces, made up of veteran PAAG campaigners, anticommunist Wisconsin National Guardsmen, and seasoned right-wing militiamen and survivalists who joined the PAAG when they invaded Wisconsin to topple the Green Bay socialists. The ANW made great progress through the state and came close to defeating the ASFR outright, but grew dangerously overextended in the process. A powerful counteroffensive by the Red Army drove them back to the shores of Lake Superior, where they are now desperately maintaining a defensive perimeter.
Trapped in Wisconsin and deprived of supplies and reinforcements. The ANW’s commanding officer General Jacobsen is a skilled and determined commander who is employing every stratagem he can think of to delay the communist advance and ready his forces for the necessary counterattack to link up with the rest of the PAAG. He previously warned Supreme Leader Sommers that the Army of Northern Wisconsin was vulnerable to counterattack and that he had no faith in its commander, General Douglass (who is now a prisoner of Green Bay). He is in too dire of a situation to say “I told you so,” however, and is devoted to the survival of the army which he now commands.
Despite their suspicions towards one another, the Army of Northern Wisconsin and New Vinland have reached an understanding for the sake of survival in the face of the socialist threat. The Great Heathen Army has turned its fury away from Lake Superior and is focusing its efforts on combatting the Reds, while New Vinland ships run supply missions across the lake to help buy General Jacobsen more time. Jacobsen, though a devout Lutheran and an outspoken critic of New Vinland Heathenry, is nonetheless willing to work with the pagans if it means the continued survival of his army.
Index
Click here to read the master post of the series, with links at the bottom of the page to all other Fallen Continent entries.
Previous Article: Weapons and Vehicles
Next Article: Illinois