Eisenhowerian
The Eisenhowerians are the inhabitants of the lost planet Eisenhower, a former American Refuge World which has been isolated from the Starweb since the outbreak of the Interstellar Dark Ages. Consisting of a human majority originally descended from ancient American colonists during the Wormhole Rush, they inhabit a harsh and dangerous world which is regularly struck by high-intensity solar flares.
As a place of refuge, Eisenhower worked. It survived the End of Earth and the fall of its parent nation with its technology base intact, and in the following centuries went on to join the American Federation, a superpower bloc during the Second Interstellar Period. This meant it drew the ire of the Federation's adversaries during the many wars of this time, and when this era ended in an apocalyptic, Starweb-encompassing conflict, Eisenhower was targeted for planetary bombardment. Prior to this, terraforming operations had thickened its atmosphere to 1.01 bars at sea level, bringing the pressure up to a comfortable shirtsleeve level.
The rebuilt Starweb in the Stellar Compact era has had little motivation to investigate Eisenhower, since it is presumed all the inhabitants died either in the Celestial Union strike or from flare exposure after the attacks destroyed their technology base.
Even so, advancement has been slow as a result of Eisenhower's harsh conditions, its low population, and the sheer damage done at the start of the Interstellar Dark Ages. As of the present day, the Eisenhowerians' state of the art approximates Terra in the mid-twentieth century A.D.: factories, manual vehicles, cathode-tube television, etc. Deposits of an oil-like fossil fuel, thought to have been formed during a past period of habitability before Eisenhower's sun became so active, provide a handy energy source but are limited, which prompted the wide adoption of atomic power once technology advanced enough to bring it out of the Archive. Cities, ships, trains, and even large landcrawlers are powered by fission reactors on a scale far beyond what is usual for civilizations at such a level. This comfort with nuclear power may be due to the flares—already accustomed to dealing with radiation there, the far more tame and contained radiation of atomic reactors is nothing to be afraid of.
Oil is reserved for applications where it cannot be substituted, such as plastics production and automobiles. Gasoline is rationed, only the rich and those whose professions require it own cars. Cities and towns are thus constructed with buildings closer together to facilitate walking and public transportation. The people of Eisenhower accomplish long-distance transport with shielded atomic trains and ships, or highways with emergency flare shelters at regular intervals. Aviation, in a world where lethal flares can crop up with little warning, is a lost art seen only in museums and circus shows. An eccentric rich man, Marcus Dorgan, attempted to start an airline with a design for a jet plane taken from the Archive, but was killed by a flare on a test flight.
The Eisenhowerians are majority-human, with minorities of lupens and marsi, two uplift species created by Americans in past centuries (from wolves and possums, respectively). The marsi were originally designed as spacecraft crews and orbital workers by the American Federation, and came to the planet with a group of space colonists from elsewhere in the system fleeing the breakdown of their habitats (which did not stand up to a dark age as well as an entire planet, even one ravaged by killer flares). These spacers brought much-needed advanced technology with them, and their descendants constitute a significant portion of the current political and economic elite. They can be distinguished by their paler complexion, sparse or absent hair, and long-toed, hand-like feet, old gene-mods which continue to be passed on. The spacers have a somewhat different culture than the planetary colonists, putting more stock in old stories about their ancestors being part of an interstellar civilization, and thinking mythical creatures like aliens, immortals, and people with wings actually existed. The marsi occupy a servant role for them and are rarely seen in the general population.
The founding documents of Ancient America, such as its Constitution and Declaration of Independence, are known from the Archive and have taken on a reverence akin to religious scripture. Indeed, Christianity and American political philosophy have fused into a kind of civic religion, in which the Ancient American Founding Fathers are alleged to have had divine assistance and inspiration, and things like voting are considered sacred rituals. A few minority faiths exist, including one which proclaims humans are indigenous to Eisenhower, the flares are punishment from God for their ancestors' sins, and Earth never existed.
Much cultural effort is spent on dealing with the flares that regularly lash at Eisenhower's surface. Extraordinarily powerful, a decent-sized flare of the type which strikes every few weeks to months is capable of delivering a lethal radiation dose to an unshielded human on the planet's surface in under an hour. Therefore, all dwellings include a flare shelter buried under the equivalent of several meters of earth for radiation shielding (such as a basement room in a townhouse or communal shelter in an apartment building), while public spaces like subway stations are designed to double as shelters for those caught away from home. Rich people can afford lavish flare bunkers and semi-buried houses which remain habitable throughout their entire area even during the worst flares. Children are taught from a young age how to seek shelter in culverts, old basements, etc. if caught outside by a surprise flare, and it is considered a capital crime to deny a stranger in need the use of one's flare shelter, provided there is room. (In the early days, the punishment for this was execution via exposure to flare radiation. Sometimes the condemned was staked to the ground, other times they were deposited in a remote area for a sporting chance at finding shelter.) Current technology cannot predict flares, but the Eisenhowerians know their Ancestors were able to.
