In the year 2050, the world slowly turns into a cinder.
Sure, the early two thousands were packed. With the resurgence of Russia, the Middle Eastern Alignment, and several wars in Africa, the world seemed to be gearing up for a new war. In the United States, yeas of subpar presidency lead the country to essentially fester in civil strife. In fact, between the mass deportation of illegal immigrants to Mexico regardless of national origin (a move that was heavily supported by the Republican Party but chastened by nearly everyone else) and growing economic strife, a far right government ended up taking over the rapidly collapsing Mexican government. North Korea went out, not with a bang, but with a whimper, simply surrendering to South Korea after a military coup took out the Kims deep in the night. The PRC, while still "communist," is essentially a capitalist form of government.
And then the war never came.
In 2050, everything is at a standstill. Automation has taken nearly every job there is to have, but Universal Basic Income and such failed to catch on. However, the global population still swelled to over 10 billion. In America, this lead to a generations of people being born and then told that they essentially have no purpose. The suicide rate in elementary schools is as high as the suicide rate in the most strenuous of American high schools in 2017. A similar trend has gripped Europe and China. Net Neutrality is as dead as the telegraph, meaning that the internet is no longer an outlet for those who are dissatisfied with things. In response, police brutality went from being simply a kind of awful fluke to an accepted part of life. Riots and movements for change are stomped out as quickly as they begin. The prison population continues to swell, as the American Prison System is exported into Europe and worldwide. Religion has begun to fade, not into Atheism, but a kind of apatheistic agnosticism, the kind that says "even if there is a God, He doesn't seem to care about us enough to affect our daily lives, so why should we care about Him?"
Russia and China at one point seemed to be nearing a conflict, but ultimately continued funding proxy wars to make sure their top brass got paid so that the governments would remain in power. A similar thing has happened in the Middle East, with ultimately everyone getting enough oil to make it so that they would be able to support enough vehicles. Renewable energy did OK, enough to keep some islands from falling into the ocean, but with the last hurricane season having a hurricane with 300+mph winds make landfall in Savannah, Georgia and burn it's way through Georgia, some are worried it might be coming back. However, for the few islands that still sank, no one would take the refugees, and many ended up disappearing into the sea. It is still better than what happened in Bangladesh, with the country's borders essentially maintained by shooting anyone who looks like they're either about to try to sneak into India or leave Bangladeshi territorial waters.
The only really growing power is Korea, and even then, ever since it failed to woo the ASEAN powers and with many African already having China as a backer, it really doesn't have anywhere to go. Japan is a decrepit state, around a tenth white these days, and pretty much falling apart at the seams as a half forgotten American lapdog.
Space travel never really got popular except for the very rich. No one is willing to scrape together enough money to terraform Mars, and the horrifying failure of the Elon Musk Mars Mission (the entire crew died when the capsule caught fire when it was descending into Martian atmosphere. The entire crew cooked live on the most watched broadcast in the history of humankind). Asteroid mining is a pipe dream of some of the newest dreamers, but no one is really willing to fund them. Most raw material is got by deep-mantle drilling (the core of the Earth has been reached, and some are even calling for the valuable iron and nickel to be mined from it).
And thus, the world slowly burns. Not in nuclear fire, nor in a plague, or famine, or any number of calamities, but simply slowly falling apart.
And if you were to ask anyone, they would say it's not sad anymore.
View attachment 350672
