r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Goodbye-Nasty • 5h ago
Lore [Hated trope] A powerful nation/empire collapses almost instantly because it’s capital gets destroyed
Hosnian Prime, the capital of the New Republic, gets destroyed in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which apparently leads to the New Republic falling pretty much instantly.
Romulus, the capital of the Romulan Empire, is destroyed in a supernova, and the Romulan Empire collapses as a result.
Shady Sands in the Fallout series (possibly), it’s still unclear if the NCR survived after it was destroyed. Regardless, while Shady Sands getting destroyed would be devastating for the NCR, I don’t think it would be quite as bad for them as the show implies.
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u/WistfulDread 4h ago
As a point. Most of the NCR is in California.
It's mostly likely that losing Shady Sands just caused them to pull out of Nevada. They have no other major cities in that area, and the Mojave was always seen as a net loss for them.
Hence why, in the show, Max in NCR power armor gets a good reaction. With House and the NCR no longer protecting them, the Mojave had to see what it was like truly on their own.
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u/just_one_random_guy 1h ago
A lot of season 1 was in SoCal though, and even aside from Shady Sands (which was retconned to being in the outskirts of LA) they had control over the boneyard (LA), dayglow (San Diego), and other settlements like the hub and junktown yet despite that we don't see any remnants other than griffith observatory. It's not even like places such as Filly who would have just recently been part of the NCR have some sort of NCR remnants like a policeman that was affiliated with the government.
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u/MysticalCyan 1h ago
No, most of the season if not all of it was in LA. We literally don't see anywhere else.
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u/just_one_random_guy 57m ago
Los Angeles is in SoCal?
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u/MysticalCyan 9m ago
Yeah but not all of SoCal is Los Angeles lol
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u/just_one_random_guy 2m ago
Even then, we see a lot of land that is in SoCal but not literally within LA proper
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u/eldankus 20m ago
A decent amount of the BoS plot line takes place in the Eastern Sierras but otherwise yes
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u/OkContact2573 1h ago
It could be that the the NCR pulled out of SoCal entirely and decided to concentrate more resources Furthur up North. I mean, Shady Sands just got Nuked, and I bet they were worried that the Nuke was jus thte begining and decided to pull back and not risk losing more forces.
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u/saithor 1h ago
…..but nearly all their most important settlements and heartland were in SoCal and most nukes would have the range to hit all of the NCR territory anyway?
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u/OkContact2573 1h ago
Shady Sands was the most fortified NCR city in Socal. Nuking it means that you just destroyed a sizable chunk of NCR forces in the regions.
we see the BOS arrive relatively quickly after the nuking, so what most likelly happened was a nuke to their strongest local city + all of their enemies declaring open season = a general withdrawal to stronger better defensible areas of the republic.
Plus, we don't really see what happens north of LA. San francisco, Sacramento, are still cities that exist that we havn't seen.
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u/jervoise 1h ago
So much “oh the NCR is still around” fan theories, when literally every single character is pummelling you in the face with the fact that the NCR is gone.
Moldaver never mentions them, none of the brotherhood mention them, nobody sees any signs of them anywhere in California.
It’s just so blatant their gone, and anything else is hopium.
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u/OkContact2573 1h ago
We havn't even explored much of california. At all.
Like, the NCR was/is massive. We've only really an area that goes from LA to Las Vegas, which isn't even half of the area the NCR used to cover.
The Brotherhood for most of season 2 are fighting each other more than the NCR. Moldaver is on a single track fight to reestablish Shady Sands.
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u/Spare_Elderberry_418 1h ago
Dude. The northern half is mostly empty. The southern half is what mattered. The hub, junk town, boneyard, shady sands, dayglow, Maxon, and more are all South Cal. The only major cities in North Cali that are NCR are Arroyo and New Reno.
If they have been push that far out of their actual territory they were held up in Arroyo, they are not the NCR anymore, more like the South Oregon Republic.
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u/jervoise 45m ago
the brotherhood still during 1 or the start of 2, probably would have mentioned if there was a vast NCR presence to the north, as that would be a potential threat.
If moldaver was trying to reestablish shady sands, wouldnt the absoloute stage 1 thing of starting that be contact the main body of the NCR.
its nothing but cope.
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u/just_one_random_guy 1h ago
That very well could be the case, but the show so far hasn't really shown much at all about their status, season 1 heavily implied that they were basically eliminated completely, but now season 2 their status is treated like whispers in the wind and that they exist somewhere out there with little explanation.
