Map Thread XIX

[Dr. Doom]

Perhaps go further back to increase possibility. Maybe a successful Indian Stream or Rough and Ready?

So I wanted to stay away from that for now because my focus is on the economic-political currents of the near past and future. If I were to bring in 1800s or 1700s PODs, that would mean the work becomes entirely different. It would also mean I have to sacrifice depth in favor of breadth.

I’ve always been interested in the alt history potential of a world where Fukuyama was right about the end of history

I have a "1990s Punk" WIP where I explore this concept. Basically what happens is the "Empire of Liberty" (liberal-democratic American sphere) spans throughout North America and East Asia. This includes a mainland-China successor state that arose after the PRC collapsed to factional conflict and external influence.

There are challengers to the American-dominated order, but they take the form of localized potentates and conspiracies. Eg, one of the "villains" in my 1990s Punk map is the Harbin Pact, a well-armed, Manchuria-led cabal of Russian/Chinese successor states whose goal is to use missiles to interdict Arctic Ocean shipping (global warming has created an actual Northwest Passage!) and hold the industrial world hostage.

But none of America's challengers take the form of civilizational contenders like the USSR or PRC, and none of them have any larger, legitimizing ideology ("greed and violence" is not an ideology.)

 

[TapReflex]

The start of my Many Americas series, done in the Equal Earth projection. My goal is to generate a large number of unique, semi-realistic successor states to America. The POD is always after 1945, and the current year is in the late 2000s / early 2100s.

That's about it for now, but more American successors are coming! Let me know if you guys have any ideas.

Gotta remember to add the non-48, maybe a successor in the Pacific Islands, Puerto Rico, or Alaska

 

[Mal-3]

Here's a project I knocked out over the last couple of days inspired by @Daeres' Crumpleverse maps. This map in particular was developed for my gonzo Star Trek mashup project, the important bits of which can be found in my signature. I'd add more words here but honestly the damn thing's got enough words on it as it is, so I think I'll let it speak for itself:

 

[Ten Thousand Red Lakes]

Ozymandias​

On every level, Ubuso is a mystery.


Seen from orbit, it looks inexplicably alien, a dull brown supercontinent which wraps around burning red seas, water and land so intermixed that there seems hardly a square mile that is not on the shore.

Ubuso is the fourth planet around a dull red supergiant only a billion years younger than the universe. Ubuso, only a shade larger than Mars and far older, has been tectonically dead for eons, the old cryovolcanoes long since dead.


Yet the topography resembles a surrealist dream more than a dead world. Why?


If you stepped onto the surface on the equator at high noon unprotected, you would freeze to death. Ubuso is a terribly cold world.


Yet if you were to survive, you could see rivers of ethane flowing from low mountains made of nearly pure water ice to seas filled with life.


Life is why we are here. Life is why anyone has bothered to notice this world, why it has a name instead of a number. Life is why Ubuso is such a mystery, because life should not be here.


Fifty million years ago, Ubuso was covered entirely in glaciers of ethane and methane. Fifty million years ago, as far as anyone can tell, there was nothing alive on the entire world. Now, there is, in stunning numbers and diversity, a world filled creatures inexplicably complex. It seems that given another fifty million years, that which lives in the hazy red seas may walk onto the land and reach for the stars.


They won’t, though. In eleven million years, the ever brightening sun will boil off the seas at perihelion. All of Ubuso will swelter under a pressure cooker atmosphere until the frozen mountains melt and the mantle is exposed to the dying giant. Everything on Ubuso is doomed, and very soon.

 

[Godot]

snip

Awesome map, but I wanted to let you know that your signature isn't showing up. I really want to learn more about this universe, so be sure to set up that signature you mention soon!

 

[KolyenuKS]

Remember that Post ww3 map of New Mexico in map thread 18? Here's Arizona

 

[Shaymin0000]

The Aum Movement is very aaaaaaaaaa.

I assume that this is a very different beast to the Aum Shinrikyo of our world.

They have decent PR and a generally positive public perception (better than OTL Scientology, despite still being labeled a "funny cult"), but there's something strange going on with them, and Asahara is supposedly planning something big to celebrate AM winning a (state-level) seat in the midterms.
take that how you will

 

[Alex1guy]

Here's a project I knocked out over the last couple of days inspired by @Daeres' Crumpleverse maps. This map in particular was developed for my gonzo Star Trek mashup project, the important bits of which can be found in my signature. I'd add more words here but honestly the damn thing's got enough words on it as it is, so I think I'll let it speak for itself:

​

This is so cool

 

[Mr. Bubbles]

Here we have Europe and parts of the middle east and africa from Chester A. Arthur's For All Time, circa 1960.

 

[GauchoBadger]

View attachment 470900
Here we have Europe and parts of the middle east and africa from Chester A. Arthur's For All Time, circa 1960.

That Bulgarian possession in northwestern Anatolia offends me. Deeply. I hate it.

 

[Mr. Bubbles]

That Bulgarian possession in northwestern Anatolia offends me. Deeply. I hate it.

