Currently at 359 words, so you'll soon see. But essentially it's a religion taking over Brazil.
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by Hellslayer » Thu Sep 17, 2020 6:50 am
by Hellslayer » Thu Sep 17, 2020 7:23 am
by G-Tech Corporation » Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:00 am
by G-Tech Corporation » Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:14 am
by New yugoslavaia » Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:18 am
by Plzen » Thu Sep 17, 2020 9:02 am
G-Tech Corporation wrote:RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: The Polar Development Conglomerate, or PoleDev, as most call it.
Territory reserved: Antarctica and her oceans
Rodez wrote:RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: Los Montañeros (Officially: Liga del Orinoco)
Territory reserved: Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Curacao
by Khasinkonia » Thu Sep 17, 2020 10:31 am
by G-Tech Corporation » Thu Sep 17, 2020 11:07 am
POLEDEV: THE POLAR DEVELOPMENT CONGLOMERATE
Polares Entwicklungskonglomerat
A plutocratic corporate fiefdom with a mixed transhumanist-arcadian outlook.
PoleDev, officially the Polar Development Conglomerate or the Sovereign Transnational Commission for Natural and Agricultural Acquisition in Marginal Regions (UN) is a country in the Southern Ocean and comprising the landmass of Antarctica. Covering an area of 14.2 million square kilometres (5.483 million square miles), it is bounded by the Southern Ocean, save for its enclaves, who are located within the Southern Ocean itself. Its maritime claims abut with the both international waters and the territorial waters of Chile, the United Kingdom, Argentina, New Zealand, and Australia.
PoleDev territory, that is, the Antartic continent, has been vaguely inhabited since the middle of the 20th century to varying degrees. This human habitation was primarily for resource exploration, research, and scientific curiosity, with the number of inhabitants steadily accelerating throughout the 20th century and picking up into the 21st. By the start of the 21st century, nearly seventy research bases of various sorts and nationalities had been established on the Antarctic continent, housing nearly four thousand persons during the Polar summer, though that number was season and declined to less than a thousand during the long winter. After 1959, access to the Antarctic continent was governed by the Antarctic Treaty System, ensuring that the Antarctic was held in trust for all mankind as a scientific preserve through the late 2030s.
Changing geological and climatological factors, however, began to weigh on the treaty system as early as the 2010s, as competition for dwindling petrochemical reserves beneath Antarctica's sister ice shelf, the free ocean of the Arctic captured the imagination of the world's nation-states. Though retrieval of the resources beneath the Arctic at depths of thousands of meters limited their commercial viability until the Ross-Pikarnev Well was sunk on the Lomonsov Ridge in 2029, both world governments and commercial concerns began looking to Antarctica for more retrievable reserves once the discovery of petrochemicals was confirmed. Early geological and scientific surveys pointed to high probabilities of both petrochemical and mineral resources upon the Antarctic Continent, due to the similar formation geology of the region to the mineral rich rockforms and sedimentary signatures of the South American continental shelf and Australia.
As world water resources began to deplete, competing nations also began to petition the UN for rights to siphon the Antarctic glaciers for freshwater, despite the astronomical scientific and economic costs involved. These first proposals were rejected by the Treaty Secretariat, but after the outbreak of hostilities between Syria and the Israeli state over the Jordan River, the UN began pressuring the Secretariat to revisit these proposals. Merging the long term interests of Russia and China in mineral extraction with the wider concerns of the global South seeking access to water, the Sovereign Transnational Commission for Natural and Agricultural Acquisition in Marginal Regions (UN) was created in 2034. Her original mandate was to conduct feasibility studies into the environmentally-sound extraction of vital resources from the conservation regions, but the environmentally-sound part of the mandate swiftly became occluded as the worldwide water shocks of the 2030s intensified.
The entrances of Gasprom and BHP Group Limited to the board structure of the Transnational Commission in 2037 marked a shift towards extraction of not only UN-determined necessary resources, but also those resources which had been depleted to the point of Antarctic extraction becoming commercially viable, such as molybdenum, manganese lead, cobalt, and titanium. Private funding for the Commission and the reworking of the Commission's mandate to include this funding source thereafter soon led to the foundation of the Prince Edward Logistical Center in Wilkes Land, and the sinking of the first six mines within a twenty kilometer radius of the Center by late 2038.
