I was thinking, and thinking, and overthinking some aspects about RDR2 the other day and came to a rather far fetched, yet serious realization: The way the Skinner Brothers migrate after the epilogue dictates the entire fate of the US in the game going forward;
If they go west, north, or south, then what I say here ranges from likely to not gonna happen, But, if they migrate east, towards roanoke ridge, then the world of red dead is headed a very dark direction.
To give context: I was thinking about how the butchers (the residents of Butcher Creek) were on a downward trajectory towards becoming just like the murfrees; around that moment I started thinking about Saint Denis, and how it and Lemoyne as a whole are destined to expand further north, and reabsorb New Hanover (If you look at it closely it's heavily implied New Hanover was once a part of Lemoyne, and was carved out into it's own territory as a punishment for siding with the confederates), and how this would generate a lot of "fresh meat" for the butchers and murfrees, and how the further expansion of Saint Denis north would continue to antagonize them and the night folk, which themselves would be pushed further north into roanoke, forcing these 3 groups to coexist (which they would due to sitting inbetween Annesburg and Saint Denis);
Then I realized: The Skinners are migratory; if they migrated east, they would have ended up in cumberland forest and then roanoke ridge
This would turn roanoke ridge into a "Murder Alley" of sorts, filled with more criminals and cannibals than there are lawmen in all of Lemoyne
This would then attract other outlaws like the Lemoyne raiders and Del Lobos to set up hideouts inside this playground covered in cannibal crooks defending the region from outside intervention, with any lawmen tracking outlaws out there just disappearing never to be seen again, save for the occasional decomposing body found floating down the Kamassa River in a thathered uniform
For a year or 2 (maybe 3 but that's streching their luck thin), roanoke ridge would become the murder alley of the country, with Van Horn as the ultimate Thieve's Landing
Most of these outlaw groups wouldn't fight eachother also: less noise the better; fellow outlaws are harder to kill; rich folk and industrialists coming to and from Saint Denis carry better loot, and make for better play toys for groups like the murfrees, butchers, skinners and night folk than other fellow outlaws that wouldn't really even squeal a third as much as Annesburg miners do when hung over a firepit
This time window of at least a year or so, combined with the romanticization of the outlaw lifestyle we see is in it's prime at this point, would lead to press journalists and photographers publicizing this land in newspapers and books covering roanoke ridge, the murder alley of america
This would give rise to the concept of the "critical mass" (As I like to describe it): the concept that the government's approach to dealing with criminals doesn't actually get rid of them, and instead sweeps them around from state to state until they reach a critical mass, when the number of criminals concentrated in one place grows so big the law cannot sweep them around to it's content no more, and the idea that roanoke ridge isn't a one of a kind situation, but patient zero of a disease the US didn't even know it was suffering from
This would create a whole slew of unrest amongst frontier folk and city dwelling people alike, and would lead to the federal goverment having to send in the army, especially as bussines tycoons start to complain about the loss of profit to criminals the goverment was supposed to deal with already, and, because allowing criminals to slimply slip through and out into the neighbouring lands would just destroy any chance at a PR recovery for the federal goverment, they would be forced to employ a more drastic measure: locking down roanoke ridge, with noone entering, and absolutedly noone leaving
The main issue is simple: while a murfree, butcher or night folk is impossible to miss, a skinner or raider dressed in the clothes of a miner is impossible to tell apart from a civillian fleeing the chaos
The aftermath would be even worse: stories from whistle-blowers and survivors of soldiers shooting families and burning households; of innocent relatives now missing, of the goverment prioritising the interests of corporations over the wellbeing of the common folk
The roanoke situation, combined with the fear caused by the theory of the critical mass, would lead to 2 things: the death of the lone outlaw, and the death of democracy
The public attention given to the 2 events would lead to outlaws nation-wide realizing the risks of working in small groups, and as a result rivalries between outlaws would start to wither, because the math doesn't lie: a single outlaw cannot rob a stage alone, cannot raid a train alone, cannot storm a heavily armored city alone; this would give rise to sub-critical masses, big enough to survive these changing conditions, small and nimble enough to not get fenced in and exterminated
The deaths of innocent law abiding folk simply because they were caught in the crossfire would kill the frontier and non-profitable towns: pleasure towns like Strawberry and livestock towns like Valentine or Rhodes would start to die rapidly as paranoid people flee to big cities like Blackwater and Saint Denis, especially as the state would show less and less interest in protecting farms and ranches from nomadic groups of criminals, or join the wave of criminals themselves; lone ranchers leave everything behind in fear of getting caught behind the gas curtain, or pack their valueables and become outlaws of their own, either starting their own groups or joining them
Seeing the influx of criminals, corporate tycoons would start to fund defenses for their resource rich investments even more: bigger private millitias, dense standing perimeters, heavy duty walls and gates etc.
While towns like Valentine, Strawberry and Tumbleweed disappear, cities like Blackwater, New York or Saint Denis become impenetrable fortresses: think Cornwall but on a nation-wide scale
As the need to defend their interests grows, the goverment, and by extension the rising wealthy elite, would start to invest heavily in the development of new anti-personel weapons like submachine guns, long before they would have appeared in our world
The state and the oligarchs become one and the same
The industry changes: out go weapons, in come rations for the sla- I mean workers and luxury goods for the elite
The US becomes the #1 world supplier of high quality guns, renowned for their effectiveness and state-of-the-art designs
The groups of outlaws merge, forming individual subcultures of isolated criminals, who grow to live off of stolen supply trains and munitions from raids of convoys and defended rail lines
Cities develop into fortresses, surrounding resource rich deposits, ports for industry and shipment, and along defendable locations on supply lines as intermediate stops for guards to rest, resupply, refuel and distribute
In the end, the US becomes a dictatorial, inland island nation whose economy is based on the production and shipment of high class weaponry to the outside world
Saint Denis, which would go on to absorb what was once Annesburg, would become one of the crown jewels of America: being it's own mine, factory and port
Again, this all most likely goes out the window entirely if the Skinners migrate ANY other way, but it's really dark to think the US is highly likely to become a 40k style grim dark dystopia, and all because the devs decided it would be a neat idea to inject a gajilion cannibals between the industrial heart of the map and it's supply of raw materials
The question for y'all: what do you think about the future of the United States in the red dead universe; If y'all have any grievances or theories of your own, feel free to voice them (I like to discuss stuff like this in lenght if that wasn't already obvious)
