Immaculate
unerring
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2003
- Messages
- 7,623
Ultimately I am going to soon have to reduce my NESing load, and especially moderating time, so I am trying to put together a new NES that will be less time-intensive to run until such time as I can find more free-time and return to my very enjoyable but incredibly time-intensive ImmacuNES IIB. and i'm trying to put the hard work of developing it in the next week or two. Game-wise its going to be MUCH simpler than anything i ran previously.
So I want to run a future NES set in 2100. Below you will find a time-table and description of events leading up to twenty-one-hundred. I have tried to make it as well-researched and plausible as possible but would greatly appreciate your assistance with anything that you find improbable, unlikely, or non-factual.
Lastly, the project is not complete and I would greatly appreciate any community assistance in fleshing it out as I go. Though the ultimate goal should become obvious once you start reading.
At this time i am not accepting reservations because the nations/factions are not complete. I am just throwing out some ideas for people to bounce around.
There is no fantasy element in this NES.
Twenty-One-Hundred
Introduction
It is the turn of a new century and the world has survived to 2100 but it is very different indeed from the world of nearly a century ago. As most futurologist of that time predicted, climate change, exploding human population and depletion of the worlds fossil fuels have given rise to irreversible changes that have caused massive human suffering.
Oil and Energy
The first oil well was drilled in 1859 and since that time demand has constantly met supply. There has never been a moment in human history where consumers were not eager to purchase and any amount of oil produced anywhere in the world. The moment that oil supply peaked and demand continued, we had a problem. Saudi Arabia was the last to peak, in 2017, but by then, Kuwait had peaked (2010), so too had the United Arab Emirates and Iraq (2009), Nigeria (2007), Canada and Algeria (2006), Mexico (2007) and the rest of the world including the USA had already peaked by 2007. The worlds net peak production, in retrospect, was found to be 2007, a rather optimistic outcome, often attributed to a growing green-movement and green policy successes amongst many world governments. As Hubert had predicted, while oil prices continued to rise dramatically, especially in the twenty-teens, by 2017 it absolutely sky-rocketed. Between 2017 and 2018, the cost of one barrel of crude went from 120$ to over $800. At the time, the oil industries controlled one-sixth of the worlds economies. One quarter of the worlds shipping carried oil. After 2017, every year the world had to make due with 2-5% less oil then the year before. By 2058, the worlds oil consumption was cut to less than 1% from the 2007 peak. The world never really recovered from the western worlds depression of the twenty-teens and by 2018, the depression was truly-world wide and none could imagine recovering without some new, magic-bullet technology for energy production.
As early as the 1980s governments and private corporations sought desperately to find alternative fuel sources and indeed many nations were forced more and more to adopt greener technologies but unfortunately, a growing population and climate change often made these difficult or when successful, such as the Spanish or north African solar energy fields of the twenty-twenties, simply inadequate to meet the ever-growing need.
Coal continued to survive as a useable fuel source for some time and though the total mass remaining in the ground did not peak until late in the twenty-forties, the net energy required to recover the coal in comparison to the energy produced had already peak long ago in twenty-twelve. The last to peak was China whos massive reserves still, to this day, remain un-depleted, though the net energy ratio peaked in twenty-twenty-eight. Well before that the massive strains placed upon energy consumption by the super-hot Chinese economic engine had driven coal prices up one-hundred fold from its prices in the twenty-ten, resulting, in combination with depletion of other energy sources in a massive and irreversible depression acceleration (they were already in constant depression since twenty-eighteen). The resulting energy crisis, by twenty-twenty eight, ended the industrialized lifestyle for 95% of Chinese and 98% of the remainder of far-east Asia.
Natural gas continued to be used in north America for a relatively short time, its production in the USA already having peaked by 2009 and in Canada by 2019. Europe, via Russia, continued to have access until nearly 2049 but its peak had already passed in 2038. Natural gas had been increasingly hoarded by Russia, China and some parts of European elites (especially for the production of much-prized fertilizers) and by 2035 was so expensive as to be beyond the reach of most Europeans, Russians or Chinese. An ever declining number of elite private corporations, mostly Russian, as well as the Chinese governments industrial machine depleted the last of the natural stocks by 2050. By then the majority of the population of these states had already reverted to pre-industrial lifestyles.