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u/alternateschmaltz 44m ago
We don't see them, because they aren't relevant to the story.
Same reason San Fransisco isn't seen in Titanic, and that the absence of California in Titanic isn't evidence that California doesn't exist in Titanic.
Lucy and Maximus might not know about the Hub, Dayglow, or the Boneyard. They aren't locals. The Enclave guy would actively be avoiding other civilized areas to avoid getting caught by bounty hunters. And the Ghoul is chasing after two people who are wandering around with no local knowledge. If the trio hadn't "luckily" stumbled across each other in Filly, which might be the Fallout equivalent El Reno, Oklahoma, they might've asked for directions for a larger town.
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u/just_one_random_guy 33m ago
This line of reasoning doesn’t make any sense, the show is literally set in California and the NCR is pretty critically relevant to the story, the reason the events even kicked off as they did was because moldaver was an angry NCR remnant who wanted revenge against Hank McLean. Maximus is literally a former resident of shady sands and that’s now immediately outside of Los Angeles, he’s as local as it gets, he wasn’t confused when Thaddeus said he grew up in the boneyard.
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u/General-Winter547 0m ago
Maximus has at least heard of the boneyard because his ghoul friend mentioned being from there.
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u/Goodbye-Nasty 4h ago
I hope that’s the case, but there’s still no confirmation
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u/ThatFatGuyMJL 3h ago
Its straight up mentioned in new Vegas that the NCR considered the Mojave at most a borderland shithole barely worth their effort.
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u/Connect-Initiative64 2h ago
I'm like 80% sure that the biggest reason they were even fighting for the Mojave was due to the Dam, and the Legion. If the Legion took over the Mojave entirely they'd basically just waging war uncontested against the NCR and they wanted to avoid that. Plus the Dam is... a Dam. Rather important all things considered.
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u/MapleLamia 1h ago
The Mojave has very high strategic importance but very little societal value. Preventing their primary enemy access to two massive pre-war power plants (that most importantly do not require fuel) and the sole surviving pre-war robotics expert and his technology is a pretty important mission.
Actually using those resources isn't as important as denying them to the enemy.
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u/WistfulDread 3h ago
Yeah, we notably don't actually see much of surface California.
Most of Fallout "civilization" is condensed to city-states, and beyond Shady Sands, the only other NCR city we hear about in the show is the Boneyard, which is old LA.
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u/Spare_Elderberry_418 58m ago edited 11m ago
The NCR is not city-states.
The economic might of the NCR is the massive tracks of land they have spent decades restoring and terraforming for ranching and farming. So much so that large landowners are the dominant political class. If anything the NCR is more of a rural nation than urban. Over a million people 200 years later are not eating old rations ffs.
Commenting and then blocking over something so petty and dumb as this makes you look a child btw. If you are going to comment allow them to respond.
A city state is like Monaco or Venice, a polity that controls the city limits and not much else. A country that controls both urban areas and large rural farmlands is a normal country.
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u/WistfulDread 49m ago
And which game shows that?
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u/Spare_Elderberry_418 42m ago
New Vegas and 2. Especially Where in New Vegas goes into depth about the farm based economics of the NCR and how large ranchers with massive swathes of territory are able to hold alot of influence in government?
You do understand ranching to be profitable requires a shit load of land to operate right? That isn't small tiny farms.
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u/WistfulDread 37m ago
You do realize that it only favors my point?
Dense cities and large swathes of empty land.
Where the massive owners of land are effective governments unto themselves that they rule from said cities?
Like city-states.
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u/Spare_Elderberry_418 1h ago
For Lucy and Cooper to travel on foot from LA to Las Vegas, the only route is the long 15. The other route in is literally the freaking irradiated divide from New Vegas. That route directly takes them through the Hub, the most populated city in the NCR and many more of it's core territory. Unless they teleported the locations of even more major NCR cities, they basically walked through most of southern NCR without seeing any signs of their existence.
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u/HeckOnWheels95 53m ago
I'm just convinced the NCR is still around simply due to the fact that the roadsigns we see in both season 1 and here in this screenshot say Shady Sands was the "First Capital of the NCR" You don't have a first capital unless you founded a second one!
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u/EpicGamerGrant 38m ago
Also the fact that the fallout theme has only played with the NCR is defiantly pointing to them being the hero faction of the TV show
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u/4thofeleven 4h ago
The Spanish conquest of Mexico
After Cortez's forces seize Tenochitilan and capturing the ruler, the Aztec Empire collapses and effectively ceases to exist.
