I'd like to know more about this fun little project! I'm highly entertained by it
Well it was a while ago but I followed it up with;
Map Thread XIX
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Well it was a while ago but I followed it up with;
Population estimates are pretty carefully calculated even if they're just estimates.
And censuses are meant to come up with an agreed-upon number, for things like distribution of government services, electoral districts, etc: you can't do that with numbers that come with error bars.
Me and a bunch of friends like to play map games. This is the end (1918-2044)
I will make a 1981 map, since it is a very memorable and insane date.
I will make a 1981 map, since it is a very memorable and insane date.
Skallagrim
Banned
Pleasing to the eye and pleasing to God.
Some go so far as to eat the census taker's liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
I don’t know what’s going on but it seems to be extremely Orwellian.
I like the United Kingdom of England, Wales, & Southwestern Scotland. You know, in the same way that it’s difficult to look away from a car accident.
The map game is pretty chaotic compared to anything else
I agree. It is a mess.
A World (Alphabetic ISOTs)
I'm not really sure why I made this when I already have a lot of pre-existing WIPs rotting in a folder waiting to be completed, but I did it anyway, because my hellish brain can't go a week without wanting to start a new project. Thus, I decided to do my own take on one of those "countries are sorted alphabetically and sent to various virgin Earths" things. (Very original, I know.) As is probably pretty obvious, this was inspired by Beedok's take on the same idea, the main difference being that I decided to alphabetize countries by their endonyms. For instance, the United States of America goes to the "A" world, while Armenia goes to the "H" world due to its endonym being "Hayastan." If a country had more than one endonym, I just went with whichever one was listed first on its Wikipedia article.
At any rate, let's get this started with the "A" world! Some of the inspiration for the Afghanistan part of the map was taken from here. I don't know when anything else in this series will be finished, if ever, because I've learned by now not to overestimate myself, but they're almost certainly not going to be in order.
Afghanistan
Andorra
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bahrain
Iraq
Jordan
Morocco
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
Saudi Arabia
Sudan
United Arab Emirates
United States of America
Yemen
Andorra
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bahrain
Iraq
Jordan
Morocco
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
Saudi Arabia
Sudan
United Arab Emirates
United States of America
Yemen
It's been 250 years since all of these countries were ISOTed to a virgin Earth, and the planet has changed dramatically in the aftermath. One thing hasn't, however: the dominant nation is still the United States of America. America is the largest country in the world, has the highest population, and is the undisputed global superpower. In the aftermath of the ISOT, the United States had a lot of land around it to expand into, colonizing Canada, Mexico, northern South America, eastern Asia, and parts of Europe, with the end result being that it has colonies on every continent (except Australia, but the Americans like to ignore that part). America was also responsible for the reestablishment of several countries that weren't brought along due to the large amounts of tourists who were stranded in America when the ISOT occurred, though the attempt to remake Canada ended up getting annexed anyway. America has become a rather libertarian place, even corporatocratic in some aspects, and the massive American megacities look positively cyberpunk. There is an increasing divide between the original American states, where corporate influence tends to be more limited, and the colonies, where corporations have much more say in how things are run, and the American colony in Korea even broke off when the corporations running the colonization of the peninsula felt that their power was being infringed. Politics have become pretty boring, with the platforms of the Republicans and Democrats being largely indistinguishable these days (though they've swapped positions in what political sides they claim to be representing, with the Republicans as the left-wing party and the Democrats as the right-wing party), and the Republicans and Democrats in the original 50 states are actually more different from their more corporate-controlled branches in the colonies than each other. As a result, America is weighed down by a good deal of voter apathy, to the point that less than thirty percent of the population even bothers to vote anymore. America's right-hand man is Australia, which initially tended to slide in and out of isolationism due to America being the only country that really bothered to visit, but as America continued to expand in every direction, the Australians quickly became America's closest ally through process of elimination. The modern Commonwealth of Australia is effectively run by corporations and has become the land of unfettered capitalism even more so than America. It's also become rather more racist, which the Americans officially disapprove of but don't do anything to stop in practice, and much of Australia's non-white population has left the country and set up shop either in America or southern Asia. The Ovimbundu Republic is also a notable American ally and was one of the nations formed after the collapse of Angola, and the main reason it's aligned with America is due to the disproportionate amount of influence American corporations have in its government. American companies also do quite a lot of resource extraction in the post-Angolan states. The Helmand Confederation is another American ally and perhaps one of the more troublesome in terms of how it formed, having been founded by a group of local strongmen in the aftermath of the collapse of Afghanistan and eventually evolving into a regional power. Helmand is an aristocratic republic somewhat reminiscent of medieval Venice dominated by its Balochi upper class, and it's also gained a reputation as a tax haven of sorts.
