THE BIG PICTURE
The state government was mostly destroyed, and Lansing is abandoned. Detroit is a smoking pit, and horrors roam the burnt remains of the Detroit Metro Area. Travel from Lake Erie to Lake St. Clair is impossible, the Mackinac Bridge lies under the waves kicked up by the Freshwater Serpent, and the Soo Locks are wholly destroyed.
But a Soldier of God is now the Governor, and she leads a small section of the state from the mostly-unharmed city of Saginaw. The forces of the Michigan Militia now (mostly) fight for humanity, peace, and order against Infernal and human marauders. Food and fresh water are relatively common, and a significant amount of heavy industry (including the all-important tool and die shops) survived.
SO WHAT HAPPENED TO DETROIT?
Detroit was Celestialed. Detroit was, before Armageddon, a Demonic stronghold -- and Windsor (the Canadian city across the Detroit River) was in the wings of the Angels. When Armageddon came, the two compliments of Celestials tore into each other, devastating the core of the area.
The Demons won, of course, the remains of the Renaissance Center becoming a Tether to Saminga. In the face of Saminga's servants, humans abandoned the Detroit area. Now the nearest communities to old Detroit are the walled cities of Jackson (to the West), Chatham (Ontario, to the East), Flint (to the northwest), Port Huron (to the northeast) and Toledo (to the south).
THE STATE GOVERNMENT OF MICHIGAN
The Tri-Cities (Bay City, Saginaw, and Midland) escaped Armageddon relatively unscathed, and Saginaw serves as the temporary capital of the state. The State Secretary of State was in Saginaw when Lansing was devastated, and she is now the Governor. She was a Soldier of God in service to an angel of David, and has recently been contacted by a Seraph of Lucifer. The Seraph saw how busy she was putting the government back together, but still occasionally visits to give her advice.
Due to the wording of several provisions of the Michigan Constitution, the Governor was able to legally reorganize the entire executive branch and appoint new department heads and a new State Supreme Court without legislative approval. She has mobilized the National Guard and State Police, and regularly consults with a council of religious, business, militia, and political leaders.
Most legislation is enacted through county and city governments, as the Governor wants everybody to be assured that constitutional government will be maintained. She has, however, taken "emergency" control of federal property, agencies, and personnel "until the Federal Government is *legally* restored". She did appoint two Senators and sent them to Boston -- where they were refused office. Since then, the Governor has sent them to Texas to talk about restoring a national government.
Actual state power extends about fifteen miles outside of the triangle of the Tri-Cities, mostly because of the support for the Governor shown by the local chapters of the heavily-armed Michigan Militia. Flint also recognizes the state government in Saginaw, although it is mostly too busy holding itself together to do anything about it.
OTHER MICHIGAN CITIES
Adrian: A citadel city between Jackson and Toledo. A model of the smaller city/urban area just big enough to have survived so far.
Alpena: Inhabited city-state, with sporadic over-lake contact with Bay City. The government has seized all the modern technology it can, and has gathered it in the city center.
Battle Creek: Burn! Burn! Burn! A group of Belial's demons burned Battle Creek as part of one of Kobal's plans for Armageddon. And then Gabriel found them, and burned them. Battle Creek is a smoking ruin.
Benton Harbor: Disastered. Tidal waves in Lake Michigan caused by the nuclear explosion in Chicago destroyed much of the area.
Cadillac: Out in the middle of nowhere, Cadillac is having a difficult time maintaining any significant degree of industrial society. Fortunately, its walls are strong, water is plentiful, and the soil is rich.
Escanaba: The New Church of Poseidon rules Escanaba. Ruled by High Priestess Amber, the city offers regular sacrifices of grain, animals, and even modern technology to Poseidon and the Freshwater Serpent (which is seen by the Cult as Poseidon's representative on Earth). The priests take 25% of the offerings, and then cast the rest into the sea each Tuesday (now called Neptunia).
Flint: Inhabited. Large numbers of refugees from Detroit have caused severe problems, including several near-riots and gang fights. The local infrastructure is strained, and several attacks from the south have come near to taking the city. The refugees are largely moving north to the Tri-Cities.
