Map Thread XVII
- Thread starter Upvoteanthology
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So just how did the Great War end? (Besides the collapses of A-H and the Ottomans.)
The UK still has Brittany. France must hate them as much as the Germans?
Does the UK regret not joining with Germany against France?
So how does Palestine look like now under the English?
Doesn't China also look to reclaim Taiwan?
How soon will the next war break out?
Deleted member 103950
I posted a link to the deviant art account I found itvon.
Skallagrim
Banned
Cool follow-up!
-- I had expected Germany to do better, honestly-- but the collapse of one's allies will take a toll, I suppose.
-- What really surprises me is that the British Empire has fallen apart so spectacularly, even though Britain basically sat out the war. In OTL, it was the ravages of the Great War that really doomed the empire. In this ATL, Britain should really be able to keep Australia, South Africa etc. on board, albeit in a very autonomous capacity. The fact that India is striiring is also a bit perplexing, again going by OTL. With no Great War-related destruction impairing Britain, keeping control of India should really be a bit easier. In OTL, the First World War hastened Indian independence, while the Second World War interrupted the process and led to a greater mess. With Britain rather uninvolved in the Great War of this ATL, I'd expect Indian independence to be a delayed process (by a decade or so), and - barring a Second Great War involving Britain - a process that can be more neatly guided.
-- Finally... American Shanghai sounds awesome. Like OTL Shanghai pre-Japanese invasion, but on steroids.
Redcoat
Banned
I don't, so this is good to know for me. I know a lot more about the South then the Northeastern areas. Like I do know that the Naga for example have their identity off of being Christian, etc. Here missionaries are successful enough to have a much larger Christian population in TTL Greater Assam. Well I'm guessing they won't be named Greater Assam now.
The German-Russian and German-French fronts largely end in a stalemate, but the two-front war and the loss of her major allies makes Germany throw in the towel. Germany annexes Austria, and parcels off the former Austro-Hungarian Empire during the peace process. Germany and the Netherlands cede some Francophone regions to France(parts of Belgium and German Lorraine) and have to pay some reparations to various powers, but nowhere on the scale of the Treaty of Versailles.
The Brittany issue has definitely soured the UK-France relationship. France has been openly threatening to annex Brittany in the last few years.
The UK regrets not being more proactive in the war, but still views the situation as acceptable in the short term. The Eastern Europe situation is viewed as a larger problem, because the Russian juggernaut is a huge threat to continental multipolarity.
Palestine is a British Dominion that is seeing an influx of settlers (both Jews and Gentiles) and efforts by missionaries to Christianize the population. Local Marionites, Alawites, and other minorities are used as collaborators and are given special privileges to entice them to work with the British. The Arabs are chafing under this regime, and there's a serious threat of a revolt.
Taiwan and Hainan are viewed as long-term goals due to the fact that both islands are held by different European powers (which could cause an anti-China alliance to form). China doesn't really have a navy as well, which means that invading Taiwan (where the Americans have a big naval base) would be a very costly endeavor at this point in time. Thus, China is focused on the immediately conquerable mainland regions in the north, west, and southwest.
About a year and a half with the Argentinian invasion of Chile (consider it a combination of the Spanish Civil War and the Anschluss issues as sort of prelude conflicts to wider wars, especially when Argentina starts getting some foreign backing).
Thank you!
The loss of her allies in some ways gave the Germans a way out. Because they annexed Austria, they were able to use various parts of Austria-Hungary as bartering chips to play some of the enemy powers off each other during the peace process.
Technically speaking, the independence movement has been delayed by a decade and a half. Remember that it's already 1934, and in my mind the independence movement is still in its infancy. There's no real leadership or defined goals yet, only sporadic chafing over certain British policies. The UK is worried about the long-term, though. And South Africa is still a problem child for the Brits, which will have repercussions during decolonization.
That's a good way to describe American Shanghai.
