snipped because my posts get a bit big.
I sure hope those names aren't supposed to be final. Not sure what you mean by LandCal, if it's the valley, it's definitely worth its own culture and the way folks talk in it is certainly widely recognized, but if you mean just the northern part then I don't know. Some folks call it the yay area, but that's a stupid name and hopefully unlikely to endure. And I think the way north folks are going to be in Cascadia, which makes more sense, although in modern times the two overlap and the devs haven't said explicitly.
A north-south baseball game wouldn't make much sense since nobody cares about baseball in the north, and probably nobody would in the south either if the Dodgers weren't a national team. Basketball might make more sense for something simple like this, but I'd be interested in seeing soccer tournaments as a big thing. They could be an old lacrosse inspired little brother to war, and would be applicable to people from all Mexican-influenced cultures, not just Californians.
Rebuilding the highway system seems pretty out there since even the current administration can't really do it, and your empire ideas sound zoroastrianism-tier and overall way less fun than what's already planned. Earthquake events are a bit of a no-brainer though, especially since hurricanes are already in in the east.
Californios are basically the mixture of Bajaño and southern Californian culture that has resulted from six centuries of survivors of the Event mingling and rebuilding society. Because I like diversity there's a non-zero chance of Californio characters showing up all over the coast, but Californio-dominant culture provinces currently are planned to be more or less Baja, and present-day San Diego and Imperial counties.
So there are no actual culturally Californian people north of San Diego? That strikes me as incredibly likely to offend people and generally invite ire, far more so than the mormon thing* that Ofaloaf was thinking of changing for that reason. Honestly, I think the name "Californio" is best reserved for the culture group.
There are already a few small Baseball ("Strikeball") flavor events, but they don't have a major mechanical effect like your proposal.
Tied to Angelano culture, presumably?
As far as nuclear plants and highways, they are long gone. Atomicists may worship The Atom, but no functioning nuclear technology exists and they wouldn't understand it even if it did.
Functional may be a strong word but there's clearly enough stuff going on to generate a ton of radiation for them to expose themselves to. That's got to be more than just what's left in the plants, because those are designed to reduce nuclear emissions to functionally nothing, although this could be the atomist "technology" of making nuclear shrines of all the radioactive material they find and clearing away other stuff I guess. Either way, letting atomists come take your nuclear artifacts is definitely adequate fodder for an event in my opinion, even if maybe not exactly what he described.
Are Nevada/Arizona going to be a solid block of provinces, or are there going to be caravan routes of provinces cutting through wasteland desert?
I'd hope for the latter, but, well, look at Arixo.
*Not because that's not offensive in its own right, but the Mormon folk are a lot more used to that, whereas people in northern California often consider themselves more truly Californian than the sureños.
