How does the EU prop itself up without US defense? It collapses out of sheer economic necessity if the US doesnt exist anymore. Is this getting too current politics-y?
Future Map Thread
- Thread starter TheGrandVizier
- Start date
well the image i wanna upload is too large so uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh click here if you wanna see a map of the greater buenos aires region some 40 years after the third world war, a time in which law and order are still largely absent from most of the planet and in which earth is disconnected from her former colonies thanks to the kessler syndrome caused by the war
how does the itnernet still exist if kessler syndrome happened, you might ask?
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh future technology, yes, that
how does the itnernet still exist if kessler syndrome happened, you might ask?
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh future technology, yes, that
So on the various Medieval America scenarios I'd like to see one where North America DOES NOT become a copy of Dark Age Europe. With it instead resembling Imperial China, alongside some elements of Persia and Egypt. Where instead of being divided into a bunch of warring feudal kingdoms with knights. It's actually a large, sophisticated and surprisingly advanced empire, centered around the Mississippi River. Albeit ond under the regular threat of nomadic cowboy and Amerindian tribes from the Great Plains-Prairie.
South America would probably be a better candidate for a repeat of Medieval Europe in my honest opinion.
South America would probably be a better candidate for a repeat of Medieval Europe in my honest opinion.
That’s actually an interesting idea and really sensical because the river would become the main thoroughfare for the continent again. If a decent enough naval tradition is kept then there’s a decent enough chance that most of the eastern part of the country does stay together or at least into two or three kingdoms at most. Now I’m imagining a Great Wall running somewhere in the plains to try and keep nomadic horse groups out.
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The problem is, things like the Appalachian Mountains, the Rocky Mountains, the steppes of inner America, and the deserts of the Southwest would all act as natural obstacles to the creation of a united Medieval USA.
Yeah I already admitted that. The Great Plains and the lands to the west are lost. Without gunpowder and an industrial revolution to help cut down the advantage of horse nomads and improve travel-communication time. What I'm talking about is a solid core centered the Mississippi and it's tributaries managing to survive the collapse. Instead of devolving into a bunch of feuding warlord states reminiscent of Medieval Europe.
Or possibly a series of watch towers similar to the Byzantine beacon system. Only making use of hot air balloons and telescopes to warn the capital of incoming invasions and raids. Maybe even both depending on how much resources they can command.
The west is definitely lost outside the absolute best scenario. So it could be interesting to explore how it's changed. It could have become completely Mormon, maybe there are some resurgent First Nations states or whatever disaster caused the collapse. Could have sparked a mass oceanic migration from East & Southeast Asia to the west coast... as unlikely as that is.
California and the Pacific north west would probably turn into coastal trade kingdoms. You don’t have to go too far to hit rough terrain in the interior of the states, be it mountains, deserts, or dense forests. If enough ship knowledge is kept then they may have the capacity to travel to Asia once in a long while. More Venice or Dutch analog than anything else.
That does make sense. I wonder if they would suffer from raids and attacks from farther north people. With the people of Alaska and possibly British Columbia acting as pseudo Vikings/Germanic tribes.
Texas could probably be home to be home to a semi nomadic people. Who commonly work as mercenary horse archers & lancers for the American State... not 100% sure if it would be a republic or an empire.
Inner system of Bifrost
Bifrost-1: Falun is the inner world of Bifrost, tidal locked to Bifrost the dark side is covered by thick glaciers of water, co2 and nitrogen. Smaller than Earth but with 4% higher gravity.
Bifrost-2: Hekla a slightly bigger version of Venus
Bifrost-3: Kimbrien, semi-arid and cold planet slightly smaller than Earth, but with 99% earth gravity, thick atmosphere, 24-hour day, and 450-day long years
Bifrost-3A: Mani, airless moon of Kimbrien with 3% Earth gravity.
Bifrost-4: Storen, hot or lukewarm gas giant with a 1100-day long year
Bifrost-4A: Oppland, Mars sized arid moon with heavy volcanic activity, thin poisonous atmosphere
Bifrost-4B: Tausen, Mars sized ice covered ocean world, thin atmosphere
Bifrost-4C: Nidaros, Earth sized cold ocean world, thick atmosphere, 141-hour day
Bifrost-4D: Hann, the colder cousin of Tausen
The Asteroid Belt splits the inner system from the two gas giants and four ice giants in the outer system.
General information: Bifrost is richer in heavy metal than Sol thanks to the Bifrost being younger. A unique fact which was a major reason for the colonization of the system is the fact that it has nine Jump Points, making it an important hub in the local Nexus. Bifrost lies a 115 jump from Sol in the closest jump line.
Interstellar history: Bifrost was discovered by the Copernicus the fourth Jump Exploration ship in 2102, the claim to the system was sold to Brahe a Danish interstellar colonization company in 2130. There was little interest in the system because of its peripheral geography and lack of easy to terraform worlds. Brahe which had less resources than bigger players, saw an opportunity in the many Jump Points and rich resources. As such it established a research outpost (Uranienborg) in the system in 2136, which grew into a full colony over the next decades. Sadly, for Brahe the peripherical nature of Bifrost meant that few other colonies were established in the region and most which was established were isolationistic. As such Brahe began to focus on other projects and mostly left Bifrost in benign neglect. So, outside the initial settlement of 40.000 Danes, 10.000 Estonians and 10.000 Belarusians the settlement received few settlers over the next several centuries, more or less developing its own culture or cultures. In the 26th century this change as the region began to rapidly change, many of the local early colonies had at that point developed into respectable economies with a renewed interest in contact with the greater galaxy, while the Inner World had begun expanding outward making Bifrost into the important regional hub the leadership of Brahe had imagined.
Of course, with the growing powers of the region and greater contact with the Inner World, Brahe also became a target of wannabe conquerors and pirate. But as Bifrost had kept a strong presence in space thanks to lack of easy settleable planets, it was able to keep these from conquer or raid the system.
Bifrost also lay claim to several system with little human settlement in the local region.
Human Settlements: Uranienborg was the first human habitat in the system, it was placed in the asteroid belt to avoid gravity wells and giving it access to raw material. In the first century most human settlement stayed in the belt, but it was decided early on that planetary colonization was necessary. Kimbrien and Nidaros was the two world which could be terraformed while keeping being settled. While Nidaros with its world ocean and small island continents would be easier to terraform than the dry world of Kimbrien with it limited water sources, Kimbrien had a lot more potential for resource extraction. It was decided to focus on Kimbrien but also start a minor biological seeding project of Nidaros.
By modern day, the terraforming is still an ongoing project. Kimbrien have reached a 7% oxygen atmosphere and the population lives in domed cities and underground. While a dry planet, the large lowland regions are dominated of massive peat swamps, while the highland have large alpine and tundra deserts. In the massive crater Tallinn taiga have begun to spread. Both the flora and fauna are extremely limited. The capital of Bifrost Nyhavn lies on Kimbrien.