So France and Russia lost the peace, and didn't even win the War. Good.
I see the Germans still have the rest of Alsace-Lorraine. Revanchism must be on the rise with that, and the fact the UK still got Brittany.
Does the Russian Empire plans for Eastern Europe also mean going after Iran, and India? (The Great Game: Part Two.)
What about familiarity technology development during the Great War and afterward?
How are Egypt, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Ethiopia?
That's a fair assessment, though technically speaking they won the war where it didn't matter: outside of Germany. France hasn't quite lost the peace, at least when compared to Russia.
Revanchism is indeed on the rise. French resentment has also been fueling their vicious activities in North Africa.
Russia isn't really interested in clashing with the British. It has enough security obligations related to China in the east and the German puppets in the west to keep it occupied. The British, on the other hand, are more ambivalent about
Military technology is a few years ahead (think early 1940's tanks and more refined aircraft/weapons), with most powers attempting to modernize their armed forces. The two main thrusts of these efforts center around creating a sizable air force and mechanizing infantry. Tactics are going to be tried and tested in the next few years ITTL.
Egypt has a lot of control over the Red Sea thanks to its protectorate in the Hejaz. Egypt isn't happy about what the British are doing in Palestine, but the country's population distribution makes it vulnerable to British invasion and bombardment.
Ethiopia is looking eastward towards Somalia, but it is wary of engaging the European powers at this stage.
Italy and Yugoslavia have very bad relations, as both covet territory held by the other. Unfortunately for the Italians, their very lucky run with conquest is going to come to an end.
Here is the linguistic map for my ideal Europe. As you can see, it's much more linguistically diverse than Europe currently is, and it looks a lot more "traditional" (I modeled much of it after early 20th-century Europe). Celtic languages predominate in their countries of origin, and many in France speak Occitan and the langues d'oc, as well as a Norman language that is a mix between French and English with some influence from Norse and Celtic languages. Greek and Albanian are widespread in southern Italy, and German is as widespread as it was a century ago. Western Anatolia is Greek, but in Greece proper there is also many speakers of Albanian, Aromanian, and Bulgarian.
A commission for Twiggierjet
It’s the future, about a century down the road, and the principal ideological conflict of the day is not economic or racial or (to some extent) religious, but rather on where one stands on the biological modification of human beings.
Biotech has made huge strides forwards, with many impressive benefits, including the elimination of almost all diseases (and the creation of new ones that need handling in their turn, admittedly), a cure for almost all cancers, [1] great extension of the human lifespan, tremendous advances in agriculture that have put an end to climate change induced mass famine (for now), and talking dogs. [2] But the most radical change has been the ability to re-write human DNA, not merely in reproductive cells but in adults, allowing people to transform themselves physically in all sorts of ways. There are limits – turning yourself into an octopus able to live unprotected on the Moon is a bit beyond current capabilities – but you could turn yourself into a four-handed human able to thrive in zero gravity and equipped with a built-in emergency space survival bubble. (Human space settlement and exploration, long pushed aside by robots, is on the rise again). Almost identical male and female faces multiply across the globe and then disappear again, as fashions in who and what is beautiful come and go. Amphibious types have begun settling the sea floor, and vegans now can finally cut out the supplements and live directly off grass and weeds. Furries are mighty happy.
Various different nations have had reactions varying from enthusiasm to sheer horror, and although there isn’t quite a new cold war, there is a sharp division between the so-called “bio-libertarian” nations, which consider the ability to modify themselves as a basic human right of self-expression (if you can afford it) and the “bio-conservative” nations which consider giving yourself a prehensile tail, let alone turning into a humanoid Pony or switching genders to be a crime against nature, God, or humanity.
