Challenge: 80s Future Dystopia Comes True

Some elements of the dystopia seen in films like Escape from New York, Blade Runner, etc.


  • Economic hardship and mass poverty
  • Authoritarian or otherwise oppressive government, likewise highly corrupt
  • Explosive crime rate and street gangs
  • Environmental catastrophe, possibly from a limited atomic war
  • Megacorporations and Corporatocracies
  • Lack of resources
  • Japan rises as a preeminent economic power, possibly overtaking the US
  • Possibly bloodsports to placate the public
 
Replace Japan with China, and then you're on to something. Dependency on external resources is a great weakness, one that would keep them from growing that high. Remember, they fought a war to get those resources once.

1, 2 and 3 are already happening around the world.

Ok, bloodsports. I could see "reality" TV growing out of control and drifting first into televised executions, and quickly degenerating after that.
 
Replace Japan with China, and then you're on to something. Dependency on external resources is a great weakness, one that would keep them from growing that high. Remember, they fought a war to get those resources once.

Yes, but China likewise has the shortcoming of relying on the foreign world for it's economic boom (and it's economic boom will likewise bust soon for that reason). Is there a way for Japan to become a grand economic power like it was projected to be?

1, 2 and 3 are already happening around the world.
Are you sure it's to the degree of the 80's dystopian future? I mean, in Escape From New York, the crime rate had jumped 400% following a limited nuclear war with Russia.

Ok, bloodsports. I could see "reality" TV growing out of control and drifting first into televised executions, and quickly degenerating after that.
I forgot about those. If you were alive in the 80's or early 90's, stuff like that was apart of the fiction (films like the Running Man, for instance). I think there was even an arcade game on some deadly American Gladiators kinda thing.
 
Have able archer result in a limited nuclear exchange, famine and economic collapse are widespread, China gets involved, but Japan remains largely unscathed by the war leaving it with considerably good internal infrastructure and economic stability(dunno how they keep the oil flowing in though). Economic hardship in the US resulting from the devastation from the war results in ludicrously high levels of domestic unrest and crime. The US government responds by going uber-right with its policies. strikes are put down to keep the nation running and corporations are given extraordinary powers "for the good of the national economy." The same excuse is used for eliminating as much competition in the private sector as possible.

The heightened crime rates results in prisons becoming overwhelmed with millions of prisoners, eventually the government is forced to turn to penal colonies to handle all the overflow. Violence becomes so widespread throughout the country that people are forced to move into the cities for safety, as a result, the surviving cities become overpopulated and packed hives of crime and corruption.

Also, IRL detroit more or less has turned into what it is supposed to be in Robocop, the only thing missing is a privatized police department and a megacorporation bent on bulldozing all the ghettos.
 
I watching Demolition Man, so the prospect of LA becoming a warzone with in the future year of 1996 (according to the distant past of the early 90s) has intrigued me, hence my bump.

I should comment of the views of skyrocketing crime rates. I think such a view in the 90s, and 80s, suffered from an oversimplification of humans and human nature, because it seems pure sociopathic behavior and psychopathy were often apart of these feared worlds. The problem with that is, most people aren't sociopaths or psychopaths, and most have motivations (whatever those motivations may be) rather than just being bad for evil's sake. I think that's a problem to work around to achieve dystopia as the 80's and early 90's viewed it. Perhaps behaviors we call evil and wrong (and sociopathic and psychopathic) could come into vogue as being supported by society and being what is taught by society to be ok and accepted, and that's be a way to work around it.

EDIT: Oh, and atop the "Escape from New York" megacity-as-prison, we could add "Cryo-Prisons" where prisoners are frozen. Although I don't understand the thinking behind that. I mean, how do you reform someone if you just freeze them in place?

EDIT EDIT to the former EDIT: Oh, and there's the issue of the Utopia that's Dystopic, where Utopia is achieved by means of suppression of some other element, often after the aforementioned regular Dystopian events occur. In "Demolition Man", it is through a hyper-Politically correct society where swearing, red meat, dirty jokes, staying out after curfew, and other things are banned (20th century things are considered contraband I believe), weapons are banned and only found in museums, physically touching someone else is considered odd and not done, and society is rendered neutered (and like "Leave it to Beaver" if the law forced you to act like that; graffiti to considered on par with how we view a murder in the present, and murder is like someone raped God and never happens), and those who don't wanna follow this way of life are pushed out, and forced to live in exile (Taco Bell is also the only restaurant in existence). In "Starship Troopers", its a borderline fascist society where citizenship is based on military service, and there's a possibly totally rigged war against an enemy that seems not really the instigator of the war.
 
