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Mr. Zwinge
Economics
It’s been a 2 years since the disease spread globally. The fungus was originally identified
to be Ophiocordyceps unilateralis and infected dead ants to reanimate them only to have them
die and spread to another host. After much study was done to find how they do so, they evolved
after successive treatments with antibiotics to rid the ants of the fungus, and eventually allowed
the fungus to live in a human host. This, however, didn’t do anything until the host was dead,
and the first report of a dead human twitching had been reported in South America on June 1,
2005, and there have since been many more such sightings around the world. The bodies infected
with the cordyceps fungus would begin flailing wildly and, since the fungus infecting those
bodies wouldn’t get very far, the fungus evolved to crawl but not quite walk or run. Eventually
safe havens were created in the largest cities around the world including Toronto, New York
City, San Francisco, Beijing, New Delhi, Tokyo, Seoul, and many others. Contractors became
immensely useful and valuable, and as a result people were fighting over who to hire to build
walls around the cities around the world. Filters on water were developed at a rate never seen
before and implemented in a matter of weeks. This was all done without any higher government
intervention since it would have taken too long and the federal government was concerned with
the political side of the situation. Eventually, more rural areas had become either completely
affected or had so many of the animated dead bodies that they frightened the rest of the
population to leave. There was also immense paranoia on letting in outsiders into the new safe
havens because of worry of infection. The fear mongering towards the epidemic was not
necessarily the infection itself, as it laid dormant until death, but the other infection that ensued.
Because the bodies were not properly living and simply being reanimated, the muscles still
experienced rigor mortis, so the decaying flesh festered and eventually a strain of bacteria
evolved to be flesh eating, destroying the host body and would spread elsewhere.
Me and my buddy were very lucky in this situation since we both lived in New York
City, so we were already safe from the disease. In addition, we happened to be construction
workers, so we were not in any danger of not having work, and therefore, money. Money was the
other thing that changed drastically. Because of the sudden loss of over 70% of useable cash in
the United States, at least, deflation occurred rapidly and the dollar nearly quadrupled in value.
It has been over a decade now since the disease began and the country has changed
drastically. Because the federal government toppled, another governing body made up of
advocates and leaders of the safety movement came to power and renamed the east of what was
previously the United States, the Coastal Eastern Republic. Walls have been built around the
major safe havens as well as a glass dome and irrigation with water filters. A sort of modern
subsistence/war-time economy has developed where labor is traded for goods and goods are
traded for other goods. Because transportation outside each safe haven is not recommended, each
safe haven is becoming increasingly crowded especially after a full decade of being quarantined
from the fungus. Because of this, the goods that are worth the most are essentials such as food
and other necessities. Often times, labor is greatly devalued as most work that doesn’t pertain to
survival is seen as foolish, and labor such as farming isn’t traded as they simply trade the goods
they produce themselves. Mostly, goods are bartered, and services such as construction and work
in the medical field can be traded for useful goods. Currency is not used since the country is very
small and not well organized since it has been a mere decade since the fall of the United States.
Food is relatively scarce considering the population size since there is extremely scarce farming
land in what was the greater metropolitan area. Food is mostly created in laboratory factories that
utilize scientists to generate formulas and factories to mass produce the food. As for the war-time
aspect of the economy, there is a focus on providing materials for research since that is the main
The country exists in separate districts that have managed to find new ways of
communicating, but this took on huge risk for those working outside of the safe havens. Because
of this, construction workers became more scarce as casualties rose when work became highly in
demand. After four years, the infrastructure was revamped and communication within the
Coastal Eastern Republic was possible and was near the level at what it was previous to the
epidemic.
Our makeshift government is a sort of oligarchic republic, with no one single ruler but a
ruling body. The leaders attempt to recreate the previous government, there are separate
branches, with one body of members per branch. Because the size of the nation is much smaller
than the original country, dispute over population is not great since each district was a major city,
so there will be a flat number of representatives from each of the districts and, because they can
not convene because of the hassle of transportation in the epidemic of the outside world, they use
video calling. Much in the same way that the Congress and the Supreme Court needed a majority
to move an action, the same will be true in the executive branch. Instead of having multiple
people advising one person, there will be a board of members that will serve the same function
and will all have different specialties to discuss how the motion affects each of their respective
divisions. For example, if a agricultural person were to be on the board and had to decide
whether spraying a toxic pesticide over the rest of the United States was a motion that should be
passed, he would consider how it affects farmland and why it is ignorant since it is only useful
for the short term and defeats the purpose because it makes that land no longer fertile. It would
essentially be a cabinet that advises itself instead of a person to make the educated choice on a
particular matter.
As for the safety of the citizens, there will be patrol on the inside of each of the exits of
the wall, and people and only pass if they have the authoritative clearance to do so, political
leaders, or are given clearance by sid political leaders. As far as the epidemic itself, the
contagion is already taken care of with a series of water treatment plants so that the fungus does
not enter the safe havens. There are successive levels of electric fences to paralyze the bodies
since the fungus controls the brain, and by giving the body many electrical signals, the brain
Currently the government is pushing for the majority of children, teenagers, and young
adults to pursue research in combating the virus and is gearing towards implementing curricula
to focus on the dangers of the epidemic to protect from it. This would be a barrier of protection
until a proper cure or method of ridding the fungus is possible. There are plans in place and are
expected to take upwards of 20 years to complete an seeks to reunite the other nations that
occupy the contiguous United States to reform it and then solve the issue of the epidemic and
implementing it nationwide so the chance that the fungus evolves to be resistant is greatly
diminished. There is hope that communication will be possible across the oceans to Europe and
Asia, but this plan is strictly concerned with the United States. Some possibilities are being
hypothesized and some have already been tested to be effective on a small scale, but fail
miserably on a much larger scale. One of the first ideas that was considered is a large scale
chemical spray over all areas that are infected, but the only problem with this is that the chemical
that is used for this is toxic to humans and is not biodegradable. This would mean that once an
area is sprayed, it would no longer be habitable for the next hundred years much like radiation.
.Once the operation to clear the fungus is successful, there would be walls on both the northern
and southern border of the United States to quarantine the virus outside the nation. The
abandoned towns and cities would be returned to and would be repopulated, and over time, the
nation would return to its former glory. This however would most likely take over fifty years as
there is no urgency to do so, and the only reason that the nation reacted so quickly to the disease
in the first place was the urgency of the safety of its citizens and the daunting prospect of
possible death. The economy will allow everyone to get what they need since everyone has
respectively. These are the three biggest cities on the East Coast and the colors take up the flag
according to their population size. The triple dashed equal sign symbolizes that the cities are
united, but the symbol also means equivalent, which is appropriate since the cities, no matter