Of course, there is a lot a variation and nuance. Even the most libertarian of nations regulate new forms of modification like new drugs, to prevent nasty-ass side effects: attempts to upgrade the human intellect are particularly closely monitored, since things can potentially go very wrong. (The actual nature of what comprises “intelligence” is still tricky enough that most improvements so far have been marginal or related to specific abilities such as memory, spatial perception, lightning math calculation, etc. The trouble with “uplifting” animals have served as something of a cautionary tale). [3]
And some things are just forbidden: you can’t genetically modify anyone else without their permission, and making people more obedient, submissive, dumber, etc. is generally a very severe crime. Of course, this brings up the issue of children: in most bio-libertarian places a parents successful biomods can be passed on to their kids, so an aquatic type has aquatic kids, or a high-altitude type kids that are comfortable at 20,000 feet: but making your kid look like Bat Boy just because is generally frowned on. In the US, children can be “emancipated” from their parents at quite an early age when it comes to biological modifications, and protective services keep a close eye. On the other hand, lots of kids want fashionable physical modifications at an early age.
In the more authoritarian bio-libertarian states, the state and corporations have a lot more say in what you can and cannot do to yourself, and biological modifications that “endanger social stability” (or seem threatening to the ruling classes) are frowned on and restricted in a number of ways both legal and semi-legal. If you want to turn yourself into a six-breasted hermaphroditic cow-person to shock the squares, it’s a lot safer to do so in, say, San Francisco than in Beijing. And both authoritarian and more democratic bio-libertarian states agree that there’s such a thing as being too heavily armed, bio-tech wise: the more sophisticated military upgrades are regulated, and attempts to combine, say, hair-trigger reflexes and poisonous spines all over your body are likely to be discouraged by the authorities.
There are of course radicals who want to upgrade _all_ humans as much as possible, create the Superman or the Spaceman or Communist Man or whatever, but governments generally frown sharply on such enthusiasts. So far, such people have only come to power in some parts of Central America, where the so-called “Alliance of the Cosmic Race” is trying to create Natural Man, the human who will live in perfect balance with the planet, with some fairly dubious results so far, while the Guatemalan regime, determined to regain their lost territories, are working hard to create super-soldiers and a super-loyal populace: there is a fair amount of international debate as whether to intervene and stop this stuff, while the bio-conservatives point and go “see? See?” Other such groups do not control any national governments, but do form powerful pressure groups, although what, exactly, are the most vital fixes for Human 1.0 is something none of them entirely agree on.
Perhaps the most severe current irritant between the bio-libertarian and bio-conservative nations is that several of the authoritarian and corporate-dominated bio-libertarian states (along with the US, although it claims it’s the work of corporate players and not the government) have been hiring out genetically upgraded soldiers to various war zones, or assisting client states with the quiet loan of a few hundred or thousand such. This sort of thing is not really winning many hearts or minds.
OTOH, the US does play a major role in the concerted international effort to fight the sex slave trade in modified human beings (including cat girls) and modified animals (including cat girls): it’s something even the stoogiest corporate stooge can agree is a Bad Thing, and compensates a bit for all that talk about US manufacted super-soldiers slaughtering, raping, [4] and burning their way through the poorer parts of the globe.
The bio-conservative nations vary a good deal, from democracies which allow some limited self-modification for consenting adults to dictatorships which punish sharply any modification from the True Form of Man. There are often religious impulses at play, but some quite secular nations, such as 22nd century England, are strongly opposed to biomodification. The Middle East is sharply divided between bio-conservative and bio-liberal nations, with endemic political violence. (Israel has not escaped this. While it finally solved the Palestinian Problem by pushing the remainder into various microstates and then putting up a wall that would impress “The Trumpster”, the conservative man-is-in-the-image-of-God crowd never really approved of human modification, and things have finally blown up into near civil war, to the accompaniment of much Arabic schadenfreude. ) Much of SE Asia is also a mess.
