Editing 623: Oregon
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
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− | ''The Oregon Trail'' was an educational | + | The video game ''{{w|The Oregon Trail (video game)|The Oregon Trail}}'' was an educational video game released in 1978, which, in the game, players would play as a character taking a trek west along the {{w|Oregon Trail}}, was an overland track leading from Missouri to Oregon, and in the video game, the player started his or her journey in 1848. |
− | The game | + | 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 a historical fashion, what would have been the result if all the players had been real settlers who really had prepared for their journey on the Oregon Trail in that way. With an unbelievably large influx of people all arriving in exactly the same year, and all 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. {{w|Dysentery}} in particular was very common in the original game and perhaps the most infamous way to die, hence its listing as the most prominent epidemic. | |
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− | The comic tries to document, as though in a historical fashion, what would have been the result if all the players had been real settlers who really had prepared for their journey on the Oregon Trail in that way. | ||
The title text makes things rather recursive. In this alternate reality, thousands upon thousands of people fleeing ''from'' the overpopulated, devastated Oregon becomes the focus of another video game, much like ''The Oregon Trail'' in our universe. | The title text makes things rather recursive. In this alternate reality, thousands upon thousands of people fleeing ''from'' the overpopulated, devastated Oregon becomes the focus of another video game, much like ''The Oregon Trail'' in our universe. |