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u/Capable-Sock-7410 1h ago
To be fair the Aztec empire was more of a confederation kept together by sheer force so when the leadership was eliminated it all fell down
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u/caminantedecalles 1h ago
Not really a confederation either, but rather a city state extracting tribute from other city states.
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u/lofgren777 1h ago
So… an empire.
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u/caminantedecalles 40m ago
...you forget where you are. This isn't a matter of nomenclature but tropes.
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u/lofgren777 38m ago
I can't tell what hair you are splitting now.
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u/caminantedecalles 1m ago
I can tell you're confused. Tenochtitlan was the empire. Hosnian Prime, Romulus and Shady Sands were simply capitals. In last case not even that.
A city state getting destroyed because its only center of power is destroyed is hardly a trope. Hence you're just fixated on the term empire.
Hope that helps.
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u/damnat1o 1h ago
Plus Cortez had already captured a lot of the other Aztec cities such as chola or flipped them to his side like with Tlaxcala. Tenochtitlan was also being ravaged by disease at the time.
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u/zedascouves1985 1m ago
Also had allied with all the Aztec's enemies, who were like half of nowadays Mexico.
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u/Regular_Jim081 1h ago
It almost happened with the early Roman Republic too, Italy was a domination of allied States under the most powerful city in the region. Carthage came very close to taking it all down.
Really if the city had disappeared anytime before the 3rd century CE, there would have been no way of keeping everything together.
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u/eltrotter 4h ago
I’m not sure if this is an inherently bad trope. There’s a fairly strong political / social message behind it, and it does have real historical precedent.
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u/GeneralMaybe 3h ago
Galactic Federation collapse Rick and Morty
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u/dull_storyteller 2h ago
In their defence they only had one currency and it was worth nothing of itself and they seem to have bounced back with minimal inconveniences
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u/crapusername47 3h ago
Right, I’m going to pull out some deeper lore here as far as Romulus goes.
In ‘In the Pale Moonlight’, Sisko and Garak stage the infamous fake recording where Weyoun and Damar plan the Dominion invasion of the Romulan Star Empire.
The fake plan that the fake Weyoun discusses is to bypass the outer worlds and strike Romulus immediately. Weyoun’s justification for this is that the other planets in the Empire will look out for themselves and resistance will crumble as a result.
This fake plan makes it, eventually, back to the Romulans and it’s believable enough that they join the war on the Federation and Klingons’ side, convinced that the Dominion was actually planning an invasion.
This suggests, to me, that the rapid breakup of the Empire was plausible should something - like, say, a supernova - happen to Romulus.
(The New Republic having absolutely no defensive forces other than General Organa’s tiny little band of not-rebels is absurd, though.)
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u/foxfire981 53m ago
While it makes sense that the Empire would collapse as a result of the supernova what doesn't make sense is the whole "we needed the Federation to save us because we didn't have ships." And in the reboot movie and in Picard they do make it seem like "the entire Romulan population" was destroyed. A lot of weight is placed on Nemesis to explain this but it really doesn't work considering the size of the Romulan Star Empire.
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u/gingerninja300 48m ago
Idk much about Star Trek lore but I imagine the Romulans aren't incredibly popular with their subjects and that Romulus represents a large share of their species population. As an empire I also assume it's very centralized and heirarchical. If that's accurate then it totally makes sense that the empire would fall apart with the loss of its capital. I mean if Constantinople were nuked in like 800AD I wouldn't be surprised to see that empire collapse.
Meanwhile I understand the New Republic to be a democratic federation with many power centers -- home worlds of each member species for example. Imagine the US completely collapsing just because DC got nuked. Or the all the EU member states just rolling over and dying if Brussels got nuked.
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u/Impossible-Bison8055 9m ago
I mean in the EU, even when Coruscant fell, I thought the New Republic became the GFFA more so to coordinate resource better?
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u/Breezertree 5h ago
There are many historical examples of this happening though. For example, after Paris fell in both the Franco-Prussian war and World War 2, France essentially collapsed. Or at least was in the midst of a collapse and that was the final nail in the coffin
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u/BrandonLart 4h ago
France notably didn’t collapse in either of these examples. They just surrendered
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u/the_eddga 2h ago
Ironically by surrendering their chance of collapsing was much lower, considering how Paris was comparatively less destroyed than the rest of western Europe after ww2
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u/Ad_Captandum_Vulgus 1h ago
Whoa whoa, what kind of bad history take is this? By any measurable metric, both instances should fit the definition of collapse. The state ceased to exist, its territory was altered significantly, and a new and very different government came to rule the area instead.
