The Texas Peninsula is a small slice of the Badlands which kisses the edge of South Houston. A good chunk of the area vanished into the sea in the post-war flooding, turning the land into a peninsula, one which happened to contain Texas City, hence the name. The Peninsula is a fairly nice place to live, given its location in the extreme south of the Badlands sandwiched between South Houston and the Bayou. Its safety comes from its wealth of industrial resources, and the ability to import food.
The Peninsula is the home of the Railway Raiders, a group best known for their use of the remaining rail lines to facilitate trade across the Badlands. Their ancestors chose to settle down within Texas City, specifically at the old Nustar transit center. The Peninsula's many settlements developed around Nustar which was able to take industrial goods out of the zone and take them almost anywhere in the Badlands, and occasionally beyond.
These days the Peninsula has imported enough supplies to have created hydroponic farms and is almost entirely self sufficient. The zone’s many towns are all net exporters whose citizens live a fairly high quality of life. Nothing approaching the pre-war world, but their standards of living are on par with major powers like the NCR, Texas Republic, and the Calculator’s Dominion.
Nustar could have been the center of revitalization for the southern Badlands, and the capital of a major power, if not for South Houston’s hostility (While safe to quickly pass through by train, its simply not worth expanding into), the Bayou being what it is, and the sea being dominated by the Confederacy who have laid claim to Pelican Island. Top that off with a culture which is largely content with their small collection of city states and you have a microcosm of good living in the Badlands which hasn’t grown in almost a hundred years.
The threats to the Peninsula are all external, and predominantly the Bayou Raiders, who have been attempting to take the region for themselves for centuries. The hazards and dangers within the Peninsula were dealt with or made beneficial decades if not a century ago. It is, genuinely, a nice place.
Such a fact is difficult to sell in the Badlands. Especially since even the green regions of the Northern Badlands have their own threats and hazards despite their abundance of food. Its not until you explain to people that the Penensula’s safety and prosperity comes at a cost that they start to believe you. Even then most people need to go to Nustar to truly accept it as fact.
The cost of keeping the Peninsula safe and independent is truly immense. The locals call it the “Soldier Tax” or the “Commitment”. It’s not a popular policy, though no one is too angry about it as the alternatives are all much worse.
In Essence, the Soldier Tax is the requirement for all couples (regardless of orientation) to provide their firstborn child to the Texas Peninsula Rangers. This isn’t simply raising your child and enlisting them into the Peninsula's military when they come of age. The children are raised by the Rangers themselves, brought up from a young age to be elite soldiers specializing in defense of their home.
The cultural impact of this mutual defense pact are immense, defining the zone itself in many ways. Without their small army the Peninsula would fall to the Bayou Raiders and its population either enslaved or forced into serfdom. With it, the citizens of the zone’s communities all experience the pain of loss as one of the greatest moments in their lives must be sacrificed for their security.
The Peninsula has experimented with changing this rule in the past. Making it the second born resulted in too few troops due to the then-wasteland low fertility rates, causing the destruction of two towns and near loss of the Peninsula. Allowing some couples to dedicate their firstborn to other services such as medical personnel did the same, resulting in the conquest of Liverpool again, due to insufficient numbers of troops.
The Peninsula is simply too small to have enough of a military without the Soldier Tax to continue existing. In recent years, some families have elected to dedicate their family lines entirely to the military but this movement is too young to see if it can take pressure of the average citizen of the Peninsula.