Nuclear power continued to gain favor but already by 2005 the world had reached it peak production of uranium. For decades uranium continued to be a very small proportional cost of energy production from nuclear power plants and even dozen-fold increase in its price had very little change in the cost of energy production from nuclear power plants. Unfortunately the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011 came at a bad time and greatly reduced public support of nuclear energy despite the obvious stains on fossil fuel and coal-based electricity production. Many governments were slow to move to nuclear and their economies reached accelerated depression much earlier and among those were some who were completely unable to reverse the trend because nuclear power had already moved beyond their financial capacity to acquire. By twenty-thirty, as the world became more and more reliant on uranium-based energy, its price sky-rocketed and Australia and Canada, who had become the worlds only remaining producers of the metal after depletion of mines in the remaining parts of the world were under increasing pressure from the industrialized world to mine faster and bring more of the metal to market. Ultimately this acceleration led to depletion of all known sources of uranium much faster then originally anticipated and by 2042, there was no more uranium to be found. Non-uranium fuels, introduced as early as the twenty-teens extended the lifetime of the power plants and thorium-based atomic energy continues to power much of the worlds remaining heavy industry though the expense of its production makes it available only to a select few corporations and governments; the energy produced proved to be, counter to expectations from the twenty-teens not nearly as efficient as originally foreseen. None-the-less, along with solar and to a lesser extent wind and tidal power, thorium-based energy remains the source of modern energy, at least amongst the elite.
One of the last sources of useable energy was the massive oil-sands deposits of Alberta, Canada and the Orinico belt of Venezuela as well as additional fields identified in Siberia only as late as 2021. Unfortunately, the extraction of energy from oil sands was itself a very energy-dependent process and additionally caused massive damage to local fresh-water ecosystems and released massive amounts of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere, further accelerating the worlds rate of climate change. This last source of energy peaked in 2038, and was able to keep the Canadian, Russian and American (who had seized Venezuela) economies ticking along without the complete collapses such as those seen in China, the middle-east or Europe until then. In 2039, a new wave of depression acceleration brought the industrialized lifestyle to a near-complete halt except for the very privileged few. By 2047 the oil sands were depleted.
The last source of natural gas, methane hydrates from the floor of the Arctic Ocean, proved extremely expensive to recover, even with the massive melt of polar ice, and beyond the means of the majority of the worlds remaining economies. None-the-less, two of the more energy-endowed nations, Canada and Russia, raced to develop these last precious resources and in 2039 fought a limited war over their possession with neither side coming out the obvious victor and an uneasy treaty resulting in the division of the worlds last energy reserves in Canadas slight favor. While the energy produced was significant, in the short term, for some remaining elite Canadian and Russian corporations (though not the general public), the burning of methane was as bad or worse for the environment as the extraction of oil-sands had been. Paradoxically, rising atmospheric and ocean temperatures resulted in the release of more methane gas from the polar ocean floor in a positive feedback cycle that, though having peaked in 2071, continued until 2078 when it abruptly ceased and the last of the mega corporations and their walled enclaves of industrialized lifestyles-enabled populations joined the rest of humanity.
No new non-renewable sources of energy were to be developed and the world was completely dependent on increasingly insufficient wind, tidal and solar farms as well as those thorium-based atomic energy plants governments and corporations were able to build prior to the almost total collapse of their economies. Already the massive deforestations of the twenty-fifties and sixties were forever changing the face of the earth.
By the late twenty-thirties, the majority of electricity available to the worlds general populations was derived from hydroelectric, wind or solar plants. In some nations that governments wisely invested their remaining energy from fossil and non-renewable sources in the extraction of the aluminum and silicon needed for their construction and there are more useable plants. Later thorium power would emerge amongst the richest nations. For many, especially among what was once called developing nations, or nations where money for these projects was diverted by corruption or war, there is no electricity whatsoever. For the lucky, despite these sources, for nearly two decades they had been suffering from recurrent large-scale brown outs, then days without power, then finally the total shutdown of the electric grid. There was much interest in building public and private renewable energy systems, but by then it was near-impossible to find the money. People spoke sorrowfully of the selfishness and shortsightedness of previous generations who neglected to use part of their energy wealth to bequeath renewable energy systems to their descendants. By twenty-forty, with the exception of Canada and Russia, energy from even the renewable sources is so expensive and so precious that only the centralized governments or mega-corporations of the world possess access to the electricity produced. By twenty-fifty, the populations Canada and Russia had joined the rest of the world.
Agriculture
The green revolution of the 1960s, the arrival of artificial fertilizers, motorized farm equipment and petro-derived herbicides and pesticides changed agriculture forever. Before then, some 100 genera of microscopic life annually unlocked the elements of the last generation of plants to make food for the next one. Artificial fertilizers killed those microbiotics but provided the necessary nutrition and so it didnt matter. In two-thousand, 85 million tons of fertilizers were spread on the worlds fields every year. This fertilizer was manufactured from five-hundred million barrels of crude oil. For very kilocalorie of food produced, ten kilocalories of petro-energy were used to manufacture it. Add transport energy costs and the picture was very grim indeed and certainly not sustainable. Fertilizers, motorized farming and chemicals meant that food production continued to keep pace with the growing world populations well beyond the natural capacity of the earth to support them. International development agencies helped spread the green revolution to developing nations and the cycle expanded.