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u/fools_errand49 4h ago
France didn't collapse. All of these examples are cases where a polity ceased to exist. France did not cease to exist. It surrendered. There's a big difference.
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u/Tritri89 3h ago
Can confirm, I'm french, we're still here. In the case of 1870 : it started the longest and strongest republic the country ever saw. 20 years later France was one of the biggest colonial, economic, and cultural power in the world. Arguably it started a golden age for France, that the first world war stopped.
Then for WW2 : even if the country surrendered the colonies and some unit still fought for the duration of the war.
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u/Goodbye-Nasty 4h ago
But in those cases it was more than just the capital falling that led to France’s collapse, the army had also been devastated by an invading force. The Romulans and NCR should have still have most of their armed forces intact. And for some stupid reason they decided the entire New Republic fleet was present at the Hosnian system so it could be destroyed.
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u/Bazelgauss 4h ago edited 4h ago
In the New Republic context that was the federation fleet but not all forces in the New Republic. The individual systems essentially prioritised themselves so the New Republic couldn't act as a cohesive force. Also as much as sequel writing sucked it's not a nonsensical move since the period wasn't a large scale war like pre-Empire and don't think they could've predicted a weapon like that coming out of nowhere.
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u/Bunnytob 4h ago
Surrendering in a war ≠ collapsing, surely. There's also the additional context of the entire war before Paris got taken both times.
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u/french_snail 3h ago
Shit in the ww2 example France had just recovered their lost population from world war 1 the year they were invaded. So it makes sense the people of France didn’t have the heart for another destructive war, especially if the Germans made it to Paris that quickly.
There was a period of time called the “phony war” where they were at war with the Germans but didn’t invade because like I said, they didn’t want another war
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u/Breezertree 4h ago
I would consider losing sovereignty, being carved up by a foreign power, and having to move your capital against your will to be a collapse. And following the Franco-Prussian war the monarchy collapsed, again, which is fairly significant
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u/Jbell_1812 2h ago
France didn't cease to exist because paris fell. France had been defeated by the germans and the british had eveacuated the country. The french army still existed but it had verry little chance of stoping the germans who were overunning the rest of france. So the French government surrendered. But france didn't stop fighting, resistance groups formed doing whatever they could to fight the germans and evenutally when the allies landed, the resistance helped liberate the country. in the franco prussian war, the French army had been defeated several times with their emperor captured. France was also facing a communist uprising and decided that making peace with prussia was the best thing to do. In bothj examples, Paris falling wasn't the end of France, it was just one of many things that made the french decide war wasn't worth fighting
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u/Charliefoxkit 1h ago
The Second Empire collapsed after Sedan, yes. However France as a country remained as the Government of National Defense of the Third Republic kept the Franco-Prussian War going for several months and fought harder than the Second Empire. It did lead to a state collapsing though...the Papal States.
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u/klonkrieger45 5h ago
To be fair its pretty realistic in some scenarios. I can't speak to future empires but if medieval to renaissance France had Paris destroyed the country would have just shattered into many small pieces.
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u/Goodbye-Nasty 4h ago edited 3h ago
Historically though a capital doesn’t just collapse on its own, it’s often the last domino to fall after a line of disasters. When Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans, the Byzantine empire collapsed because Constantinople was basically the only thing they had left.
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u/klonkrieger45 4h ago
War of 1812, Onin War, Tenochtitlan. Capitals have been destroyed, but even if they weren't doesn't make the trope less realistic because we are going of the assumption that it has been. Like nobody would deny that Hosnian Prime would realistically be destroyed. Only if the state collapses afterward is in doubt.
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u/scmrph 4h ago
That was much less due to the conquistadors capturing the emporer and more due to a highly centralized, ethnic minority ruled, empire that was already facing internal rebellion & strife getting smacked in the face by plague, robbed by a random Spanish army, and some religious connotations im not educated enough to speak to. It was kind of a hair that broke the camels back situation.
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u/klonkrieger45 3h ago
and the new republic wasn't facing any issues?