Nidaros on the other hand have shown itself to be a much easier success the large oceans are a carbon sink and the over the centuries the oxygen level have increased to 22%. But at the same time the inland regions of most of the island continent are covered with kilometer thick ice sheets, leaving only coastal areas for human habitation, some coastal temperate forests do exist and a few arctic deserts. Life on Nidaros have a much greater complexity with ocean being incredibly rich in life. Nidaros rich aquaculture is a major export of the planet, though forestry is also major industry even with the limited area for it.
At last, there’s the world Falun. Falun is rich in both metals and volatiles thank to the tidal locking keeping the volatiles from being lost. As such there exist a heavy human presence in the twilight zone where they live in domed or underground habitats and make heavy use of the free energy of Bifrost. While not competitive in the production of spaceship with the Belt, Falun is still the beating industrial heart of the system and to lesser extent local space.
Population:
Bifrost (entire system): 800 million.
Kimbrien: 680 million.
Nidaros: 70 million.
Falun: 40 million
The Belt: 5 million
Other: 5 million
Political system: Bifrost is a semi-feudal hereditable monarchy ruled by a grand duke. The title grand duke is simply an attempt to translate the local title of the monarch and a truer translation would be “Grand Warlord”. While original a corporate free state ruled by the shareholders, the growing population of non-shareholder resulted in the old regime collapsing in the late 22nd century and after two and a half centuries of warring states, the warlord of Uranienborg used the increase external trade to fund his conquest of the system and the establishment of the monarchy. The Grand Duke power comes from his control over the jump points, which both give him control over the import and export of goods from Bifrost and control over the trade flowing through Bifrost. This control over the trade have resulted in the Grand Duke keeping power over the system, through the extinction of one ducal line resulted in a sideline taking over. Beside the Asteroid Belt around 15% of all the settlements of Bifrost is under direct control of the Grand Duke.
Below the Grand Duke the high nobility of the realm are the burgraves, again this title is a loose translation of the local title, whose direct translation would simply be “city lord”. The burgraves rule their settlements like absolute princes. They’re represented in the Council of the Realm, where they have power over taxes being raised on their settlements. There’re other categories of nobility below the burgraves like the lords, but they swear direct fealty to the Grand Duke or burgraves and aren’t represented in the council. The nobility has their own armed forces
Outside the control of the emperor is the guilds, the guilds represent the neutral parties in the warring states who was necessary to keep the terraforming going and infrastructure running. The two major guilds are the Spacefarer and Terraforming Guilds, but several minor guilds also exist. The guilds are represented in the council as their own estate. The guilds are more secular monastic (through non-celibate) order than traditional medieval style guilds.
Nidaros is a disruption in this system, since the terraforming allowed people to live outside the fortified city domes, there have been a rise of small coastal settlements which neither the Grand Duke nor the nobility can keep control over. The lack of the need for complex infrastructure to survive have resulted in the population growing increasing independent minded. A major uprising 40 years ago resulted in the Nidaros being given wide autonomy and its own parliament which swear direct loyalty to the Grand Duke.
Culture and ethnicity: The vast majority of Bifrostian ancestry come from Europe and as such they’re recognizable as being European descendent. The three languages of the settlers still exist, though they have diverged significant and many dialects of these three languages would be seen as distinct languages if they existed elsewhere. The main language is of course Danish descendent, but both Estonian and Belarussian do well and is recognized as co-official languages and sole official languages in many dome cities. On Nidaros and Falun Danish is solely spoken. The Asteroid Belts are distinct in that it has a heavy presence of outsiders as it’s a major trading hub. Half of the three million people of Uranienborg are immigrants and expats. Beside that the capital of Nyborg is home to another million immigrants and expats.
Cultural the Bifrostian have as much in common with their 21st century ancestor as those had with their 11st century ancestors. While their culture borrows heavy from the symbols of their parent culture on Earth, they’re very distinct including from each other as several centuries of civil war radical changed them. There’s also significant difference between the different planets and social classes.
The nobility is militant and feuding culture, low level civil wars between the different noble families often break out, through the Grand Duke limits the collateral damage. But if two families declare a feud on each other open warfare is banned, but assassination are overlooked. Outside feuds the Grand Duke deal harshly with such behavior. But it still creates a paranoid and vicious culture.
The commoners are in general browbeaten into submissiveness, they’re careful, polite, softspoken and obey orders. But they’re also deeply care about their word and deal with rulebreakers viciously. Many foolish outsiders have found that out.
The Nidarosians are different from other Bifrostians, they’re clannish, rude, and independent minded, but share the belief in the importance of one’s word and deal harshly with anyone trying to take advantage on them or break the social contract.
The Nyborgians and Uranienborgians are more cosmopolitan and tolerant through they share the general politeness of most Bifrostian. This is large externt caused by the Grand Duke protection of them against the nobility.
Here's a world based on the fabulous 'Rifters' trilogy, a sci-fi series from the early 2000s (naturally, there's a lot of aughts-punk ideas thrown in). Hope you enjoy!
The year is 2050. Welcome to the future! Sea levels have risen to cataclysmic proportions, strange new antibiotic-resistant diseases crop up every 24 hours, swarms of botflies allow unprecedented levels of surveillance, and increasingly totalitarian governments keep their populations in check through pacifying drugs. And this is BEFORE shit hits the fan.
In similar vein to the Roaring Twenties and the Dirty Thirties, the 2000s decade is one embedded in the popular consciousness as the 'Awful Aughts' - an apt moniker, defined as the decade was by terrorism, political scandal, and environmental catastrophe, although many would argue that the past forty years haven't been a great better. This history diverges from our own c. 2002, the PoD being Paul Wellstone surviving his fatal plane crash.
2004 was a far crazier year than IOTL: on February 28, Dick Cheney was involved in a hunting accident, shooting 67 year old sheriff Roland Felton Quayle while participating in a quail hunt at a ranch in Riviera, Texas. Sheriff Quayle died from his injuries the following day (naturally, there was no shortage of jokes about the victim's name on late-night talk shows, and Bob Marley's 'I Shot the Sheriff' experienced a brief resurgence in popularity). Cheney resigned his position in early March, becoming the third Vice President in US history to do so, and was replaced by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (much to Hastert's chagrin).
A few months later, in early June, Marvin Heemeyer demolished over a dozen buildings in the city of Granby, Colorado, using a modified bulldozer (a.k.a. the 'Killdozer'). The vehicle in question never became trapped in a basement, instead causing dozens of fatalities, resulting in the authorization of an anti-tank missile strike. On August 31, the city of New Orleans was devastated by the category 5 storm, Hurricane Frances. Government response was harshly criticized, and Bush's approval ratings took a nosedive.
The final nail in the Bush administration's coffin came in late October, after it emerged that the Department of Homeland Security had been asked to raise the nation's terrorism threat level in the hopes of scaring undecided moderates into voting Republican. Bush and Frist were soundly defeated that November the Democratic ticket of North Carolina Senator John Edwards and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt.