Still, in some ways, the bio-libertarians have won a larger argument: almost every nation on Earth accepts bio-engineered plants and animals (if not sapient ones), and only a few oppose modification of the human gene as preventive medication (for those diseases and cancers) and to cure actual physical and mental disabilities. A number of bio-conservative nations invest a good deal in brain-boosting drug and cybernetic enhancement R&D: although they won’t admit genetically enhanced people are in any way _superior_, they do feel they have unfair advantages that need to be countered.
Although the total size of the US economy has fallen behind that of China, it still leads the world in high tech both traditional and bio. It’s more decentralized than OTL, divided into several large regional sub-groupings, while some of its largest cities have gained a great deal of autonomy. Corporate entities, after a brief reaction earlier in the 21st century, have also a great deal of autonomy, corporate “persons” having been replaced by corporate “states.”Much of the SW and the north plains/Rocky mountains have been ecologically hammered by greatly extended drought cycles (the giant pipes from Canada now carry water, not oil) and there is an ongoing “reseeding” effort with hard-desert adapted plant life which should in the long run cool things and trap ground water.
The old European Union broke up, with the East and England turning sharply against major human modification, while the west following the US course of making self-modification a right: unrest continues to this day, with hardliners in Eastern Europe pushing to decrease even further the allowable, leading to protests among the pro-reform crowd, which often turns violent: while France is being wracked by a three-way struggle between extremists pushing for the Revival of France through mass use of artificial wombs and the creation of the Superior Frenchman [5], conservatives calling for an end to all the “displacement” of normal humans by gene mods that think they’re so superior, and the forces of Keeping Things the Way they Are.
(Switzerland, where the individual Cantons all reserved their own rights to set biomodification policy, is worse. The Alliance for the Preservation of Humanity, which holds that the normal human form is superior to all the “perversions” is carrying out a terror campaign on massive scale).
Some nations are “conservative” in the sense that they allow biomodification but regulate it closely, and try to stay out of the ideological crossfire. Other nations are simply poor enough that the majority of the population simply can’t afford it, and the ruling classes try to avoid at least looking too different from the people they often insecurely rule over. India is pretty middle of the road, and manages to some extent play off bio-liberal and bio-conservative nations, tightening or loosening their legal regime depending on which way they want to tack into the wind: their current major concern isn’t so much Humanity’s Biological Destiny as catching up with China economically, something they’ve been struggling to do for the last century, hampered by climate change damage and political instability: currently growth is sluggish, and resources to push forward their modernization are expensive.
Russia on the other hand, after the era of Putinism, and another ultimately unsuccessful stab at democracy, is ruled by an oligarchic “emergency council” that has been at the point of returning Power to the People almost any day now for several decades. Some augmentations are allowed, but tightly restricted – unless you have a lot of money, in which case the government turns a blind eye. Clashes between anti-modification extremists and genetically upgraded security forces working for oligarchs are common: pro-democracy groups are divided on their attitude towards genetic modification, which doesn’t help them cooperate against the oligarchy.
Japan has remilitarized, but tries to keep a low geopolitical profile. Artificial wombs and extended life spans finally brought population decline to an end, but Japan remains nervous about its relatively low throw weight, population-wise. The Japanese allow for quite a bit of self-modification, but “respectable” social status means you keep the visible modifications to a minimum.
[1] A few cancers, it was eventually discovered, were actually caused by previously undetected non-DNA microscopic life from space, which certainly would have made Hoyle happy if he hadn’t been long dead.
[2] It turns out they don’t have much interesting to say.
[3] Even the most manlike, chimpanzees, took several tries: version 2 were charmingly plausible sociopaths, and the less said about versions 1 and 3, the better.
[4] US corporate heads are outraged at such stories: they build a superior, non-rape-capable model of soldier.
[5] Part Charles De Gaulle, part Napoleon, part Descartes, and part Gargantua
It’s the future, about a century down the road, and the principal ideological conflict of the day is not economic or racial or (to some extent) religious, but rather on where one stands on the biological modification of human beings.