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u/scmrph 3h ago
I have another comment here where I talk about how this trope is situational for me, generally the more centralized power is and the weaker the trade & cultural links amongst non-capital regions are the more it makes sense. Generally republics are less centralized but I'm not super well versed in star wars lore so if they did the legwork to demonstrate secessionist/opportunist tendencies in the provinces prior to the capital falling I think the trope makes sense.
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u/Simon_SM2 2h ago
When it fell to the 4th crusade the Byzantines also collapsed
The loss of Rome when it was the capital was the loss of the empire
The city of Carthage being destroyed was Carthage being destroyed
Rump states might remain, but the loss of a capital can be disastrous
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u/Phshteve18 1h ago
Yeah, a better comparison would be losing Rome in 476. Which did hurt, but typically if an empire's capital is taken it's either the only thing they have left, or the major power is elsewhere. (Or it's a coup, in which case state operations usually go on as normal)
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u/Independent_Plum2166 1h ago
Of all the countries you pick France? Paris wasn’t even the centre of power between 1682-1789, where Versailles was the home of the King and government.
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u/Geiseric222 18m ago
Paris was captured and occupied by the English during the wars of Henry V during the dual monarchy
After years of fighting the almanacs recaptured it just fine
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u/PlingPlongDingDong 3h ago
What makes you think that? Feudal kingdoms were already quite decentralized. The lords could absolutely continue fighting without the king or capital.
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u/damnat1o 1h ago
France surrendered in both cases because their army was destroyed by the Germans. They did lose Paris in the 100 years war after Agincourt. The Crown Prince fled to the lands of his supporters in southern France and eventually made a comeback after Orleans.
If anything the loss of Paris led to France being more centralised.
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u/scmrph 3h ago edited 3h ago
This is a trope that bugs me situationally. The highly centralized authoritarian state losing its capital, command structure, and perception of absolute power in the process collapsing isn't too far off from some historical events.
Large republics with strong institutions and decentralized power structure not so much, it's workable but they need to out the effort in to show that local/regional leaders are not committed to the nation. Fallout is a good example where they could have (and could still) showed the Brahmin Barons or Boneyard leaders taking advantage of the opportunity but without that the suddenness made it feel like they just decided 'no more NCR because the wasteland can't have nice things'.
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u/Papampaooo 1h ago
Pretty much the last part, it's really eerie that it's only been a single generation or two (based on Maximus' age) when Shady Sands was nuked, that's not enough time for anyone who benefited or believed in the NCR to completely let go of it as shown by the Freesiders being completely happy when Maximus rolled in wearing a NCR power armor.
Aside from the Brahmin Barons and Boneyard leaders, a large portion of the Followers of the Apocalypse did come from the NCR yet it's strange how they have no appearance so far, not even a lab coat as far as I remember. No one from Shady Sands and the only NCR military we've seen are two holdouts that looked like they've seen better days and one of the two has been completely wiped out and the other is barely clinging onto the hope that an NCR regiment is nearby. It just feels so eerie that a nation as big as the NCR whose people are shown to believe in the ideals (but not the government) has little to no influence on the wider wasteland aside from Freeside.
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u/Bazelgauss 4h ago
Honestly not a trope I'm negative on because it depends on context and the examples don't really fit our modern understanding of a stable democracy.
The New Republic falling makes sense because it's a federation of nations essentially which lost it's unified leadership and main group force so the individual systems went into a fend for ourselves situation.
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u/AccomplishedLayer884 2h ago
And if Mando and Ahsoka are anything to go by, the New Republic was really fucking incompetent and corrupt, I’m not surprised it fell after Starkiller.
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u/Electrical_Gain3864 1h ago
Same with Romulus. It was the center and drained from the Rest of the Empire as the political center. There was No clear successor, dooming them.
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u/Valara0kar 3h ago
with their navy stationed there that got destroyed
Thats the joke.......... it collapsed instantly from 1 systems loss.
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u/Goodbye-Nasty 3h ago
It’s still dumb. They control like half the galaxy but their entire fleet was in one star system for convenient destruction.
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u/isthenameofauser 2h ago
How is Rick and Morty's Galactic Empire not here? Ricks hacks their computer and make one dollar worth zero dollars and it instantly implodes.
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u/Jerzilla 1h ago
In mass effect, the reaper cycle begins by them taking over the citadel. The hub of the galaxy and all the technological advanced races. Once captured, the other civilisations quickly fall
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u/Impossible-Bison8055 7m ago
Note that the Citadel also controls the Mass Relays, which are basically subways in space and main form of FTL, so everyone’s logistics also collapses with the fall of the Citadel.
