Vaguely poking at an alternate history type project where the USA fractured into multiple warring states in a multisided modern civil war.
Since I can’t help but inject some kind of weird horror elements I added “The Ohio Exclusion Zone”, an area roughly bordering Ohio that has been completely walled off. The wall is patrolled and watched. Whatever is beyond it is so serious that the warring states all agree the wall is off limits of the war.
I don’t know what is beyond it though. My first thought was skinwalkers. Shapeshifting weird spirits seems pretty ominous. Maybe instead f them, just a giant black orb hovering in Ohio and doing, something…
I don’t know. What weird paranormal thing would make the military patrol a border and is such a threat that enemies of that military agree the border is off limits in war.
(Yes I’m asking people to be creative for me…)
Nothing out of the ordinary, just native Ohioans
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Do you need to know?
It could be interesting to have it just be a canonical "black hole, ie nobody knows what’s there - it started with people, animals and plants disappearing and then jumped to hills, buildings and even weather systems until there was nothing there at all as far as the outside world is aware; nobody who goes there ever comes back, satellite photos come back corrupted, and people are scared to even mention it
I want to know, even if the presentation leaves it very obfuscated. Being able to drop vague, borderline nonsense clues works better if the creator actually knows what they mean. Otherwise I’m just writing LOST.
I don’t think that necessarily puts you in Mystery Box territory. JJ would just change it to fit whatever he wants to say at the moment. Think of it more as a currently-unknown variable that will logically reveal itself to you as you continue building the setting outside.
“We just don’t know about what happened in Ohio, but it had to be cordoned off.”
PS You should check out East of West by Image Comics.
I would suggest even further restraint. There’s no need to fill the space, just have it as a mystery, maybe even to yourself.
Blank spaces on the map are always so intriguing.
It’s Ohio in an alternate timeline. They don’t want you to know what you’re missing out on. But some evil lurks beneath the surface, of course.
Almost at the top of the rope. You won’t have long before a patrol spots you, but long enough to snap a picture and get out. You swing your legs over and look around.
The top of the wall exends into the morning haze in both directions. The view to the other side is blocked by a jumble of small huts, chimneys, floodlights; each one emblazoned with the logo of the Ohio Containment Corp - the block capitals OHIO enclosed in a möebus band. You pick your way through until you see what you came here for.
Disappointment. It’s just the same scrubland, dusty tracks and fields that you drove through to get here. Maybe there’s some settlements way off in the distance? It’s hard to see. Oh well. What did you expect? The whole secret laid bare on your very first view? You snap a picture, and step forward for a better look.
What was that? You heard something! Is there someone else here? You dart back and crouch, out of sight you hope, and try to listen. If there was a guard they would surely have raised the alarm. You creep forward, quietly as you can, then … shit! You see its shadow. Human shaped, crouched, moving slowly, stalking you.
You’ve gotta go. Where’s the rope? You must have got turned around in the confusion but you find it. Swing over and back down. Hand over hand as fast as you dare. Your buddy Flip is still at the bottom where he parked the car.
He grins and raises his palm. You fumble the hi-five.
He looks up at the wall, sceptical, but nods. “Hey, are you driving?” He motions you towards the other door. You stumble around and climb in. What is wrong? Something is, you know it.
You don’t know. You try to think. You try to reflect.
It could be an area for nuclear waste. Long term nuclear waste signage is an interesting concept. How can you make sure an area is understood as dangerous for 10,000 years?
Here is a Wikipedia article on it but ideas include fields of thorns like this image
but you could add other elements like menacing rock blocks.
If you want you could have mutated wild life that inhabits the zone.
If I recall correctly some places employ people to shoot birds and what-not that enter so a military precense may make sense for several reasons.
Bonus for those interested here’s a BBC article on the concept
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200731-how-to-build-a-nuclear-warning-for-10000-years-time
Also my first idea, but I think that’d only make sense if it’s a few centuries old and completely forgotten about creating weird superstitions. There’s nothing actually dangerous about long-term nuclear waste storage, all of these markings would exist mostly to prevent people from digging in the area and potentially uncovering the waste.
Not to mention that it’d have to be a very small area, nowhere near the size of a single city – nevermind a whole US state.
It could be an area 51 situation where it is also used for weapons/military testing. Maybe it’s a world wide disposal effort and that is why it’s prohibited in war like OP wants? An element of fantasy is probably going to be needed either way if things like skinwalkers are included. Kind of like the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park story
I feel like superstitions can form anywhere that is generally viewed as off limits or secluded
That sounds like a good cover story.
What are the rules of the world?
It’s just in a primordial state of canon. Started out relatively vanilla military fiction stuff but I want to get weird and give it some rabbit holes. Right now nothing is strictly off limits.
Ohio is a perfectly nice place filled with perfectly nice people. Exceptionally, creepily, contagiously nice.
How “settled” are you to it being based in Ohio? Sorry, but all the memes a few months ago just ruined my ability to take “The Ohio Exclusion Zone” seriously. Maybe consider basing it near Lower Appalachia? Like West Virginia through western North Carolina? There are plenty of Appalachian folklore monsters you could use for the area. Wendigos are one.
Hell, you could even have some kind of nuclear leak from Oak Ridge, TN, be the cause.
There can be other weirdness elsewhere, but Ohio is kind of set. The memes of Ohio being awful and everyone wanting to escape from it were the inspiration.
A few months ago? Ohio has been a joke for decades!
Have you ever read Roadside Picnic, the book the STALKER stuff is loosely based on? I highly recommend it and I love that they really have no idea what The Zone is. The best suggestion was from a scientist saying that we were like ants goggling at the trash and crumbs left behind after some beings beyond our ability to comprehend had a roadside picnic during a trip to our planet and left it all behind. We never witnessed the beings themselves, but their refuse is like gold and/or poison to us and we can barely comprehend any of it.
There were many immediate dangers within The Zone, but I like to think the main reason it was closed off was because some anomalies acted contagious to materials, such that metals could contract the effects and spread them to other metals. Imagine that getting out.
Just wind turbines as far as the eye can see.
The noise and “radiation” is contained by the wall.
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A single word glinted unmistakably on the underside of the orb. “IKEA”.
But yeah some beyond comprehension monolith objects that were made with company parts would bring up some implications. Maybe it was a project that got out of control and is now locked down because nobody knows how to clean it up.
It’s Ohio. It’s filled with stupid. (Source: grew up there.)
Have you seen the show Threshold?
A crystalline growth which can make people go mental or take over them to become worker drones.
Alternatively, sticking with the crystal theme. Tiberum.
play into the weird horror.
Ohio is a wasteland of eldritch horror, the likes of which drives those exposed to a state of insanity.
those guarding the border are administered anterograde amnesia drugs before every patrol, preventing formation of long term memories and preventing them from going mad.
I like this, or at least I like the headspace it’s in. I still want for myself at least to know what’s in Ohio, even if the presentation makes it obtuse.
For guards getting memory wipes makes me think of giving them interviews after patrols and administering them if there is anything out of the ordinary. I want at least what’s along the wall to be for the most part very boring and ordinary with only occasional hints of weird about what is further in.
I kind of thought about if guards were given polygraph tests during interviews. No as a means of verifying honesty, but as a subtle way of making sure they were human. A thing impersonating a human presumably wouldn’t know what its biometrics should look like on a polygraph.
