AH Challenge: Plausiable "Chaotic" Dystopia

With a POD no earlier than 1900, create a "chaotic dystopia" that by 2000, has the world in a state of chaos and fragmentation.

Bonus points if ideologies like anarchism, libertarianism and the radical parts of the New Left(Weather underground) take root around the world

More bonus points if this dystopia IS NOT caused by a collapse following a Nazi victory, WW3(in the traditional sense), or nuclear war.
 
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Rex Mundi

Banned
With a POD no earlier than 1900, create a "chaotic dystopia" that by 2000, has the world in a state of chaos and fragmentation.

Bonus points if ideologies like anarchism, libertarianism and the radical parts of the New Left(Weather underground) take root

More bonus points if this dystopia IS NOT caused by a collapse following a Nazi victory, WW3, or nuclear war.

1. Bait ideological leftists by implying that the causes they support would result in a dystopia.

2. ???

3. lulz
 
Yellowstone explodes, massive hordes of people head south, (insane) people do some sort of nuclear thing in a last ditch effort, world is thrown into chaos with refugees swamping places.
 

karikon

Banned
Seeking a form of order and stability is part of human nature. However if you have strong, diverse and heavily vicious disagreement on what that order should be then you have yourself a situation were Chaotic Dystopia is possible if not probable.

For example the Russian civil war were neither party is able to get the upper hand. To make it even better have the Reds be just as divided as the white.
 
Yellowstone explodes, massive hordes of people head south, (insane) people do some sort of nuclear thing in a last ditch effort, world is thrown into chaos with refugees swamping places.

That reminds me of my high-school era unfinished novels features a comet wrecking most of the United States and creating an ash cloud covering most of North America, Europe, the northern 2/3 of Africa, and Asia to the Himalayas.

As a result:

1. An independent California and an independent Pacific Northwest. The former is getting rather feudal, especially in areas where there was military-supervised mass agriculture in the aftermath of the comet.

2. A remnant US centered around Colorado Springs run by a bunch of real jerks. In the third novel, they actually give the Aztec cult (see below) a nuclear weapon to use them against California.

3. Various little Rocky Mountain militia fiefs, ranging from the benign (a libertarian film producer's ranch and associates) to the downright scary (neo-Viking white supremacists who revere Steven McNallen as a prophet). Here's where the extreme ideologies part comes in. Maybe I could have some scary Green commune centered around Ted Turner's bison ranches while I'm at it.

4. A neo-Aztec cult ruling most of Mexico and intent on obliterating all traces of European civilization from the Americas despite worshiping the Virgin Mary as the wife of one of their gods whose name I'm not even going to try to spell.

5. The remnants of the Mexican government squatting in the Four Corners somewhere and threatening to go all barbarian-invasion of California.

6. An evil Russian empire that genocided Central Asia to turn it into one big farm to feed the rest of the country--the comet winter was less severe there.

7. An Israeli agricultural redoubt at the headwaters of the Nile being used to feed the rest of the country during the impact winter.

8. The Aswan High Dam burst from the post-impact rains a la Lucifer's Hammer. No more Egypt.

9. Three-way Chinese civil war between the democrats, the Communists, and some neo-Imperial military dictator.

10. Stranded American troops in Afghanistan forming a military caste and assimilating.
 
I had another timeline involving a disunited Canada, an Aztlan, a Muslim theocratic France, and other stuff, but in hindsight, it was REALLY unrealistic.

I wrote a later version where it was just Iberia going Muslim and France instead went hard-right, but then figured "screw it."
 
I actually have a new idea, what if after the alt world war one, which lasts 10-15 years, all of Europe is in Russia style chaos.
 
Okay, don't ask me about the science, but SOMEHOW, mid-80s, AIDS morphs into a disease that can be spread more easily than in OTL. Maybe not via mosquito bites(which was in fact one of the many underground rumours in OTL), but perhaps with the same degree of casualness that tuberculosis can spread. Not something you're likely to get from any random stranger on the street, but the news is still alarming enough to engender mass panic.

There are calls for the mass suspension of civil-liberties, in order to faciliate the lock-up of all infected persons. Reagan, who still maintains a schoolboy's civics-class respect for basic liberty, balks at the proposal, as does GHW Bush, but their opinions are drowned out by a doubly energized Religious Right, who now have added credibility with the public, as their previous Doomsday claims appear to be coming true.

So, Reagan and Bush are either pushed out of office, or agree to save their political hides by letting the panic-mongers call the shots. A sort of medical Homeland Security Act is passed, mandating the incarceration of all HIV carriers, along with the deportation of all non-citizen Haitians. A panel, co-chaired by one of the more panicky scientists(for medical legitimacy) and Robert Bork(to provide legal cover) is charged with implementing the new statute's provisions.

These measures provoke the formation of a far more militant version of ACT UP than we saw in OTL, which responds to the state's repression with Weather Underground-style violence, directed against the new medical-sercurity apparatus(quarantine camps under construction are bombed, as are the offices of medical professors who support the government's position). Combined with the already-existing panic about the disease itself, this provides further impetus for the assault of civil-liberties.

Enforcement of state "sodomy" laws comes back with a vengeance(that such enforcement is rather pointless given that the disease is now airborne makes little difference to already homophobic elements of the public), and is met with militant pushback by gay activists. There are dozens of Stonewalls across the land every month.