The Soviets gave it to them after they invaded Turkey. Everything west of 30th meridian and north of the 39th parallel aside from Istanbul, according to the story.

 

[Charlie950]

Here's a project I knocked out over the last couple of days inspired by @Daeres' Crumpleverse maps. This map in particular was developed for my gonzo Star Trek mashup project, the important bits of which can be found in my signature. I'd add more words here but honestly the damn thing's got enough words on it as it is, so I think I'll let it speak for itself:

​

>Ares III incident

Love the The Martian reference

 

[Betelgeuse]

View attachment 470808
The United American Socialist Republics from a TL I've been working on, several POD's resulting in a 2nd Revolution and civil war in 1968, The various republics are roughly based on the zones of control of the various groups that were victorious in the 2nd civil war. Feel free to ask any questions, though I haven't quite figured it all out.

The only thing I don't understand is number 7. Native Americans would be an absolutely minuscule minority. How could they hold on to any kind of political power?

 

[GauchoBadger]

The Soviets gave it to them after they invaded Turkey. Everything west of 30th meridian and north of the 39th parallel aside from Istanbul, according to the story.

I know, it's the author's choice, but... couldn't they at least have made the border at least a little more curvy and wrinkly? "Not drawing straight border lines through irregular and/or well-populated terrain" seems to be one of the Ten Commandments of Alternate History, last i heard.

 

[Etruscan-enthusiast35]

THE CHRISTIAN WORLD IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 381

 

[GDIS Pathe]

That Bulgarian possession in northwestern Anatolia offends me. Deeply. I hate it.

seconded

 

[BrobDingnag]

Weaknesses: Height

There’s a whole slew of people who find that endearing. Something about pancakes and such.

...a dull red supergiant only a billion years younger than the universe.

Unless your story is set only a billion years after the Universe was created, this doesn’t work. You mean a red dwarf. Giants don’t last very long; some supergiants only in the hundreds of thousands of years, depending on their mass. It’s dwarfs that last up to trillions of years. Which means…

In eleven million years, the ever brightening sun will boil off the seas at perihelion.

This part of your story will have to change.

 

[Ten Thousand Red Lakes]

Unless your story is set only a billion years after the Universe was created, this doesn’t work. You mean a red dwarf. Supergiants don’t last very long. It’s dwarfs that last billions of years. Which means…

This part of your story will have to change.

Dude, I'm an Astronomy PhD. I know how stars work. Ubuso's star (Kuta), is a roughly solar mass star that formed ~12.7 billion years ago and is currently nearing the helium flash. Ubuso is the fourth planet, orbiting somewhat beyond where Pluto would be in our own solar system, far enough out that even Kuta's present brightness has only warmed it to around ~135 degrees Kelvin, squarely in the middle of Ethane's range of liquidity.

In 14 million years, Kuta will hit the helium flash and reach peak brightness (until the AGB). Three million years before that, it will warm Ubuso sufficiently that the ethane seas start boiling off. The atmosphere, already about five times denser than Earth, will become about forty times denser than Earth's, nearly Venusian in thickness. At 100,000 years before the helium flash, the surface temperature will near 350 K, and hotter at the equator, quickly boiling off the water oceans and turning it into a gas dwarf.

 

[BrobDingnag]

a roughly solar mass star that formed ~12.7 billion years ago and is currently nearing the helium flash.

So how did a 1M☉ star become a supergiant? The lifespan makes sense now, but it’s not going to be more than a class III.

orbiting somewhat beyond where Pluto would be in our own solar system

Oh, that’s fine, of course. Regardless of the stellar life cycle, putting it far enough away to be warmed only at the end thereof is easy as pie. I remember reading long ago about the potential re-warming of Mars (and perhaps even the Galileans) by the increased heat output before the eventual expansion of the Sun. I’m fascinated by the rest of what you wrote, just hung up on the supergiant foible. Ethane life, huh? I like it. Did you ever read the thread here, years ago, by the guy who came up with a potential mechanism for life using fluorocarbons? He even mapped the “amino acid” analogues, I think…

 

[Ten Thousand Red Lakes]

So how did a 1M☉ star become a supergiant? The lifespan makes sense now, but it’s not going to be more than a class III.

Oh, that’s fine, of course. Regardless of the stellar life cycle, putting it far enough away to be warmed only at the end thereof is easy as pie. I remember reading long ago about the potential re-warming of Mars (and perhaps even the Galileans) by the increased heat output before the eventual expansion of the Sun. I’m fascinated by the rest of what you wrote, just hung up on the supergiant foible. Ethane life, huh? I like it. Did you ever read the thread here, years ago, by the guy who came up with a potential mechanism for life using fluorocarbons? He even mapped the “amino acid” analogues, I think…

It's a K7Ib star. A regular giant would be around 40-60 times the luminosity of the sun (see Pollux), while Kuta is several hundred times brighter than Sol.

I'm new enough here to not have read that thread, sadly. I do have a general idea for the internal chemistry of life on Ubuso, but it's not quite that complicated, given how young it is.