even though i do love stranger things 4, they really fumbled after season 3. the flayed were SUCH an interesting and terrifying plot point, plus a great continuation of season 2. Hawkins is supposed to be a small town and a portion of the population melting into goo to create a giant flesh monster?!?!?! but then we saw very little repercussions. good lord, if only i had been a writer in the stranger things room
The Prisoner of Zenda is a swashbuckling story set in the mythical area of central Europe known as Ruritania.
Rudolf Rassendyll has a private income and a lust for travel. He has the Elphberg red hair and large nose, courtesy of an affair between a young English girl and a previous king of Ruritania centuries before.
When he goes to Ruritania for a quiet holiday, the attendants of the king,…
The Sociocultural and Economic Implications of the Hawkins Quarantine Make No Fucking Sense.
Despite what it looks like, I don’t care that much. This is just a fun excuse to flex my dormant history-buff muscles and write a stupid essay because I am the Mark Corrigan of Fandom.
Like, okay. It was 1986 when the fences went up. Of course, we all remember lockdown very clearly (presuming you weren't just getting high all day, because what else was there to do), and modern procedures are most likely very different to how things were done in 1986. I should probably research how they went about Chernobyl, seeing as the disaster happened in April 1986 (crazy coincidence). Of course, these disasters were very different in scope and level of human understanding, but given the snowflakes + gaseous plumes being a complete mystery, and not knowing ourselves how wide these spores and clouds spanned above Roane County or maybe the entire Americas, you could probably still draw some decent comparison for knowing how they would have/should have reacted to the Hawkins disaster. As well, Chernobyl was under Soviet control, so this has other implications for how differently the procedures would have been versus how the United States would have handled a similar-ish disaster.
But What Could It Be?
"The fuck? The fuck! There's white shit in the air. The fuck!" - Lord Jazor's Nightmare Before Christmas parody song. When I'm an impoverished historian, every chapter of my book will begin with a funny quote because I can.
We had a good understanding of the dangers of radiation and how it affects cells by this time. That's why the areas immediately affected around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station were designated a 30km 'exclusion zone'. You need to get people away from that shit asap.
For the Hawkins Disaster, I find it fascinating that they opted for a quarantine following the snowflakes, their biggest health concern, instead of evacuation. Yes, monitoring every civilian's health after being exposed to and potentially ingesting these spores would be the main priority, but to keep them for 18 months? Lunacy! Especially in the age of the Cold War, American pride in democracy and their freedoms, and the universal terror that was nuclear weapons/radiation. It is safe to assume the people of backwater Hawkins would be jumping to conclusions, assuming these snowflakes were radioactive, possibly even nuclear weapons deployed by the Soviets themselves.
We can also assume the US officials (which include scientists) involved in the Upside-Down business don't have a good scientific grasp on this shit either, seeing as they were still demanding mandatory health check-ups 18 months in (as stated by Robin on Squawk Radio in the compliance message). However, given their decision to call a quarantine instead of an evacuation, they clearly know it isn't radioactive in nature, with a lasting half-life that only hurts you more with exposure. They've obviously determined that the stuff has pretty much dissipated into the atmosphere/degraded already, otherwise an evacuation would absolutely need to have been conducted. So again, why keep people longer than maybe a month to two months for health monitoring?
Despite the people involved in the Upside Down shit being very, very Evil Scientist Core, we're in the USA. I'm hesitant to say they would take any risks with their procedure or act complacent when it comes to public health. This is a very public, national disaster, surely witnessed from miles and miles away. Tax dollars are being pumped into this operation and its rehabilitation, and people don't like it when their tax money goes anywhere, frankly.
Remember, not only are reparations and recovery efforts eating millions of tax dollars, but there is also high military action and on-site research happening inside. They have had to build entirely new facilities to accommodate this. Barracks and labs, scientists and soldiers' salaries.
This is just insane. Reagenonomics, were you prepared for this?
Funding
“I don’t care who the IRS sends, I am not paying taxes!” - Dan Vs.
