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500 years after The Apocalypse decimated the world, North America is a wasteland. Backwards people reduced to using 1680s technology at best, early Bronze Age technology at worst. There are only a few powerful nations in the continent, and raiders, marauders, slavers, cannibals and mutants stalk the vast stretches of wilderness in between major settlements. If you go out of a town, unarmed, you're guaranteed to got robbed and killed if you're a man, and robbed and enslaved if you're a woman. Slavers are even seen as honorable businessmen, not cruel monsters (for example, in Midwest Empire, 90% of people own at least one slave). Vicious animals are also there, and will happily eat any trader or merchant they see.

Around the late 30s of the 26th century, a new company is founded called Interstate Caravans. It starts out as a small trading company, with only about 30 employees, but it eventually wants to expand, connecting the East Coast and West Coast, like the Silk Road of ancient days. My question is, how could they go about this?

Monica Cellio
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Talos5
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    Talos, you have got to figure out how to register your account. You're asking too many questions without it being in place. – JBH May 13 '18 at 18:44
  • A question very similar to this was asked a month or so ago, just without mentioning the Silk Road. – RonJohn May 13 '18 at 18:45
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    (1) Drop the inflammatory language. It adds nothing of value, and at best seems to run counter to the spirit of the be nice policy, if not its exact words. (2) How is the question about building a world? Seems more story-based to me. – user May 13 '18 at 18:48
  • Sorry, but we can't write your book for you. This is way too broad and opinion based, simply not a good fit for Q&A format. – Mołot May 13 '18 at 18:49
  • @Michael Kjörling: Whats inflammatory language? – Talos5 May 13 '18 at 18:49
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    "90% of the people own at least one slave": no they obviously don't, unless slaves can also own slaves. BTW, there has never been a caravan which travelled all the way on the so called Silk Road. Caravan A goes some distance; then the goods are sold and some are picked by Caravan B, which also goes some distance, and so on. – AlexP May 13 '18 at 18:58
  • Large business ventures require Banking and Rule of Law. Without those, agreements are unenforceable, asset's are hard to make liquid (or value properly), and each caravan will be an independent company. Note that until the 1860s it was faster and cheaper to sail around North America than to walk across it. – user535733 May 13 '18 at 19:20
  • Was my "it's obvious" comment deleted by a moderator? Is that the "inflammatory language" that @MichaelKjörling refers to? – RonJohn May 13 '18 at 19:22
  • @RonJohn As you'll note if you read the comment field placeholder text, comments are not for answers. – user May 13 '18 at 19:29
  • @MichaelKjörling so what inflammatory language are you referring to? – RonJohn May 13 '18 at 19:32
  • @RonJohn "so what inflammatory language are you referring to?" In this case, OP's in the question. – user May 13 '18 at 19:36
  • @MichaelKjörling for the life of me, I don't see anything inflammatory about it. – RonJohn May 13 '18 at 19:39
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    Possible duplicate of How to set up a trade network from one coast to another? – RonJohn May 13 '18 at 19:41
  • Talos, just to point out, 2018-1680 = 338 < 500 so you'd be at least 162 years into the second apocalypse. My point is 500 years is unrealistic. It took only 338ish years to get to the tech level of your first apocalypse. It's impossible to hold people back that long without an unbelievably strong outside force (as in "godlike"). – JBH May 13 '18 at 23:44
  • Perhaps a slight knowledge of American history would provide you with an answer. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Trail – jamesqf May 14 '18 at 06:19
  • Why would they want to connect the east and west coast? What does either coast have that the other wants? The core concept sounds very derivative of Fallout 4 and/or MadMax – Pinback May 14 '18 at 09:01

1 Answers1

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It's unlikely.

  1. There is no silk here. You need something valuable to trade.
  2. To have long distance trading, you need to have fairly large cities to make it worth the trip through the deserts and mountains. I doubt you have that.
  3. The journey needs to be relatively safe or merchants won't use that road. If traveling means a certain death, nobody will do it unless it pays a lot.
Vincent
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