Chapter 43
The Anthropocene Mass Extinction began thousands of years before the birth of Christ and it wouldn’t end until thousands of years after it, but by 2006 the geopolitical chaos of the 1980s was receding. The world population had fallen from 3.3 billion in 1980 to 1.8 billion a quarter of a century later- the Final War and the Stone Dogs having killed around a billion people, while the famines of the Anthropocene and the violence of smaller conflicts killed another half-billion- well within the (now much reduced) carrying capacity of the Earth. A broad stripe of land (still largely anarchic) was reduced to near-uninhabitability by desertification and a warming climate, it is bracketed above and below by equally broad regions where people have been forced to adopt entirely new agricultural packages in response to changing circumstances. The Amazon Rainforest was replaced by a vast grassland, the Congo Basin is a waste where pioneer species both native and invasive fight to create something approaching a stable ecosystem on land reshaped by the death throes of the Congo Sea. In Southeast Asia the Earth’s largest surviving rainforests are grimly holding on. Violent conflict and political instability remain an ongoing problem, but national governments have restored order to their hinterlands, regional governments have pieced national governments back together where they had fallen, and entirely new states have re-emerged from lawless areas where none previously existed. Most chemical and biological agents have been washed out of rivers and streams by the inexorability of the water cycle (although contamination remained in lakes, wetlands, and the most devastated urban areas). Fishing boats collect healthy harvests of jellyfish (and garbage, which they mostly throw back), dry them, salt them, and sell them to hungry people in coastal cities. Traditional farming remains the dominant practice, but where people can afford it, they’re increasingly investing in high-yield, high-intensity, aeroponic/hydroponic greenhouses whose semi-controlled environments are relatively immune to climate shifts and ecological disruption. Animal husbandry declined, but euphemistically named “Protein Farms” use inedible agricultural waste to raise armies of cockroaches that are usually reduced to unidentifiable brown powder before finding their way to consumers. The near extinction of several major pollinators in the wild devastated many flowering plants, but there are no staple crops that rely on insect pollinators (wheat self-pollinates, corn and rice wind-pollinate, potatoes can self-fertilize
or reproduce asexually, plantains are grown from cuttings, etc.) and plenty of other types of vegetation that can also get by without them. Animal biodiversity dropped on a large scale and it is the most adaptable who have pulled through- rats, seagulls, racoons, coyotes, feral pigs, sharks, jellyfish, and of course human beings.
A Protein Farm in southern China. Cockroaches are a far more efficient source of protein than cattle, albeit a less appetizing one.
The United States of America is largely reunified (Metropolis and Josephtown informed Knight he could surrender to them jointly and not die or be imprisoned, take it or leave it)- even if the federal government remains weak and is struggling to project power over a large swathe of New Mexico (remember New Mexico ITTL is a region corresponding to OTL northern Mexico and the US Southwest) and the Great Basin where desertification is particularly severe. Sookobitʉ (Comancheria) refused to end its independence and rejoin the Union, inadvertently acting as a safe haven for criminals which is undermining law and order in the region. Three other states are also maintaining their independence, two of which- Quebec and Haiti- belong to the Union of New France. Thus far the US government has stuck to a policy of refusing to recognize the independence of these “countries” or the legitimacy of their secession, preferring to reintegrate them peacefully as it has most of the Union. There are large and active reunification movements in Quebec and Cuba that can potentially win elections, Sookobitʉ is coping with severe climate problems, and Haiti is a dictatorship using the UNF as a way to ward off federal intervention- once Quebec rejoins the Union and France had reasserts its independence (both seemingly inevitable developments) it can be dealt with. Partly this policy is due to a desire not to have to use force against fellow Americans and partly it is due to the incredible demands the ongoing crisis is placing on a more decentralized state. In addition to the desertification of the west (displacing large numbers of internal refugees) you have the drying up of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers in California, the general disruption to the ecosystem, and the capital of Metropolis itself slowly sinking into the ground as the water table beneath it empties. Relocating the government (probably to Josephtown) is going to be a substantial headache.