Shortly following the disaster, Ukrainians were dependent on public donations and the Soviets' own funding to see them through the long-term repercussions. While Ukraine did eventually receive financial support from other countries, this wasn’t until 1997 from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. I was startled by this because that would mean they held out for 11 years before coughing up some charity money. Then I remembered, OH shit yeah, the USSR, that old chestnut. Reading between the lines of these massively depressing, professionally prosed cries for help at the end of this document I am referencing from 1990, it seems it wasn’t until the State’s collapse in 1991 that non-Soviet countries even considered financially aiding Ukraine. Under the independent Ukrainian state, people were paying 10% tax on their wages towards the recovery efforts, even those who were displaced from their homes and made unemployed.
All that is to say, the US most likely would have had allies willing to financially contribute to the Hawkins Disaster. This would have bumped up taxes across the country because hey, uh, we gotta pay those guys back, actually. Reagan was freaking out about stagflation; meanwhile, Hawkins is taking out a band-aid loan the size of, well, Indiana.
People hate taxes! Especially the people who cannot fucking afford it inside the quarantine zone. “Okay, so I’m jobless, and you give me these reparations payments, awesome, and then you expect me to be cool when you just take a cut of it for yourselves!?” I’ll get into public attitudes later on, but you can imagine it's not gonna be pretty.
Between the “free mandatory health check-ups” that have been going on for every civilian and government grunt in Hawkins for 18 months, the salaries of these grunts, reparation payments, reconstruction, business compensation, research efforts, YOU NAME IT, need to be funded somehow. Zoinks!
Agriculture
"This is a cow farm. You're gonna find cows outside!" - Barnyard (2006)
We know of the rival pumpkin patches from Season 2, although pumpkins are a novelty crop, so these farms would have definitely been cultivating all manner of crops across seasons and acres of field. Corn is a massive one for Indiana, whether it be for popcorn or animal feed. Soybeans and watermelon, which surprised me. Livestock like cows and chickens are a given. I've read that ducks are huge in Indiana, so considering they don't know the long + short term affects of the snowflakes and the fumes that erupted from the Upside Down, we can guess all of these birds were culled in order to stop them from flying outside the quarantine zone and potentially spreading something.
Already, that outright kills, like, a bajillion contributors to a bajillion industries worldwide. Billions of dollars lost. Families put out of work. Fantastic! Are the government providing compensation for this? After Chernobyl, the ukrSSR gave reparations to those who lost their jobs and homes. They were supported in relocating, the state built new houses, free meals and clean water were provided, and people were granted monthly stipends based on prior wages.
All that farmland, arable and pastoral, is made defunct. The cows have surely been killed, meaning they can no longer work the land naturally, so the soil will not be as rich for the crops by the time the fields are rotated. No crops will be coming out of these fields while the quarantine still stands, but when it’s finally over? All those acres of what was once arable land now look undesirable on the market, should the farmers want to sell them to recoup their money after the reparation payments end. Losing 18 months of harvests is detrimental to any farm, but especially a small farm in a small county in the Midwest, which most definitely doesn’t have a monopoly to fall back on. This land would have been bought up by one of the big sharks in the area, spelling the end for that family's dynasty. Yikes.
Not to mention the acres of woodland used in forestry operations. I imagine in the beginning stages of the quarantine, at least, these operations would have had to be shut down for the time it would take to monitor the atmospheric effects on the trees. Enough time to determine, once again, if the wood could spread any harmful pathogens if sold outside of Hawkins, risking infecting other woodlands.
Trade
"After a long night of hooking, trade didn't like the session, so he had gutted me and set me on fire. But you know I didn't die. I had crystallised. And now I'm a glamazon, bitch, ready for the runway." - Kennedy Davenport, RuPaul's Drag Race.