Profits from the venture were at first marginal, only sufficient to cover costs, but the continued intensification of petroleum sounding efforts in Antarctic waters led to the discovery of vast reserves not only of crude oil, but also natural gas and shale. With the destabilization of world oil supplies the Persian Gulf Conflict created throughout the early 2040s, Antarctic sweet crude soon came to replace Middle Eastern oil as the second most important petrochemical supply chain in the world, and leading partners, British Petroleum and Chevron, surged past Aramco in market valuations in 2042.
The vast amount of facilities, logistical engines, and infrastructure created to service the extraction efforts at the South Pole motivated public-private partnerships to begin local manufacturing efforts, as one study in 2041 tendered by the Australian government categorized 92% of the financial and environmental cost of Antarctic exploration as being tied in with transportation costs to the Australis Continent. Growing environmental concerns, amplified by the cascading costs of climate disasters worldwide, forced governmental and corporate entities to begin moving manufacturing, maintenance, and even housing concerns to Antarctica herself, allowing workers to live the entire year in the vast oil-rig cities and sealed settlemetns of the Antarctic coast. By 2050 the population of Antarctica had reached nearly a hundred and twenty thousand souls.
Continued needs for rare earths, cheap ore, and compact energy led only to amplification of the human presence in Antarctica throughout 2060. Growing cities of tens of thousands of workers, riggers, roboticists, geneticists, geologists, and miners led to the creation of the Polar Security Forces, a UN command with rotating leadership, a lawkeeping organization who had strong ties to the corporate interests that predominated in Antarctica at the time. Technological diversification to deal with the cold weather, and the creation of cold weather infrastructure like sealed underground train networks, swiftly drove the transportation costs from Antarctic downwards inexorably, even as the resource extraction costs from the Third World and known First World reserves began to rise. Climate change played a role in this regard, reducing the amount of dangerous ice floes even as it increased calving events, allowing even non-specialized tankers and shipping to access the growing port-cities of the Southern Continent. Advances in robotics also played their part, for though processing power began to stall, the harsh conditions and limited labor of Antarctica necessitated and soon predicated advancement in automation, both in the indigenous factories and in the descending borehole-mines and undersea rigs of Antarctica, laborers of silicon and ceramics slaving away in the inky blackness of the Polar sea.
The tension between the hodgepodge of UN agencies, corporate interests, and the Treaty Secretariat came to a head in 2063 when the UN General Assembly, motivated by a desire to gain a more equitable share of Antarctica's resources, voted to place the entirety of the Commission under UN supervision. This measure was initially rejected by both the Treaty Secretariat and the UN Security Council, as most of the Security Council members benefited unduly from their share of Antarctica's wealth, however as 2063 passed into 2064 public pressure on the Security Council eventually led to the ratification of the measure - with the understanding that the members of the Security Council would be compensated for their losses by the nationalization of corporate assets.
Thus the seeds of the White War were sown. Though in public only a few of the companies based in Antarctica, such as Consolidated Ant-Anglo Metals, Limited, protested the measures, behind the scenes almost none were willing to acquiesce to the looting of what the corporations though had been a success story largely built on their risks. With public confidence in government competence at a serious ebb, and the only the Polar Security Forces possessing naval cutters and vessels capable of operating consistently in the hideous weather at the bottom of the world, a league of the twenty largest and most influential corporations took it upon themselves to establish autonomy for Antarctica. When the first UN-flagged ships arrived in Port Wilhelm to begin escorting water tankers to Russian coastal reservoirs, they were quietly surrounded and forced to strike their color by both naval cutters of the Security Forces, and two third-generation nuclear submarines silently acquired from the United States. Public announcements were made the corporation involved of the dissolution of the Secretariat, and the transition of the Commission into the Polar Development Conglomerate.
Thus the White War started and ended. With the world on edge in a dozen locations, there turned out to be no governments willing to divert naval assets to fight in unfamiliar waters over an unpopular program of corporate seizures. Several of the entities involved were sanctioned, or sued by various states in court, but nearly all of the cases were eventually dismissed or quietly dropped as the stranglehold of Polar gas, oil, and minerals caused economic hardship. Embargoes were placed on Antarctic goods by several nations, but slowly dissolved over the course of the next decade.