Still, America is one of the leaders of the New Alliance, is experiencing a slow but steady economic recovery, and is a functioning democracy. There are sixty-five stars on the flag- no one is taking any off for the states who’ve left, and there are three new ones in the former sub-Arctic. It even has a modest orbital presence via the joint Allied space program reconnecting the Republic of Selene with the terrestrial members of the AfD.
(Godfrey Knight and his defectors are socially ostracized and largely trying to pretend as hard as they can that they have always been Americans, but are otherwise being left alone by the state)
Welcome to the new, post-apocalyptic Wild West. Roving gangs, local militias, corrupt officials, harsh deserts, we've got the works!
The Caribbean is hot, rainy, and politically quiet. The warlord of Jamaica went sufficiently legitimate to be accepted into the New Alliance and is grudgingly democratizing. The Bahamas have recovered from their brief period as a Drakian Princely State and restored their old government- including the pretender to throne of Britain who assumed office as King of the Bahamas.
The last remnant of a House of Hanover that once ruled a third of the globe.
Where the West Indies Federation once was is now a collection of small island countries, and islands depopulated by the Stone Dogs or occupied by Drakia (there was overlap) that ended up being split between the exilic Spanish Republic (it nabbed the Canaries again when the Country of the Dragon collapsed) and Colombia. Both were democracies, and the only thing keeping Colombia out of the Alliance is the fact that Ecuador (which had seceded from Colombia during the madness, and whose secession remains unrecognized by Bogota) joined first.
Like the Bahamas, Guyana recovered from its short stint as a Princely State of the Empire and is back in the Alliance even if its emergency government continues to delay elections. Brazil reacquired her island territories and (finally) dropped the Brazilian monarchy’s claims to the throne of Portugal. Peru was broken- Upper Peru is now a Platinean satellite calling itself the Republic of Peru, while Lower Peru is an authoritarian “Inkan Republic” which still has bandits and petty warlords haunting its hinterlands. At the bottom of the continent is La Plata, now just as important as the United States when it comes to leading the New Alliance, its claims in Antarctica uncontested, and its standard of living the highest in the Americas.
The capital is in Córdoba permanently these days- plans to decontaminate and rebuild Buenos Aires were stymied by rising sea levels.
La Cometa, Population: 14,877, de facto capital (the de jure capital is in Patagonia) of Platinean Antarctica. As the climate warms and conditions become Artctic rather than Martian, the seventh continent has seen its population climb steadily to 45,000~.
Across the Atlantic are three more members of the restored Alliance for Democracy- Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Ireland. Ireland in particular is grappling with the thorny question of what to do with Britain, now that the larger island has been repopulated (albeit not to former levels) by surviving Britons, Irish immigrants, and refugees from elsewhere- mostly the Dutch. Cornwall voted to become an autonomous part of Ireland, and some have suggested direct political union under Dublin may be the best route for Britain. This is staunchly opposed by Free Britain- the Situationist government based in Douglas, Mann and controlling Wales, Northumbria, and northern England- most of whose inhabitants are British survivors of the Stone Dogs torn between full-independence from Ireland and support for a loose confederation of the British Isles
a la New France. Scotland is leaning towards the loose confederation option, while England- a plurality of whose population are Dutch refugees- is split between those who want to follow Cornwall in becoming part of Ireland, and those who want it to become part of
the Netherlands.
The Netherlands itself is doing poorly, alas. It survived the Final War and beat back a Pact invasion only to succumb to a much older enemy- the waves of the rising Atlantic Ocean. What’s left of the country is essentially a massive evacuee camp concentrated around the capital at Maastricht. Large numbers of Dutch climate refugees have fled abroad to form a Dutch diaspora centered on England, Germany, the Rhenish Republic, France, and America.
Germany has close relations with both the Alliance and China but isn’t formally a member of any bloc more specific than “not Russia”, France is part of the Union of New France of course (though as it recovers it’s thinking about striking out on its own again), Portugal and Yugoslavia are Situationist members of the Free World, while Italy voted the Situation into office more conventionally. The Rhenish Republic is in the same kind of “not Russia” place as Germany, but without Germany’s close friendships or strong ties to anyone.
