The San Joaquin Valley is a lake valley in Central California. It was flooded by the sea level rise of the Holocene Collapse and alternates between monsoon wet seasons and explosive fire seasons. While it is considered one of the best refuges from climate change, it is also a region in extreme turmoil over clean water resources.
The San Joaquin valley is considered an Exclusion Zone by Aempis. People are allowed to come and go, so long as they pass through Aempian checkpoints.
Aempis offers no aid to anyone within the exclusion zone. Trading and aiding people from the exclusion zone is a criminal offense.
Disasters:
- Dust Storms
- Wet Bulb Events
- Monsoons
- Wildfires
- Seismic Activity: Although the Big One was long ago, the land is still settling, and there are small periodic tremors that shake through the land
- Sinkholes: Soil sublimation from the sudden recent appearance of an inland lake has caused all sorts of erosion issues in the karsts of California, and has made many areas hazardous to create large buildings in due to land sinkage
For half of the year the valley is a lush grassland from monsoons and windstorms, with rampant growths of grassland that eventually all connect together. During the dry months, these grasslands become a vector for great wildfires — every few years this builds up to a particularly massive and devastating fire which tears across the land.
'Aempis offers no aid to anyone within the exclusion zone. Trading and aiding people from the exclusion zone is a criminal offense.' Rude :(