The year is 2062, but the world is not a place of glimmering cities, high technology or great progress that many in the past might have hoped for. Society is agrarian, life is tough and even the greatest of the world's cities are deeply lacking in mechanised industry. The world of 2062 is not in the midst of ever-accelerating technological and social progress; the world of 2062 is recovering from an almost apocalyptic disaster, The Great Deluge, in which the Earth's oceans rose a kilometre and inundated much of its land. The Great Deluge has caused technology to regress, has made the world's population shrink dramatically and has made the world almost unrecognisable.
It is the 1st of March, 2062- 100 years after the Great Deluge began, and 50 years since sea levels finally peaked. Earth has been ravaged by the wrath of the oceans, and human civilisation is a shadow of its former self.
The cause of the Great Deluge can be blamed on one man- General Secretary Joseph Stalin, leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In late 1952, with the arms race of the Cold War beginning, Stalin suggested to his highest officials that despite the USSR's pre-existing nuclear capabilities, it would nevertheless be a good idea to develop other weapons of mass destruction apart from nukes in an attempt to one-up the Americans. The top echelons of the Russian military went through a wide array of ideas and to a limited extent attempted many of them, but one proposal above all gained prominence - that of Project Perun.
The goal of Project Perun, named after the Slavic pagan god of thunder, was to create a device capable of causing earthquakes. With the threat of seismic warfare as a deterrent, the Soviets believed that the West would have no choice but to refrain from aggression against the Communist bloc. It was thought that this in turn would greatly aid the expansion of Communism across the globe.
The project was top secret until 1962, when the USSR tested their seismic weapons and caused massive earthquakes (magnitude 7.9) off the coast of Kamchatka. This was partially in response to tensions resulting from the Sino-Soviet split, but at the same time the practical realisation of Project Perun was nigh inevitable regardless.
A few days later, settlements around the Sea of Okhotsk under both Japanese and Russian jurisdiction began noticing an abnormal rise in sea levels - the sea was rising by more than five centimetres a day and not receding. The Soviets realised that the weapon created by Project Perun had fragmented the seabed for many kilometres and extremely deeply, opening up deep subterranean reservoirs of water which were now emptying themselves into Earth's oceans.
After 30 days, sea levels across the world were beginning to rise dramatically. low-lying coastal communities in China were decimated by a 1.64 metre sea level rise over the course of those thirty days, and the situation elsewhere wasn't much better. The United Nations Security Council unanimously voted to declare a state of global emergency. The Vietnam War was put on hold indefinitely by an armistice as both sides scrambled to relocate their people to higher ground. Sea levels would rise by a whole 20 metres over the next 12 months and continue rising at that rate.
In April 2063, a multinational scientific expedition was launched to determine how much water was being added to Earth's oceans. They determined using radar that, although the oceans would continue to rise by 20 metres a year, the seas would stop rising once they had reached levels a kilometre higher than before the flooding had began. This finding was met by a mix of relief and panic from humanity - the flooding would end eventually, but only after the vast majority of the world's population had lost their homes under hundreds of metres of seawater.
The flood would be dubbed the "Great Deluge".
As the exodus to high ground grew more intense following the news, order broke down across the world and governments were toppled. Hundreds of millions of people across the world would die at some point as global anarchy set in during the worst natural disaster in human history. The few national governments which did survive became military dictatorships in all but name.
The seas would continue to rise for half a century, halting abruptly in the June of 2012. After two generations of chaos, destruction and collapse, those who had been spared by the Great Deluge now had the opportunity to rebuild. The survivors lived in a new world - seawater lapped at the Rockies while fish swam above the submerged streets of New York City - but the Great Deluge had spared them, and what was left was better than nothing. It was now time to rebuild.
The past fifty years since then have been spent picking up the pieces of what was lost and trying to build a new world out of them. During that time new nations have appeared, the streets of towns and cities are once again full of people calmly going about their days, maritime trade is returning to the seas and industry is slowly advancing towards the heights it once achieved. Will you help the people of the world continue their Herculean task of rebuilding what was lost?
The World of Today
The post-Great Deluge world is very different from our own. Sea levels are a kilometer higher- Russia, Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, Eastern North America and the eastern half of China are now almost entirely underwater.