The Republic of Selene remains an independent member of the Alliance for Democracy, and is a much more pleasant place to live since trade and immigration reopened with Earth. Still rather spartan, but understandably attractive to climate refugees from Earth.
Russian efforts to become the global hegemon have yielded little, but the Russian Empire
has emerged as the unquestioned leader of the post-Societist bloc- an alliance of authoritarian regimes hanging together for fear of hanging separately. Russian influence is strongest in Europe where it is among the least war-damaged regions and it can count on a number of allies- Spain (which inherited most of Drakia’s former possessions in the Mediterranean, and most of the Imperial military forces in Europe and North Africa), Rhomania (now without any significant non-Romio population other than some Albanians), and Rumania, Hungary, and the Czech State (all satellites “liberated” from Drakia). The “Western Military Territory” is in an odd position in that Russia doesn’t know what to with the collaborator-run piece of Germany that it got its hands on- does it want to cultivate a Germany puppet state or prepare it for eventual direct incorporation into Russia like they did East Prussia?
Underlying Russian influence however is the reality of Russian weakness- Russia hasn’t annexed the WMT because it
can’t. It failed to enforce its claims to all of Germany because it wasn’t strong enough to defeat the surviving Germans, and it hasn’t tried to integrate the WMT because it lacks the resources to spare for a round of ethnic cleansing- Moscow
needs the German collaborators there to control the place. Russia lost the North Asian War with China because while its ability to project power beyond its borders is better than America’s it isn’t so by much- Russian state authority declines as one pushes into its former Siberian heartland, and declines dramatically when one pushes into the desertified regions of Central Asia and the Near East. In Iran it is totally theoretical.
Not because of strong resistance by the surviving Iranians, but because Russian lacks the ability to properly conquer and settle the region.
The former Aral Sea- as in OTL Russia diverted water from it for agriculture, leading to its eventual disappearance. These days it's part of Free Turkestan- the country that China formed for the surviving Central Asian peoples after it beat Russia in the North Asian War.
Kurdistan, Assyria, Yemen, and Mesopotamia (a minor Drakian legacy state run by old Imperial military) are Russia’s allies in the Near East, facing down Situationist Turkey and the Arab Union State. Turkey clawed its way back from the brink of national destruction even if it’s only about three-quarters Turkish, and many of its “Turks” are Central Asian, of partial Turkish descent, or of non-Turkish descent but have embraced the Turkish language and culture. The not-Turkish-by-any-definition citizens are generally accepted and tolerated- they’re mostly non-Arab Freedmen- and those of African descent make up a model minority.
There are no Romios or Kurds in Free Turkey.
The Arab Union State began as the Msiri Empire; a strong former Princely State like Kurdistan that expanded into the power vacuum left by Drakia’s collapse during the Great Jihad. It aligned itself with Russia, and the elites who had formerly collaborated with the Dragon remained in power. Then the flow of the Nile became increasingly intermittent, rising seas swamped a large part of the Nile Delta, the climate continued to worsen, people began to starve, and the Mujahideen proved a lot harder to control than the Sultan had hoped. Three coups and a revolution later and the Arab Union State is an impoverished military dictatorship run by the navy, now absent the Msiri nobility, royalty, or aristocracy, any former White Citizens, Honorary White Christians, and quite a few other enemies of the people. Much of the population is employed in “subsistence water production”- producing drinking water from grey water and sea water using solar-powered stills or solar ovens- food is dear, and ethnic strife continually threatens to break out between the Msiri, the Arab Freedmen, the non-Arab Freedmen, and different sects of Islam. A denomination of Pre-Colonial-Revival Sunnism continues to dominate the government and dictate policy, while the different Sufi sects (most quietly revolutionary and unhappy with the dictatorship) are suppressed and discouraged.
One bright spot in AUS ethnic relations is in the holy land where a handful of Jewish Zionists have returned- memories of the Judeo-Arab Revolt against Drakia persist, and there’s been a shortage of skilled personnel since the purges. The Zionists are mostly focused on restoring Jewish holy sites and working with former secret Jews coming out of hiding- a sovereign homeland just doesn’t seem to be in the cards right now.
