The Worst and Most Dystopian World Possible

[Rex Romanum]

The idea here is to create the world where humanity is in the most miserable condition as possible. This is not about nuclear war, plagues, natural disasters, etc. This is about building the worst international order possible. Our fellow member rvbomally has suggested this in a past thread:

The question here is what flavor of dystopia you want. Do you want something big and flashy happening occasionally, like WWII? Or do you want to drag out humanity's collective agony? Another question is, how many people do you want to include in this experiment? Placing the world in a perpetual state of barbarism would certainly be "dystopian" in some sense, and would be easy to accomplish, but it lacks the sheer scale of industrialized societies devoting themselves to keeping the boot on the human face forever. The issue with industrialization is that it requires a certain level of prosperity and freedom to get started.

Let's assume that we want scale. The most people possible, suffering in the worst way possible, without nuclear war and the like. Go big or go home, I say! This necessitates the presence and continuation of a stable, orderly society that allows some degree of intellectual freedom in order for industrial growth to occur. However, in order to keep human suffering at a maximum, to meet the dystopia requirement, we don't want to just replicate OTL. After all, OTL is full of crapsacky societies, but we can do better! We want oppressive, brutal, bloodthirsty societies where human life is just another natural resource. How do we resolve this?

My proposed solution is, instead of having one quick burst of industrialization, instead having it develop slowly. The 3500 BC PoD gives us a lot of room to work with. Consider the aeolipile. Why not have something like this arise sometime in antiquity, and instead of being a curiosity, it sparks a small-scale industrial revolution. Nothing big, just something that allows for the manufacturing of more sophisticated farming tools that increases crop yields, and with it, population. More population means more wars, especially for slaves required to work the fields while free workers move to the "factories."

A few centuries later, more industrial developments: a form of locomotive that crisscrosses these empires and allows these ancient despots to enforce their will through massive swaths of land. This allows for the rise of large empires earlier on in human history. Then, perhaps, other technologies catch up. Quinine allows these empires to conquer areas infested with malaria. Gunpowder breaks the backs of the nomadic "empires" and helps stabilize the already-existing empires, which at this point are several centuries if not millennia old. Slow developments that spread out throughout the world, giving no one civilization such an extreme upper hand that they unite the world under their rule.

Of course, as these developments progress, these empires become practically unstoppable. They have experienced every sort of internal and external threat under the sun, and those that remain are well aware of how to stay on their thrones. Human culture itself has been transformed by these despots over the millennia. Oppression is the norm, to serve the state is the only good. Philosophies that oppose this have been extinguished centuries ago, these thoughts disappearing into the aether as their originators are beheaded. Only the philosophies that promote obedience to the state, eternal opposition to the enemy within and without, and unending toil for the furtherance of the state's goals survive. Even religion is changed to match this despotism: the emperor is a god, and he will punish those who disobey him for the rest of eternity. There is no good but obedience, there is no evil but dissent.

By the time we get to 2016, we have a world dominated by a few large empires which have been at a state of "war" for millennia. The border lands between rival empires are a zone of utter chaos, crisscrossed with trenches, barbed wire, pillboxes, minefields and anti-aircraft emplacements. The only people that live here are savages, descendants of the former native cultures, with a heavy dose of the invaders' genes thanks to soldiers raping women whenever they're not killing or pillaging. This isn't an active war, no, this has been the state of affairs for centuries, and while there may be a "major" offensive every month or so, only a few yards of territory changes hands, only to change hands yet again the next month. The leaders of the various empires have realized that this state of affairs is very advantageous to them, for it gives their people an enemy to despise.

Speaking of the common people, their lives are just as poor and miserable as their ancestors' have been thousands of years ago. At least they're not slaves, who still toil the fields as their ancestors did thousands of years ago. Neither group has had the taste of freedom and prosperity, so they do not ask for it. The states that oppress them are so ancient that dissent is unthinkable outside of the tales old women tell their grandchildren. Tales that, of course, end in only one way: with the wicked rebels being punished by the righteous king's men. And in the meanwhile, in the gilded capitals of the world, the upper classes of the great empires eat and drink the best fruits of their subjects' labor, their only concern apart from debauchery being the maintenance of this system which has remained in place since time immemorial. Their lieutenants toil endlessly to make this so, looking for the enemy within and without; they only do the job their ancestors have for millennia, and they ask for nothing except for the assurance that their sons will follow in their footsteps.