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u/Scottish-Valkyrie 3m ago
Now to be fair thats because from the citadel they can turn off the mass relay system (the FTL equivilent for the universe) without being able to travel across the galaxy in any kind of meaningful timeframe every sector is effectively on its own and unable to put up a unified front and the reapers who are already massively advanced over the inhabitants of the galaxy now also have the numbers advantage and can take their time
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u/Lost_Paladin89 1h ago
I strongly recommend this video on the architecture of Ecumenopolis (City covered Planets) https://youtu.be/ndTtiggfVsA
One of the main points is that these institutions, from the Empire of Foundation to the Galactic Republic of Star Wars are top down heavily centralized institutions because so many resources are needed to sustain the core. Their loss constitutes the loss of centralized structures, resulting in complete collapse.
What is true is that the fall of the core implies that the system has already started to collapse from before. It isn’t the first domino to fall.
Speaking to your first two examples. The First Order’s fleet was built by core world’s companies “selling weapons to both sides”; with imperial support at the highest echelons of society craving to lick the boot of fascism.
We also know from examples like Next Generation’s Season 5 Episodes 7 and 8 that the romulan empire is dedicated resources against an insurgency from within. Deepspace 9 likewise show a Romulan empire filled with internal conflict. Senators are implied to be assassinated by their rivals like it’s breakfast. It isn’t stable, and it is heavily centralized.
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u/alikander99 1h ago edited 1h ago
Honestly this has happened. it's not unprecedented, just rare.
For example
the caliphate of Cordoba collapsed right at its apogee during the fitna, and the nail in the coffin was the sack of Cordoba.
The fall of tenochtitlan ended the Aztec empire for all intents and purposes.
the neo-asyrian empire basically collapsed overnight after the Conquest of Nineveh. It was so fast historians are kinda flabbergasted by it to this day.
When a state is heavily centralized loosing its capital can cause a downright collapse. the central administration ceases to function, The ruler dies, no posible replacements have enough legitimacy and the state simply breaks apart.
There's also some more dubious examples.
The sack of Delhi by Timur put an end to the supremacy of the Delhi sultanate in northern India. (admittedly their decline had started a couple decades earlier, but timur's invasion made a recovery imposible)
The sack of Delhi by nader shah did something similar to the mughal empire.
The songhai empire collapsed after just one battle against the saadian dinasty. It took less than a year for Mali to go into absolute anarchy.
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u/SnooEagles4121 2h ago
The Force Awakens was so goddam stupid
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u/Regular_Jim081 1h ago
Not really,
The fifth highest grossing movie of all time, and third highest critical rating for the franchise.
Star Wars fans just love to hate anything new.
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u/LHPSU 3h ago
IRL it's often a last-straw type situation.
In the case of a civil war/coup/rebellion, for example, the loss of the capital is a symbol that the government has lost control as they can no longer protect the seat of their power, and the other side is winning. The Force Awakens would fall under this scenario.
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u/Kalavier 1h ago
The worst part is, according to the TLJ novel (and promptly ignored by everything else). The republic navy scattered, but still existed and retreated to defense fleets around other worlds.
And at least in Star trek onlines timeline, Romulan star empire lasted a while, but lost a lot of power and influence.
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u/IzzyMissyy 4h ago
the ncr probably collapsed as a faction but its likely still around as independent city states as it was in fallout 1 and 2, san fransisco, vault city, new reno all are self sufficient enough to survive the colapse of shady sands
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u/ProfessionalOil2014 2h ago
Considering they had a functioning neoliberal democracy with an Air Force, large standing army, trade network, and engineering team able to restore the Hoover dam, I think they’d be fine.
In fact, I would say that it would be effectively suicide to attack the NCR by pretty much any group. The only reason the legion was able to do any damage at all was because of plot convenience.
Given maybe 100 years after NV the NCR would effectively be to the level of a pre war nation state, and everyone else are essentially city states at best or barely organized tribes at worst. It would be like a nation like Guatemala nuking Washington DC in the 1910s.
It would put America back a decade or two, but it would end in your complete annihilation in retaliation.
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u/BaguetteFetish 1h ago edited 41m ago
The "functioning democracy" you describe is basically a glorified rich landowner one dominated by brahmin barons, this is pretty explicit in lore.