Maybe before Mashiach comes.
Westward along the coast is Tunisia- rare as a surviving Princely State even if the King is a ceremonial figurehead for the military- and eventually the Islamic State.
The Islamic State is the country established by the great Mujahideen leader Talal Fellag and is one of the few successful multiparty democracies in Africa. Explicitly described as a “democratic and Islamic state” in its constitution, the mostly Sufi country unifies its inhabitants through a common faith that 75% of them hold, and leaves issues like marriage, divorce, inheritance, halal certification, adoption, and child custody to a system of Sharia courts whose views are orthodox, but nowhere near the attitudes of OTL fundamentalists. These courts have jurisdiction over Muslims, but there is a separate set of religious courts run by the United Free Church of St. Claver (founded by some of the former Bonded House Churches) responsible for Christians, and a small set of secular family law courts to handle citizens of other faiths. This can be a restrictive system for some (particularly Christians and Muslims who don’t belong to the denominations that run the courts), but criminal law is secular, racism and discrimination are banned, and all citizens can vote or run for a seat in the elected Majlis regardless of religion. The Majlis choses the Diwan (who acts as head of state) and runs the country.
Poverty is a severe problem, the changed climate is harsh, Spain is a constant looming threat, but the Islamic State is a beacon of light in an otherwise dark continent.
Subsistence water production in the Islamic State. These solar ovens boil grey water in small stills to render it safe to drink.
West Africa is a war-torn region of small states locked in ethnic warfare- mostly between the Freedmen and the former Martial Races, but also between ethnic groups attempting to revive cultures their conquerors failed to totally destroy and people not part of those ethnic groups on their land. Members of groups that collaborated with Drakia like the Fulani and the Hausa have been subject to enslavement and genocide in areas under the control of the Freedmen, Freedmen have been subject to enslavement and genocide in areas controlled by former allies of the old regime. The desertification of the Sahel as the Sahara expanded forced a wave of climate refugees southward where they were met with hostility by those already there and drawn into bloody conflicts over fertile land, water sources, shelter, and food. The Fulani Empire, the Fulani Sultanate, the Kingdom of Senegal, the Kingdom of the Gold Coast, and the Hausa Empire are all legacy states of Drakia’s to some degree, the Fulani Empire and Senegal are both in Russia’s sphere. Mali is reviving the language and culture of the Mandinka (and turning away refugees by force), Yorubaland is doing the same with the language and culture of the Yoruba (while fighting an insurgency by non-Yoruba within its borders). Major Freedman military regimes include the respectable empire of the Tiger of the Volta, Dugal Hermann, in OTL Ghana and Burkina Faso, the Zaria Freestate in what was once the Fulani Sultanate, and the State of Camaros in OTL Cameroon. The Republic of the Pepper Coast leads a bloc of Freedmen states where the Ekpe secret societies that flourished among the Bonded rose to leadership as a combination between a modern political party, a Masonic lodge, and a mafia family (several of the Ekpe cells operated as organized crime before the Great Jihad, and those were the groups with the most guns when the fighting started). They are much more stable than the warlords at least.
The Dahomey Free State and the Free Republic of Liberia are China’s allies in West Africa. Dahomey (where Situationist revolutionaries overthrew the government of the old Princely State of Dahomey) is a flawed democracy, Liberia (located in OTL Nigeria) is an art-themed dictatorship.
The Congo is a shaky military junta run by ex-Nationals and Honorary Whites who keep the peace between different segments of the Congolese population via sheer brutality towards anyone who makes waves. Chad was founded by a diverse group of persons who fled from the Sahel as the climate warmed by displacing the persons already living in the land they had selected for their new home.
Various ephemeral warlord states coexist with the larger countries, some ruled by Mujahideen, some by Freedmen, some by relics of the Imperial order, and some by pre-colonial nations trying to re-establish themselves.
And you thought that OTL decolonization was bad. The trauma of Drakian rule is going take centuries to recover from- if it even can be recovered from.