As of 2095, Antarctica is a land of nearly unfettered corporate innovation, governed by the Antarctica Board of Trustees, where the twenty richest corporations of the year send their representatives. The climate shift has only increased Antarctica's value, immense infrastructure projects capturing vast amounts of freshwater for subterranean hydroponics farms powered by fourth-generation reactors, and Antarctica is, through the quirks of history, by some measures one of the freest and most mobile societies remaining upon the planet. With labor highly valued, and innovation still a powerful force to open up new horizons on the Astral Continent, the corporate landmass looks to the future with more hope than most.
2095: Blood and Iron; an application
by G-Tech Corporation » Thu Sep 17, 2020 11:12 am
by Democratic East-Asia » Thu Sep 17, 2020 12:19 pm
Pan Asia Broadcasting Channel: "We will achieve communism in 20 years." - Chairman Wei Yenwu, Central Government | Automation of industries threatens millions of jobs, says economic advisors
by Sao Nova Europa » Thu Sep 17, 2020 12:48 pm
by New yugoslavaia » Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:13 pm
by Bolslania » Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:14 pm
by Plzen » Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:18 pm
by Khasinkonia » Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:25 pm
by New yugoslavaia » Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:47 pm
by Plzen » Thu Sep 17, 2020 10:54 pm
G-Tech Corporation wrote:A plutocratic corporate fiefdom with a mixed transhumanist-arcadian outlook.
Democratic East-Asia wrote:I could go incredibly boring and just be the PRC, though this is just a tag for now.
Sao Nova Europa wrote:Climate change and rising temperatures had a somewhat positive side-effect in NAF.
Bolslania wrote:In this Consensus, Germany, Poland, France, and Austria decided to unify.
Bolslania wrote:In 2050, the remnants of the EU collapsed, and the European Federation adopted the name. The European Union also began to absorb neighboring nations, annexing Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg. The EU attempted to annex the Netherlands and Belgium, but those two nations resisted, requiring the application of military force. The Euro War lasted from 2054 to 2055, with the Netherlands and Belgium just not having the force to resist the might of the EU. There was a short lived attempt to annex Belarus and Ukraine, but when those two nations refused, the EU decided not to pursue the invasion of the two countries.
Bolslania wrote:Through 2056-2072, the EU was struck, along with many other places, by a resurgence of the bubonic plague. This was handled fairly well by the government, however, this new strain killed about 15% of the population over the 20 years it was around.
Bolslania wrote:In 2054, a non-partisan Platonian "Government Caste" was formed. It functions somewhat like a clergy, with inductees not being able to own private property or interests. However, they are allowed to marry and have a child.
Bolslania wrote:The European Union has reasonably open borders, with immigration not being too expensive or hard to do.
Khasinkonia wrote:RESERVATION
Name of state/organisation: The Himalayan Kingdom
Territory reserved: Tibet, Chinese Kashmir, Northern Nepal, Arunachal Pradesh, Bhutan, and Sikkim
New yugoslavaia wrote:In the backstory, you mentioned about expanded deserts. What about the Southern African ones?
by Sao Nova Europa » Fri Sep 18, 2020 3:48 am
by SangMar » Fri Sep 18, 2020 6:50 am
by G-Tech Corporation » Fri Sep 18, 2020 6:59 am
Plzen wrote:One outlook, please. I'd say that transhumanist probably fits this concept better than arcadian.
The application looks good - I envision the Arctic region, Canada, Scandinavia, or Siberia, as the last regions in which hope for the future still burns. I didn't imagine the same for the Antarctic, but the same environmental and demographic factors that apply to the Arctic would also apply to the Antarctic - doubly more so, since the latter is even colder, more resourceful, and less populated.
Provisionally accepted, but please revise your outlook.
Unrelated to your application, but you may also wish to consider how you intend to avoid falling into the Dutch Disease.
by New yugoslavaia » Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:17 am
by SangMar » Fri Sep 18, 2020 10:10 am
by Plzen » Fri Sep 18, 2020 12:03 pm
G-Tech Corporation wrote:I'm not actually aware of instances where the Dutch phenomenon worked in reverse to a deleterious outcome.
Khasinkonia wrote:-snip-
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