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Remember though, in Demolition Man, the prisoners were supposed to be given rehabilitation and training programs while frozen. Wesley Snipes was given instead, martial arts and weapons training, while Sly Stallone was taught how to knit.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
In the 1970s, Nixon allows the Apollo program to continue. In the 1980s, the first US Mars mission is launched by President Reagan. Through the 1990s, manned exploration continues with outposts now on the moon, Mars and Jupiter and one of Saturn's moons and space opened to commercial development. In the early 21st century, around 2004, titanium mining stations are established on Jupiter's moon Io by the Con Am corporation, which has a problem with corrupt managers who give the workers dangerous performance enhancing drugs. As the space outposts and mining operations are founded using US spacecraft and US citizens, US Federal marshalls police these space stations and industrial facilities. A US Federal marshall becomes involved in an armed confrontation with the operators of the Io mining facility around 2010.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
In the 1980s, due to heightened Cold War tensions, the CIA renews the old MKULTRA mind control experiments and develops a technology as an offshoot that can implant false memories. This is codenamed REKALL.

In 1989, the Soviet hardliner coup is successful and overthrows Gorbachev, maintaining Soviet presence in Europe. The remaining Soviet Union causes the US to continue space missions and a Mars mission is launched in 1994.

Around 1998, the Soviets and US reach a new period of detente and the USSR and Europe forge a common economic market.

India, South Africa, Brazil and others now with nuclear weapons etc. begin a new period of political and economic cooperation and rivalry with the Euro-Soviet Common Market and the USA, creating the Northern and Southern Blocs.

The Euro-Soviet Common Market founds a manned Mars station in 2014 and this later develops into a series of pressurized domes and mining stations. At this time a commercial variant of the CIA false memory technology is marketed by the REKALL corporation.

By 2040, Mars has become de facto independent under the corrupt and authoritarian administration of East German director Vilos Coohagen and his lieutenants Richter and Hauser.

A decade later, a construction worker named Douglas Quaid goes to get some false memories of a vacation to Mars...
 
Someone wrote a "Blade Runner" TL here or on the Old Board that featured a small asteroid impact into the Pacific Ocean that devastated Asia.

The massive water evaporation of such an impact would cause a lot more rain, which would explain the world's weather.
 
I let this thread pass too easy. I quite like the topic, so I'm not sure why.

Anyway, something new: Is there a way to have a World War III which doesn't end in complete destruction of the world? Bonus points if Nukes are still in general usage to some degree.
 

Macragge1

Banned
I let this thread pass too easy. I quite like the topic, so I'm not sure why.

Anyway, something new: Is there a way to have a World War III which doesn't end in complete destruction of the world? Bonus points if Nukes are still in general usage to some degree.

No nuclear exchange would end in the complete destruction of the world.
 
No nuclear exchange would end in the complete destruction of the world.

Well, yes, but a few thousand people in a global dark age isn't what I mean. I mean like Escape From New York, where there was WW3 but still there's a New York City which isn't an atomic pile (albeit its a prison island).
 
Well, yes, but a few thousand people in a global dark age isn't what I mean. I mean like Escape From New York, where there was WW3 but still there's a New York City which isn't an atomic pile (albeit its a prison island).

China and the USSR have a nuclear war. New York is fine because the US isn't a belligerant.

OR

The US and USSR (and maybe China. On either side.) have WW3. Only a few nukes are set off, and those are in Europe (and maybe China.)

That's two off the top of my head.
 
Economic hardship and mass poverty (check)

Authoritarian or otherwise oppressive government,
likewise highly corrupt (USA and European Union: check)

Explosive crime rate and street gangs (check)

Environmental catastrophe, possibly from a limited atomic war (partially check)

Megacorporations and Corporatocracies (check)

Lack of resources (Inflation and Hyperinflation to come: partially check)

Japan rises as a preeminent economic power, possibly overtaking the US
(no, its china and financial sector: patially check)

Possibly bloodsports to placate the public (partially check, it's twilight series)

:D
 
Trouble with any dystopia thread--you could post something like "What would a world look like where the fomori came back after having defeated the Celtic gods, murdered every living thing in the British Isles, and started in on the rest of the world?" and some wits would post "Just like the world right now, har de har har!"
 
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