Biotech has made huge strides forwards, with many impressive benefits, including the elimination of almost all diseases (and the creation of new ones that need handling in their turn, admittedly), a cure for almost all cancers, [1] great extension of the human lifespan, tremendous advances in agriculture that have put an end to climate change induced mass famine (for now), and talking dogs. [2] But the most radical change has been the ability to re-write human DNA, not merely in reproductive cells but in adults, allowing people to transform themselves physically in all sorts of ways. There are limits – turning yourself into an octopus able to live unprotected on the Moon is a bit beyond current capabilities – but you could turn yourself into a four-handed human able to thrive in zero gravity and equipped with a built-in emergency space survival bubble. (Human space settlement and exploration, long pushed aside by robots, is on the rise again). Almost identical male and female faces multiply across the globe and then disappear again, as fashions in who and what is beautiful come and go. Amphibious types have begun settling the sea floor, and vegans now can finally cut out the supplements and live directly off grass and weeds. Furries are mighty happy.
Various different nations have had reactions varying from enthusiasm to sheer horror, and although there isn’t quite a new cold war, there is a sharp division between the so-called “bio-libertarian” nations, which consider the ability to modify themselves as a basic human right of self-expression (if you can afford it) and the “bio-conservative” nations which consider giving yourself a prehensile tail, let alone turning into a humanoid Pony or switching genders to be a crime against nature, God, or humanity.
Of course, there is a lot a variation and nuance. Even the most libertarian of nations regulate new forms of modification like new drugs, to prevent nasty-ass side effects: attempts to upgrade the human intellect are particularly closely monitored, since things can potentially go very wrong. (The actual nature of what comprises “intelligence” is still tricky enough that most improvements so far have been marginal or related to specific abilities such as memory, spatial perception, lightning math calculation, etc. The trouble with “uplifting” animals have served as something of a cautionary tale). [3]
And some things are just forbidden: you can’t genetically modify anyone else without their permission, and making people more obedient, submissive, dumber, etc. is generally a very severe crime. Of course, this brings up the issue of children: in most bio-libertarian places a parents successful biomods can be passed on to their kids, so an aquatic type has aquatic kids, or a high-altitude type kids that are comfortable at 20,000 feet: but making your kid look like Bat Boy just because is generally frowned on. In the US, children can be “emancipated” from their parents at quite an early age when it comes to biological modifications, and protective services keep a close eye. On the other hand, lots of kids want fashionable physical modifications at an early age.
In the more authoritarian bio-libertarian states, the state and corporations have a lot more say in what you can and cannot do to yourself, and biological modifications that “endanger social stability” (or seem threatening to the ruling classes) are frowned on and restricted in a number of ways both legal and semi-legal. If you want to turn yourself into a six-breasted hermaphroditic cow-person to shock the squares, it’s a lot safer to do so in, say, San Francisco than in Beijing. And both authoritarian and more democratic bio-libertarian states agree that there’s such a thing as being too heavily armed, bio-tech wise: the more sophisticated military upgrades are regulated, and attempts to combine, say, hair-trigger reflexes and poisonous spines all over your body are likely to be discouraged by the authorities.
There are of course radicals who want to upgrade _all_ humans as much as possible, create the Superman or the Spaceman or Communist Man or whatever, but governments generally frown sharply on such enthusiasts. So far, such people have only come to power in some parts of Central America, where the so-called “Alliance of the Cosmic Race” is trying to create Natural Man, the human who will live in perfect balance with the planet, with some fairly dubious results so far, while the Guatemalan regime, determined to regain their lost territories, are working hard to create super-soldiers and a super-loyal populace: there is a fair amount of international debate as whether to intervene and stop this stuff, while the bio-conservatives point and go “see? See?” Other such groups do not control any national governments, but do form powerful pressure groups, although what, exactly, are the most vital fixes for Human 1.0 is something none of them entirely agree on.