Conditions in South-Central Africa are similar (Central Africa proper is mostly lawless wasteland left by the death of the Congo Sea), consisting mostly of contentious short-lived regimes and a trio of allied Imperial legacy states- the Great Lakes Confederation, Kivu, and the Yeke Republic- facing off against the larger and more stable Freedman states of East Africa. All three of the Freedman states of East Africa are grappling with the same challenges of nation-building when your population consists of a wide array of different ethnicities, all are using the common experience of Drakian rule as a unifying factor, all are using some kind of unifying ideology on top of that, and all co-operate (albeit very grudgingly) against Drakia and its legacy states.
The African Republic is a fascist dictatorship (not as ominous a descriptor as in OTL) ruled by Simon Liberty with an iron fist. One of the leaders of the Great Bonded Revolt against Drakia, Liberty (he picked the name himself) has set the goal of unifying as much of Africa as possible into a single country strong enough to protect its citizens from ever being conquered or exploited again by foreigners. This the enforcement of a single “African” identity based on Bonded culture, the glorification of resistance and revolution against Drakian rule, the need to be strong in the face of the continued Drakian threat, and the centrality of new cultural products commissioned since the revolt. At the same time, it mandates the active suppression of surviving pre-colonial ethnic and cultural identities- after all, the old tribes and nations of Africa were too weak to protect the African people from conquest and it was the divisions between them that Drakia exploited to maintain its rule. The cultures of Martial Races (particularly the Somalis) and groups that collaborated are particularly targeted for destruction, but the African Republic does not distinguish between former Freedmen, former Nationals, or former Honorary Whites provided they abandon any identities other than African and are loyal to the African Nation and Simon Liberty. This embrace includes non-Africans such as Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and even Europeans who weren’t White Citizens before the Great Jihad- once again, as long as they are loyal Africans. Religious freedom is respected in private; you can pray however you like if your faith doesn’t make you outwardly different from your neighbors.
The African Republic is at least stable and peaceful, and suffering less of a shortage of skilled persons than most of the other Freedmen states. It also inherited a decent chunk of Drakia’s industrial base.
Further south is the Christian Republic of Tanganyika- formerly part of the general alliance of Bonded rebels that eventually coalesced into the African Republic, it struck out on its own when Simon Liberty began centralizing power. Like the Islamic State, the CRT uses religion as well as the mutual experience of living under Drakian rule to bring its people together. Unlike the Islamic State it actively suppresses the “wrong” sects of its religion- mostly the Drakian Church, the Sedevacantists, and the Church of Christ the Savior, that the Empire used to promote, but some other denominations as well. They’re also not a democracy, although the allied rebel groups who founded the CRT (each with its own affiliated church descended from a Bonded house churche) form distinct political factions within the government. Their theology isn’t particularly extreme and religions other than Christianity aren’t banned, but non-Christians have no representation in a government where the religious and political leadership largely overlap, and disagreements over doctrine can end in gunfights.
Where the AR and the CRT rely on culture and religion to bring their people together, Free African uses a purely political ideology- namely Situationism. The democracy and political decentralization that traditionally characterizes Situationism is absent however- these are Second-Wave Situationists committed to fighting the enemies of freedom first and living life for fun second- and Free Africa promises to hold elections when the Societist menace has finally been eliminated. In its defense it does directly border the rump-Drakian Empire, and armed clashes with their former rulers are a regular occurrence. So, they use Situationist symbols, Situationist rhetoric, tolerate the attempted revivals of pre-colonial culture (not a lot of which survived at all this far south), encourage artistic and cultural events provided they don’t require sponsorship in the form of resources that could otherwise go to more practical things, and are part of the Chinese-led Free World.
Repairing and restarting Imperial factories- even with wage labor- was controverstial to say the least, given the associations they held in most Freedmen's minds. But exploiting the surviving industrial base has allowed the African Republic to develop the strongest military and strongest economy on the continent.
Past Free Africa we come to the Empire of Drakia itself.