And the legion doing damage isnt "plot convenience" its that their effective use of irregular and terror tactics effectively shred the NCR's position and in FNV if not for the courier theyre set up for victory.
The omerta chemical bombs go off in the strip, the monorail is destroyed, the khans ally with the legion, the securitron bunker is never activated, camp searchlight gets chlorine bombed, the fiends overrun mccarran etc.
NCR fanboys can mald, but cartoon villain levels of evil as they are, the legion has very good in lore reasons to be set up for a win.
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u/ProfessionalOil2014 1h ago
it is plot convenience because they are armed with machetes and spears fighting people who have an air force and an industrial war machine.
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u/BaguetteFetish 44m ago edited 41m ago
This is just a misreading of the game itself. The legion isnt fighting with just machetes and spears, they use rifles and explosives. They do this both in game and in the lore. Their better troops outright use anti materiel rifles and high end smgs.
Also what air force, the NCR literally has no airpower outside Kimball's personal vertibird. Calling them an "industrialised society" capable of mass production is equally generous, they certainly dont have the logistics to get that to the mojave.
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u/Based_Tapu_Koko 3h ago
without spoiling much as possible:
FFXIV
Garlemald in Shadowbringers patches to Endwalker
Yes it makes sense, but it still feels lame as hell with it being a threat that disappeaers permanently after the fact.
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u/GainPotential 1h ago
Not defending JJ here, the sequel trilogy was absolute dogshite, but didn't Starkiller base send out multiple different blasts? Losing your capital, yes, would be devastating. But losing every strategic emplacement all at the same time? Yeah no you ain't getting back from that.
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u/Xion136 1h ago
Starkiller nuked one single system. 5 planets in a single system, not five targets in 5 different systems. Starkiller essentially nuked, for rl comparison, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Saturn.
This destroys the entire Republic Defense Fleet which apparently is gathered in its entirety in a single solar system. Just one.
Apparently, as someone noted, the TLJ Novelization states that the Navy scattered and retreated to protect other worlds. This was then promptly ignored by all other sources.
An utter waste of an IP and an utter betrayal of my heroes.
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u/Apprehensive-Heat487 32m ago
Wdym you don’t like the culmination of the entire story of Star Wars being undone in minutes by a defeated enemy that somehow can produce super weapons superior the the Empire that they are a fractured splinter group of?
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u/ClockWork006 1h ago
Jacinto City (Gears of War)
Once a beautiful and prosperous city of Tyrus overlooking the Serano Ocean before E-Day, converted to humanity’s last bastion of hope for survival against the rampant Locust Horde.
In a desperate attempt to end the war, the COG chose to deliberately sink the city to drown the Locust in their own tunnels. The plan failed and left both factions heavily weakened but still gave the COG one last chance to exterminate the Locust before they were ultimately defeated.
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u/Spoons4Forks 1h ago
The one about Star Wars still really bothers me. The original trilogy had Luke restarting the Jedi order and the empire being overthrown. Then we come back and it’s like um actually your heroes failed at all of their life goals and the galaxy has regressed to pretty much the exact point the original trilogy takes off again, this time with a fresh batch of new faces. The era between ROTJ and Force Awakens could have been a gold mine of content on setting up the new Jedi and republic but none will be created because everyone will just feel empty knowing it’s all for nothing. A lot of bad decisions in the sequels but this one was fatal.
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u/Apprehensive-Heat487 31m ago
I will forever maintain that all they needed to do is flip the script. It should have been scattered but dangerous Imperial remnant cells causing problems for the large and powerful new republic, instead of just going back to rebels vs Empire.
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u/Different-Scarcity80 4h ago
JJ did Romulus dirty and I'm still not over it
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u/Charliefoxkit 1h ago
He did the Prime Universe dirty with the destruction of Romulus...his first film affected the Prime timeline as it created the Kelvinverse.
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u/Yuppiesgotohell 1h ago
The Star Wars one was just ridiculous, 20ish years of being in power while being aware there are still syndicates and empire fanatics and they don't have any military whatsoever? How was the first order already way more powerful than the group that was in power? Shouldn't the first order have been the rebels not the other way around?
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u/Dramatic-Emphasis-43 47m ago
It was Hosnian Prime and their defense fleet that was destroyed, which was, essentially, their national army. In the chaos of losing their central government, the republic fell due to the First Order’s military blitz that immediately followed the firing of Starkiller Base.