April 1, 2005 saw what has become known as 'the Day the Laughter Died', when two brothers stormed Braniff Studios in California, killing eleven people, including South Park showrunners Matt Stone and Trey Parker, in an attack motivated by the foul-mouthed cartoon's previous depictions of the prophet Muhammad, as well as terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. The two brothers were later found to have been radicalized online, leading to some panic surrounding the internet's role in such attacks (social media never really progressed past Friendster). While there was no Columbia disaster, the space shuttle Atlantis disintegrated upon re-entry to Earth on July 4, 2005, killing all on board - the fact that such a tragedy occurred on Independence Day of all days was merely salting the wound.
*****
The assassination of former President George W. Bush was, in many ways, a perfect storm: on October 6, 2006, the ex-President was shot outside a hotel in Columbus, Ohio where he was due to give a speech on foreign policy. Security had been tight, although perhaps not as tight as it would have been had he currently been in office - after all, few had tried to assassinate a former President before. The assailant was subsequently identified as 43 year old Fort Wayne resident and Gulf War veteran Clyde Rutherford McClelland (b. November 22, 1963), better known to the press as Claw McClelland (a nickname he received after losing his left pinky and ring finger during combat).
Like President Bush, Claw McClelland had twin children, Kenneth and Maxine, and shot Bush on his daughter's (and what would have been his son's) twentieth birthday. Kenny McClelland had been killed in Iraq during a bombing raid in August the previous year, with his father holding President Bush primarily responsible for his death. Claw believed it was fate that had brought George Bush to his neighboring state on his late son's birthday, and long after his arrest, maintained that he was a patriot fulfilling God's plan (the fact he himself was born just a few hours before John F. Kennedy's assassination only further cemented these beliefs)
Bush was placed in an induced coma, and died six days later at 1:13 AM, on Friday, 13 October, 2006. A well-liked man in his hometown, Claw McClelland's crime came as an immense shock to his family and friends. His wife, Claudia (nee Kirkpatrick) McClelland, believed that her husband had been at work at the time of the shooting, and was unaware that he had in fact taken the bus to Columbus, carrying a concealed weapon.
She would later testify however, that as soon as she heard the news Bush was shot, she knew that her husband responsible. Claw McClelland was subsequently executed via lethal injection for his crime, and while George Bush had been a hugely controversial figure during his life, all sides of the political spectrum came out in support of him and his family. There has since been an international airport and a major baseball stadium named in his honor.
By virtue of the fact that the assassin survived to testify in court, there have been surprisingly few conspiracy theories surrounding Bush's assassination (some of the more novel suggesting it was Vice President Cheney getting his own back after being fired for the whole 'shooting a sheriff' thing). As with all tragedies, there was no shortage of tasteless jokes in the aftermath, with one shock jock evoking furor after citing McClelland's case as 'proof that disabled people can do anything - even assassinate a President!'.
McClelland's daughter, Maxine, struggled tremendously with her newfound infamy. The afternoon Bush was shot, she had been planning to return home from law school for a quiet celebration of her twentieth birthday. Maxine McClelland sadly took her own life on December 9, 2019, shortly after separating from her husband.
There were, thankfully, no Madrid train bombings, and the 7/7 attacks are successfully foiled by British intelligence services. There was however a bombing in London on 3 May, 2007, resulting in five fatalities, and dozens of injuries. The chief suspect, Jamal Abu Zikri, a British-born man of Syrian descent, was swiftly arrested based on dubious DNA evidence, and later committed suicide in his prison cell. This incident is widely remembered as a gross miscarriage of justice, and sparked numerous protests throughout the Muslim community. Zikri was posthumously exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing, and it was not until early 2010, nearly three years after the attacks, that the bomber was successfully identified.
While President Edwards enjoyed fairly high approval ratings throughout his first two years in office, this was (shockingly) not to last: in mid-2007, in the midst of the McClelland hearings, a 28 White House secretary named Jessica Twelvetrees (1979 - 2038) became pregnant, and claimed Edwards to be her child's father. Edwards initially denied these allegations, and Twelvetrees was subject to much public scrutiny, until the President reluctantly agreed to a DNA test, which ultimately came back positive. Edwards resigned the presidency on November 7, 2007, and his daughter, Zephyr Twelvetrees, was born two months later.
As the affair occurred when the President's wife, First Lady Elizabeth Edwards, was battling breast cancer, Edwards has gone down as one of the most despised Presidents in living memory. Zephyr Twelvetrees would later marry the wealthy Quebec-born politician Vernon Felix Tremblay (b. February 3, 2003), and is, ironically, currently serving as First Lady of the United States.
On June 4, 2008, a disgruntled software engineer named George St. John (b. 1955) crashed his private plane into an IRS building located in Texas. He had removed all additional seats in the plane, replacing them with additional fuel, in order to maximize the number of casualties. Over two dozen IRS employees were killed along with St. John himself, in what was (at that time) the deadliest act of domestic terrorism since the Oklahoma City bombing a decade previously.
St. John's suicide note, posted to the internet, detailed the engineer's long history of troubles with the IRS, citing Marvin Heemeyer of 'Killdozer' fame as his inspiration for the attack (indeed, it is believed he intentionally chose the date of June 4 in honor of Heemeyer's infamous rampage). Much like Heemeyer himself, George St. John has amassed a significant number of followers in later years, buying into their stories of one man's struggle against a corrupt system).
The same year, in late September, Great Britain experience a national day of mourning after Prince Harry was killed due to catastrophic engine failure during helicopter training in Afghanistan. Back in the United States, President Gephardt was voted out of office in November, losing to the Republican ticket of John McCain and Olympia Snowe, the country's first woman Vice President.
Late 2009 saw another, far deadlier terrorist attack involving aircraft: on December 25, a date remembered as Black Christmas, multiple planes travelling between the US and Europe were downed using liquid explosives designed as energy drinks. All in all, 911 people lost their lives on Black Christmas, and the wake of this tragedy saw further widespread patriotism in the United States (a constitutional amendment was passed in late 2010 banning flag desecration), and huge growth in anti-Muslim sentiment.
October 2010 saw a failed attempt at capturing terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, causing multiple American casualties (with the terrorist subsequently gloating of his near-miraculous escape in a video addressed to the American people). This blunder came less than eight months after the Black Christmas attacks, and President McCain's public image never fully recovered from the incident. Not helping matters was the ongoing recession (although not as severe as OTL's Great Recession), and in November, Paul Wellstone was elected, and was widely expected to serve as the country's 47th President.
Sadly, President McCain passed from a fatal stroke on January 14, 2013, with Olympia Snowe serving the remaining six days of his term. Snowe is the country's shortest-serving President, and as of 2050, remains the only woman to have held the office. Ironically, she was also the longest-lived President, dying on April 20 of this year at the age of 103, beating Jimmy Carter's record (who famously passed away on November 30, 2022, the same day as his wife).