Western North America, separated from the green islands of the Appalachians by thousands of kilometres of ocean, is a reborn Laramidia stretching from the Rockies in the north to the Mexican Plateau in the south. Mexico City is the largest pre-Deluge city to still be above water. In Europe, only mountain ranges have survived the Great Deluge, producing jagged and complex landforms in its wake. The Afghan, Iranian and Anatolian Plateaus, along with the mountains of the Caucasus, stand above the waves as subcontinents linked by land bridges and islands chains. Africa too is a collection of subcontinents, many of them the remnants of East Africa's fertile highlands. Lake Victoria and Lake Kivu still exist in their pre-deluge states, and many African cities such as Addis Ababa and Johannesburg are still far above sea level. In Asia, the Himalayan Plateau is stands steadfast against the waves, with the plains of western China and Mongolia to its north and an almost-completely flooded Indian subcontinent to its south. The Tajik and Kyrgyz people now inhabit a fertile, mountainous coastal region with a mild climate, and Mongolia, with its coastal Lake Khövsgöl, possesses the largest body of fresh water in Asia by volume (along with seasonal monsoons over much of the country's once-parched plains). Southeast Asia and Oceania are a collection of jagged archipelagos that stand where their mountain ranges once did, with the exception of New Guinea's highlands. South America is mostly centred around the Andes, which have a significantly-milder climate, large reserves of fresh water and great agricultural potential.
What remains of the Earth's continents have a much milder, more oceanic climate with less temperature variation and more rain than before the Great Deluge. The Poles are warmer and the equator is cooler. A lack of fertile cropland is a problem in many regions of the world however; shortages occur almost everywhere, sometimes resulting in famine.The breadbaskets of the world are East Africa, the Southern Mexican Plateau, the Andes, Anatolia, East Africa and Yunan. Some coastal areas, such as the eastern foothills of the Rockies and Northern Mongolia, have become suitable for crop-growing as a result of increased rainfall but still struggle with soil fertility. Fisheries are a source of protein for much of the world's population, but not as much as one might expect; the Great Deluge has severely disrupted marine ecosystems. Nevertheless, cod, catfish and salmon are common meals.
The world's population is around 900 million, having declined from 3.1 billion in 1962. Population decline has leveled off and is now stable, and with the Green Revolution having been nipped in the bud by the Great Deluge and agricultural methods regressing many areas hover at around their carrying capacity. Population density around the world tends to be greatest on large, reasonably-fertile plateaus that bore large populations before the Great Deluge.
Technology across most of the world hovers at just below an industrial level. Advanced manufacturing, where it still exists (namely the former developed world), relies heavily on artisanship and is mostly geared towards producing much-needed goods such as bolt-action rifles and threshing machines as opposed to commodity production. In places like Africa muskets have seen a return to use, with relic guns such as AK-47s being reserved for elite military units. With much of the world's oil-bearing land over a kilometre underwater and oil drilling having ended with the collapse of the Great Deluge, transportation is once more reliant on the horse and sail. Steamships are used in more advanced countries. Travel between landmasses by ship takes months, and is thus mostly done for either exploration or for trading valuable, exotic commodities. Coal, being most abundant in the Rockies, the Mongolian Plateau, Yunnan and Southern Africa, remains important for heating and industry (to the extent that the latter still exists).
Nation Application
Note that your nation application doesn't necessarily have to be for a fully-fledged state entity and a sedentary people. I'm perfectly fine with tribal entities as well - a very loose Tuareg tribal confederation on one of the former Sahara's islands would be cool for instance. I'm just pointing this out because sometimes people play in althist nation RPs as tribes, and I'm cool with that.
Anyway, here's the app.
- Code: Select all
[b]Name of the country you are RPing as:[/b]
[b]Territory controlled:[/b]
[b]Form of government, ideology (if any) and leader/s:[/b]
[b]Ethnic and religious makeup:[/b]
[b]A brief history of how your country came to be:[/b]
[b]Agricultural suitability of territory (based on [url=https://nelson.wisc.edu/sage/data-and-models/atlas/maps/suit/preview3.html]this[/url] and [url=http://passel.unl.edu/Image/mmamo3/TimKettler/InhLandQual/LandQualityAll-Opt=800x500.gif]this[/url], but feel free to take liberties with places like Colorado and northern Mongolia which now have more rainfall):[/b]
[b]Number of military naval vessels (if any, also their technological level will be determined by how developed your society was pre-Deluge):[/b]
[b]Population of territory (I'm fine with a rough guess):[/b]
