The Chechens would certainly take advantage of the post-nuclear chaos! The TL is set in 2019 A.D. so most of the world is still fighting over resources and control of whatever land is still fertile and life sustaining. Basically it's on the 'Protect and Survive' scale of AH nuclear apocalypses, in comparison to a 1983: Doomsday-esque cosy catastrophe.
Time to put all of the experience from them Doomsday-verse fics to good use. It's going to be in the style of a journal entry, written by one not-so-happy Royal Navy officer...
ISIS would also take advantage of the sudden loss of Russo-American support in the ME too...
The Chechens would certainly take advantage of the post-nuclear chaos! The TL is set in 2019 A.D. so most of the world is still fighting over resources and control of whatever land is still fertile and life sustaining. Basically it's on the 'Protect and Survive' scale of AH nuclear apocalypses, in comparison to a 1983: Doomsday-esque cosy catastrophe.
Time to put all of the experience from them Doomsday-verse fics to good use. It's going to be in the style of a journal entry, written by one not-so-happy Royal Navy officer...
ISIS would also take advantage of the sudden loss of Russo-American support in the ME too...
The eastern borders are kind of arbitrary; they're more intended to denote areas of heavy settlement rather than everything they have nominal control over. (Also, I realized a little late in the TL that I was sticking too closely to the English claim line on the 1700 basemap that I modified to make the Worlda map.)
The in-universe explanation is that there are scattered settlements in the Ohio Valley, but there aren't enough of them to really count as any particular nation's territory. The rush for new land has mostly gone north and south rather than west ITTL, because Quebec was conquered much earlier and Spanish East Florida was also taken, although they got some of it back later on.
I've seen a number of maps in which northern Yemen is part of a Greater Saudi Arabia, but given that it's a (relatively) densely populated area inhabited mostly by Shi'as quite hostile to Wahabism, mountainous, poor, and hard to impose unified control on for very long, would they want to conquer it, and even if they did, in the era before they had gobs of oil money to spend on their military and police, would they be able to hold onto it? Is this just a matter of aesthetics? (A unified Arabian peninsula with an independent Yemen just stuck on there doesn't look so good, I suppose...)
I've seen a number of maps in which northern Yemen is part of a Greater Saudi Arabia, but given that it's a (relatively) densely populated area inhabited mostly by Shi'as quite hostile to Wahabism, mountainous, poor, and hard to impose unified control on for very long, would they want to conquer it, and even if they did, in the era before they had gobs of oil money to spend on their military and police, would they be able to hold onto it? Is this just a matter of aesthetics? (A unified Arabian peninsula with an independent Yemen just stuck on there doesn't look so good, I suppose...)
I've seen a number of maps in which northern Yemen is part of a Greater Saudi Arabia, but given that it's a (relatively) densely populated area inhabited mostly by Shi'as quite hostile to Wahabism, mountainous, poor, and hard to impose unified control on for very long, would they want to conquer it, and even if they did, in the era before they had gobs of oil money to spend on their military and police, would they be able to hold onto it? Is this just a matter of aesthetics? (A unified Arabian peninsula with an independent Yemen just stuck on there doesn't look so good, I suppose...)
I think a lot of people also don't realize how many people Yemen has had for quite some time. I think the natural tendency is to assume it's like Oman or the UAE or Qatar with very few people rather than a country that, in the modern day, has close to as many people as Saudi Arabia. So I imagine they simply assume it'd be a small amount of people to swallow up instead of Germany trying to swallow France.
Guys, i've been looking for a map focused on a german-occupied Crete after WWI, but can't seem to find it. It's in Map Thread XV, IIRC.
Could somebody help me find it? That map's been itching on my mind for quite a while.
"The current situation in the south-eastern half of the Russo-Ukrainian border can be described as a mixture of roving nomads, heavily fortified city-states and organised, highly militarised states that are descended from Russian naval assets. The key exception to this is the Azov Republic, a neo-fascist state that formed mere weeks after the Exchange. Records have indicated that in the initial confusion from the strikes, the infamously far-right leaning Azov Battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard stormed their way through the two nascent Russian-backed warlord states in Donetsk and Luhansk and destroyed both factions after a few months of offensive combat, shredding the poorly-organised groups to nothing but a roving mob of bandits who tried to make the trek east, through the still-hazardous Russian wastelands. The new republic has quickly morphed into something akin to a miniature Slavic version of the Third Reich, wherein the ruling class of the Azov Battalion’s generals have taken to exterminating any non-Orthodox citizens and enslaving the rest to work in the farmland. Although it must be noted that said farmland has since been contaminated by the nuclear strikes near the Sea of Azov and the Dnieper River. Those that have escaped the fledgling state are forced to wander the wastes. Some have now turned to banditry and go about attacking any supply caravans they can find. This region is currently of no importance to HM’s Gov’t, but the expansionist goals of the Azov State are to be noted and delivered to the War Room in Plymouth ASAP."
