Editing United States of America (section)

===Laws===
The [[Protectorate]] and [[PRT]] were founded as US organizations under President [[Wikipedia:James_D._Griffin|James Griffin]],<ref>[https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/06/22 Excerpt] from [[Interlude 24.x]]</ref><ref name="I15.z">[https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/11/08 Excerpt] from [[Interlude 15.z]]</ref> although they later expanded to [[Canada]].<ref>[[Gestation 1.6]]</ref>

The United States briefly adopted a policy of tattooing [[Simurgh]] victims with a white bird on one hand or on one arm so others would know to take care. The policy lasted for four years, covering two of the [[Endbringer]]'s visits to the US, including [[Madison]] Wisconsin. It caused prejudice and violence against those affected, and many others got similar tattoos in protest.<ref>Doctor Foster had been asked to keep an eye on those being released from the city’s quarantine. Each individual got a tattoo of a bird on one hand or on one arm, marking them as someone affected by the Simurgh.<br/><br/>It had been a short-lived policy, covering only two of the Simurgh’s visits to America in the span of four years. Shortly after the second event, the idea was abandoned. The idea, that people could take extra caution around anyone with a tattoo of a white bird, only generated prejudice. The affected individuals couldn’t find work, they were beaten and they had their lives threatened.<br/><br/>The outcry had meant it was hard to spread the word about what the tattoos were intended for, and the problem was further exacerbated when some people had started getting the tattoos as a matter of protest. In some poll a year back, something like six out of ten people had been unable to say why the tattoos existed.<br/><br/>But it wasn’t likely that the tattoos were why the Doctor had been asked to oversee this situation. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/02/14 Excerpt] from [[Interlude 18.f]]</ref>

Thanks in part due to outside actors the United States has a tighter gun control policy then seen in [[Earth Aleph]],<ref name="R2">Parahumans might elicit a desire for more guns - but Cauldron had a hand in wanting there to be much less. It's in their interests for the debate and culture to go one way, so there's less parahumans dying at the hands of civilian vigilantes. So things get nudged here and there, the guys who get sniper rifles and go after prominent heroes have a way of failing spectacularly. Gun manufacture and distribution/sale gets some nudges and it's harder to get new guns, and politicians with certain stances succeed, which impacts things on the legislative/judicial side of things. - [https://redd.it/7ns0fc Comment by Wildbow on Reddit]</ref><ref name="R1">PRT taps New York and Watchdog, they have thinker resources to zero in on the snipers. You get a team of investigators backed by thinkers and other resources finding the sniper, and then tracing it back to the source.<br><br>Coil ''has'' snipers. He also has a deeper awareness than most of what the PRT does and how they would handle a situation like this. He knows better.<br><br>To the PRT, on the surface, they've got a villain that's getting too big for their boots, who're eliminating competition, breaking the rules, and who could very easily be willing to escalate to start targeting heroes. A murder out in public is very visible and newsworthy, and people in the public get scared. It's controversial. They don't want things to escalate.<br><br>To the PRT, more behind the scenes, they have a vested interest in the balance and the unwritten rules. They want to keep parahuman numbers up. So they have task forces who are exclusively trained to keep stuff like this from coming about.<br><br>With the PRT, even ~more~ behind the scenes, you've got Cauldron. Cauldron doesn't want people going out and pulling this for many reasons - capes strong enough to warrant a sniper instead of a normal beatdown are capes Cauldron wants in the final confrontation. This is the sort of thing Contessa is regularly tackling - figuring out how to shut down elements like anti-parahuman hate groups and people who start using snipers.<br><br>So people try to pull this and events conspire against them and they miss the shot. The incident gets reported, the target lives, the PRT cracks down on them, and the gang leader who put the money out there gets crucified, so to speak.<br><br>And the shot might land ''sometimes'', but the target lives without being much worse for wear, and the repercussions are dramatic. The investigatory team has a pretty damn smooth investigation in finding the culprit. With enough repetitions, the narrative is effectively set. Someone gets the bright idea and then their underling says, "Didn't you hear what happened to King Krunch in Phoenix? Or that Truth Seeker guy? It's not like it is in the movies. I hear most people with the qualifications won't even take the job if the target doesn't have a kill order."
<br><br>[...]<br><br>
:The whole point was to select a target that cannot survive a head shot
The shot might land sometimes, but gee, look at that. A bird flies across your field of view at the wrong moment, or your target sees someone and slows at the wrong moment. Your shot hits but catches them in a shoulder. The opportunity is missed.<br><br>You got Path-to-sniper-no-sniping'ed and you don't even know it.<br>
:Any comment on why there are no civilians/baseline humans trying something?
'No' might be an exaggeration.<br><br>In general? Frog in a pot of boiling water. Society changed, society adapted, and past incidences of backlash were muted and unsuccessful (at least in the US). Media, government, law, entertainment, and careful pruning by the bogeyman are all pushing against the anti-parahuman sentiment. - [https://redd.it/5ip94x Another comment by Wildbow on Reddit]</ref> with fewer guns in civilian hands.

