So I have this story about our present day world after a mysterious entity starts granting all of humanity various supernatural powers, and one of the earlier villains in my story is a radical environmentalist who takes advantage of the fact that the very first power everyone got was a healing factor that renders them immune to aging and disease to argue that if our capitalist consumerist modern society isn't destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up, we will all live to see the day our planet becomes uninhabitable, and that we must put a stop to anything and everything that pollutes our air or turns any of our planet's finite resources into permanently unusable trash. As more and more powers get added to humanity's repertoire, her argument that humanity can endure this total collapse of modern infrastructure becomes more and more believable until, when everyone's given both a bullet-proof force field (that lets in larger projectiles and melee weapons) and the power to disable technology just by looking at it, she has enough followers to take over a town with an army of zealous, violent thugs during the chaos. But towards the end of this story arc what becomes painfully clear is that, however badass and physically dangerous of an opponent she herself may wind up being, her movement is utterly impotent and useless and easily dispersed once anyone with any real fighting experience and equipment comes along. You see, her followers, while perfectly willing to vandalize, steal and assault people for that they're certain is the greater good, are largely total cowards who have never gotten into a real fight in their lives and only have the nerve to be violent and rebellious with an overwhelming advantage in numbers. As one of the heroes mockingly explains to her, "you tried to wage a war with an army united by nothing but fear of death!". So my question is: where in America should I set my story where this woman would believably get the most support from people already sympathetic to her general message who could feasibly be radicalized by the panic of the supernatural situation?
The Pacific Northwest is traditionally the region most associated with these sorts of radicals. Hardly exclusive, but recruiting would probably be easiest there.
Having lived in Vermont for four years, I can imagine it'd be easy, or somewhat easy, to recruit there as well.
I'll second the Pacific Northwest for maximum craziness, to include more serial killings than anywhere else in the world. ELF got its start in the PNW, for just one example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Life_Force
Alright, that seems to be the consensus. Any idea where I can read up on the culture of the PNW or otherwise learn why the place has these sorts of people in such numbers? I live on the opposite side of the country and have never been there.