--
-- CLASSIFIED AT THE REQUEST OF THE ROYAL NAVY --
An excerpt from the journal of Sub-Lieutenant M. -REDACTED- Spencer -REDACTED -REDACTED- Viscount of -REDACTED-.
March 6th, 2019.
Sea of Azov, former Russo-Ukrainian Maritime Border.
It’s nearly been five years since everything went to buggery… It’s also nearly been a year since I went from that cushy, well-paying UN desk job to the cramped confines of a Royal Navy submarine. But at least I’m still on the Civil List, despite my pay being docked significantly. Crew morale seems to be on the lower end of things lately and shows few signs of improving. That taped message from good King Charlie mentions some bollocks about how we’re out on some grand mission to reconnect the world… Half the crew calls bullshit, while the rest of us are using it as the last scrap of hope they have left…
As far as I’m concerned, we’re on a mission. But to where?
March 8th, 2019.
We’ve had another suicide. Some poor Sikh bloke couldn’t take it anymore and decided to paint one of the shower cubicles with his brains. Now there are plenty of rumours flying about of some scrambled transmissions coming from as far as India, Pakistan or even China... Our CO and Comms officers have denied all that due to the amount of shite that’s still in the atmosphere, even a good five years post-Exchange. We’ve only received garbled signals from as far as Switzerland and the Portuguese…
March 12th, 2019.
Our operations in the Sea of Azov are going quite well. We’ve sent a few landing parties onto the coast and have found nothing but chaos. There are reports of an organised neo-Nazi state in the former Donetsk province, but nobody is going to touch that place without a fully armed tank battalion…
There are also rumours of a mutiny amongst the crew… I’m staying out of it. I pledged my loyalty to King and Country the moment I was conscripted into this mess… But at least Dad got his wish, his only son now carries on the family tradition of sailing the seven seas…
March 13th, 2019.
I’ve just received news from the estate… Dad died in the early hours of the morning from radiation sickness. I’m now an Earl, the sole heir to an empire of dust and broken imperial dreams. There are more rumours this time, mostly of a race war in South Africa. Dear God, I hope my relations in Port ‘Liz are ok… The Afrikaners are nothing but a stubborn bunch…
Cousin Frankie remains missing. As does my wife…
March 15th, 2019.
That mutiny I mentioned… It failed, spectacularly. Our CO took the men out onto the coastline and shot them, personally. I honestly can’t blame them for revolting like that, but they took the wrong course of action. They had no support apart from the most suicidal members of our crew.
Keep Calm and Carry On are our new orders…
March 17th, 2019.
New orders have come in from Portsmouth. We’re to return to port and receive more men, supplies and begin the official ‘Downgrade Policy’ in earnest. We’re supposed to strip down most of our non-essential equipment to a 1980’s-level of technology until we can get our manufacturing capacity back. That means tapes, old satellite phones and terrible haircuts. Yay.
Maybe we can dig up ‘ol Maggie Thatcher while we’re at it… She knew how to run this blasted place.
I was going to keep this to my own thread, since I haven't given it a write-up yet, but I'm very proud of this map (not so much the legend). It's the map for my favorite TV show, Syfy's Defiance, in the year 2046. A world in which humanity and an alliance of alien refugees wound up nearly destroying each other in the Pale Wars (2021-2032), before their ships in orbit crashed in a mysterious event called Arkfall, the terraforming engines aboard those ships warping most of the Earth into something unrecognizable, in some places changing the very geography of Earth. Many died, but with the crippling of the Votans and the already weak position of humanity, a ceasefire was called.
In the modern day, the Votans have liberalized, growing more accepting of humanity, and like the irathients, sensoths and liberata before them, many in the VoCol are eagerly suggesting that humans be accepted as yet another species with the Votanis Collective, an idea which causes great controversy between traditionalists, whose extremists still believe that human existence on Earth is an unnatural lie, and whose moderates aren't that much better, and the liberals suggesting it. Sulos, the capital of the Votanis Collective, a constructed city built with Votan super-science in the Amazon Jungle, has even begun to allow loyal Brazilian collaborators to visit, ending a long period of isolation. Endless brush wars in Africa prove a constant annoyance, however, and the violent revolts against Votan occupation help traditionalist arguments.
Meanwhile, humanity struggles to get back on its feet. The mighty Earth Republic, an alliance of worldwide militaries twenty years in the making before the Pale Wars began, has been shattered by geographical realities, and while wars between human powers are virtually nonexistent, there are growing sets of rivalries. It's been fourteen years since the Pale War Armistice was called between humanity and the Votans, and many are beginning to forget the threat that the Votans once posed, especially with the reconciliatory attitudes their leadership has made towards the rest of the world. Already, Jakarta and Antalya are beginning to reach out for improved relations with their former enemy, while New York and Lodz turn to issues closer to home, like the Storm Divide and the maglev, or the Rhone ark-brain and the Russian Wastes. There are some, however, who will never forget the injustice the Votans commit merely by existing. Chonqqing and Omsk don't like each other very much, but they like the Votans even less.
