View attachment 602557
*A map request of the world in the dystopian movie "Children of Men"
The point of departure of this TL is intermediate but started with an era of far-worse religious fundamentalist terrorist attacks taking place all across the globe. This all started in 2001 when the 9/11 attacks were far worse, involving tactical nukes and other nasties like that. The War on Terror turned into a far bigger debacle not only involving Islamic Fundamentalism but the rise of other religious fundamentalism and xenophobia across the world. Things turn from bad to worse when nearly all of humanity begins to go infertile in 2009, causing demographics to collapse and a collapse in society.
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The United States is a hollow shell of the world superpower that it was at the dawn of the 21st century. Things went south back in 2001 after a dirty bomb went off at New York City and DC which turned the government near totalitarian in making sure something on a similar scale does not happen again. This caused anti-government unrest to break out across the USA and eventually, the seeds were sown to the Second American Civil War. The election of 2016 saw political strife reach its maximum and the military decided to pick a side of the conservatives. Liberal states refused to obey the military-conservative regime in power and rebelled. Other factions sprung up and soon, the entire country was up in flames.
Currently the military-conservative regime is the most powerful of the factions, holding control of the majority of the former USA’s land and cities. They place less emphasis on imposing conservative values and are more focused on a restoration of order. By the 2020s, the government is essentially controlled by a clique of police officers, generals, and collaborators. For the opposition, it’s broadly a coalition of liberals, socialist-democrats, and anti-government militias. Their control over the former USA is tenuous at best since the military regime cuts off the factions from each other. Nevertheless they sustain the war using guerilla tactics and support from their Northern neighbor to keep their war support going. In opposition held territory, there is really no centralized authority like in the military regime and it’s mostly controlled by militias and bandits who roam the land and have broad loyalties.
The Holy States of America can trace its origins back in 2001 that saw the rise of Islamophobia and the popularity of Christian fundamentalism to counter their Islamic counterparts. Once the Second Civil War broke out in 2016, they were initially on the side of the military-conservative regime but after they were more focused on order and not imposing the word of God they rebelled in 2018 and carved out their own faction. Life is hard in HSA held territory, what little food is stolen by HRE troops and anyone suspected of Islamic and Atheist tendencies are to be shot on site if seen so. Their ideology is “Religious Rationalism” and they heark to return to the days of 1950’s America but as a theocracy. Any pop-culture and trends are forbidden and the only thing you can read are religious texts. On the side note, they aren’t racist enough to block African-American fundamentalists from joining their side. Another scary, although weak, faction is the New America Movement which is a collection of Neo-Nazi held territories troughout the USA. By far the scariest, they don’t hold much power and are hated by all factions alike so their time is to be short lived.
Other factions include breakaway states such as California, Texas, and Vermont who wanted to sit out the shitshow.
Mexico still technically had a government but only as a concept. Mexican states run their own affairs and day by day, the central government is slowly getting chipped at. In the North cartels-turned-warlords carved out their own states while the far-left Zapatistas took over Yucatan but are modest about expansion. In Central America, most of the states are under juntas of some kind and feat the communist Central America Union, funding guerillas in Guatemala and El Salvador, although this time, there is no USA to back the juntas up.
South America suffered from political turbulence in the 2010s and suffered from revolutions, coups, and civil wars after things turned worse for the world. From fascist governments in Brazil and Paraguay to the communists of Peru and Venezuela, the promise of a better South America in the 21st century fell flat. Leader of the Bolivarian League is the “Bolivarian Socialist Union”, a typical socialist totalitarian state that turned to the worse when the global oil market collapsed, sending their economy down with it. The government survived though, under an expansionist dictatorship that wanted to impose the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” in all of South America. Brazil is somewhat functional in the East, although under a clerical-fascist dictatorship allied to Paraguay and Bolivia to fight back communism and to stabilize their states.
Meanwhile in Europe, the European Union at first had a promising future, a dream of a united Europe one day stretching from Lisbon to the Urals under peace and democracy. As the 21st century turned out not to be the century of peace and prosperity, things were going to be hard for the European Union. In the early 2000s, European cities were constantly attacked by Islamic terrorists, with the worst ones being the Copenhagen 2011 Attacks and the Munich 2016 Attacks. Eastern Europe experienced an anti-Islamic reaction and were opposed to any type of foreign immigration that the EU was doing. In 2016, Christian Fundamentalists and other far-right politicians formed their own personal union within the EU but did not formally leave. Although, after the Brexit War they took their chance and left the EU all at once, uniting into the Visegrad Union. The EU was rapidly on the downfall to collapse and in a final act of survival, the French and German governments united to form the European Federation.
The European Federation today is a wobbly superstate only holding together with force and the police as the last bastion of the old liberal order. Although battered by terrorist attacks by all sides, they miraculously withstood into the 2020s but things are not looking bright for them. Italy’s collapse into civil war and the Neo-Nazi putsch in East Germany showed that Brussels is not 100% in charge. Riots rock cities every week and gas shortages are a part of normal life. With the expansion of the IS into North Africa and Turkey, the EF did not want Islamists on the steps of Madrid and the Balkans so decided to intervene, sending troops to anti-Islamist countries. With both the IS and EF nuclear powers, time would tell before all of North Africa goes up into nuclear hellfire.
