North Carolina

During the Collapse, North Carolina suffered hard. Rising sea levels brought on by global warming inundated the coast, devouring the many Carolina swamps and causing many more acres to sink into a quagmire. Without effective countermeasures from either the state or national government, mosquitoes and other vermin rose to epidemic proportions, spreading a variety of diseases among the coastal populations, including the notorious Wasting Plague. In a belated effort to escape contagion, the coastal populace fled to the big cities, where overcrowding and poor sanitation further spread these illnesses through the unprepared metropoli. Between disease and evacuation, even Jacksonville and Wilmington were wiped off the map. To this day, North Carolina has no ports. No one wants to go back to the coastal swamps.

There have been rumors of coastal pirates operating from bases in North Carolina, but most consider these rumors to be fanciful; there's nothing nearby for them to raid.

Thanks to tobacco and the intervention of some international corporations, North Carolina was able to get back to its feet relatively quickly. Huge tracts of land were bought wholesale by a variety of Corps, because many investors were panicked that the entirety of North Carolina was going to sink into the sea. Lots of new factories, training centers, and warehouses opened up, filling in the gaps in the Winston-Salem-Raleigh urban axis. Without governmental price supports, the price of tobacco would have dropped, but the agricorps deliberately kept the price high, then gave cigarettes as perks to underpaid lower-class workers to get them hooked. There's never been proof that the agricorps added unusual chemicals to these cigarettes.

For at least a decade, nicotine addiction and low pay were the hallmarks of North Carolina industry, for those who didn't care for cigarettes moved elsewhere in search of better-paying jobs in nicer-looking cities. This has earned North Carolina a reputation for being a low-brow state, despite its more recent upscale turn.

The advent of inexpensive designer drugs and artificial tobacco broke the hold the agricorps (and their subsidiaries) had over the workers, and to stay in business they had to offer better pay and fund civic improvements. This has catapulted North Carolina back into the pack with the rest of the Appalachian states, and the entire length of the WSR urban axis is now a showcase of urban development. Nevertheless, tobacco remains on the market, lingering like a cloud of smoke.

Balsam
Balsam is the unusual result of the massive tunneling done in the Appalachian Mountains. An ambitious tunnel project ran from west of Asheville (near the 1-40/US-23 interchange) under the Great Smoky Mountains to Knoxville (coming out near the US441/US-411 interchange). After doing extensive mining in the vicinity of the tunnel, the shaft was renovated and opened as a new highway with a speed limit of 75 miles per hour (minimum speed 60). This new road, dubbed 1-440, greatly facilitated trucking from the coast across the mountains, and several firms started running regular land train routes through the tunnel.

This new city Balsam was built into the rock by the state government, and has the distinction of being the world's first underground city. Taking full advantage of geothermal power and the stable temperature underground, Balsam has become a major production center, with several corporations leasing area from the state at rates beneficial to all. The layout of the city is truly three-dimensional, which is confusing to most people at first.

It is run by a state-appointed mayor with a city council made up of the corporations leasing factory area (votes determined by corporate rent). There is little violent crime, but with so many corporations in such a small area, there's plenty of covert operations taking place all the time. It should be noted that the EBM branch in Balsam has recently fallen into dispute with the head office over certain management policies. This is the first time an American branch of a foreign Corp has had such a management dispute.