Worldseed

[Valles]

My muse is a bitch. Because, see, despite all the fun being had in Fenspace... she is not content.
Oh, no.
See, it starts with my picking up S.M. Stirling's The Protector's War a week or two ago. There are things about that book's premise (Namely that, one fine day ten years ago, The Machines All Stopped) that bother me quite a bit. Not neccessarily his evaluation of the consequences as a whole (that being, ninety-mumble percent of the human race starves to death or worse) - I don't think it's the most likely result, but it's plausible enough to accept for the sake of the story - so much as his apparent conviction that mass starvation = mass cannabalism = total social breakdown into animalism for anyone and everyone caught in a city, regardless of other factors.
No, I have not read the prequel dealing with the actual change and its consequences. No, nothing will ever convince me to do so.
So, where this dissatisfaction led, for me, was wondering if there was another way of getting that same situation - IE, modern people building new nations with medieval tech, and...
Well.
It starts when Sufficiently Advanced Space Aliens show up in orbit and say, "Hi. We're your new gods. Now that you're set on the right path in our worship, you're going to have to throw away everything you've got that involves electrical current or turning combustion into mechanical work, for they are blasphemous in our eyes. You can have a year or two to convert, since we know there'd be a lot of people starving otherwise."
And the nations and people of Earth say something quite polite that boils down to, "Nothin' doin'."
And the Gods say, "Do this or risk our terrible wrath," and zap some insignificant and mostly depopulated cultural landmarks into smoking craters.
And the nations and people of Earth say, "Go fuck yourselves."
And the Gods oblitherate every speck of military power they can find and say, "You don't really have a choice about this."
And Earth sez, "Go fuck yourselves sideways."
And the Gods say, "If you keep being foolish, we're shortly going to forget about how tolerant we'd meant to be of those who don't know better."
Then they glass a random selection of major world cities.
And the UN Security Council put their cards on the table in private session and admit that - at best - they're years from being able to do anything about these assholes.
So they say okay. And hide their research projects real good.
And then, since they've been troublesome, the Gods dissolve all these absurd 'Republic' delusions and draw up new borders, mostly along geographical lines, and grab people out of the populace and say, "Here. You're King in these parts. Throw away everything your people had before we came and build something that's not indecent."
So.
Here. You're King in these parts.
Where are you? And what do you do?
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Kokuten]

hrm.
I'm King of North America, which is Alaska, Canada, and the northern bits of the U.S.A., our state bird is the raven, our state motto is "Laboring for Truth in the Sight of $Deity_Alien", and our prime occupation is hidden research.
This is a rigidly, religiously totalitarian society - with a twist. The culture of revolution is the underlying theme. The state church teaches, in private (what private is is going to be defined rather messily early on, methinks, but good bombs don't neccesarily mean good eyes... ) That we are meant for freedom, us humans, and we must Labor Mightily for the weapons tech and strategic and tactical power needed to overthrow our alien overlords.
Membership to the Church is mandatory, as is attendance. The religious class is a thinly-veiled Resistance leadership. While the 'modern dress' is both drab and unflattering, the underdress is quite frequently seen in 'private', and is a lurid fantasy of color and fashion and eroticism. The advanced medical tech developed as a facet of the military research (and as a cloak for military research, since alien overlords love healthy, long-lived subjects!) allows for immense sexual freedom, with all STDs having been eliminated, and contraception being reliable and free.
This has led to a dualistic culture - in public, and in 'public', more importantly, the word of the day is 'conformity', the drab hard-working strength that delineates our place under the $Alien_Overlord. In private, my people are very passionate and wild. In 'private', we've been handing down an immense technical knowledge of wargames and military knowledge, right along with the whipped cream orgies and baby oil rubdowns.
The man on the street might pass his fellow man with a brisk nod and a murmured 'Labor', which means both 'Labor for Truth' and 'Labor to Overthrow', depending on who's listening.
Nothing really 'new' has developed socially or societally, we're all just hard-working folk, kinda like modern-day Amish without the Luddite thing, but when we let the dog out, we _really_ let the dog out. A dance club in New Frisco can have upwards of ten thousand people in it on a good night. Admittedly, we've rebuilt to a much different plan since the Coming, and the glassing of San Francisco, but that's still an incredibly large, happy party.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Valles]

Who: Your humble servant, Nathan I, King of Augusta.
Where: The Appalachian Mountains of North America, a series of linked mountain ranges and partly eroded plateaus stretching along much of the eastern edge of the continent. Specific area: Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, northern Georgia, all of West Virginia, Maine, Vermont, and New Brunswick, the western edges of North and South Carolina, much of western Virginia including the Shenandoah valley, central Pennsylvania including Pittsburgh, much of New York including Albany but explicitly -not- including Syracuse or New York City, western Massachusetts and most of New Hampshire.
Why: It's home. ^_^
Resources: Timber, coal, hydrological power, defensible terrain, lack of truly large cities and their associated demands.
Weaknesses: Hard to get anywhere, limited farmland, lack of technological background.
What Am I Assuming: That the 'Gods', while arrogant, are not sufficiently foolish to confuse external obedience with real submission. That the reason they're so hardass about technology is that Earth's was high enough to realistically present a threat... eventually. That they will, accordingly, want to stir things up on Earth and disrupt our society even further.
That, in short, sooner or later I'm gonna need to fight a war - against other Terrans.
What to Do: First, get together a brain trust of relevant specialists and get them to draft a new body of law, preferably a fairly simple one. Inheritance, property rights, the works. Put another trust on writing 'Primitive Subsistence Farming for Dummies'.
Second, in the period where the old world is 'shutting down', use as much modern tech as I can manage to do things like hammer in railroad cuts and tunnels - it'll be useful at every other stage, and -much- easier with things like dynamite. Also part of this project will be setting up a network of sephamore or heliograph towers. Distribute PSFD and crop seeds and needed tools for same.
Third, get, mmm, the machinery of the state up and running and shaken down.
Fourth, build city walls.
Fifth, build a network of forts controlling choke points granting access from foreign parts.
Sixth, finally pick up on the research side of things.
...ulg. I have more to say about government organisation and such, but it's late and my brain is dying.
Catch you tomorrow.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Florin]

