Thanks, and you can avoid being shocked and still play a dominant path. Just answer Elena differently. The dom path will not necessarily require a team up so to speak, but certain desired endings would require a realistic alliance to survive, etc.
I wouldn't consider this dystopian world very believable anyway, but for different reasons than you stated. I am not sure how deep into the lore I will go that I created for "The Great Collapse" (I have a timeline and specifics of how nation states largely collapsed and why) but suffice to say The Karlsson Group is allied with numerous factions from former nation states and particularly intelligence and military agencies and other smaller entities (that knew it was coming before the general public) that got ahead of the curve. (roughly 50 million people) From say America, these would be people affiliated with certain academic/military/tech/industrial/intelligence interests. (The NRO/CIA/NSA/Los Alamos/Caltech/NASA/NORAD/Naval Intelligence/rumored Blackjack/MAGIK entities, etc) How Alexander Karlsson actually worked with these specific groups ahead of time to ensure his own survival (they knew first and had the land, etc.) versus military intervention/force is a pretty cool story to me and how I wrote it out, but way beyond the scope of this game I think.
Global trading as a whole is an irrelevant consideration in that their alliance is completely self-sufficient and everyone else literally have nothing to offer them in trade value in exchange. Given that, it would be very difficult for regional trading blocs to form in relation to The Karlsson Group (certainly among themselves perhaps) as only one entity truly has the most important resource anyway. So the assumptions about normal crisis response tactics in a typical global shortage are largely irrelevant given the backdrop, but the overall lore in itself is hardly realistic anyway. It just makes for a good dystopian atmosphere.