Perhaps the most severe current irritant between the bio-libertarian and bio-conservative nations is that several of the authoritarian and corporate-dominated bio-libertarian states (along with the US, although it claims it’s the work of corporate players and not the government) have been hiring out genetically upgraded soldiers to various war zones, or assisting client states with the quiet loan of a few hundred or thousand such. This sort of thing is not really winning many hearts or minds.
OTOH, the US does play a major role in the concerted international effort to fight the sex slave trade in modified human beings (including cat girls) and modified animals (including cat girls): it’s something even the stoogiest corporate stooge can agree is a Bad Thing, and compensates a bit for all that talk about US manufacted super-soldiers slaughtering, raping, [4] and burning their way through the poorer parts of the globe.
The bio-conservative nations vary a good deal, from democracies which allow some limited self-modification for consenting adults to dictatorships which punish sharply any modification from the True Form of Man. There are often religious impulses at play, but some quite secular nations, such as 22nd century England, are strongly opposed to biomodification. The Middle East is sharply divided between bio-conservative and bio-liberal nations, with endemic political violence. (Israel has not escaped this. While it finally solved the Palestinian Problem by pushing the remainder into various microstates and then putting up a wall that would impress “The Trumpster”, the conservative man-is-in-the-image-of-God crowd never really approved of human modification, and things have finally blown up into near civil war, to the accompaniment of much Arabic schadenfreude. ) Much of SE Asia is also a mess.
Still, in some ways, the bio-libertarians have won a larger argument: almost every nation on Earth accepts bio-engineered plants and animals (if not sapient ones), and only a few oppose modification of the human gene as preventive medication (for those diseases and cancers) and to cure actual physical and mental disabilities. A number of bio-conservative nations invest a good deal in brain-boosting drug and cybernetic enhancement R&D: although they won’t admit genetically enhanced people are in any way _superior_, they do feel they have unfair advantages that need to be countered.
Although the total size of the US economy has fallen behind that of China, it still leads the world in high tech both traditional and bio. It’s more decentralized than OTL, divided into several large regional sub-groupings, while some of its largest cities have gained a great deal of autonomy. Corporate entities, after a brief reaction earlier in the 21st century, have also a great deal of autonomy, corporate “persons” having been replaced by corporate “states.”Much of the SW and the north plains/Rocky mountains have been ecologically hammered by greatly extended drought cycles (the giant pipes from Canada now carry water, not oil) and there is an ongoing “reseeding” effort with hard-desert adapted plant life which should in the long run cool things and trap ground water.
The old European Union broke up, with the East and England turning sharply against major human modification, while the west following the US course of making self-modification a right: unrest continues to this day, with hardliners in Eastern Europe pushing to decrease even further the allowable, leading to protests among the pro-reform crowd, which often turns violent: while France is being wracked by a three-way struggle between extremists pushing for the Revival of France through mass use of artificial wombs and the creation of the Superior Frenchman [5], conservatives calling for an end to all the “displacement” of normal humans by gene mods that think they’re so superior, and the forces of Keeping Things the Way they Are.
(Switzerland, where the individual Cantons all reserved their own rights to set biomodification policy, is worse. The Alliance for the Preservation of Humanity, which holds that the normal human form is superior to all the “perversions” is carrying out a terror campaign on massive scale).
Some nations are “conservative” in the sense that they allow biomodification but regulate it closely, and try to stay out of the ideological crossfire. Other nations are simply poor enough that the majority of the population simply can’t afford it, and the ruling classes try to avoid at least looking too different from the people they often insecurely rule over. India is pretty middle of the road, and manages to some extent play off bio-liberal and bio-conservative nations, tightening or loosening their legal regime depending on which way they want to tack into the wind: their current major concern isn’t so much Humanity’s Biological Destiny as catching up with China economically, something they’ve been struggling to do for the last century, hampered by climate change damage and political instability: currently growth is sluggish, and resources to push forward their modernization are expensive.