Obviously, we see Murray being authorised to pass through the quarantine zone under the guise that he works for a grocery supplier. He states that he hides the Party's ‘presents’ under the produce, implying he is made to stop, and the contents of his truck do get surveyed. It’s safe to assume he is also getting checked this way on his way out of Hawkins, too, meaning he would have to be actually delivering those vegetables to stores in town, otherwise the gatekeepers would surely be suspicious. Interesting that Hawkins is still outsourcing food this way, rather than having the government supply food packages first-hand. Maybe Bradley’s Big Buy is a gov-certified supplier, who knows. A lot is coming into Hawkins, but nothing is going out, and if my A Level essay on the Spanish Decline in the 17th century taught me anything… Well, that’s just not a healthy economy. The French are on their way as we speak. I can hear Catalonia’s war drums; they threaten a revolution.
Think of the produce that would have normally been coming from within Hawkins and the locked-down areas of Roane County instead of being outsourced from the wider state of Indiana and beyond. Perhaps Melvalds had a cosy deal with the local dairy farm for their ice cream and milk. Well, they had to kill all their cattle due to health concerns; that farm is now defunct. That deal no longer stands, and so now Melvalds must buy in from bigger suppliers demanding more money.
Public Attitudes
“Well, I’m Ted Cruz and my pronoun is kiss my ass!” - you heard the man, Ted Cruz (Kiss/Ass)
Family and friends would have seen the goings-on when Hawkins split. The various phenomena would have definitely been caught on live television and broadcast across the world. There is no possible way the people in charge, aware of the Upside Down, could have prevented all that publicity. It would have attracted scientists, geologists, and all manner of nerds in high and low places. They would have flocked to Hawkins for an explanation, maybe even camped outside the fences to take their own readings of the air and soil. The quarantine would have divided families and friends, and we all know first-hand how hard that was, but at least we weren’t under military surveillance, barring us for 18 months straight (though I know places like China and Australia weren’t far off).
In the 80s, there’s still a sort of idle Red Scare going on. Reagan liked to call it the ‘Evil Empire’ - very camp. If it’s coming across like it, I want to clarify that I do NOT mean to romanticise the Soviet Union or brutalise the people who lived/worked/served under it because, no, it wasn’t a fun time and it was a fucking abborant state in most aspects, but I'm also not a capitalist xenophobe. However, there was certainly a picture in everyone in the western hemisphere’s heads of what the East looked like. To the average American, the Soviets were the #1 enemy. Reagan perpetuated this idea to the public, revitalising these anxieties about communist control and nuclear fallout forty years into the Cold War.
When Hawkins opens up four ways, releasing literal RED plumes of gas from the GLOWING RED SPILT IN THE EARTH, only for mysterious snowflakes to descend in springtime, launching a military takeover without a decent explanation? Conspiracy will prevail. This, my friends, must be the Soviets, using secret bioweapons we’ve never seen before. This is war.
The land of freedom and democracy, with a superiority complex so severe it tricked the rest of the world? Yeah, Americans are gonna riot when you tell them to stay within this fence.
I haven’t even fucking mentioned East Berlin.
The US, as well as other ally countries, had a chunk of Berlin after the second world war as a part of the reparations, which is what allowed West Berlin to be controlled under democratic leadership despite Berlin being smack-dab in the middle of Soviet-occupied Germany. East Berlin, on the other hand, was completely locked away from this by a wonderfully tall, unclimbable and unapproachable wall. The Soviets were fucking nuts dude, you gotta look at how they rigged that thing up with gunmen and all sorts of other mouse traps, it’s fucking crazy. David Hasselhoff couldn’t have come sooner (there’s a running joke in my friend group that Hasselhoff singlehandedly freed the East)? Still intact by 1986, the parallels between this wall of oppression and Red Terror, and the fences surrounding Hawkins under quarantine would have absolutely sparked imaginations and riots.
No one likes taxes. Even in the UK, where we have the privilege of the National Health Service funded almost entirely by tax money, I still hear people complain that their taxes shouldn’t be going towards benefits, the NHS and its many branches. LIke, I’m sorry but it is literally there to help you and your neighbours, you inconsiderate- anyway. On the flip side, we also have a colourful history of Kings exploiting taxes, and Parliament inventing new stupid ones (see: the Poll Tax). No one likes taxes, especially when they’re already getting financially fucked, as the people of Hawkins would be. After Pearl Harbour, the government passed the Revenue Act 1942, introducing the Victory Tax (such a corny name for a tax, jesus christ), which expanded the number of people paying income tax to aid the war effort. I’d assume it wouldn’t just be Indiana state-made revisions to taxes, but larger federal action like this, given they are putting so many of their own resources into Hawkins between the scientific research and military. The whole of the US would be feeling the Hawkins Disaster in their pockets. No one is happy.
