2322 Geo War
Inspired by Rvbomally’s „The Day after Yesterday“, Quantumbranchings “A new Ice Age” and Paolo Bacigalupi “The Windup Girl”, as well as some grimdark scenarios, such as the 1998 movie “The Avengers”, and continued Cold War. I have created this fictitious Grimdark scenario.
The PoD here is that the Cold War didn’t end in 1989 but lingered on for a couple of decades. Which greatly frustrated a villain-like-character based on the evil guy in The Avengers, who hoped that a collapsed Soviet Union would generate allot of mayhem. Thus he engineered some truly apocalyptic devises – the Geo-Bombs, which can exhilarate tectonic movement, cause glaciers to melt and can cause land to sink beneath the waves.
When for the next 23 years there weren’t signs of a nuclear showdown between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, this evil Genius started to detonate his bombs…
His first bomb was to create the Nebraska Sea, a favorite theme of his, after reading the novel of Allan Danzig, but his “Sea” was quicker in developing.
His second, third and fourth bombs were planted in the Chad, Congo and Kalahari Basin – he was a fan of the Atlantropa Idea but despised its Pacifist element. Also he created straits which will lead into these Inner Seas.
The Sixth and Seventh bombs were the most devastating – he exploded them under the Arctic and in Antarctica causing these two ice capes to melt – the resulting tidal waves wiped large parts of Northern Europe out.
The consequence: Sea level started to rapidly rise, causing whole population to flee to higher grounds. The Eastern Coast of the US was quickly swallowed, the Amazon destroyed and East Asia and the Pacific drowned. With this Second Deluge came the sporadic of Geo-Bombs, especially in the South China Sea (creating the South China Islands), Scandinavia (Separating South Swede from the rest of the country), Central America and West Africa. Ironically the Gibraltar bomb sheltered the Mediterranean from the coming waves, allowing the North Africa countries enough time to evacuate their citizens until subsequent bombs flooded the Med and collapsed large parts of southern Europe into the Sea.
The reaction of the world was one of panic and apocalyptic. Whole countries were destroyed, the Netherland and Denmark drowned beneath hundred meters high tsunamis, Bangladesh and Senegal slipped under the sea, their populace just reaching safety in India and Mauretania, the US and the Soviets struggling to evacuate their people to high grounds, this and other apocalyptic scenes were played out everywhere on Earth.
But the world started to hit back, a War between one man and the world has started – the Man vs. the World War, the Hunt or simply the Geo-War.
For the next couple of months the fight against or more likely the search for the evil guy has started. After more suffering, the Volga River collapsed beneath the Ocean level, California destroyed and Japan drowned, the guy was cornered beneath Yellowstone, preparing to detonate his largest bomb yet. Luckily he was eliminated before he pushed the red button.
Now Earth has to deal with the cost and consequences of the Geo-War, climate shifts, loss of the Gulf Stream, hundreds of millions dead and billions of displaced persons.
It took most Earth governments nearly three-quarters of a century to take adequate control of the crisis and a further fifty years to stabilize the situation. In this time massive intrusion by earth nation into a wounded earth has caused more crises. Oil and coal was burned without any second though leading to an oil peak about sixty years after the Geo-War and ten years after petroleum has run out.
More seriously with losses in Europe and Midwest America Agricultural production has plummeted. Government struggling to feed their population turned to genetic-engineered food production. GEN-Food was born. GoodGeneFruits in Bloemfontein, BioFarm and Pure-AgriProds in Springfield, United Standard CalFruit in Sioux Falls, VidAlimento in Brasilia and others have accumulate vast powers and are constantly battling to produce disease free food for the Earth population.
With the loss of so much forest to the sea, the fire and the earth much of the world climate has changed desertification is a major problem, areas where this topography is unknown are now sprouting deserts and wastelands, an extreme example are the tropical isles of Madagascar and Papua. Experts say that in a few decades no Greens will be left and the islands turned into large deserts or dry wastelands.