The only other major bloc is the Islamic Alliance, which is run by Morocco, Jordan, and Sudan. Morocco ended up being forced to let the Sahrawis go, and thanks to a conservative backlash caused both by the territorial loss and the ISOT itself ended up sending colonists out into the surrounding lands to the point of overstretching itself. Morocco grew increasingly autocratic up until a popular revolution in the 220s put the current republic in place, but it's a shaky, flawed democracy and still very conservative. Jordan established a temporary absolute monarchy in the immediate post-ISOT period, and it ended up becoming permanent. Jordan managed to establish itself as a regional power during the international war against Saudi Arabia six years post-ISOT, and seized most of the Hejaz in the Treaty of Riyadh, rebranding itself as the Caliphate of Jordan. As Jordan settlers flooded into the Levant and began reconstructing Jerusalem, the monarchy took several steps to ensure its absolutism would be entrenched permanently, eventually aligning with Morocco and forming the Islamic Alliance. Sudan is a more recent member of the alliance, having joined after a military coup put the Islamic Republic of Sudan in power. Sudan broke apart in the post-ISOT period and became an impoverished trouble spot, though its economy gradually grew better as it expanded up the Nile. Of all the states in the Islamic Alliance, Sudan is the most jingoistic, and it's still very revanchist.
Argentina has kept itself neutral and pulled out of the American bloc about a century and a half ago, not particularly liking the increased influence of corporations in its government. Now, it's the dominant state in South America and may even become a threat to American power given a few more decades to build itself up. It's a flawed democracy and rather economically leftier than America, to the point of having a communist party that manages to win elections sometimes. Patagonia broke off due to increased regionalism during the Patagonian Secession Crisis (as it has been retroactively named) in the 120s, and Argentina let it go because Patagonian nationalism had grown too strong to combat by that point and it wasn't like the Patagonians weren't going to stay aligned with Argentina anyway.
While the Middle East isn't the greatest place in the world, it has improved after the initial period of chaos and madness and is certainly better off now than it was when the ISOT occurred. Asides from the Helmand Confederation and the member states of the Islamic Alliance, Azerbaijan has also become a regional power in the Middle East. Though it didn't fare so well in the immediate post-ISOT period, the nearby fertile land ready to be colonized and a population boom caused by refugees from former Afghanistan, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen helped get colonization started, and Azerbaijan is doing much better now. It's currently in the process of making colonial forays into eastern Europe, though there's a worrying amount of secessionist sentiment cropping up in the Ukrainian colonies due to concerns over the government's growing authoritarianism. Farther east, the Punjab Confederacy is also a notable regional power with strong ties to the Helmand Confederation, having formed as a loose confederation of farmers descended from refugees fleeing Afghanistan that eventually became a proper nation-state. The other post-Afghanistan states are doing much better after two and a half centuries, and even the Islamic State of Afghanistan has calmed down a little.
Of course, the world wouldn't be complete without a major global Big Bad. The Amerokorean Republic is a totalitarian state that split off from the United States when the corporations that controlled most of the colonization of the Korean peninsula grew worried that increasing regulation from Washington was going to cut into profits and broke off from America, invading and annexing the nascent Korean Republic as well. The Amerokorean Republic is run by the corporations now, with more than 90% of its populace living in permanent corporate serfdom, and it's since become the most universally-loathed nation on the face of the planet. (Indeed, its very existence is probably one of the major reasons why the Americans have more restrictions on corporate power now than they did before the Amerokoreans broke off.) Amerokorea managed to seize enough nuclear weapons to force the United States to back off in the immediate aftermath of its independence, and though they're old and somewhat outdated now, they still work, and the Amerokoreans have made it clear that America's megacities will burn in nuclear hellfire if the Americans try to invade.
Technology is kind of crazy now. The biggest advancements have been in biotech, which has advanced dramatically, especially in the field of food production, and most food in the developed world is vat-grown now to save space. Genetic engineering is also rather more advanced, to the point that genetically modifying one's body is even possible to a certain extent, though there are certain restrictions on just what you can alter- gender transition surgery or new limbs for amputees are 100% okay, modifying your brain so that you only need an hour of sleep or giving yourself cat ears are also fine, grafting gills onto yourself is legal in some places as long as you're willing to read through and sign easily a terabyte's worth of legal documents, but anything much bigger than that is out of the question. (There are still some black market surgeons who'll perform illegal operations, but their quality probably isn't going to be great.) Solar power has prevailed despite the ISOT refilling oil reserves around much of the planet, and a large array of solar panels in the Mojave Desert now provides power for the entire western half of North America. Hydrogen fuel cells are also rather popular. Just about everything is digitized these days, especially considering that computer screens are paper-thin and can even be folded a few times without causing any damage, though most governments have gone back to storing important documents on physical paper to avoid hacking. Implants in the brain and eye to replace phones and computers do exist, but they're pretty expensive and most people consider them too invasive and susceptible to hacking. Some prototype energy weapons have been developed, but conventional bullet-firing guns are still dominant on the battlefield. Drone warfare has advanced greatly, though robot soldiers are still a while away. (Genetically-modified soldiers, on the other hand...) Flying cars do exist, but they're extremely expensive and a pilot's license is required (unless you're rich enough to bribe the people selling them, of course). Massive maglev trains have largely replaced highways, except in the less technologically advanced parts of the world.
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Another March of War map, this time of the European Alliance (in grey) circa 1939 - bordered by the Soviet Union to the east and the warlord-ruled Confederation of Africa to the south. The big black line is a DMZ between Europe and the Soviets. On the European side is the “Red Wall” - the world’s largest defensive line of bunkers, land mines, barbed wire, AT and AA guns, watchtowers, hidden artillery bunkers, soldiers armed to the teeth, and so much other stuff not even its commanders can keep track of it all. Little keeps the Alliance together aside from their mutual hatred of the Soviets and their desire to get their colonies back
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