Once the ruler of two continents and significant chunks of two more, leader of the Pact of Blood, and for fourteen months hegemon of the world, it has been reduced to a vestigial pariah state where remnants of its government and military coalesced under the leadership of General Eric Darrington in the white-majority parts of southern Africa. In his efforts to secure the south Darrington (who uses the title “Generalissimus”) forcibly ejected most of the region’s Bonded population while welcoming in large numbers of White Citizens and Honorary White loyalists who fled there. The result is a country where- for the first time in its history- demographics are on the side of the Dragon. This does mean that large numbers of formerly upper-caste Drakians have been forced into menial professions once done by the Bonded, and the standard of living for the former rulers of Africa has declined precipitously. The regime in the city of George (the largest major city not completely plastered in the Final War) is remarkably sensible by Drakian standards- there’s a reason why Darrington prevailed over his rivals for ultimate power, and why the Country of the Dragon under his leadership survived at all. The remaining Honorary Whites and Nationals in Drakia have been granted full Citizenship without caveats, and the Generalissimus cut a deal with the Matebele Kingdom to grant them full independence in exchange for a continued alliance between what was left of the empire and the Matebele. Cognizant of the fact that the rest of world viewed the survival of the Empire in any sense to be an existential threat, he even formally abolished the Bonded Labor System in a failed attempt to normalize relations with
anyone (the goal was to ally with Russia).
Drakia still uses a fair amount of forced labor however- mostly criminals, dissidents, and prisoners of war- and their conditions are no better than they ever were for the Bonded, for all that such persons can’t be bought or sold. A nominally illegal, but in practice sanctioned, business in human trafficking flows between the Country of the Dragon and anyone unscrupulous enough to deal. The state is a totalitarian dictatorship, human rights are subject to Darrington’s will, and the theocracy persists. Thus far the Generalissimus has secured the country from internal threats, but there is nothing he can do about external ones.
The rest of the world has spent the past two decades distracted by the immediate concerns of survival and was content to let Drakia fall to the Great Jihad on its own, but now that things have calmed down and it’s clear that the Freedmen can’t finish off the Country of the Dragon by themselves, the regime won’t be long for this world.
Once virtually guaranteed managerial, bureaucratic, or military positions that automatically came with at least a middle-class standard of living, many White Citizens were reduced to penniless refugees living in ramshackle homes in Southern Africa. Including some Drakensis, to their fury and sometimes suicidal depression.
One country is preparing to drive a stake into that particular black heart for good.
Free China is still a democracy, as are China’s Partners for Peace and Reconstruction, but Second Wave Situationism is grimmer, less optimistic, and more zealous than the older kind. The Final War demonstrated that war can seek you out no matter how carefully you remain neutral or how dedicated you are in the pursuit of peace. The Anthropocene Mass Extinction proved that humanity cannot address issues of environmental preservation in a piecemeal fashion.
If Homo Ludens is to truly come into existence, if the utopian world celebrating the individual where man can live for pleasure instead of pain can be created, then neutrality is not possible.
The world must be made safe for freedom, threats to peace must be eliminated before they can strike, and unified stewardship of the biosphere is essential for the long-term survival of the species.
Hu Li shepherded China through the post-war chaos and led it to victory over Russia in the North Asian War a decade ago, now Jin Zhang is marshalling the war machine Li built- a machine founded on a rebounding economy, a loyal populace, and a new school of military tactics. He is ready to do something about the declining Burmese-Indian Alliance trying to hold Situationism back, the Russian Sphere whose heritage is Societism with a fresh coat of paint, Drakia and its legacy states, and all the regimes and warlords standing in the way of progress. He is ready to work with his allies and the AfD to build a glorious new future… provided they don’t stand in his way. Sparta and Athens have fought each other into exhaustion, now the time of Macedon has come.
This is not the end of history- history does not end. There is no Final Society, there will never be a Final War. But it is
an end, and- as Zheng watches not the first but the third test of a brand-new weapon- also a beginning.
The Thermonuclear Age is dawning.
Who knows what it will bring?
The key is a bit messed up, and the sea level rise may be slightly wonky, but I'm happy with it. It's been one heck of a ride dudes!