[quote=WilsonTurner]
4) And by antimatter, I mean for, first and foremost, research areas, and energy production. I'm sure that there are many other areas where antimatter could be used, but when a tiny amount of antimatter could equal 120 tonnes of conventional rocket fuel (<- more or less quoting), I think people who are interested in being a bit better in the long-term would be willing to invest.Plus, well, with antimatter, one could have more efficient engines, provided that they have enough antimatter and an efficient design, to mine at, say, the Asteroid belt. Mining asteroids has extreme resource potential, does it not? While expensive, the Earth is quickly running out of resources. A sudden boost in minerals from giant mineral chunks floating in space sounds good. ish.[/quote]

I'm still iffy on it since it would still be too expensive of a route in all probability. And when most metals can be recycled and re-used there's not much purpose in going out to mine them. And when you can produce carbon-based building supports and use plastics for armor and structural chassis there's less a need for metal when there's sound replacements. For many companies the most economically viable option would be to re-use the waste of last week, and the most pressing for public concern would be fuel shortages with the safest being either wind farming, solar panels, hydro-electric, oceanic-currents, natural gas, or even nuclear power (in the form of Thorium reactors, which'd be safer than the stuff we got today).

For the public mind, I'd say it's more likely they'd get ugly images of the magnetic containment for anti-matter to fail and kill everyone in a massive nuclear blast. It just wouldn't be pretty.

And I would hope that this RP'll take place in a time-frame where we can not possibly hope to see anti-matter deployed. Maybe mentioned as a side-line thing in the same way stuff my be invoked in Deus Ex, but probably never used; unless it's the final boss fight at Pangea. But that's another question entirely.

I'm going to maintain the voice of the cyncic because cynical, dark ideas make for more interesting story telling. When everyone's carrying on as if the war never happened and has managed to pull extreme feats to tackle major issues like they're cracks in the cement the whole RP really looses its charm. Why bother writing about gritty awesome slums and ghettos when you can light up those areas with a perfect and safe anti-matter generator on the other side of town? Why even both exploring deepening rich-poor divides or social malcontent when everyone has work somehow, and the Great Dictator is lovable.

And if anything needs to happen: generic ethnic rebellion #275 with no cause stated other than: "They're this race". I might expect quirky stuff like that out of Africa, but even thirty-years on the Mongos should have learned to play nice with everyone. Or the Hutus with the Tutsis. Not without instigation or policies that do not favor their demographic because of complex reasons.

Let's try to push ourselves here.

[quote]Japan) Well what if they [u]did[u] kind of come back, and start repopulating? I was thinking of expansion by way of underwater 'bases' of sorts, and something like really-large sea platforms constructed during the war as a sort of bunker, except easier to defend and the like for the masses of Japan?
[/quote]

Actually, this is the Japanese population pyramid:

[img]http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/japan-population-pyramid-2013.gif[/img]

It's shrinking, and massive wars would only hurt it more. More-so when I wrote a post briefly pointing out that India's burned out, so their food exports probably went down the drain as well (if the continuing GMO debate hasn't hit western agriculture production already).

The Japanese population issue can be easily explored on a few basic things. One could be their defeat at the end of WW2 killing their breedable youth and the economic devastation they faced not favoring having large families that'd be indicative of population growth. After that, you got the Japanese work ethic, which can be summarized with: "The man lives at work, and commutes to home"; more young people in Japan now are working more time than they have with raising a family, making having children and awkward and complex affair in modern Japan.

You also have their immigration policy which actually isn't very generous. To actually be a full citizen you have to prove Japanese heritage on your father's side. Otherwise, if you're even Korean, Chinese, Filipino, or western-born you're not in for a bright future in Japan. No matter how good you talk the talk and walk the walk you'll only ever be "that guy" with a residency card; if you managed to get in.