And so mankind continues on its path of misery and suffering. It has been this way for thousands of years, and it will be this way for thousands more.

While this was initially proposed in ASB forum, I've been wondering how plausible actually is the above scenario? Or is there bound to be, eventually, successful rebellion that topple the imperial order to bring freedom, justice, and American way?

And below is the map, also edited from one of rvbomally's. The regions with lighter colors that labeled as "allies" are actually either puppets or savage lands mentioned above.

 

[Skallagrim]

There's a reason this originated in the ASB thread. No, it's not realistic. A situation is certainly conceivable where something kind of like this occurs, but it is always temporary. There can be a situation where vast empires face off, but this goes in one of three directions:

1. Cold war. Yes, it sucks in the border zones. Yes, having the economy on permanent war footing is shitty for all concerned. But for most people, something like normal life just goes on. If all regimes involved are basically stable, it can last for a long time like that. If one or more is/are devoted to some ill-conceived ideology that will not work forever in practice... one or more will eventually collapse. Then the balance is lost, and that probably ends the situation. without the "eternal foe", the other side(s) will suffer from popular demand that food rations are upped, the economy liberalised, and life essentially becomes more "normal" now. After all... the excuse for "permanent war footing" is gone! (Even if all regimes are basically stable, chances are that even if the leaders want war, the people will eventually get tired of that nonsens. And if the people succeed in only one empire, the same thing as happens: the others also collapse, for lack of this "eternal enemy".)

2. Actual war. One regime, perhaps sensing it cannot last forever, starts open war. Assuming a MAD-like scenario, this eventually ends all the great power, leaving a fractured world to be rebuilt by smaller entities. Or one power "wins", but again... no major enemies left. So nothing to hold everyone together out of fear. The unipolar power will eventually collapse, split apart, or the central authority will simply fade away into irrelevance.

3. Natural disturbance. Basically like the cold war scenario, but instead of human action disturbing the balance, it's a natural cause. Say... climate change. This will affect different regions in different ways. One empire may be critically weakened, upsetting the balance, and leading to collapse of the armed stalemate.

The essential point to remember is that change is constant. A situation that is "frozen" is not natural. It can only be maintained through concentrated effort, and from all sides to boot. If one side stops playing, the whole thing falls apart. So chances of such a situation lasting are just extremely slim.

 

[Timaeus]

Oh, I remember this from my lurking days! It was interesting.

The essential point to remember is that change is constant. A situation that is "frozen" is not natural. It can only be maintained through concentrated effort, and from all sides to boot. If one side stops playing, the whole thing falls apart. So chances of such a situation lasting are just extremely slim.

I think the idea behind it was that yes, change is constant, but the eternal dystopia keeps it to a level comfortable for the old order to survive and maintain itself even as it changes, with technological changes being put to use in as soul-crushing a direction as possible.

Maintaining a constant boot to the face is impossible. But one can at least keep the periods of freedom short and rare, and use them to tighten the chains.

A permanent war footing is not necessary nor desirable in such a dystopia. Peaceful suppression of dissent with a few bones for the masses (arenas, bare doles) is enough.

 

[Zireael]

Egyptian South America? Interesting to say the least. And is Antarctica settled?!

 

[Timaeus]

Also, another thing: make it the empires of Hatti, Egypt, and Assyria dueling in the Levant, with Assyria extending up to Khorasan, Hatti ruling the Black Sea, and, well, Egypt can be the same. Rasna can rule Western Europe, China can be insanely Mohist-Legalist, and the New World can be a mess.

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

Orwell did a pretty reasonable job. You can have an "AHC make the actual world look as closely as possible to the world in 1984" thread, with bonus points if you actually get this done by 1984.

 

[CountPeter]

I know you said no plagues, but what about a world where it's politics is heavily affected by plague?

E.g. Say a world in which the Black Plague is held back long enough to hit primarily during the enlightenment equivalent/colonisation period? A Black Plague that spreads faster, to more corners of the globe with less resistance and at the outset of political liberalisation could give rise to more conservative views and a more depopulated world. At the very least, having the printing press in such a world could make an apocalyptic zeitgeist which could have all sorts of nasty effects, particularly if social Darwinism has come into play.