Grand Rapids: The largest surviving city in Michigan, it has become a fascist stronghold in the hands of the opportunistic General John Smith (a false name and title).
Holland: Holland has accepted the rule of Grand Rapids's General John Smith, rather than risk a war.
Ironwood: A small, isolated city-state barely hanging on.
Jackson: Jackson is walled and paranoid. Jackson State Prison was opened by persons or Celestials unknown, and the area surrounding the city's walls is full of these hardened criminals. You can only get into Jackson if you can show pre-Apocalypse identification proving residency, or have a shipper's license from the City Council.
Kalamazoo: A fairly standard mid-sized city-state.
Lansing: Disastered -- multiple powerful tornadoes. The state government was virtually wiped out.
Marquette: A fairly powerful, albeit localized, earthquake rocked Marquette -- and a localized section of the crust sunk about 750 feet. The new Marquette Bay is dotted with dozens of perfect deep-water harbors -- and nobody to use them.
Menominee: Combined with Marinette, Wisconsin to form a city allied in confederation with Green Bay.
Monroe: Abandoned. The population fled to Toledo.
Mount Pleasant: Abandoned. A college town without the resources to practically fortify, the population has taken refuge in Midland. The state government/Michigan Militia converted a CMU dorm into an outlying garrison.
Muskegon: Inhabited and independent. Portions of I-96 and US-31 were destroyed by the Muskegon Confederation's government to prevent an invasion from Grand Rapids or Holland.
Niles: Abandoned. Most inhabitants fled across the border to Indiana for safety in numbers.
Owosso: A Fundamentalist-ruled city-state, Owosso has transformed itself into a fortress city. The Reverend John Richardson controls the city with an iron fist, and teaches that the "New Jerusalem" will descend onto Owosso and the inhabitants, if they remain pure of heart and deed, will become the Elect.
Port Huron: Inhabited, has formed confederation with Sarnia across the St. Clair River. Small outlying fortresses have been built across I-94 at Adair and on the St. Clair River at Marine City to protect the cities from attacks from Detroit. It is now the seat of Detroit's Archbishop/Cardinal, who had been visiting one of his churches here when Armageddon began. He has refused to recognize any of the claimants to the title of "Pope", on the grounds that none were elected by the College of Cardinals.
Sault Ste. Marie: Disastered when the sleeping Ethereal Paul Bunyan awoke and dug his way out from under the ground with his blue ox Babe. Bunyan then ran off to Canada's Northwest Territory, leaving an utterly devastated city behind him.
Traverse City: Vapula released another one of his bioengineering products in Grand Traverse Bay -- gargantuan carnivorous turtles. Although significantly less successful than the velociraptors, the highly intelligent "demon turtles" have besieged Traverse City. It's still holding on, but food and supplies are getting scarce (although there's a lot of turtle meat).
Redneck Gaijin
How much of the Michigan Militia went with the state government, and how much with General Smith?
Militia chapters in Kent, Ottawa (parts), Allegan, and Barry counties are mostly with General Smith. The chapters in Bay, Midland, Saginaw, Isabella, Genesee, and parts of neighboring counties are mostly with the "State Government". Everybody else is localized.
Who -is- General Smith anyway?
Wouldn't you like to know :-). Seriously, General Smith is nothing more than a human with a very bright Destiny, a very dark Fate, a very charismatic voice, and an instinctive cunning. He uses the false name and title to project an aura of being an ordinary-type guy who can get things done. But the Governor (I've decided on the name Mary Ford for her) is sure General Smith a servant of Hell, and acts accordingly. The policies Smith lately has been implementing (under the advice of a seductive and intelligent Habblah of Malphas) have not alleviated that impression.
How are all these cities getting supplied with food, fuel, electricity, replacement ammunition, manufactured goods?
Statewide, electricity comes from pre-Apocalypse gas turbines and the fuel for them comes from the gas and oil wells (mostly concentrated on the Michigan and Huron shores). Manufactured products in southern Michigan are largely made locally, and trade between the cities does occur on a lower level. For food, you go 50 feet outside of the city limits to where the farms begin. Michigan does grow the widest variety of crops of any U.S. state (or so claimed the "Little Known Facts About Michigan" booklet I got in ~1988).
