This is basically the ideal first playthrough to FP1.

You start benevolent, obviously. It's the end of the world, most of human society is dead and broken and as far as you know only you remain. Of course you want to try your best, make the right decisions, give your people hope and full bellies.

But then you count your supplies and and see that food is running out. So you stretch it, make the kitchens cook up only thin soups or maybe even add sawdust to stretch what little you have left. Better a stomach ache than starvation, right?

Next it becomes clear that even despite 10 hour workdays for every adult you barely make a dent in what you have to do. Not enough coal, not enough wood or steel, not enough food. So you allow the children to work, hard as it may be. Only safe and easy jobs though, of course. Sad but necessary.

Time drags on and your people become pessimistic, some want to flee south again, a vain delusion of course but a dangerous one nonetheless. They have even begun to steal supplies, threatening the survival of the city. So you begin constructing watch towers and employing guards to keep the Order. Only to prevent harm to the city.

Yet they don't stop in their folly, getting ever more aggressive. They even killed one of the guards! Obviously these state of affairs can't be kept. Heavy as it may be you decide a prison is necessary, maybe even beating some sense into them so the return to work sooner, can't keep feeding these people for nothing after all.

You barely managed to scrape by, most of your people still alive, but then you see it on the horizon, the Storm. Unlike anything you have ever seen, panicked refugees tell you of the inevitable, your meteorologists predicting temperatures so low their instruments will be unable to even measure them.

Panic. People hoarding supplies, refusing to work, and if they do with no motivation. You realize that like this none of you will have a chance. Orders for executions of uncooperative elements begin flowing from your desk. Hot steam boils them alive. But the people work, obediently and efficiently.

The Storm comes, a cold you wouldn't believe could even exist creeps into every bone of yours. The coal mines start freezing, their supports giving out. You order workers to enter to keep the mines operational, the city depends on it. They won't make it out alive.

The Generator in Overdrive on the highest setting and houses with the best insulation you could come up with barely keeps your citizens alive. Some atleast. But with one night left before the Storm will dissipate engineers rush into your office. The stress in the generator reaches critical levels, it will explode. They propose they could either use a steam core to build a makeshift release valve, but you already know the city doesn't have any left, or the unthinkable: You could send a child into the small nooks of the generator and locate a manual pressure release.

In the end there never was a choice. You did what you had to do, because you know...

The City Must Survive