The world, however, is not focused on large scale combat. Hundreds of millions of Votans and billions of humans died in the Pale Wars, and there are still wide swathes of the world that are uninhabitable thanks to the aforementioned conflict, the most devastating in any species' recorded history. There is hope that the reconciliatory attitudes from the Votans are genuine, that humans will wind up merely the most populous of the species in the Votanis Collective, that the devastation unchecked xenoforming inflicted on Earth will be undone through steady hard work, and that the VC will one day move to the stars, maybe even being renamed the Sol Collective, as apparently unoriginal integrationists opine. Others say that there is no room for more than one species (or one alliance of species) on the planet Earth, and that it will inevitably come to blows.
I suspect that if this is a full blown, northern hemisphere-wrecking atomic war, there probably would be even more atomic strikes than shown on the map. Russia still has almost 2000 immediately usable atomic warheads, the US close to 1500. (If they nuked Simferopol, Kerch probably gets it too. Not to mention Taganrog).
I suspect that if this is a full blown, northern hemisphere-wrecking atomic war, there probably would be even more atomic strikes than shown on the map. Russia still has almost 2000 immediately usable atomic warheads, the US close to 1500. (If they nuked Simferopol, Kerch probably gets it too. Not to mention Taganrog).
It's at times like this I regret not having cable TV.
What's the status of Ghana, South Africa, Chile? Collaborators?
(The TV scenario doesn't entirely make sense as described: it would work better if the various races inhabited a star cluster rather than a single solar system, and a supernova made the whole area uninhabitable).
Edit: the sentence "an alliance of alien refugees and humanity wound up nearly destroying each other" would be more immediately comprehensible as "humanity and an alliance of alien refugees wound up nearly destroying each other": when I read it, I momentarily thought that this was about an alliance of humans and aliens which had fallen apart.
It's at times like this I regret not having cable TV.
What's the status of Ghana, South Africa, Chile? Collaborators?
(The TV scenario doesn't entirely make sense as described: it would work better if the various races inhabited a star cluster rather than a single solar system, and a supernova made the whole area uninhabitable).
If you want to see it, but don't mind piracy, PM me.
Collaborationist regimes, yes. Ghana in particular is trying to adapt itself to Votan culture.
The way I explain this in the draft is that a progenitor species (not the omecs, a different one) that decided it would be interesting to see what would happen when you put around six or seven sapient species in the same solar system, and they wound up being surprised at how peaceful it wound up being. (Until Earth, anyway.) There's a group of indogenes that has discovered proof of their existence in the Canadian prairie.
(The Syfy Defiance site is broken, show having been cancelled two years ago, but there was Word of God saying this on there. It sucks, I have screenshots of everything but the Canada segment.
In the wake of Arkfall, travel across North America was severely hampered by the chaotic micro-climates that engulfed the middle of the continent. Rather than attempt to cross the deadly Storm Divide, some people opted to go north, hoping that travel across the once picturesque Canadian landscape would prove more pleasant. What they found there was even worse. An improbable alliance of former Biomen and Gulanee soldiers have overrun the city of Vancouver and declared British Columbia to be their own personal empire. The ravaged provinces of Ontario and Quebec are a lawless frontier where raiders and highwaymen prowl the broken roads between fortress towns too proud to bend the knee to the Earth Republic. And explorers quickly learned to avoid the Northwest Territories, where giant mutated beasts stalk the terraformed landscape. Central Canada is also home to one of the most pristine recreations of a Votan ecosystem outside of the Sulos colony. A region of Indogene crystal-rock formations stretches from Alberta to Saskatchewan – dubbed the Canadian Desert. No animal can survive in this brittle and desolate region, save for a few dangerous species of alien creatures indigenous to the planet Daribo in the Votanis System. Upon hearing about these wonders, Indogene scientists made a pilgrimage to see it for themselves. They discovered a crashed Ark near the ruins of Edmonton, and went in to explore. No one knows what they found inside that ship, but the Indogenes immediately erected a barrier around it, threatening to kill anyone who came within miles of their find. These rogue Indogenes have been working around the clock on the ship ever since. For what purpose, no one knows.)
Edit: the sentence "an alliance of alien refugees and humanity wound up nearly destroying each other" would be more immediately comprehensible as "humanity and an alliance of alien refugees wound up nearly destroying each other": when I read it, I momentarily thought that this was about an alliance of humans and aliens which had fallen apart.
93 cities above 200K... Yeah, not pretty. European Russia would probably look like what it did when the Mongols came across any form of resistance...
The UK has fared somewhat better with the survival of some cities on the southern coast. NI is a completely different story. Belfast made it... But the ghost of Ian Paisley still screams a haunting "NEVEEERRR!"
Here's a hint for the next map~
"Vort gamle Danmark skal bestå, så længe bøgen spejler sin top i bølgen blå..."