True, but electricity and fuel have to travel over physical distances. Unless each city has its own power plant (which it could, I'll admit), they could be cut off from power by hostile neighbors... or have their fuel supplies roadblocked.
The Tri-Cities/Flint and the Grand Rapids state are sufficently separated geographically that IRL they already have separate power facilities (in fact, IIRC, Grand Rapids' power company is Consumers Energy, and Flint has Detroit Edison. Also, if the Apocalpse happens after Michigan deregulates electricity, most of the potential competitors plan numerous natural-gas powered mini-generators). The same geographic separation would make it militarily imposssible for either to cut the other off from gas/oil wells.
The Muskegon-Grand Rapids rivalry has more potential along these lines. Muskegon is closer to the gas wells, and Grand Rapids has the power plants. However, Grand Rapids has the military advantage and access to the wells south of Holland. Muskegon is pretty much doomed to collapse anyway...this is just another reason for it to happen.
More specifically, the "State of Michigan" includes Dow Chemical Co. of Midland, Michigan, which now supplies both smokeless and black powder. The bullets themselves are made on machines that either already existed locally or were made with the tool-and-die shops of Bay City, Saginaw, Midland, and Flint.
Coolness. So long as Dow can keep supplied with mercury or whatever chemicals they use in the primer for the percussion cap, Michigan will be in bullets- maybe even exporting.
I know less about Grand Rapids' capacity, but they do manufacture furniture and appliances pre-Apocalypse.
Port Huron gets what it can't make from the "State of Michigan" and Toronto via rails, roads, and lake shipping (as one of the three US-Canada border points between Minnesota and New York, the rail connections were especially good, and are largely useable)
Adrian is dependent on the manufacturing center of Toledo, and is probably ultimately unviable. Same with most of the non-destroyed cities north of Bay City, and Jackson.
Kalamazoo is questionable. It has metal and pharmaceutical industries, however, and perhaps sufficient links to Grand Rapids.
True enough, though I doubt the Huron-Erie connection on the St. Laurence Seaway is working...
Most Huron-Erie traffic goes through the St. Clair river to Lake St. Clair, then through the Detroit River to Lake Erie. (Lake St. Clair is sorta like a sixth Great Lake, although it's significantly smaller than any of the actual Great Lakes).
So, yes, Lake Erie is cut off from Lake Huron, by the creatures of the Detroit-Windsor disater area. But Bay City (one of the Tri-Cities of the "State of Michigan") is on Saginaw Bay, an inlet of Lake Huron -- and Port Huron/Sarnia is at the southernmost point of Lake Huron/northernmost point of the St. Clair River.
Was Lansing's disaster coincidence?
Nope. David did it when Infernal victory seemed inevitable, feeling that the elected state government was mostly either corrupt or soft, and that Michigan would be better off in the hands of "his" people (the Secretary of State, the Michigan Militia, and a few important people who backed General Smith).
Whoa. That sounds way extreme for David, destroying a whole city to take out a few hundred people.
David didn't mean to destroy the *entire* city, just a few government buildings and such. But he couldn't get the missing Janus's help, and there really wasn't an easy way to destroy only the offending buildings with a geological attack, and David never was an expert in meteorology. So the small number of relatively weak tornadoes fed off each other and the odd winds caused by the Chicago bomb...and the entire city was ripped to shreds.
So it wasn't a coincidence...but neither was it fully intentional. David would be feeling somewhat guilty about it if he wasn't being distracted by having to suffer while an evil lives.
BTW, the (1990) population of the Tri-Cities (combined) is about 146,000; Flint has about 140,000 people; Grand Rapids has about 189,000 people (and its largest suburb, Wyoming, has about 64,000); Port Huron and Sarnia combine for 84,000; Kalamazoo has 80,000; and all the other surviving cities have under 50,000 each. (Thank you U.S. Census Bureau.)
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