Russia on the other hand, after the era of Putinism, and another ultimately unsuccessful stab at democracy, is ruled by an oligarchic “emergency council” that has been at the point of returning Power to the People almost any day now for several decades. Some augmentations are allowed, but tightly restricted – unless you have a lot of money, in which case the government turns a blind eye. Clashes between anti-modification extremists and genetically upgraded security forces working for oligarchs are common: pro-democracy groups are divided on their attitude towards genetic modification, which doesn’t help them cooperate against the oligarchy.
Japan has remilitarized, but tries to keep a low geopolitical profile. Artificial wombs and extended life spans finally brought population decline to an end, but Japan remains nervous about its relatively low throw weight, population-wise. The Japanese allow for quite a bit of self-modification, but “respectable” social status means you keep the visible modifications to a minimum.
[1] A few cancers, it was eventually discovered, were actually caused by previously undetected non-DNA microscopic life from space, which certainly would have made Hoyle happy if he hadn’t been long dead.
[2] It turns out they don’t have much interesting to say.
[3] Even the most manlike, chimpanzees, took several tries: version 2 were charmingly plausible sociopaths, and the less said about versions 1 and 3, the better.
[4] US corporate heads are outraged at such stories: they build a superior, non-rape-capable model of soldier.
[5] Part Charles De Gaulle, part Napoleon, part Descartes, and part Gargantua
fashbasher
Banned
(mild bio-punk scifi incoming)
2031 saw the invention of the so-called "autism cure", a gene therapy treatment that if given to women in pregnancy would prevent them from having a low-functioning, nonverbal autistic child. The "cure" was seen as miraculous, with TIME Magazine showing a photograph of a toddler and the words "The Last Autistic Baby Born in America?" However, it had an interesting side effect, in that it instead resulted in an explosion of high-functioning but noticeably autistic children being born. Indeed, the autism cure would not only turn severely handicapped children into "little geniuses", it would occasionally turn otherwise neurotypical infants into high-functioning autistic young adults without the skewed sex ratio that was so common in the 2010s. The upshot is that the overall rate of autism hasn't decreased (some estimates are that it has more than doubled since the cure was released), but the IQ distribution of autistic Americans matches that of non-autistic ones. By the 2050s, there is a significant bulge of young, often idealistic, high-functioning autistic Americans who are frustrated at having to change their ways to fit in with the majority. At the same time, further cultural fragmentation in the West due to social media has resulted in a new wave of geographically-based settlement and secession movements in the US and Canada, reminiscent of the 2000s Free State Movement in New Hampshire. As a result of these societal shifts, an autistic multimillionaire named John Smith Jeffries purchased thousands of acres in northeastern New Mexico, an area that was depopulating in spite of the state's rich STEM heritage (Los Alamos National Laboratory in - obviously - Los Alamos and Spaceport America in T or C) and planned to build a community for intelligent autistic people who didn't want to kneel before mass society's norms and those who wished to live alongside them. Ground was broken on one homestead with 250 houses before a non-autistic couple took him to court, alleging that his marketing materials violated fair housing laws. 3 years and 2 days after it started, the Autistic Secession experiment ended when the US District Court ruled that the Secession Movement had violated federal law by targeting people with a specific condition.
