Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27745396-20170213143845/@comment-25936766-20170213230827

No, that sounds like it was a bunch of scorching sand with a little gem in the center. A diamond in the rough. Obsidian amidst lava. Blah blah.

The people lived in that little gem, the small bit that was a heaven in the middle of the hell. That's where Vacuo grew. Then came Soviet Murica and that little heaven went away and in it's place they got more hell.

The unrestricted mining leads to ecological problems. The "yankee invasion" leads to conflict and more use of resources, leading to their scarcity. And the hot desert was already bad enough on it's own.