 

[Whiteshore]

Read "What Madness is This" by Napoleon53. The alternate ending has the entire planet either irradiated or under the jackboot of NUSA and friends. Also, what about RvBomally's "Under the Jackboot"? The final paragraph says it all.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Since this is in the pre-1900 forum, I'll offer my TL ideas therein which I would consider the most dystopian:

• the Neo-Assyrian Empire lasts about another century, and their successor regime is neither the Neo-Babylonians nor the Achemenids, but an empire as ruthless or little better; the Iron Age Middle East, as a result, does not get the much needed stability it got following the conquests of Cyrus the Great
• Monge Khan lives longer, meaning Hulagu has more time to wreck destruction across the Middle East, further hindering not only Islamic civilization but European Christendom as well
• the American Revolution fails; among the butterflies is not only the delay of the French Revolution, but the Atlantic Slave Trade, and thus the larger slave economy, surviving longer
• the CSA wins the US Civil War

(I also had a Napoleon III want idea years ago, but I'm pretty fuzzy on the details today.)

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

One interesting possibility is the industrial revolution just doesn't happen. Or even the industrial revolution and the French revolution is stillborn.

European civilization had reached a dead end in the seventeenth century and was stagnating. All the benefits from the Columbian Exchange (for the Europeans) had been reaped, and there were no more large landmasses populated by aboriginal peoples to go settle and exploit. Even the Asian steppe had been tamed and was being settled. Without the additional energy from coal and the steam engine, the stage was set for a really nasty demographic collapse, with political and social collapse in its wake.

On the other hand, without the industrial revolution there is no late twentieth and early twenty-first century ecological crisis, and you don't get the destructive early twentieth century wars.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Ad Astra except without the space stuff

 

[Arkenfolm]

One interesting possibility is the industrial revolution just doesn't happen. Or even the industrial revolution and the French revolution is stillborn.

European civilization had reached a dead end in the seventeenth century and was stagnating. All the benefits from the Columbian Exchange (for the Europeans) had been reaped, and there were no more large landmasses populated by aboriginal peoples to go settle and exploit. Even the Asian steppe had been tamed and was being settled. Without the additional energy from coal and the steam engine, the stage was set for a really nasty demographic collapse, with political and social collapse in its wake.

Wait a minute, there's still the entire trans-Appalachian lands in North America to go kill the natives in and take their stuff, including land which doesn't need industrial-era plowing to make productive. There's still Argentina. There's still South Africa. I'll exclude Australia since it was very far for sailing technology then, but it's still there. So there's still outlets for demographic pressure. And there's still Siberia for Russians to let people colonise and serve the Tsar, which to this day hasn't reached its agricultural potential.

And for North America, not even trans-Appalachia, considering how thin the Eastern Seaboard was settled in the 17th century compared to a century later. All you need is governments more willing to send people over and stomp over the rights of the natives. Which for them is pretty dystopic, no doubt, but they were already living in a dystopia considering the events of 1492 onwards.

• the American Revolution fails; among the butterflies is not only the delay of the French Revolution, but the Atlantic Slave Trade, and thus the larger slave economy, surviving longer
• the CSA wins the US Civil War

Very bad for Africa and those of African descent in the New World, but see my point on the natives above, just apply it to Africa. The massive warfare and the slave trade already was a dystopia for most Africans from the moment the Europeans brought the slave trade to heights never even dreamed. Yeah, it's horrifying to us OTL, but for the people TTL not affected (most everyone besides those groups), it's mostly business as usual.

Dystopia needs to be internationalised for every group, every nation to truly make it the worst.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Very bad for Africa and those of African descent in the New World, but see my point on the natives above, just apply it to Africa. The massive warfare and the slave trade already was a dystopia for most Africans from the moment the Europeans brought the slave trade to heights never even dreamed. Yeah, it's horrifying to us OTL, but for the people TTL not affected (most everyone besides those groups), it's mostly business as usual.

Dystopia needs to be internationalised for every group, every nation to truly make it the worst.

Well, if the ARW fails and the French Revolution is both significantly delayed and curbed, then (very broadly and roughly speaking) the legacy of the Enlightenment is going to be much weaker in the subsequent 19th Century. As an example, I can see Republicanism in TTL not only being much weaker, but developing in conflict with what OTL would consider other socially progressive values (abolitionism, social welfare, gender equality, etc).

