I wonder if there WILL be any strategy developed to deal with this region? You've got: land (trashed, needing years of cleanup); people (who need a living and a place to live - I see many moving out - who has 15-20 years to wait for a region to be rebuilt?); natural resources (which would be years/decades from being exploited for legal and environmental reasons.

This is an incredibly complex problem and nobody will be happy with any likely outcome.

What happened is as vast (in a limited area) as the kind of geologic process that came after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, and mud tsunamis blanketed entire continents. The difference there is that the earth had millions of years to recover. NC, GA and TN had a geological epoch happen in 1/2 hour or so.