Meanwhile, rumours persist that the disease CAN be spread by mosquitoes, and enterprising chemical companies are quite happy to promote this idea. Industry lobbyists push for a massive spraying program. This prompts the formation of armed militant factions within Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, who do battle with government and industry.

Not sure how all this ends up. Possibly, the public buys the idea that the repression was neccessary, because it's hard to prove that the less-than-predicted death-toll wasn't a result of the medical-security laws.

Scenarios may vary for other countries, though probably a bit of overlap everywhere.
 
Here's one that could do the trick without going apocalyptic:

The Progressive movement of the early 1900s never takes off in the US and the Palmer Raids still happen, decimating the organized Left as OTL. As a consequence the causes of the Progressive and radical movements of the early 1900s will linger on, the US government will get more repressive, leading to more violent resistance. Eventually things boil over in the aftermath of 1929 with an indecisive civil war that splits the country into multiple warring states divided by intense ideological hatred of one another.

With the United States a giant warzone the British don't have a major source of supplies and capital to resist the Nazis and they make peace by 1941 after the fall of Greece and the arrival of the Afrika Corps. The Nazis throw everything they've got at the USSR and just manage to take Moscow in 1941 but due to overextension the Soviets push them back in the winter of 41-42. With no second front or American lend-lease the Soviets manage to fight the Germans to an awful, bloody standstill before finally making peace in 1949 after Hitler's death by stroke with the newly-minted Fuhrer Goering.

The resulting war, occupation and looting of the European continent, and wholesale genocide of the Jews, Rroma, and others has gutted the European continent leaving it divided between three mutually hostile powers who are all too weak to bring the others down. The British and the Soviets are covertly propping up anti-Nazi resistance while the Nazis are keeping themselves busy massacring whole populations, suppressing bloody uprisings, and arresting anyone who looks at them funny. There might even be a limited nuclear exchange or two, just to really liven things up.

In Asia things go worse. Britain fights Japan to a draw in southeast Asia while the Japanese secure their resource objectives. The two make peace in 1944 due to Britain being too exhausted from two wars and the increasing costs of holding down their empire especially since the revolt in India, due to Gandhi's death, is turning increasingly violent. Japan continues their long, bloody, and fruitless war in China before making "peace" with the Kuomintang in 1946. China remains divided between local warlords, the Communists, the Nationalists, and the Japanese on the coast while Australia and New Zealand become giant armed camps to keep the threat of Japanese Singapore and Indonesia at bay.

Africa probably goes about as OTL except decolonization is longer and bloodier as the British try to squeeze the colonies for all the resources they can and prevent the empire's breakup. Italian, German, and Vichy French attempts to re-assert control over their claims goes badly due to the overstretched logistics and brutality of the regimes. Apartheid South Africa is the one exception to a state of general warlordism but only due to Nazi-like barbarism of the Afrikaner government which in turn inspires its own bloody, unrelenting resistance.

By the 1960s much of the world is divided by war and armies with tyrannical empires grappling for Europe, much of Asia, Africa and the Americas are the playgrounds of warlords and armed gangs, and in the rest of the world overt state repression is the rule rather than the exception. In this environment radicals of especially militant anarchist and libertarian streams have a broad, ready audience in a world where many see governments as little better than large, well-organized gangs.

How's that?
 
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1973 Oil embargo becomes a tool by OPEC not only to pressure the West but also foster economic chaos. Unfortunately they take it too far and as a result the Western economy collapses about 1978, leaving a Soviet Union that is dominant for about 15 years before corruption and factionalism take control permitting much of the Soviet-dominated areas to go free by force or choice. Technology has stagnated to about OTL 1985 levels and food has become more scarce due to the lack of oil for fertilizer. Our consumption of resources is unabated and rapidly depleting the planet, resulting in a post-peak oil crisis in 2008 causing another global downturn. Regional factions break up the remaining superpowers while smaller nations are locked in war to take whatever territory they can in much of the world, the most stable five countries being Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, and Japan. Standard of living in much of the half-dozen successor nations to the United States is about that of 1910 with a few added conveniences, but life expectancies are going down slowly as modern technology becomes less available to the average person in the wake of reduced energy availability.
 
how about this scenario:

the Chinese cultural revolution goes out of control in 1967/68.
Importan key figure like Deng Xiaoping are murded
Marechal Lin Biao is force to military to stop the Red Guards killings.
Lin Biao goes even so far to kill Mao Mao Zedong "the self proclaimed leader of the Red Guards"
but not manage to gain control over china, it end in bizarre political division.
one hand the Chinese Military, on other hand the communist party under control of gang of four

China evolve not to the economic super nation, but become bigger version of orthodox communist Albania or North Korea.
so the World economic already damage by 1973 oil crisis of 1973 and 1980, will have major recession on edge of economic crisis like 1930s.
 
China evolve not to the economic super nation, but become bigger version of orthodox communist Albania or North Korea.
so the World economic already damage by 1973 oil crisis of 1973 and 1980, will have major recession on edge of economic crisis like 1930s.

The West-China trade that has come to dominate our economy now was only just in its infancy in 1980 and didn't really take off until the mid 90s. Removing China from the scene would lead to capital flowing to other places like India and Brazil sooner.
 

Kongzilla

Banned
Some sort of large Polar flip. I hear we're overdue for something like that and it will cause a lot of trouble.

But I really like some of these Ideas. they seem like a cool plot device.
 
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