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In light of the growing terrorism (both foreign and domestic) seen throughout the Awful Aughts, NAFTA's successor (and N'am-Pac's predecessor), the North American Economic and Security Community, was established early in Wellstone's term, the foundations having been laid by the McCain administration. It was around this time that Osama was (finally!) captured (unlike IOTL, there were photos this time round, although a small minority still believe they dressed a dummy in a turban and fake beard).
The 2010s also saw the rise of increasingly-sophisticated internet worms and viruses. Parasites such as Whiptail and the Clap, which reproduce through what has creatively been termed 'e-sexual reproduction', were a nuisance, but it would not be until the following decade that the first true viral ecosystems were confirmed, eventually rendering the internet almost unusable. The mid-90s to late aughts are generally considered the internet's golden age, with the silver age lasting from c. 2010 - 2030.
'Internet' has been regarded as a quaint, antiquated since the 2020s: up to the 2040s, 'onion' and 'metabase' became the more common terms. Since then, what we know as the internet has become known by the decidedly more accurate name of the 'Maelstrom'. Public bandwidth usage has been legally restricted since the Mercosur Incident of 2031.
Rick Santorum, who was elected along with his running mate Jeb Bush in 2016 and 2020, was the first American President since Clinton to win more than one term in office. Both Santorum's victories were highly controversial - indeed, he remains the only President to have lost the popular vote twice, and at 92 years old, is currently the oldest-living former President, following Olympia Snowe's passing in April.
The 2030s, often called the Wet Decade, brought about a series of widespread conflicts over access to clean water: at the time this conflict was often referred to as the Third World War, but since then, has become largely known as the Hydro Wars, or the H-Wars. The Hydro Wars saw the first usage of nuclear weaponry in almost a century, between Israel and Syria. Russia very nearly collapsed as a result of this conflict, and Japan has become the puppet state of a corporate syndicate. This era also saw the first major issues regarding Kudzu4, a genetically modified plant intended as one of several solutions to the ongoing climate catastrophe, with the plant now covering much of the North American continent.
There was no coronavirus pandemic, although 2038 saw a global outbreak of a highly infectious, asymptomatic strain of encephalitis, which is estimated to have killed between 50 and 80 million people worldwide. Roughly 70% of fatalities were otherwise healthy young adults between the ages of 21 and 34. Some notable fatalities include Jessica Twelvetrees, Claudia McClelland, and Prince William of the United Kingdom (his daughter, Queen Caroline, has served as Britain's monarch since 2044). Since 2038, masks, social distancing, and hand sanitizers have grown ever more commonplace in the west. The phrase 'gone the way of the handshake' has entered common vernacular, to describe something once common, since abandoned due to health and safety concerns.
The late 2030s through early 2040s saw the development of the first-generation smart gels (a.k.a. 'head cheese'), cultured neurons used primarily to firewall online worms and parasites. This year has already seen the first 'murder' of a smart gel by Canadian-born Christian fundamentalist Dylan Leblanc, who argued that their usage was, in his own words, 'desecrating to the human soul'. He was ultimately acquitted in this landmark case (ironically, another smart gel served on, which set the precedent that smart gels do not meet the necessary criteria to qualify for personhood. Public opinion against smart gels had been growing since 2042, when November 9 ('Black Box Sunday') saw 538 Londoners killed after a gel put in charge of a subway system neglected to turn on the ventilators in time.
This was one of many instances of Christian extremism in recent years, having grown significantly over the past few decades in response to humanity's increasing ecological woes. In mid-2009, outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins died in hospital after being stabbed by a fundamentalist named Oliver John Hillcrest, who blamed Dawkins for the 'permeating godlessness of modern civilization' (news of the victim's demise, however, was largely overshadowed by the death of Michael Jackson the same day).
In response to the growing energy crisis, the N'AmPac Grid Authority has constructed numerous deep sea geothermal stations along tectonic rifts, which are staffed by cybernetically-enhanced Rifters. Ordinary people tend to have a hard time keeping it together at such depths, so Rifter recruits are typically persons already used to bouts of intense psychological distress, ranging from hardened criminals to shell-shocked veterans to victims of long-term abuse. While there were no shortage of individuals meeting these criteria, in recent years, the Grid Authority has resorted to some rather unorthodox (not to mention highly illegal) means of producing Rifters, up to and include the implantation of false memories (although for the time being, this is kept carefully under wraps and away from the public eye).
The west coast, popularly known as the Strip, is inhabited by countless refugees (or fugies), where law and order is quickly breaking down, despite flocks of botflies coating the land's more troublesome communities with pacifying drugs. The region is fast becoming dominated by organized criminal syndicates, which (much like many megacorporations) ensure loyalty by GuiltTrip administration. Prior to Tremblay, the last three US presidents were Dennis Leopold Faulkner (b. November 5, 1974, and the first African-American President), Peyton Orville 'Poppy' Prelinger (b. August 12, 1977), and Keith Frances Chenoweth (b. March 9, 1984).
Fashion is odd: zebra/cheetah haircuts are in, as are golden xanthophyll tans. With gengineering increasingly common (although outlawed in many nations), 'Rifter chic' is a growing fad, and deep-sea tours are all the rage. The term 'TwenCen' has come into common usage, to describe ideas and attitudes now seen as antiquated. Virtual reality is a booming industry, from the vrcades of the 2010s to more modern, personalized headsets.
There is also a device known as the Sandman, which allow users to experience intense lucid dreams. Many regard Sandmans as superior to any VR systems ('dream addiction' is fast becoming a problem), although over usage has been known to lead to sleep paralysis, and nightmares far nastier than anything your brain would ordinarily come up with (the Sandman industry has faced a number of hefty lawsuits in recent years, after one or two older customers suffered nightmare-induced heart palpitations).
Most food these days is grown cheaply in labs - vatmeat, or veat, is generally regarded as inferior to the genuine article, with 'true' meat (or natmeat) considered a delicacy. Steve Jobs succumbed to his illness in the early aughts, and flipphones remained commonplace into the 2010s, although have since largely been supplanted with smartwatches that keep constant tabs on users' health.
Cancer-free 'saferettes' were a trend in the '10s and '20s, and exoskeletons are used in a number of professions, and have surpassed wheelchairs as the primary means of enabling mobility in disabled people (although thanks to gene editing, these too are on the way out). There are eyedrops which enable 20/20 vision in anyone sighted, making spectacles a thing of the past.
Public medbooths are found on most street corners, and are used to test for a wide variety of ailments, with in-person checkups largely a thing of the past. Mumps and measles have been eradicated. HIV and malaria are no longer a threat, although many new afflictions have rushed in to take their place (unprotected sex is MUCH rarer). Temperatures continue to rise, although there's recently been a cold snap (the so-called 'Long Winter') throughout the southern hemisphere due to the VEI-7 eruption at Lake Taupo in February of 2047.
