Revolution Map Fun part 2

More revolution map stuff.

This week's episode sees our heroes encounter a bridge at "Freeport". Apparently that is the only bridge over the river because the Militia blew up all the other ones.   We are told this is 290 miles from Philadelphia.     Okay, there is a Freeport, Pennsylvania.   Which is on the Alleghany River, presumaby the river they are talking about, and the headstream of the Ohio River.  Which according to google maps is 288 miles from Philadelphia on foot.   They river is depicted as a raging torrent.   They also say that if they can't use this bridge (which is full of Monroe Militia) the nearest crossing is in Morgantown, 100 miles away.  Presumably they mean Morgantown West Virginia.   Which is not on the Allegany, but is on the Monongahela River, which joins the Alleghany to form the Ohio river.   The junction of these river is a little town called Pittsburgh.

The Militia would have had their work cut out for them blowing up every bridge between Freeport and Morgantown including every bridge in Pittsburgh, as well as presumably ones upstream the Alleghany (which granted does run a long while).  Also this bridge does not have a railroad.   We saw the train just a couple episodes ago run all the way to Philadelphia.  Why not walk along the tracks, presumably they cross the river, no?

Eventually after an option to find a guy with a boat fails.. they get the bright idea of swimming across which is made up to be dramatic (presumably it is a raging torrent the entire distance), but is accomplished in short order.

The purpose of this blog is not to go over the non-geographical failings of the show (I could go on about the bad guy a supposed tactical genius picking an ambush spot in some woods as the only place that provided sound tactical cover, a small area with junked cars), just to highlight the geographical stuff.

We also got some more shots of a wall map.

Some towns are in Red, some are in Black.    My initial guess was the ones in red are destroyed, but we did see that Chicago, while dangerous was inhabited and living off of fish from Lake Michigan.   Maybe the black ones are?  or maybe it indicates the presence of a militia garrison, who knows at this point.   Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, Cincinnati, Akron, Lansing and Milwaukee are among the ones I could make out at a quick glance.

The camera also briefly pans over stuff farther west:

Here we see the California Commonwealth.   And the western portion of the Plains Nations along with the wasteland between th em.   Note the Plains nation goes well into and past the rockies into the great basin, to a large lake.   At first I thought this was meant to be the Great Salt Lake, but its shape isn't quite right...   it is also way too big to be Tahoe.   You can seen the San Fransisco Bay area to the left... I guess it has to be the Great Salt Lake, perhaps the perspective of the camera throws us off a bit.  Also as for the shape it is an endoheric lake meaning increased rainfall levels could cause it to swell (unlike Tahoe which while part of an endoheric basin (meaning its waters do not reach the sea) it has an outlet, the Truckee river, which flows into Pyramid Lake which would be more prone to such fluctuations).

At one point the dialogue mentions the Monroe Republic is sending a diplomatic delegation to the California Commonwealth, a journey which could take years, and "those heathens" might send the delgation home in a box.

Overall this seems a remarkably large area to hold together in a "republic" without modern means of communication.   Especially one seemingly built on fear and backstabbing and paranoia of its dictator.   We don't see any means of long distance communication other than the train, no smoke signals, mirrors, semaphor, horns, etc.

Anyway not sure if we'll have much more to look at.  Apparently the show had enough budget to buy usage of Led Zepplin music next episode, which apparently was where the show needed money spent to fix its problems...