Also with the Geo-War earth bio and eco system has been dealt a large, some say fatal wound, wheat and other agricultural products have fallen to repeated outbreaks of plant diseases. Only the GEN-Food of the New Agri-Companies has saved most Earth population from starvation. Domesticated mammals, such as poultry, cows and others, and humans alike know feed themselves with Single-Life-Wheats and PurGenTomato.
Without Oil, Earth has returned to the sail, genetic engineered work-mammals and their own muscles to power their methods of transportation. The cycle has made a major comeback. Also sail ships made from US-Teakwood or Dragoon Redwood criss-cross the storm-wracked oceans of the earth, bringing GEN-Food, Novo Stegodons and religious settlers to foreign coasts.
Earth population and nations have also gone tremendous and sometimes terrifying changes. Religious fundamentalism has risen in many countries, the Gordonites in the US and their allies, the Waraabies in North Africa, the Middle East and some Asian countries.
After the old regimes of North Africa have fallen to the Waraabies, a Fundamentalist Theocracy has been declared stretching from the Maghreb to the dried up Indus and also including the Malay and Indo Islands.
Western Europe has since fallen to the fundamentalists, swamped by refugees from Africa and Asia; it was an easy prey for the Waraabies. Some managed to flee to the Eastern Bloc or to the Alpine Neo-Fascists, the rest of the native population have been reduced to second class citizens.
Eastern Europe has weathered the Geo-War and its result surprisingly well, courtesy of the centralized and planned-economy policy, though many foreigners say that having large armies helped. It has successfully assimilated Geo-War refugees and others fleeing from Western Europe. The Neo-Soviets are the greatest rival of the Waraabies, seeing themselves as the true Europe.
China has recovered from the devastation of its eastern provinces. Large concrete cities has sprung out along the new coastline, being more practical and with the need to house large numbers of people, these new cities are nothing more than sprawls filled with sewage and sweating humans.
Africa and Asia outside of China and the Waraabie Theocracy have more or less stabilized. Ranging from waste-filled metropolis in West Africa and India, to near-nomadic life cycle of Uganda and Central Africa, from the Urban-Archipelago Sprawls of Malay, Indo and Thai Islands to the vast GEN-Food fields of South Africa, these countries have since aligned themselves with one of the major powers or are dealing with uprisings, revolt, corruption or battling Plant-Diseases, Desertification or a combination of all these crisis.
In North America the rise of the fundamentalist Gordonite Christians was partially kept in check by the powers of GEN-Food companies, some say that the companies paid off the priest-generals of the Gordonites or that some of its leaders sit on the board of directors. The presidency is mostly a farce by now; in reality GEN-Food controls the American government, with the church as a respectable front.
South America has since returned into the warm bosom of Chicago, or more precisely into the greedy arms of BioFarm, Pure-AgriProds and United Standard CalFruits. Large areas around the Amazon and La Plata Sea which isn’t suffering from desertification or from the Free Food Guerillas, the FFG, attacks, have been turned into gigantic GEN-Food farms.
The major powers have since returned into space and even managed to build semi-permanent bases on the moon using small ancient technologies of the 20th and early 21st century. By using large amounts of coconut and palm oil, a heaven-ship from each of the powers managed a return every decade to their one to two-man bases, after a month long journey from earth’s surface. America has even managed a one-way space mission to Mars…
World Population has after three hundred and ten years returned to over six billion people, Asia with 2.7 billion and Africa with 2.3 billion are the most populous continents on earth. And some say that this booming population is a time bomb waiting to explode...
Technology is mostly based on work-mammal strength, wind power and the basic human muscle, palm oil fuel is purely restricted to heavenly rockets, GEN-Food directors and governmental ministers’ coal-cars. Although the powers have returned into space and even made some-what inhabitable bases on the moon, they have failed to effectively combat plant-diseases and climate change turmoil.
This is the world in 2322 the Legacy of the Geo War.