The field of manned space travel advanced significantly quicker than OTL: there are a number of space hotels, and orbital vacations are a popular option for the (ever-shrinking) middle-class. Similarly, many nations maintain orbital particle canons, and the Outer Space Treaty is pretty much null and void. The Chinese have put a man on the Moon, and there are several lunar bases under construction. Interest in the planet Mars grew significantly after the popularization of the 'Big Splat' Hypothesis.
First posited in the late 2010s, this theory argued that all (known) terrestrial life originated with 'Martian Mike', an object that collided with Earth aeons ago, introducing the primordial soup that would lead to the first sponges, arthropods, dinosaurs, and eventually, the human species. It has since been discovered that the red planet did indeed host a complex underwater ecosystem prior to losing most of its atmosphere. All exploration of the extinct Martian biosphere has been through conducted robotic exploration - despite the efforts of a number of private companies, there have been no attempts at a manned mission yet.
Weird Martian cults are dime a dozen (the most prominent being the Children of Ares, responsible for one of America's largest mass murder-suicides since Jonestown), which teach that all humans are in fact the reincarnations of long-dead Martians. These are, of course, entirely pseudoscientific in nature - there's no evidence that indigenous Martian life ever made the jump to land, let alone complex brains - although popular sci-fi set involving intelligent Martians has enjoyed a massive resurgence.
For the time being, much of the world remains blissfully ignorant of the fact that while all known life may have originated on Mars, Earth also has its native life forms, far more alien and destructive than anything found in the fossilized seabeds of its planetary neighbor...
The year is 2050. Welcome to the future! Sea levels have risen to cataclysmic proportions, strange new antibiotic-resistant diseases crop up every 24 hours, swarms of botflies allow unprecedented levels of surveillance, and increasingly totalitarian governments keep their populations in check through pacifying drugs. And this is BEFORE shit hits the fan.
In similar vein to the Roaring Twenties and the Dirty Thirties, the 2000s decade is one embedded in the popular consciousness as the 'Awful Aughts' - an apt moniker, defined as the decade was by terrorism, political scandal, and environmental catastrophe, although many would argue that the past forty years haven't been a great better. This history diverges from our own c. 2002, the PoD being Paul Wellstone surviving his fatal plane crash.
2004 was a far crazier year than IOTL: on February 28, Dick Cheney was involved in a hunting accident, shooting 67 year old sheriff Roland Felton Quayle while participating in a quail hunt at a ranch in Riviera, Texas. Sheriff Quayle died from his injuries the following day (naturally, there was no shortage of jokes about the victim's name on late-night talk shows, and Bob Marley's 'I Shot the Sheriff' experienced a brief resurgence in popularity). Cheney resigned his position in early March, becoming the third Vice President in US history to do so, and was replaced by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (much to Hastert's chagrin).
A few months later, in early June, Marvin Heemeyer demolished over a dozen buildings in the city of Granby, Colorado, using a modified bulldozer (a.k.a. the 'Killdozer'). The vehicle in question never became trapped in a basement, instead causing dozens of fatalities, resulting in the authorization of an anti-tank missile strike. On August 31, the city of New Orleans was devastated by the category 5 storm, Hurricane Frances. Government response was harshly criticized, and Bush's approval ratings took a nosedive.
The final nail in the Bush administration's coffin came in late October, after it emerged that the Department of Homeland Security had been asked to raise the nation's terrorism threat level in the hopes of scaring undecided moderates into voting Republican. Bush and Frist were soundly defeated that November the Democratic ticket of North Carolina Senator John Edwards and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt.
April 1, 2005 saw what has become known as 'the Day the Laughter Died', when two brothers stormed Braniff Studios in California, killing eleven people, including South Park showrunners Matt Stone and Trey Parker, in an attack motivated by the foul-mouthed cartoon's previous depictions of the prophet Muhammad, as well as terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. The two brothers were later found to have been radicalized online, leading to some panic surrounding the internet's role in such attacks (social media never really progressed past Friendster). While there was no Columbia disaster, the space shuttle Atlantis disintegrated upon re-entry to Earth on July 4, 2005, killing all on board - the fact that such a tragedy occurred on Independence Day of all days was merely salting the wound.
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The assassination of former President George W. Bush was, in many ways, a perfect storm: on October 6, 2006, the ex-President was shot outside a hotel in Columbus, Ohio where he was due to give a speech on foreign policy. Security had been tight, although perhaps not as tight as it would have been had he currently been in office - after all, few had tried to assassinate a former President before. The assailant was subsequently identified as 43 year old Fort Wayne resident and Gulf War veteran Clyde Rutherford McClelland (b. November 22, 1963), better known to the press as Claw McClelland (a nickname he received after losing his left pinky and ring finger during combat).
Like President Bush, Claw McClelland had twin children, Kenneth and Maxine, and shot Bush on his daughter's (and what would have been his son's) twentieth birthday. Kenny McClelland had been killed in Iraq during a bombing raid in August the previous year, with his father holding President Bush primarily responsible for his death. Claw believed it was fate that had brought George Bush to his neighboring state on his late son's birthday, and long after his arrest, maintained that he was a patriot fulfilling God's plan (the fact he himself was born just a few hours before John F. Kennedy's assassination only further cemented these beliefs)
Bush was placed in an induced coma, and died six days later at 1:13 AM, on Friday, 13 October, 2006. A well-liked man in his hometown, Claw McClelland's crime came as an immense shock to his family and friends. His wife, Claudia (nee Kirkpatrick) McClelland, believed that her husband had been at work at the time of the shooting, and was unaware that he had in fact taken the bus to Columbus, carrying a concealed weapon.
She would later testify however, that as soon as she heard the news Bush was shot, she knew that her husband responsible. Claw McClelland was subsequently executed via lethal injection for his crime, and while George Bush had been a hugely controversial figure during his life, all sides of the political spectrum came out in support of him and his family. There has since been an international airport and a major baseball stadium named in his honor.
By virtue of the fact that the assassin survived to testify in court, there have been surprisingly few conspiracy theories surrounding Bush's assassination (some of the more novel suggesting it was Vice President Cheney getting his own back after being fired for the whole 'shooting a sheriff' thing). As with all tragedies, there was no shortage of tasteless jokes in the aftermath, with one shock jock evoking furor after citing McClelland's case as 'proof that disabled people can do anything - even assassinate a President!'.
McClelland's daughter, Maxine, struggled tremendously with her newfound infamy. The afternoon Bush was shot, she had been planning to return home from law school for a quiet celebration of her twentieth birthday. Maxine McClelland sadly took her own life on December 9, 2019, shortly after separating from her husband.
There were, thankfully, no Madrid train bombings, and the 7/7 attacks are successfully foiled by British intelligence services. There was however a bombing in London on 3 May, 2007, resulting in five fatalities, and dozens of injuries. The chief suspect, Jamal Abu Zikri, a British-born man of Syrian descent, was swiftly arrested based on dubious DNA evidence, and later committed suicide in his prison cell. This incident is widely remembered as a gross miscarriage of justice, and sparked numerous protests throughout the Muslim community. Zikri was posthumously exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing, and it was not until early 2010, nearly three years after the attacks, that the bomber was successfully identified.
