My biggest sources of inspiration for this work were SCP-2000 and SCP-6523, as you might have been able to tell. I acknowledged the former by blowing it up, and the latter by not using SCP-871.
This article began as an answer to the question "Why would people live in overcrowded Blade Runner megacity urban hellscapes?" The answer I came up with was "farming is no longer possible, and all food is therefore found in cities". SCP-7000 was an explanation of why cities were food sources.
The hardest part of this was figuring out what caused the famine in the first place. I wanted to do a volcanic eruption, but I was worried that Yellowstone would obliterate America and that would disrupt international politics more than I wanted to fool with for this article. That might have been the case with a VEI 8 eruption (or not), but eventually I figured I'd only need a 7, since that's what happened in 1815. I was still worried about the damage that might do to the US. To estimate it, I sat down and measured an ashfall map of the Tambora eruption, then transferred those distances to a map of the US. I immediately discovered that the United States is REALLY, REALLY BIG. You can fit a sizeable chunk of Indonesia inside the state of Montana - and, it turns out, most of the ashfall from a VEI 7 eruption. If it had blown in a different direction the damage probably would have been worse, but Montana is expendable has a pretty low population density, so northeast was the best outcome for an eruption like this. Most of this volcano stuff was made possible by SCP-4997, which allowed me to flagrantly ignore all actual science related to the Yellowstone caldera as the plot required.
I also considered having the Foundation actually cause the famine to take over the world via food control, but that's the plot of Jurassic World: Dominion, and if you watch that movie you'll see why it was a foolish idea.
After the volcano was sorted out, the next hardest part was the Horizon Initiative addendum. It was hard to get that dialogue right, and to convey the point I was trying to make with these guys. It was Veralta who helped me sort that out.
Most everything else followed pretty naturally; I just imagined the situation created by the famine and SCP-7000, then wrote about it.
I urge you to take the Chaos InsurgencyTM parts with a grain of salt. The Foundation, as "an authoritarian NGO with no oversight," as Samuel put it, is employing a lot of doublespeak in this file.
At one point, I planned to include addenda covering the actions of other GoIs during this period - Sarkic agricultural practices producing lots of meat, the Cogwork Orthodoxy getting a lot of recruits from people eager to shed their organic body and its caloric requirements, Wondertainment's Logistics Division and dado helping with distribution, the Factory enslaving workers via food dependence and producing an alternative to SCP-7000 with all sorts of deleterious effects, Greazeburger trying the same thing but failing hilariously, and so on. I decided not to do this because it was wackier than I wanted my article to be, and because I wanted to leave some ends open for myself or others to expand on this, nudge nudge wink wink.
If you paid attention, you might have noticed that several of the dates line up with holidays. Yellowstone erupted, and SCP-7000 was deployed, on Saint Patrick's Day (luck theme!). Construction started on April 1st. The Florida Fruit Crisis happened on January 6th (in this timeline, there was no capitol insurrection because of the way the Lifted Veil changed the political landscape). The Chaos InsurgencyTM attacked the distribution centers on Bastille Day, and Larson blew up the reactor on Guy Fawkes Day.
O5-9 here is "Willow"/"The Lovers". O5-10 is "The Mad General".
ItsDenali, author of SCP-4997
far2, author of SCP-170
Dmatix and
Djoric, creators of the Horizon Initiative.
llama66613, author of SCP-1689
Deadly Bread, author of SCP-4109
UraniumEmpire, author of SCP-4495
SpoonOfEvil, author of SCP-4503
DarnellJermaine et al, authors of SCP-6542
DrClef,
Taffeta, and
TyGently, creators of Everhart Resonators, geases, and pinhole Ways, respectively.
JackalRelated, creator of the Neon Dystopia theme.
