They debated how California should handle the military. Maybe their new nation should be neutral, such as Switzerland, they mulled. Where should it get its water? Most of it, they reasoned, comes from the Sierra Nevada and the Colorado River, which are in the state. California, Evans said, is the world's sixth-largest economy and already has money, so that will be fine. The secessionists likened their cause to the legalization of marijuana and same-sex marriage: things that seemed implausible a decade ago but are now the law here.