While President Edwards enjoyed fairly high approval ratings throughout his first two years in office, this was (shockingly) not to last: in mid-2007, in the midst of the McClelland hearings, a 28 White House secretary named Jessica Twelvetrees (1979 - 2038) became pregnant, and claimed Edwards to be her child's father. Edwards initially denied these allegations, and Twelvetrees was subject to much public scrutiny, until the President reluctantly agreed to a DNA test, which ultimately came back positive. Edwards resigned the presidency on November 7, 2007, and his daughter, Zephyr Twelvetrees, was born two months later.
As the affair occurred when the President's wife, First Lady Elizabeth Edwards, was battling breast cancer, Edwards has gone down as one of the most despised Presidents in living memory. Zephyr Twelvetrees would later marry the wealthy Quebec-born politician Vernon Felix Tremblay (b. February 3, 2003), and is, ironically, currently serving as First Lady of the United States.
On June 4, 2008, a disgruntled software engineer named George St. John (b. 1955) crashed his private plane into an IRS building located in Texas. He had removed all additional seats in the plane, replacing them with additional fuel, in order to maximize the number of casualties. Over two dozen IRS employees were killed along with St. John himself, in what was (at that time) the deadliest act of domestic terrorism since the Oklahoma City bombing a decade previously.
St. John's suicide note, posted to the internet, detailed the engineer's long history of troubles with the IRS, citing Marvin Heemeyer of 'Killdozer' fame as his inspiration for the attack (indeed, it is believed he intentionally chose the date of June 4 in honor of Heemeyer's infamous rampage). Much like Heemeyer himself, George St. John has amassed a significant number of followers in later years, buying into their stories of one man's struggle against a corrupt system).
The same year, in late September, Great Britain experience a national day of mourning after Prince Harry was killed due to catastrophic engine failure during helicopter training in Afghanistan. Back in the United States, President Gephardt was voted out of office in November, losing to the Republican ticket of John McCain and Olympia Snowe, the country's first woman Vice President.
Late 2009 saw another, far deadlier terrorist attack involving aircraft: on December 25, a date remembered as Black Christmas, multiple planes travelling between the US and Europe were downed using liquid explosives designed as energy drinks. All in all, 911 people lost their lives on Black Christmas, and the wake of this tragedy saw further widespread patriotism in the United States (a constitutional amendment was passed in late 2010 banning flag desecration), and huge growth in anti-Muslim sentiment.
October 2010 saw a failed attempt at capturing terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, causing multiple American casualties (with the terrorist subsequently gloating of his near-miraculous escape in a video addressed to the American people). This blunder came less than eight months after the Black Christmas attacks, and President McCain's public image never fully recovered from the incident. Not helping matters was the ongoing recession (although not as severe as OTL's Great Recession), and in November, Paul Wellstone was elected, and was widely expected to serve as the country's 47th President.
Sadly, President McCain passed from a fatal stroke on January 14, 2013, with Olympia Snowe serving the remaining six days of his term. Snowe is the country's shortest-serving President, and as of 2050, remains the only woman to have held the office. Ironically, she was also the longest-lived President, dying on April 20 of this year at the age of 103, beating Jimmy Carter's record (who famously passed away on November 30, 2022, the same day as his wife).
*****
In light of the growing terrorism (both foreign and domestic) seen throughout the Awful Aughts, NAFTA's successor (and N'am-Pac's predecessor), the North American Economic and Security Community, was established early in Wellstone's term, the foundations having been laid by the McCain administration. It was around this time that Osama was (finally!) captured (unlike IOTL, there were photos this time round, although a small minority still believe they dressed a dummy in a turban and fake beard).
The 2010s also saw the rise of increasingly-sophisticated internet worms and viruses. Parasites such as Whiptail and the Clap, which reproduce through what has creatively been termed 'e-sexual reproduction', were a nuisance, but it would not be until the following decade that the first true viral ecosystems were confirmed, eventually rendering the internet almost unusable. The mid-90s to late aughts are generally considered the internet's golden age, with the silver age lasting from c. 2010 - 2030.
'Internet' has been regarded as a quaint, antiquated since the 2020s: up to the 2040s, 'onion' and 'metabase' became the more common terms. Since then, what we know as the internet has become known by the decidedly more accurate name of the 'Maelstrom'. Public bandwidth usage has been legally restricted since the Mercosur Incident of 2031.
Rick Santorum, who was elected along with his running mate Jeb Bush in 2016 and 2020, was the first American President since Clinton to win more than one term in office. Both Santorum's victories were highly controversial - indeed, he remains the only President to have lost the popular vote twice, and at 92 years old, is currently the oldest-living former President, following Olympia Snowe's passing in April.
The 2030s, often called the Wet Decade, brought about a series of widespread conflicts over access to clean water: at the time this conflict was often referred to as the Third World War, but since then, has become largely known as the Hydro Wars, or the H-Wars. The Hydro Wars saw the first usage of nuclear weaponry in almost a century, between Israel and Syria. Russia very nearly collapsed as a result of this conflict, and Japan has become the puppet state of a corporate syndicate. This era also saw the first major issues regarding Kudzu4, a genetically modified plant intended as one of several solutions to the ongoing climate catastrophe, with the plant now covering much of the North American continent.
There was no coronavirus pandemic, although 2038 saw a global outbreak of a highly infectious, asymptomatic strain of encephalitis, which is estimated to have killed between 50 and 80 million people worldwide. Roughly 70% of fatalities were otherwise healthy young adults between the ages of 21 and 34. Some notable fatalities include Jessica Twelvetrees, Claudia McClelland, and Prince William of the United Kingdom (his daughter, Queen Caroline, has served as Britain's monarch since 2044). Since 2038, masks, social distancing, and hand sanitizers have grown ever more commonplace in the west. The phrase 'gone the way of the handshake' has entered common vernacular, to describe something once common, since abandoned due to health and safety concerns.
The late 2030s through early 2040s saw the development of the first-generation smart gels (a.k.a. 'head cheese'), cultured neurons used primarily to firewall online worms and parasites. This year has already seen the first 'murder' of a smart gel by Canadian-born Christian fundamentalist Dylan Leblanc, who argued that their usage was, in his own words, 'desecrating to the human soul'. He was ultimately acquitted in this landmark case (ironically, another smart gel served on, which set the precedent that smart gels do not meet the necessary criteria to qualify for personhood. Public opinion against smart gels had been growing since 2042, when November 9 ('Black Box Sunday') saw 538 Londoners killed after a gel put in charge of a subway system neglected to turn on the ventilators in time.
This was one of many instances of Christian extremism in recent years, having grown significantly over the past few decades in response to humanity's increasing ecological woes. In mid-2009, outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins died in hospital after being stabbed by a fundamentalist named Oliver John Hillcrest, who blamed Dawkins for the 'permeating godlessness of modern civilization' (news of the victim's demise, however, was largely overshadowed by the death of Michael Jackson the same day).