There's a series of books that starts with There Will Be Dragon's that deals with a similar idea, although it's set WAY in the future and doesn't involve aliens. Unfortunatly, it's written by John Ringo and thus involves extended rants against Democratic style thinking and scientific rationality. It also contain's 'Heroes' who I dearly wish death upon.
As for me, I'd set my self up in a Benevolent Dictatorship in Alberta. Although the society would have a comprehensive set of laws, I'd be able to ignore them as needed for special situations. Agroculture would be a major focus, with an eye towards export, since nothing makes friends like offering to feed them. Military service would be mandatory for both sexes, with a nice benefit package for carrierist's.--
Comb your hair, damn anime hippies.
--
If you become a monster to put down a monster you've still got a monster running around at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. 

[Jinx999]

There isn't mass cannibalism, however the results from a big city is pretty grusome.
1) There isn't enough food within walking distance to feed even a small proportion of the population and what food there is often gets spoiled by the fighting over it.
2) The vast majority of people would rather die than turn cannibal - but a small percentage of a very large number is still a large number.
However, rest assured, this isn't actually shown in the first book. The plot follows groups who were either smart enough to get out of town immediately or were lucky enough to be in isolated areas. The grusomeness happens off stage.

[DHBirr]

"Pax Galactica" by Ralph Williams, first published in the November 1952 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. (My copy is part of the anthology Imperial Stars Vol. I: The Stars at War, edited by Jerry Pournelle.)
First line: "In North America, it was a bright, cool April night when Galactic Security, after several years of careful observation, decided the Solar Phoenix was a little too hot for Terrestrials to play with."
They don't order us to give up technology. They blast every nuclear site we've got, and spread an "inhibitor" which renders chemical explosions impossible as well. "Above a pressure of two hundred psi, chemical reactions were self-damping. Hydroelectric and steam plants functioned normally, low-compression engines and jets idled without power; but guns and high-compression engines stalled."
"By the next spring, the population of the United States was less than sixty million.... Five years after the raid, the country was back on its feet, but it was not the same country.... [Twenty years after the raid] From five thousand feet, [the alien admiral] could not see ... the scars and bitterness and hatred still tangled in people's hearts."
Deprived of certain forms of technology, we develop aspects of sociology into a lethal science of strategic and tactical calculation. "We can't lose, because we don't depend on tools, we depend on knowing what people are going to do with tools, and adapt our own action to the circumstances."
When the aliens finally decide to make "peaceful" contact, fifty years later, they'll never know what hit them....
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[Freddy Isnot]

I'm the Duke of New York. I am the Duke! A-number one!
I rule over the blasted and decaying ruins of New York City. After the aliens destroyed most of it in a rain of fire as a demonstration of their power I lived and led other survivors in rebuilding a militant, isolationist city-state.
It is one of few places on Earth not controlled by an alien appointed king. The aliens never investigated the ruins of the cities they blasted, and by the time one of their appointed kings checked, we had already built strong walls and were heavily armed. The king decided we weren't worth the trouble, and never bothered reporting us to the aliens.
I cruise around my domain in a '79 Lincoln. I'm glad I paid extra for the the chandeliers option.
Freddy Isnot

Rimmer: "Step up to Red Alert"
Kryten: "Are you quite sure, sir? It does mean changing the bulb!"
"Red Dwarf"
-Freddy Isnot

"You are now graduated from newbie and are just clueless. Consider that a compliment."
-Zipcode

[DHBirr]

Thinking again about the line "And hide their research projects real good" reminded me of Leslie Fish's song "Where Do We Go From Here", written for C. J. Cherryh's "Merovingian Nights" shared-world series. The second half of the second stanza and just about all of the third stanza are particularly appropriate to your concept. I can't find the lyrics to "Where Do We Go From Here" written down anywhere, but in case somebody here hasn't heard the song, it goes like this:
Word came out of the sky
To our Ancestors long ago:
"Leave this planet or die";
So, many rose to go.
But a few were stubborn of soul,
And would not quit their hard-won ground;
They hid, and held, through the winter cold
When the Scouring Time came down.
Chorus: And how shall we survive?
How shall we stay alive?
Where do we go from here?
Hard was ravaged the land,
And when the folk came out again,
They found on every hand
Ruined the work of men.
And how to build once more,
With eternal threat in the silent sky?
Only hidden work that will mark no score
To any watchful eye.
Chorus
We were not born to crawl,
But to sail the depths of the boundless sky.
They shall no prison us all;
Even hidden birds may fly.
So we labor underground,
In the promise sworn to the hope of men:
When the time is right, when the day comes 'round,
We will have the stars again!
Chorus
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.