2031 saw the invention of the so-called "autism cure", a gene therapy treatment that if given to women in pregnancy would prevent them from having a low-functioning, nonverbal autistic child. The "cure" was seen as miraculous, with TIME Magazine showing a photograph of a toddler and the words "The Last Autistic Baby Born in America?" However, it had an interesting side effect, in that it instead resulted in an explosion of high-functioning but noticeably autistic children being born. Indeed, the autism cure would not only turn severely handicapped children into "little geniuses", it would occasionally turn otherwise neurotypical infants into high-functioning autistic young adults without the skewed sex ratio that was so common in the 2010s. The upshot is that the overall rate of autism hasn't decreased (some estimates are that it has more than doubled since the cure was released), but the IQ distribution of autistic Americans matches that of non-autistic ones. By the 2050s, there is a significant bulge of young, often idealistic, high-functioning autistic Americans who are frustrated at having to change their ways to fit in with the majority. At the same time, further cultural fragmentation in the West due to social media has resulted in a new wave of geographically-based settlement and secession movements in the US and Canada, reminiscent of the 2000s Free State Movement in New Hampshire. As a result of these societal shifts, an autistic multimillionaire named John Smith Jeffries purchased thousands of acres in northeastern New Mexico, an area that was depopulating in spite of the state's rich STEM heritage (Los Alamos National Laboratory in - obviously - Los Alamos and Spaceport America in T or C) and planned to build a community for intelligent autistic people who didn't want to kneel before mass society's norms and those who wished to live alongside them. Ground was broken on one homestead with 250 houses before a non-autistic couple took him to court, alleging that his marketing materials violated fair housing laws. 3 years and 2 days after it started, the Autistic Secession experiment ended when the US District Court ruled that the Secession Movement had violated federal law by targeting people with a specific condition.
fashbasher
Banned
Mappo:
Please tell me that the second 21st century economic crisis had nothing to do with Florida/real estate, and if it did that it at least happened after '29. It's not a good look for my state to contribute to the three greatest recessions ever.
Redcoat
Banned
I am so upset for Italy, the North is the best part!View attachment 365513 Here is a little teaser map, mainly playing around with new map making technics, but if you would like to see anything else from this timeline let me know
KitFisto1997
Banned
(mild bio-punk scifi incoming)
2031 saw the invention of the so-called "autism cure", a gene therapy treatment that if given to women in pregnancy would prevent them from having a low-functioning, nonverbal autistic child. The "cure" was seen as miraculous, with TIME Magazine showing a photograph of a toddler and the words "The Last Autistic Baby Born in America?" However, it had an interesting side effect, in that it instead resulted in an explosion of high-functioning but noticeably autistic children being born. Indeed, the autism cure would not only turn severely handicapped children into "little geniuses", it would occasionally turn otherwise neurotypical infants into high-functioning autistic young adults without the skewed sex ratio that was so common in the 2010s. The upshot is that the overall rate of autism hasn't decreased (some estimates are that it has more than doubled since the cure was released), but the IQ distribution of autistic Americans matches that of non-autistic ones. By the 2050s, there is a significant bulge of young, often idealistic, high-functioning autistic Americans who are frustrated at having to change their ways to fit in with the majority. At the same time, further cultural fragmentation in the West due to social media has resulted in a new wave of geographically-based settlement and secession movements in the US and Canada, reminiscent of the 2000s Free State Movement in New Hampshire. As a result of these societal shifts, an autistic multimillionaire named John Smith Jeffries purchased thousands of acres in northeastern New Mexico, an area that was depopulating in spite of the state's rich STEM heritage (Los Alamos National Laboratory in - obviously - Los Alamos and Spaceport America in T or C) and planned to build a community for intelligent autistic people who didn't want to kneel before mass society's norms and those who wished to live alongside them. Ground was broken on one homestead with 250 houses before a non-autistic couple took him to court, alleging that his marketing materials violated fair housing laws. 3 years and 2 days after it started, the Autistic Secession experiment ended when the US District Court ruled that the Secession Movement had violated federal law by targeting people with a specific condition.
This is an interesting scenario... I never thought that anyone would think of a secessionist movement for autists, but here we are.
I hope there's a crazy right-wing Libertarian variant called the Free State of AnSpergistan or something equally weird.
Massive armies of high functioning child soldiers paid in bitcoin with 3D printed weapons and suicide vests will destroy the non-autist forces.
(It's just a joke chill out)
What are the other secession movements in TTL's USA, if there are any more of them?
- Status