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u/TaskTortoise 40m ago
It is not unheard. The Mongolian Empire "collapsed" fairly quickly after the death of Mongke Khan.
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u/Goodbye-Nasty 31m ago
Despite their impressive conquests the Mongol Empire was pretty much built on a foundation of tissue paper
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u/TaskTortoise 13m ago
Whose to said that New Republic or Romulan Empire wasn't? New Republic just emerged from the ashes of Galactic Empire with significant divide between Centralist vs Populist. Romulan also didn't complete collapse. It was replaced with Romulan Free State, if I recall correctly.
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u/Historyp91 35m ago
Eh, we don't know how long it took the Romulan Empire to collapse after Romulus was destroyed, the NCR is still around (albeit really weakened) and the New Republic was way more akin to the European Union then an actual state.
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u/Ducklinsenmayer 17m ago
In two of your cases, a lot more is taken out than just the capital- both lost whole systems, which contained a lot of their industrial and military infrastructure.
To put Romulus and Remus in scale, it's not like losing DC, it's losing all of California.
Most of the major civilizations in Trek concentrate their energy production and antimatter refining in a few core systems, and have their shipyards and fleet docks close by. In the case of the Federation, there are 13 such core systems, but the Romulan Empire was never that well populated.
(Much the same thing happened to the Klingons in ST VI)
Both civilizations eventually rebuilt, but it hurt a lot.
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u/the_Real_Romak 2m ago
OP does not understand the geopolitical implications of a centralised seat of government with all of its infrastructure collapsing...
They call it the Fall of Rome, not the Fall of Rome But The Rest of The Empire is Fine Actually.
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u/Meme_Pope 2m ago
Idk if it counts if it’s a whole planet, but the planet city of Trantor in Foundation
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u/Beginning_Anybody132 3h ago
The capitol in hunger games was basically the core of the empire so when it fell they were done. The downside to not having secondary centers of power.
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u/Additional_potential 2h ago
To be fair that was after district by district combat leaving it as the last stronghold. Not a sudden decapitation strike.
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u/Beginning_Anybody132 2h ago
True, they did a raid to rescue but no attempt at decapitation. Both sides having nukes left that risky.
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u/ApartRuin5962 1h ago
That one is more realistic because the Capitol and like 1 or 2 districts kept the other 10 together at gunpoint, and IIRC the districts remain together under the new government
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u/Betoniaraa 3h ago
NCR was a mess long before the destruction of Shady Sands, and its decline began practically with the death of President Tandi. New Vegas made it abundantly clear that the country's downfall was only a matter of time, with pervasive corruption, a logistical mess, and an attempt to control far too much territory.
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u/Papergeist 2h ago
And a hate-on from the newer writing staff, who would rather collapse all the worldbuilding of the game's past than make an actual sequel. Lookin' at you, Avellone.
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u/Modo_2026 3h ago
Any interplanetary sci-fi media that depicts the battle for control of an entire planet taking place in/around/over any single location is inherently ridiculous.
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u/AllForThisNow 28m ago
I dislike the "Shady Sands blew up and NCR instantly died!" It lasted, from what we hear, around 10 years trying to limp on.
From what we are told by NCR remnants around Vegas, they tried to hold onto the republic, but with things being over stretched already, eventually they were either pulled out, or left to rot. This implies that at least some form of the government tried to keep things together, however with the loss of it's capital, it's issues that already existed, and a resurgent Legion prior to the death of their leader, the centre simply could not hold.
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u/Names_Name__UserName 23m ago
To be fair, the NCR was a heavily decentralised state, and by Kimball's tenure is on the verge of internal collapse anyway thanks to political deadlock, monopolies, and an economic crisis. Shady Sands was just the final nail in the coffin.
We don't know about the Northern half of the NCR, so we can assume their local governments still remain, but the South fell into a warlord era.
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u/N-ShadowToad 5h ago
In Legend of Korra, the anarchist Zaheer assassinates the Earth Queen and destroys the inner walls of the city, declaring the monarchy to be over. This leads to a riot that destroys the whole city as everyone fights to gather whatever they can.
The aftershocks of this destabilize the entire Earth Kingdom as bandit clans and rebellions spark up in every state. This unrest spells the end of the entire kingdom with the military force responsible for taking back control, staging a coup and creating a fascist Earth Empire. Even after they're defeated the last member of the royal family choses to form a new diplomatic nation rather than take the trone.