Cleanups of nuclear accidents, and emergency work during flares, is handled by brigades of older citizens who are past childbearing years and likely to die of old age before any radiation-induced cancers take hold.
To its north is the breakaway Free State of Jefferson, which seceded several decades ago in a brief civil war. While its territory is still officially claimed by the New Republic, it enjoys de facto autonomy for the time being. Disputes between the two governments occasionally flare up into brushfire conflicts, often brought on by border partisans stirring the pot.
The Archive near Ticonderoga City is considered an almost-sacred place and played a major role in the establishment of the current political order, currying favor with early powers and withholding technology from those who would not fall in line. Its scientist-historians have been able to steer redevelopment to a degree, and the government by and large lets them do this as many people still fear that insufficient control of technology risks repeating the catastrophe which killed their Ancestors. The Archive historically focuses on resurrecting general-purpose technologies like electricity and combustion engines, and is known to deliberately slow-walk development in certain fields, particularly weapons. Since it maintains a monopoly on the Ancestors' records (which would never fit into a physical library, even if it covered the entire planet) and the dispensing of it through its associated colleges, certain technologies and applications can be avoided by not teaching about them, and impressing upon scholars the need to avoid misapplication of fundamental principles required for beneficial purposes. It is not widely known to the public, for instance, that the Archive knows how to construct nuclear weapons but forbids physics students and atomic engineers from writing about this or even hinting it is possible, lest they give the government a weapon which could poison the few good lands which remain.
Scientists and engineers outside the Archive are often considered mavericks who think maybe they can come up with something the Ancestors never thought of, or amoral sellouts who take Archive technology released to the public and turn it into weapons for the military. The Archive has been forced at times to tolerate the activities of the latter group, lest the government try to take control of its internal affairs.
History
Settlement on Eisenhower traces back to the Wormhole Rush, when it was established as a secret civil-military outpost-colony by Ancient America as a sort of national refuge to ensure the continuation of its culture should anything disastrous befall Old Terra. Its harsh conditions as a planet orbiting a variable star were desirable in this regard, the thinking being few enemies would think to look for humans in such a place. At this time, Eisenhower's atmosphere was quite thin, just barely breathable for unaugmented humans on account of gradual erosion by its sun's flare activity.
As a place of refuge, Eisenhower worked. It survived the End of Earth and the fall of its parent nation with its technology base intact, and in the following centuries went on to join the American Federation, a superpower bloc during the Second Interstellar Period. This meant it drew the ire of the Federation's adversaries during the many wars of this time, and when this era ended in an apocalyptic, Starweb-encompassing conflict, Eisenhower was targeted for planetary bombardment. Prior to this, terraforming operations had thickened its atmosphere to 1.01 bars at sea level, bringing the pressure up to a comfortable shirtsleeve level.
The rebuilt Starweb in the Stellar Compact era has had little motivation to investigate Eisenhower, since it is presumed all the inhabitants died either in the Celestial Union strike or from flare exposure after the attacks destroyed their technology base.
People
In reality, however, enough people survived the attack to re-establish themselves and begin rebuilding a technological civilization. The habitable lands around the Bush Sea, one of Eisenhower's few large bodies of water, became the center of this, the original pre-bombardment population centers in the northern hemisphere have remained abandoned. Eisenhower's rebuilding has been assisted thanks to its ancestors, who had the foresight to establish several "Archives", libraries located in underground bunkers and centered around large mainframe computers holding most of the sum total of human knowledge. One Archive, located near the modern settlement of Ticonderoga City, survived the bombardment and became the source for much of the information required for rebuilding.Even so, advancement has been slow as a result of Eisenhower's harsh conditions, its low population, and the sheer damage done at the start of the Interstellar Dark Ages. As of the present day, the Eisenhowerians' state of the art approximates Terra in the mid-twentieth century A.D.: factories, manual vehicles, cathode-tube television, etc. Deposits of an oil-like fossil fuel, thought to have been formed during a past period of habitability before Eisenhower's sun became so active, provide a handy energy source but are limited, which prompted the wide adoption of atomic power once technology advanced enough to bring it out of the Archive. Cities, ships, trains, and even large landcrawlers are powered by fission reactors on a scale far beyond what is usual for civilizations at such a level. This comfort with nuclear power may be due to the flares—already accustomed to dealing with radiation there, the far more tame and contained radiation of atomic reactors is nothing to be afraid of.
Oil is reserved for applications where it cannot be substituted, such as plastics production and automobiles. Gasoline is rationed, only the rich and those whose professions require it own cars. Cities and towns are thus constructed with buildings closer together to facilitate walking and public transportation. The people of Eisenhower accomplish long-distance transport with shielded atomic trains and ships, or highways with emergency flare shelters at regular intervals. Aviation, in a world where lethal flares can crop up with little warning, is a lost art seen only in museums and circus shows. An eccentric rich man, Marcus Dorgan, attempted to start an airline with a design for a jet plane taken from the Archive, but was killed by a flare on a test flight.