The United States has become a major resettlement area for refugees of failed states and areas devastated by Endbringers and the like. The '''Preservation Act''', legislation signed during the Bradley administration, helping such people to get on their feet.<ref name="15.5 c1.1">Fantastic question, and one I’m not sure I can give a fantastic answer to.<br/><br/>Why is that? Well, primarily, there’s the issue of trying to quantify ‘damage’. As stated in Legend’s pre-battle speech (early in arc 8) there’s almost always grievous losses but they aren’t always the same sort of losses.<br/><br/>You have the events that left the world reeling: Lausanne, Hawaii, Kyushu, Newfoundland, Moscow, Sydney. The attacks that left major areas uninhabitable or unrecoverable, with wide-reaching effects on the rest of the country/region/world. In this setting, for example, Japan isn’t a world power and it’s still dependent on international assistance 12 years after Leviathan’s visit to Kyushu.<br/><br/>But even there, where do you say, “Ok, that’s the sum total of the damage done”? The disaster at Kyushu, the number of refugees seeking living space/work and the pressures on the rest of Asia’s pacific border might have led to some more unrest and tension. Some friction, some ‘small’ wars, infighting and intermingling. Refugees and immigrants. Many settle in major cities across America because President Bradley’s Preservation Act gives them a hand in getting on their feet.<br/><br/>Do you factor that last point into the damage as well? [[Lung]] comes to Brockton Bay in part because of the booming population of Asian immigrants (which hasn’t yet set down roots). Bakuda was born to a Westerner mother and Immigrant father. Do you count the damage they’ve done? Ditto for [[Mannequin]] and the Simurgh.<br/><br/>But that’s only the major hits, the broad strokes of the brush and all the repercussions/spatter that follows from that. Attacks end in other ways, for example. Legend mentions mass loss of life. There’s economic damage that follows from that, disease and explosions in the population of vermin when a quarter million people die in a concentrated area.<br/><br/>There’s the deaths of countless heroes, and how that biases things further towards the general villain population. If the selfless throw their lives away for the greater good and it’s primarily the selfish (or the very powerful) who are left, how does that skew things?<br/><br/>And I should stress that weak points aren’t necessarily just areas which are geographically vulnerable. There’s places where there’s ongoing conflict (like we might point to the middle east over the past decade), places where it takes little effort on the part of the Endbringer to deal maximum devastation (ie. a nuclear power plant, military bases) and spots where a great many resources are invested (be they great minds collected in one place or major projects like Dr. Gramme’s major projects in trying to save the world). Did anyone else catch the mention of the water crisis? Leviathan isn’t always attacking cities, and the world has only so much accessible freshwater.<br/><br/>I digress.<br/><br/>To answer your question in the general sense? Relatively few places have been hit as hard as the major examples listed above. But figure this has been going on for 20ish years. Behemoth shows up in the early 90’s, attacking once a year, roughly (twice in 1994), Leviathan shows up in the mid 90’s (now we’re up to 2-3 Endbringer attacks a year), and Simurgh comes in just after the turn of the century (now 3-4).<br/><br/>I mentioned in a comment during the Endbringer arc, but I said something like ‘Behemoth is the cape-killer and Leviathan levels cities’. Figure each Endbringer has attacked 16 to 20 times so far, account for the bias towards killing capes (Behemoth) vs. wiping out landscapes (Leviathan) and that Brockton Bay is pretty middle-of-the-road for the kind of aftermath you see, and maybe you can make an estimate.<br/><br/>Ballparking it? 8 or 9 Endbringer attacks in America over 20 years. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/colony-15-5/#comment-5639 Comment] by WildBow on [[Colony 15.5]]</ref> This policy allows capes such as [[Miss Militia]] to obtain citizenship with ease.<ref>She was taken to the bathroom, patted down on her re-entry to the interrogation room, and they found the same gun on her that they’d taken away just half an hour ago.<br/>
Everything else had happened very fast, after that. It was an American in a military uniform that rescued her. He took her to America, saw that she was put with a family there. When the first three Wards teams were established, she was enlisted. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-1-10/arc-7-buzz/7-x-interlude-arc-7-buzz/ excerpt] from [[Interlude 7]]</ref>