623: Oregon
Oregon |
Title text: A century later, the harrowing flight of the survivors from Oregon was dramatized in a popular video game. |
Explanation
This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: A major edit needs an acceptance by the community here. Remove this tag if this explain is still complete. The title text is just simple English. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
Most players were grade-school students. The game was very popular, and thousands of players played it monthly. In their youthful wisdom, most players brought the minimum amount of food and planned to hunt for their meals. Large animals (bison, bears, etc.) were very easy and rewarding targets, while smaller prey (rabbits, squirrels, etc.) were harder to obtain and provided less food.
The comic tries to document, as though in an historical fashion, what would have been the result if that was really how people had prepared for their journey on the Oregon Trail. With no other supplies or sources of food, the land would soon have been stripped bare, all large game slaughtered for meat, with hunger, starvation and disease soon to follow.
The title text makes it clear that the comic is referencing the educational video game, implying it was a dramatization of the horror story that he has presented above.
Transcript
- [Timeline, with relevant images next to each date.]
- 1805
- [Two men stand at the edge of a cliff. One has a walking staff.]
- Arrival of Lewis & Clark
- 1825
- Early settlers arrive
- 1841
- Oregon trail established
- 1843
- Larger western migration begins
- 1848
- [A horse is pulling a covered wagon. A gun peeks out the back.]
- Huge wave of 500,000+ settlers arrives from Missouri. Largely children and adolescents, most bring nothing but cartloads of bullets for hunting.
- 1849
- [Two men with rifles aim at something.]
- Overhunting begins to devastate ecosystem
- Dysentery epidemic
- 1850
- [Tombstones. Bodies.]
- Shooting deaths skyrocket
- Typhoid epidemic
- Measles epidemic
- Cholera epidemic
- 1851
- All mammals larger than squirrels wiped out by overhunting.
- Massive famine
- 1852
- [Sun low over a land, devoid of life. Scattered remains of corpses.]
- Last survivors flee
- Oregon territory abandoned
Discussion
Has somebody made that alternate universe OT in the title text? DPS2004'); DROP TABLE users;-- (talk) 21:36, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
My grandfather used to brag that he could shoot squirrels from 100 meters. He used small bullets, because large ones would explode them... Exploded squirrels might be thought to be good for making stew, but it mixes all the parts, fur skeleton all together and is quite a mess to collect. Also squirrel pelts make great gloves... He told me... But he also told me that his cat could talk, but was very shy, and just wouldn't do it when I was in the room. DancingDuck (talk) 19:31, 24 September 2018 (UTC)