In response to the growing energy crisis, the N'AmPac Grid Authority has constructed numerous deep sea geothermal stations along tectonic rifts, which are staffed by cybernetically-enhanced Rifters. Ordinary people tend to have a hard time keeping it together at such depths, so Rifter recruits are typically persons already used to bouts of intense psychological distress, ranging from hardened criminals to shell-shocked veterans to victims of long-term abuse. While there were no shortage of individuals meeting these criteria, in recent years, the Grid Authority has resorted to some rather unorthodox (not to mention highly illegal) means of producing Rifters, up to and include the implantation of false memories (although for the time being, this is kept carefully under wraps and away from the public eye).
The west coast, popularly known as the Strip, is inhabited by countless refugees (or fugies), where law and order is quickly breaking down, despite flocks of botflies coating the land's more troublesome communities with pacifying drugs. The region is fast becoming dominated by organized criminal syndicates, which (much like many megacorporations) ensure loyalty by GuiltTrip administration. Prior to Tremblay, the last three US presidents were Dennis Leopold Faulkner (b. November 5, 1974, and the first African-American President), Peyton Orville 'Poppy' Prelinger (b. August 12, 1977), and Keith Frances Chenoweth (b. March 9, 1984).
Fashion is odd: zebra/cheetah haircuts are in, as are golden xanthophyll tans. With gengineering increasingly common (although outlawed in many nations), 'Rifter chic' is a growing fad, and deep-sea tours are all the rage. The term 'TwenCen' has come into common usage, to describe ideas and attitudes now seen as antiquated. Virtual reality is a booming industry, from the vrcades of the 2010s to more modern, personalized headsets.
There is also a device known as the Sandman, which allow users to experience intense lucid dreams. Many regard Sandmans as superior to any VR systems ('dream addiction' is fast becoming a problem), although over usage has been known to lead to sleep paralysis, and nightmares far nastier than anything your brain would ordinarily come up with (the Sandman industry has faced a number of hefty lawsuits in recent years, after one or two older customers suffered nightmare-induced heart palpitations).
Most food these days is grown cheaply in labs - vatmeat, or veat, is generally regarded as inferior to the genuine article, with 'true' meat (or natmeat) considered a delicacy. Steve Jobs succumbed to his illness in the early aughts, and flipphones remained commonplace into the 2010s, although have since largely been supplanted with smartwatches that keep constant tabs on users' health.
Cancer-free 'saferettes' were a trend in the '10s and '20s, and exoskeletons are used in a number of professions, and have surpassed wheelchairs as the primary means of enabling mobility in disabled people (although thanks to gene editing, these too are on the way out). There are eyedrops which enable 20/20 vision in anyone sighted, making spectacles a thing of the past.
Public medbooths are found on most street corners, and are used to test for a wide variety of ailments, with in-person checkups largely a thing of the past. Mumps and measles have been eradicated. HIV and malaria are no longer a threat, although many new afflictions have rushed in to take their place (unprotected sex is MUCH rarer). Temperatures continue to rise, although there's recently been a cold snap (the so-called 'Long Winter') throughout the southern hemisphere due to the VEI-7 eruption at Lake Taupo in February of 2047.
The field of manned space travel advanced significantly quicker than OTL: there are a number of space hotels, and orbital vacations are a popular option for the (ever-shrinking) middle-class. Similarly, many nations maintain orbital particle canons, and the Outer Space Treaty is pretty much null and void. The Chinese have put a man on the Moon, and there are several lunar bases under construction. Interest in the planet Mars grew significantly after the popularization of the 'Big Splat' Hypothesis.
First posited in the late 2010s, this theory argued that all (known) terrestrial life originated with 'Martian Mike', an object that collided with Earth aeons ago, introducing the primordial soup that would lead to the first sponges, arthropods, dinosaurs, and eventually, the human species. It has since been discovered that the red planet did indeed host a complex underwater ecosystem prior to losing most of its atmosphere. All exploration of the extinct Martian biosphere has been through conducted robotic exploration - despite the efforts of a number of private companies, there have been no attempts at a manned mission yet.
Weird Martian cults are dime a dozen (the most prominent being the Children of Ares, responsible for one of America's largest mass murder-suicides since Jonestown), which teach that all humans are in fact the reincarnations of long-dead Martians. These are, of course, entirely pseudoscientific in nature - there's no evidence that indigenous Martian life ever made the jump to land, let alone complex brains - although popular sci-fi set involving intelligent Martians has enjoyed a massive resurgence.
For the time being, much of the world remains blissfully ignorant of the fact that while all known life may have originated on Mars, Earth also has its native life forms, far more alien and destructive than anything found in the fossilized seabeds of its planetary neighbor...
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To be fair, this does mean that English is preserved pretty well here. Very little change compared to the last thousand years, presuming the script is also ittl.
Political map of Venus and Mercury circa 2090.
Same setting as that map i couldn't post because of size. The space race kept going during the cold war and after the USSR's collapse the Second Cold War between the USA and China (and later on the Eurasian Union State) would speed up the process of cheapening sending massive amounts of material offworld, skyrocketing (heh) space colonization for many nations. Then in 2045 everyone started nuking eachother, Earth became inaccessible for offworlders due to Kessler syndrome and (as you can tell by that little snippet of text right below Venus) is not a particularily nice place to live in. I'm making a map of the entire solar system but I thought I'd post this to show ppl and hopefully revive this thread.
And to reply to this guy:
A lot. Earth became inaccessible and with it came technological stagnation and even regression in some places (Venus is one of the most advanced and well-off planets, aswell as the most populated one), so apart from bringing a very VHS-futurist aesthetic to the table it also meant the colonies were left to fend for themselves with whatever means they had. Colonies became colonizers and much more radical means of inhabitation were devised, from genetically engineering wind-carried plants that can photosynthetize Venusian air, building colonies with breathable "micro atmospheres" around them, to carting off tons of orbital mirrors to Ganymede's orbit, effectively turning the planet into a waterworld in about 40 years time, to transforming the massive manned mining rovers used in the lunar colonies into communities of lunar nomads serving both as private security contractors (mercenaries but with a fancy name) and private mining enterprises. It's suprising how much and how fast humans can make stuff when their life depends on it.
Aaand its done! Too large to post as a full image so I'll post both halfs here and a link to it on deviant art if you want some more writeups (they aren't done yet but they will be as soon as possible), DA horribly compressed the image but you can either download it for full res or see the two images I'll be posting down here. This is probably the biggest map I've ever done yet so any comments/questions/criticisms welcome!
Is it a mistake that the Ceto system and the Jade Rabbit Cylinders appear twice with two different political affiliations? In the latter case I could see it as two branches of the same project going their separate ways, but I figure the former must have been accidentally duplicated into the main Asteroid Belt.