 

[Timaeus]

Wait a minute, there's still the entire trans-Appalachian lands in North America to go kill the natives in and take their stuff, including land which doesn't need industrial-era plowing to make productive. There's still Argentina. There's still South Africa. I'll exclude Australia since it was very far for sailing technology then, but it's still there. So there's still outlets for demographic pressure. And there's still Siberia for Russians to let people colonise and serve the Tsar, which to this day hasn't reached its agricultural potential.

Make the colonization process slow and steady, perhaps, and put it under the oversight of the elite, who teach the natives the ways of imperialist oppression?

 

[The Undead Martyr]

OTL is rather horrifying when you look at it a certain way.

I mean:
China. Pretty much always the largest and often the most sophisticated state for the past 2000 years, periodically goes through massive civil war and/or foreign invasion which routinely kills tens or hundreds of millions of people even in the Middle Ages.
The Taping Rebellion and Mongol invasions both killed more people than the First World War, and depending on the estimates the former may have even exceeded the second in total body count.

Persia: got wrecked by the Mongols, then the ashes salted by Tamerlane. Lose Iraq to the Ottomans and the Caucasus to Russia. Now something of a diplomatic outcast due to US hostility.

Rome: the Western Empire utterly destroyed by infighting and Italy becomes a political chew toy between the Greeks, Lombards, Germans and Franks, briefly undergoes a renaissance only to get wrecked again by the Spanish and the French. The Eastern Empire suffers invasion after invasion, the Arabs laying siege to Constantinople twice, and eventually loses all of Anatolia to the Turks and infighting before the Angeloi'sincompetence and the Crusaders finally put it out of its misery.

Africa: Egypt was a civilization that ruled itself for nearly 2000 years before Persia or Rome even existed. It has since then been largely a colony of other empires.

Spain: almost entirely conquered by the Arabs, the Christian kingdoms reduced to hicks in the northern mountains, who splinter due to infighting and reunite due inbreeding. The thriving southern culture of Ansalusia is subject first to fragmentation, then two periods of foreign Berber rule, then "liberated" by the Castilians and we all know how that turned out for them. Subsequently caught in a massive struggle against France and the freaking Ottomans at their peak, burns itself out trying and failing to hold everything, loses Portugal, Rousillon, the Netherlands, (evwntually) Italy, and all of their overseas colonies following a Napoleonic invasion.

Russia: Mongol Yoke. Russian Revolution. Stalin. Need I say more?

Germany: suffers genocide (Saxons) at the hands of Charlemagne, constant raids from the Magyars, political fragmentation, culminating in the Thirty Years War. Finally gets its shit together under Prussia just in time to lose two world wars and 25% of its territory.

France: longstanding political fragmentation, an obsession with dividing their inheritances, and overmighty vassals cripple it right from the start. Despite Philip Augustus still suffers a subsequent English invasion that lasts 100 years and almost immediately thereafter finds itself encircled by the Habsburgs. Manages to break them in the 30 Years War but then faces constant British led coalitions. Finally collapses into Revolution, and spends a third of its adult male population trying to prop up Napoleon. Subsequently smashed and humiliated by Germany and isolated by Bismarckean diplomacy. Throws everything and the kitchen sink at the Germans in the 1st World War, takes a quarter of a million losses in the first month, and barely eeks out a win, only to find its allies desert them almost immediately and the "defeated" Germany isn't all that weaker...

Britain: subject to constant Scandinavian raids and conquests, finally subjected to Norman (Frenchified NorsEssen, insult to injury) conquest. Gains most of France by inheritance, loses it due to incompetence. Tries and fails to regain it in the Hundred Years War, which in turn caused a civil war so deadly that GRRM used it as inspiration. Underwent yet more struggles during the Protesttant Reformation, up to and including a CIVIL war and a revolution. Gains dominion over most of the world only to lose the US to revolution and French meddling. Loses nearly all of its overseas holdings and reduced to and American satellite following the Second World Wars.

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

I understand the Undead Marty's argument, but this is a glass half full/ glass half empty type of thing.

I would argue that globally, human civilization reached its peak in the decades after World War II, extending to about 1970 (the Moon landings and the first oil crisis) or 1900 (the fall of the Soviet Bloc and various right wing dictatorships), depending on your perspective. Humans used the good years after World War II to breed to unsustainable numbers, as if we are elk, and its all been ecological deterioration and the attendant stresses on human society since then.