The Eisenhowerians are majority-human, with minorities of lupens and marsi, two uplift species created by Americans in past centuries (from wolves and possums, respectively). The marsi were originally designed as spacecraft crews and orbital workers by the American Federation, and came to the planet with a group of space colonists from elsewhere in the system fleeing the breakdown of their habitats (which did not stand up to a dark age as well as an entire planet, even one ravaged by killer flares). These spacers brought much-needed advanced technology with them, and their descendants constitute a significant portion of the current political and economic elite. They can be distinguished by their paler complexion, sparse or absent hair, and long-toed, hand-like feet, old gene-mods which continue to be passed on. The spacers have a somewhat different culture than the planetary colonists, putting more stock in old stories about their ancestors being part of an interstellar civilization, and thinking mythical creatures like aliens, immortals, and people with wings actually existed. The marsi occupy a servant role for them and are rarely seen in the general population.
Customs and Culture
The people of Eisenhower have maintained many of the traditions and traits common to American-descended cultures in the Starweb. Democracy is considered the ideal of government, apart from a period of warlordism in the early days of rebuilding, societies have been republics. Individualism and self-reliance are considered important values, and while there is inequality and rich and poor economic classes, there are no legally-enshrined class divisions such as nobilities or an aristocracy. (Though some political dynasties can approximate this.)The founding documents of Ancient America, such as its Constitution and Declaration of Independence, are known from the Archive and have taken on a reverence akin to religious scripture. Indeed, Christianity and American political philosophy have fused into a kind of civic religion, in which the Ancient American Founding Fathers are alleged to have had divine assistance and inspiration, and things like voting are considered sacred rituals. A few minority faiths exist, including one which proclaims humans are indigenous to Eisenhower, the flares are punishment from God for their ancestors' sins, and Earth never existed.
Much cultural effort is spent on dealing with the flares that regularly lash at Eisenhower's surface. Extraordinarily powerful, a decent-sized flare of the type which strikes every few weeks to months is capable of delivering a lethal radiation dose to an unshielded human on the planet's surface in under an hour. Therefore, all dwellings include a flare shelter buried under the equivalent of several meters of earth for radiation shielding (such as a basement room in a townhouse or communal shelter in an apartment building), while public spaces like subway stations are designed to double as shelters for those caught away from home. Rich people can afford lavish flare bunkers and semi-buried houses which remain habitable throughout their entire area even during the worst flares. Children are taught from a young age how to seek shelter in culverts, old basements, etc. if caught outside by a surprise flare, and it is considered a capital crime to deny a stranger in need the use of one's flare shelter, provided there is room. (In the early days, the punishment for this was execution via exposure to flare radiation. Sometimes the condemned was staked to the ground, other times they were deposited in a remote area for a sporting chance at finding shelter.) Current technology cannot predict flares, but the Eisenhowerians know their Ancestors were able to.
Cleanups of nuclear accidents, and emergency work during flares, is handled by brigades of older citizens who are past childbearing years and likely to die of old age before any radiation-induced cancers take hold.
Political Divisions
Most of Eisenhower's population and inhabited lands are governed by the New Eisenhower Republic, the successor state to the original United States of Eisenhower formed by the ancient American colonists.To its north is the breakaway Free State of Jefferson, which seceded several decades ago in a brief civil war. While its territory is still officially claimed by the New Republic, it enjoys de facto autonomy for the time being. Disputes between the two governments occasionally flare up into brushfire conflicts, often brought on by border partisans stirring the pot.
The Archive near Ticonderoga City is considered an almost-sacred place and played a major role in the establishment of the current political order, currying favor with early powers and withholding technology from those who would not fall in line. Its scientist-historians have been able to steer redevelopment to a degree, and the government by and large lets them do this as many people still fear that insufficient control of technology risks repeating the catastrophe which killed their Ancestors. The Archive historically focuses on resurrecting general-purpose technologies like electricity and combustion engines, and is known to deliberately slow-walk development in certain fields, particularly weapons. Since it maintains a monopoly on the Ancestors' records (which would never fit into a physical library, even if it covered the entire planet) and the dispensing of it through its associated colleges, certain technologies and applications can be avoided by not teaching about them, and impressing upon scholars the need to avoid misapplication of fundamental principles required for beneficial purposes. It is not widely known to the public, for instance, that the Archive knows how to construct nuclear weapons but forbids physics students and atomic engineers from writing about this or even hinting it is possible, lest they give the government a weapon which could poison the few good lands which remain.
Scientists and engineers outside the Archive are often considered mavericks who think maybe they can come up with something the Ancestors never thought of, or amoral sellouts who take Archive technology released to the public and turn it into weapons for the military. The Archive has been forced at times to tolerate the activities of the latter group, lest the government try to take control of its internal affairs.
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