In Eastern Europe, the Visegrad Union stands as the premier power of Eastern Europe. Things are troublesome though, the demographic collapse due to infertility has caused their population to plummet to the point where they force immigrants and other non-Slavic Europeans to assimilate into their culture just to survive. Nationalist militias patrol the streets for the nightly curfew and the law is the bible. They are good friends with the United Kingdom, even making a deal to deport the UK’s Polish population back to Poland. After the Eurasian War, the Visegrad Union does no longer have to worry about the Russian menace but are always paranoid about the threat of the IS, a new crusade being declared against all Muslims in Europe is seriously considered in Warsaw.
The United Kingdom saw the writing on the wall for the European Union and a legacy of anti-EU sentiment and their policies towards immigration caused a surge of nationalism. Nationalist parties won UK elections and without a referendum, they pulled out of the EU. The EU was not happy about this, fearing the UK would inspire other nationalists to split with Brussels so they decided to take action against the UK, sponsoring a pro-EU coup in Scotland and invading from the North. Due to the sheer instability of the EU, the invasion was a disaster and the UK defended itself against the EU but also bombed Paris and bluffed with atomic destruction if Brussels doesn’t stop now. With Eastern Europe also calling quits with Brussels, the EU agreed to a reluctant peace that saw a buffer zone established from Brest to Belgium. The UK today is an authoritarian democracy under a Norsefire-esque regime that survives off of the sheer hatred of foreigners, kinda like a European North Korea of sorts.
In Eurasia, the 21st century saw the rise, and fall, of two superpowers. The first was the People’s Republic of China in East Asia and the resurgent Russian, later Eurasian, Federation. As the old liberal order of the 1990s crumbled as the years passed by, the Russians and Chinese took advantage of it and expanded their own nations. The Russians annexed Belarus, half of Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2015, and bits of pieces of Georgia. The Chinese asserted control over the South China Sea. After the USA crumbled into civil war, the Russo-Chinese alliance fell apart with it and both turned against each other. In Central Asia, both China and Russia vied for influence and after Russia sent troops to depose the pro-Chinese president in Kazakhstan, war broke out. The so called “Eurasian War” was the worst of the wars the 21st century would ever see with chemical, biological, nuclear, and cyber weapons all used. The war saw the destruction of China and Russia into feuding warlords, anarchy, wastelands, and rump governments.
The former People’s Republic of China has been shattered by the Eurasian War and the ensuing onslaught of plagues, famines, radiation, and warlords. In the Northeast stands the former People’s Republic of China, a rump tinpot dictatorship on the likes of their DPRK allies next door. They reversed most of the post-Mao reforms and turned back inwards into a strange form a Neo-Maoist nationalism that idealizes the Chinese as the master race and should be the only one standing. Most Russians and other minorities were killed outright or used as slave labor with the former Russian far-east being filled with Chinese refugees. In the Western borderlands is controlled by a junta regime that tried to depose the CCP in a post Eurasian War civil war under the pretense of “stability”. They failed in their objective in seizing control of all of China but held onto the Western borderlands. They are even more xenophobic and are waging wars of extermination against non-Chinese minorities, hence the Tibetan and Uigur insurgencies. In the South is the “Republic” of China and is not the democratic-loving society that it wants everyone to think they are. The neo-KMT are not shy from outright fascism and, no surprise, are just as hostile to foreigners as their communist enemies. The Taiwanese are nominally allied to the neo-KMT but refuse to join their state due to not wanting to get involved in the mess that is the mainland.
The once resurgent Russian Federation is nothing more than a squandered post-industrial crapsack warlord-ridden wasteland. Siberia is reaching population levels so low that centralized governments don’t even exist and surviving local communities run their own affairs. In European Russia, there is still civilization but just as bad as in Siberia. The Russian Democratic Republic (don’t get fooled by the name) is the remnants of the Russian Federation still ruled dictatorially by the old pre-war political party. Their leadership switches between ex-secret service agents to aging military men every month or so and the situation is looking worse day by day and time would only tell until they break up into warlords like the rest of Russia. The fertility crisis has also caused the Russian population to drop three-fourths, and they are not for long in this world. In the Urals stands the mysterious “Church of Siberia'' formed in the apocalyptic aftermath of the Eurasian War. The Church of Siberia is a theocratic state running on a different branch of Orthodox Christianity and they believe the apocalypse has begun, and rightfully so. They seek to “purify” the population and reunite the Russian lands under their rule in the second coming of Christ.
In Southeast Asia, theocracy found ideal roots to spread from. In Thailand, the military allied with Buddhist theocrats and took over the government, installing a puppet king. Going against the peaceful origins of Buddhism, they declared all Muslims enemies of the state and wanted to expand their domain into all Buddhist nations to prepare for the incoming apocalypse as things get ever worse. War is just about to begin between Nustantra and Thailand over border disputes in Malaysia, this can only go down so well. In the former Indonesia, stretches the Caliphate of Nusantara, a state inspired by the IS to spread Islamism across all of Southeast Asia and “liberalist” the Muslims from Infidels. They are paranoid of an invasion by Australia and Thailand and are trying to make nukes and were able to get some from the black market.
North Korea also took the opportunity amidst the chaos to invade South Korea, forcing the South Koreans to flee to Jeju.
Australia and New Zealand managed to survive under authoritarian democracies and avoided falling under totalitarian governments. They are still xenophobic to all immigrants though but are fairly isolationist in the international scene, only maintaining influence over the Pacific Island nations and funding rebel groups in Nustantra. Climate changes has caused entire Pacific Nations to sink below the sea while Australia and New Zealand house refugees in more-or-less internment camps. Otherwise, Australia and New Zealand are doing better compared to the rest of the world in the 21st century.
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