Certainly just about every place has seen deterioration by many social and political metrics in the twenty-first century,but its hard to conceptualize just how good the second half of the twentieth century was.

But the big event was the industrial revolution. The ability to burn fossil fuels for energy on a grand scale brought an almost ASB pace of technological advance and technological wonders, but the carbon released and the population explosion may wind up trashing the environment people need to live in beyond repair. Before that, things sort of cycled up and down within the limits of the ecology of the local area, though after 1500 this started happening on a global scale. Toynbee's "Mankind and Mother Earth" offers a good perspective on the dynamic. I think without the industrial and political revolutions that happened towards the end of the nineteenth century in Europe, things run into a demographic, technological, and cultural dead end and there is a terrible crash, though something humanity can recover from, maybe like the crashes in the 3rd and the 14th centuries in Eurasia.

Another possibility post industrial revolution was the great early twentieth century totalitarian societies winning and providing the model for everyone else to follow. This was a really big worry at the time. Just having Hitler and Stalin's Pact holding could be a POD.

Maybe this belongs in chat?

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

A good post by @The Undead Martyr and not just those nations, but the Arabs as well.

Comes bursting out of the peninsula and conquers the largest empire in the world to the lose it after constant rebellions and wars on all sides, in 50 years. To then the Abbasids who unite everything and proceed to start a massive inquisition and scientific racism in southern Iraq. Leading to crushing revolts and the depopulation of the oldest cradle of society (Iraq) and the destruction of the Kaaba. Then the relative emasculating of Arab warrior society in favor of Turks who then rule them for 900 years+ and then once gaining freedom, lose Palestine to the Jews, have idiotic dictators who are shamelessly backward, women cannot drive in KSA, dependence on one economic product (guess that), no market economy of any sort, the source of migrants to Europe instead of helping their people and bringing shame to Arabs in foreign land and terrorism the world over. Not to mention being the geopolitical quagmire of the world, not for the strength of the Arabs but because of the inability of us to get anything together.

 

[CountPeter]

• Monge Khan lives longer, meaning Hulagu has more time to wreck destruction across the Middle East, further hindering not only Islamic civilization but European Christendom as well

Mongke Khan living longer wouldn't reasonably have that result. The conditions which led to the Hulagu-Berke war would still be in effect, just arguably with Hulagu in a better position. Either way, Hulagu would be distracted by this war until his death.

A better POD for the same effect is no conversion to Islam of Berke, or something else happening to Berke that would lead to Hulagu continuing on his conquests. However, this wouldn't necessarily be to the detriment of European civilisation which Hulagu was in the process of courting European nobility (hence the infamous bragging about killing more people than physically possible to the French)

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

However, this wouldn't necessarily be to the detriment of European civilisation which Hulagu was in the process of courting European nobility (hence the infamous bragging about killing more people than physically possible to the French)

However, the Crusader states were expensive for Europe, so having them survive longer would drain them further; plus an Egypt run over by Hulagu would send economic depression ripples across the west, especially in Italy. The medieval flourishing prior to the demographic catastrophe of the 14th Century would be greatly retarded, which in turn carries over to a very different 15th Century. And this doesn't even get into things like OTL's scholastic and humanist philosophy's debt to Islamic flourishing, which is now more endangered TTL.

 

[CountPeter]

However, the Crusader states were expensive for Europe, so having them survive longer would drain them further; plus an Egypt run over by Hulagu would send economic depression ripples across the west, especially in Italy. The medieval flourishing prior to the demographic catastrophe of the 14th Century would be greatly retarded, which in turn carries over to a very different 15th Century.

I always presumed that Hulagu going far enough to take Egypt would eventually result in a European reclaiming of the land that could mitigate such a disaster. Also the Crusader states may become less expensive given time, and might mitigate some of the disaster that Europe felt when it was cut off from trade with the Yuan. On the other hand, that would also remove the reason to fund efforts such as Columbus's voyage and by proxy delay the tech progression of Europe.

I'm not saying your wrong or that my hypothetical is right (we both agree on a technologically retarded Europe I believe) but that it wouldn't necessarily be all disasters for Europe. Hell, Mediterranean Europe on the east coast may do better than OTL