As for agriculture and business inside Hawkins: Just the other month (April 2026), there were protests in Ireland, demonstrated mainly by farmers, demanding that fuel prices be capped after the extortionate increase, thanks to - huhhgn - everything going on in the Middle East and the subsequent closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Everyone must have felt it, but if you want numbers, the Republic of Ireland (which taxes fuel highly anyways) saw a 28% increase in the price of diesel after the first missile strike on Iran. I hate how current this is, and it’s going to kill a piece of my soul to now tie it to a fucking Netflix show, but, uh. This is what we’re here for so…
Farming communities in Ireland fronted these protests because agricultural vehicles do be expensive. Fuel Economy? I hardly know ‘er! About 65% of the Republic is agricultural land. Ah, sure Jaysus, we’re gettin’ dirty tillin’ these fields, boys! Except we’re not because it woulda been costing hauliers and farmers an additional €1500-3000 ($1733-3465) annually to operate as usual if prices kept at their peak price of €2.18 per litre for green diesel (that’s $11.42 per gallon). It would have put hundreds out of business had the government not put in place the Fuel Support Scheme in response to these protests. God I love Ireland, they just get shit done. Get me off of bootlicking Terf Island, this is NOT what it said on the back of the Tomodachi Life switch case.
What I’m saying is farmers are angry bastards. With guns. And plows pulled by 10ft tall wheels running on 300 horsepower.
Conclusion
Of course, the government have their own malicious motives for putting Hawkins and its population under quarantine in Stranger Things. However, there are so many things that stack against the logic of this decision, as I have (hopefully) illustrated. The quarantine, trapping civilians via militant force, puts their freedoms + rights into question, not just in Hawkins but nationally. The mystery surrounding the actual disaster and the ‘health concerns’ they’re still harping on about a year and a half later is incredibly alarming for the whole world. That reason/excuse would also come into serious question globally very quickly, leading to mass panic and drawing everyone’s attention to this ‘top secret’ Upside Down business. Knowing there would have been constant defiance and threats of violence, the only real way to maintain the quarantine regime that we see in the show is if people were being persecuted hard. It spells total military rule, one that would have had to span nationally to keep their operation neat, tidy and undisturbed.
Destroying and limiting the immediate trades, resources, business, and industries with this quarantine has HUGE implications for the rest of the country, maybe even the world (how far does the popcorn pop, I don’t know). Environmentally, financially, socially. I feel confident in saying Hawkins would have become a ghost town after the fences let up. The land hasn’t been worked for so long, the health concerns perpetuated by the government scare new settlers off, the hardships of living inside would push people away, businesses have gone bankrupt etc. Yes, some people within the exclusion zone of Chernboyl refused to leave their homes for years, dismissing the harm that could come to them by radiation. But eventually they were forced to move when the lack of work, community and trade made it apparent that it was no longer a sustainable way to live.
The more logical response from the US government would be evacuation and an exclusion zone. They have at least a little insider knowledge on the Upside Down. They could conduct research into the short-term health effects within the first two months following the disaster, relocate all inhabitants, determine whether agriculture and similar industries could continue, though most likely not. And while those knock-on effects would have the same negative impacts stated above anyway, I think it would significantly lower the degree of negative publicity, public attitudes and financial strain. By making it Indiana’s own Area 51, you can at least ensure less opposition and attraction to your top-secret interdimensional toying.
This was my TED Talk, thank you.
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[source] INFORMATION ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT (1990)
the concept of the hawkins police taking dustin, lucas and max to the WHEELER'S house in s4 as opposed to the police station is so fucking funny like what???