Ah yeah, both mistakes. The Jade Rabbit was initially suppoused to be Huoxing's capital but then I settled on it being a wealthy station-state on the moon. As for Ceto I think it's a mistake from the original map yeah, the one in the Inner Ring shouldn't exist. Thanks for pointing that out!
This pales in comparison to @mate888 's fantastic scenario, but crossposting this from the Map Thread. 
But peace couldn't last forever, and a miscommunication in the Japanese military mistaking a civilian aircraft for a Chinese military presence in the Sea of Japan sparked a bionuclear war that would make Earth second to Mars, and permanently seal the planet off from intersystem politics. Not only was the nuclear armageddon far more complete and close to home than the Russo-American War, the American nanovirus NVL-13 (eventually just colloquially "nanos") tore through first China, then the world as it spun out of control. By the time fighting stopped and a team of Brazilian and former American scientists managed to find a mechanism to shut off the viral protocol, the world population sat at a mere 600 million, mostly concentrated in the global south, and Earth was declared a quarantine zone. Contact with the Solar System was sporadic and conciliatory at first, with skirmishes breaking out on the Moon and the threat of looming economic dominance from Mars, as Ceres' economy, so focused on Earth, nearly collapsed as it transitioned to shipping material to Mars' fleet construction. Nanos now lies dormant in inhabitants of Earth and their descendants, but its ability to spread has been put on hibernation. Even still, around a hundred years later, the impoverished nations of Earth have not been fully reintegrated into the interplanetary trade network, and has virtually no military to speak of other than massive anti-spacecraft structures meant to deter invasion.
Ever since the end of the Apocalypse Plague, the nations of Earth have been nominally governed by the Earth Confederation. The Confederation, an institution representing every globally-accepted state (excluding the melange of warlords and pariah states found in and around the wasteland), has very loose power domestically, serving mostly to mediate and prevent conflicts between member states, enforce freedom of travel, and enforce a singular currency, the Martian (Dollar) Credit. Member states include radically different values and political systems, from the liberal democratic Australia to the theocratic Medina State and even remnants/successor of the old USSR in western Siberia. Members vote in a World Congress for two officials: the Minister of Interplanetary Affairs (often referred to as the President internationally) and the Minister of Domestic Affairs (referred to as the Prime Minister internationally). Each nation gets one vote, regardless of population, and so the "parties" and coalitions are different nearly every election, each of which happen every five years. The government is then appointed by each leader, the President internationally-facing and concerned with trade, historically the more powerful of the two due to the importance of connections with the much wealthier Solar System, and the Prime Minister mostly a figurehead with little true power over global policy.
Pictured are, first, the member states of the Earth Confederation. Full member states— with voting rights— are in dark blue, while secondary member states— currently undergoing approval processes and connecting their infrastructure and militaries to the Confederation's systems— are shown in light blue. Secondary member states are a combination of pariahs and warlord states consolidated and stabilized to a proper degree for the Confederation's military chain of command to begin negotiations for entry.
Second is a map of the 2115 Interplanetary Affairs Ministerial Election, won by Dr. Zahur Ramadhani, a member of the Liberal International Party coalition and a popular compromise choice due to his popularity back home in Cameroon as a frontline military doctor and his role as a global advocate for minor tariffs, his rejection of military fleet-building, and enthusiastic reintegration of Earth into the solar economy.
The Earth Confederation in the Year 2115— Terra/Earth/Diqiu
After the Second World War, the Earth continued to burn. War raged hot as the Allies did the "unthinkable" and soon war broke out between the Allies and the Soviet Union. The war left the planet pockmarked with radiation, but it was mostly relegated to tactical battlefield lines, and technology surged and advanced even faster than in OTL. Europe and Russia were ruined land, and the world struggled with crop shortages due to sudden global cooling, but the rising powers of Japan, China, and, of course, the United States held untold dominance over the post-war peace, fighting in proxies for ideological dominance over the African continent and the Solar System beyond. Anglo-Japanese corporate ventures and Chinese mining settlements alike began to stretch as far as a sizeable American outpost at Ganymede.But peace couldn't last forever, and a miscommunication in the Japanese military mistaking a civilian aircraft for a Chinese military presence in the Sea of Japan sparked a bionuclear war that would make Earth second to Mars, and permanently seal the planet off from intersystem politics. Not only was the nuclear armageddon far more complete and close to home than the Russo-American War, the American nanovirus NVL-13 (eventually just colloquially "nanos") tore through first China, then the world as it spun out of control. By the time fighting stopped and a team of Brazilian and former American scientists managed to find a mechanism to shut off the viral protocol, the world population sat at a mere 600 million, mostly concentrated in the global south, and Earth was declared a quarantine zone. Contact with the Solar System was sporadic and conciliatory at first, with skirmishes breaking out on the Moon and the threat of looming economic dominance from Mars, as Ceres' economy, so focused on Earth, nearly collapsed as it transitioned to shipping material to Mars' fleet construction. Nanos now lies dormant in inhabitants of Earth and their descendants, but its ability to spread has been put on hibernation. Even still, around a hundred years later, the impoverished nations of Earth have not been fully reintegrated into the interplanetary trade network, and has virtually no military to speak of other than massive anti-spacecraft structures meant to deter invasion.
Ever since the end of the Apocalypse Plague, the nations of Earth have been nominally governed by the Earth Confederation. The Confederation, an institution representing every globally-accepted state (excluding the melange of warlords and pariah states found in and around the wasteland), has very loose power domestically, serving mostly to mediate and prevent conflicts between member states, enforce freedom of travel, and enforce a singular currency, the Martian (Dollar) Credit. Member states include radically different values and political systems, from the liberal democratic Australia to the theocratic Medina State and even remnants/successor of the old USSR in western Siberia. Members vote in a World Congress for two officials: the Minister of Interplanetary Affairs (often referred to as the President internationally) and the Minister of Domestic Affairs (referred to as the Prime Minister internationally). Each nation gets one vote, regardless of population, and so the "parties" and coalitions are different nearly every election, each of which happen every five years. The government is then appointed by each leader, the President internationally-facing and concerned with trade, historically the more powerful of the two due to the importance of connections with the much wealthier Solar System, and the Prime Minister mostly a figurehead with little true power over global policy.
Pictured are, first, the member states of the Earth Confederation. Full member states— with voting rights— are in dark blue, while secondary member states— currently undergoing approval processes and connecting their infrastructure and militaries to the Confederation's systems— are shown in light blue. Secondary member states are a combination of pariahs and warlord states consolidated and stabilized to a proper degree for the Confederation's military chain of command to begin negotiations for entry.
Second is a map of the 2115 Interplanetary Affairs Ministerial Election, won by Dr. Zahur Ramadhani, a member of the Liberal International Party coalition and a popular compromise choice due to his popularity back home in Cameroon as a frontline military doctor and his role as a global advocate for minor tariffs, his rejection of military fleet-building, and enthusiastic reintegration of Earth into the solar economy.