By twenty-ten, nearly 10-15% of all fossil fuels, especially natural gas, are consumed in the production of artificial fertilizer, and as the loss of cheap natural gas progresses, artificial fertilizer manufacturing in all but a few locations shuts down, the majority of farmers completely unable to afford their use. The same is true of herbicides and pesticides. Fuel for the use of motorized farming equipment is no longer available. The megalithic agricultural corporations from the twenty hundreds and twenty-teens are falling apart and increasingly farming is performed by independent small-scale families and communes who are desperate to switch from massive, large-scale seasonal mono-cropping to growing a mixed crop of organic product. The thousands of years of a human agriculture that developed over 497 varieties of lettuce and 307 of sweet corn, due to modern farming practices has reduced these numbers to 36 and 12 respectively. The same is true of every other human and livestock crop. And while these last few varieties had been stowed away in the food crop vault in Norway prior to their extinction, there is precious few varieties that remain that are naturally suited for the millions of microclimates across the globe no longer able to rely upon chemical assistance.
Meat and egg producers are switching from electricity and grain-dependent factory farms to pre-industrial pasture based herding. Automated watering systems and the network of food distribution collapses. Increasingly labor is provided by draft animals where available and human labor where it isnt. Productivity, despite man-kinds best efforts, drops dramatically, accelerated by the droughts and extreme weather phenomena of out-of-control climate change. Indeed, the effects of climate change greatly complicated re-establishment of an organic agricultural base as few species were adapted to such extreme weather conditions. For most in North America and Europe, farming has been someone elses job for several generations and there is little tradition of food production without industrial assistance. By twenty-twenty Americans and many in the Middle-East are getting leaner and leaner and already suffering from periodic, extended, food shortages. Fast-food, as most chain-restaurants have all but disappeared. In Asia and Latin America, where traditional organic food-farming was much more common only a generation ago, the change is not so abrupt as many return to their grand-parents professions. None-the-less, highly expanded populations mean domestic squabbling over land and the formation of petty warlords throughout these areas.
In present times, most people grew food in a way very similar to their ancestors of the middle ages, on small homesteads on small private lands though they make use of a much wider variety of crops and animals that had been traded from all over the world in better times.
Runaway Climate Change and Extreme Weather
Since twenty-ten the average planetary temperature has risen 8.7˚C. Sea levels have risen 14m. Many had predicted such changes in 2010 but most futurologist would have called them pessimists. While many had understood the potential for what was known as Runaway Climate Change, none could foresee the numerous overlapping factors that would give rise to the phenomenon.
Obviously the single greatest source of climate change was the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Later increasingly desperate governments and corporations sought energy, any energy for consumption without concern for the long or short-term effects upon climate, the use of the oil sands energy by Canada, the former USA and Russia as well as the use of methane hydrates from the polar ocean floor all being excellent examples thereof.
The rising temperatures not only led to rising sea volumes, but also decreased capacity to passively absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, warming waters being unable to absorb as much of the gas.
Rising temperatures also led to the thawing of the permafrost in Sibera, northern Canada and Alaska, which in turned inverted their function from net carbon sinks to carbon emitters and caused the release of approximately 90 gigatons of methane and 40 gigatons of methane clathrates from tundra areas. These gases had effects up to ten times that of a similar mass of carbon-dioxide and once this process, along with the reduced buffering of the worlds oceans due to increased temperatures and the massive deforestations undertaken by much of the worlds population in the twenty-fifties and sixties desperate for energy began, a very rapid and obviously irreversible trend in accelerated climate change began. This was known as Run-Away Climate Change and, together with the energy shortages of the century, was directly responsible for most of the economic and human suffering we have observed.
Rising temperatures ultimately led to an inversion of many of the worlds ocean currents, ultimately leading to the great freeze that currently grips the British isles and much of Scandinavia and the extreme weather phenomena including hurricanes, cyclones and frequent tornadoes that continually harass much of the worlds population.
Run-away climate change has sunk innumerable small islands, including the entirety of the Malidves, the majority of the Netherlands and amongst other major cities, London and New Orleans.
Areas in purple are completely flooded and areas in blue suffer from seasoning and/or tidal oceanic flooding.
Run-Away Climate Change has also led to massive droughts, especially in western North America, north-eastern Brazil, the Mediterranean basin, Iberia, Southern Africa, and Oceana, often due to reduced mountain glacier spring run-off but just as often not. Drought in these areas has also, in turn, led to greatly reduced agricultural productivity and frequent wild-fires brought on by ever-increasingly numerous lightning storms.
High altitude areas retain less ice and as a consequence many delta regions have suffered due to reduced river flow and rising sea levels Indeed one-sixth of the worlds population, in 2100 was dependent upon meltwater from mountain glaciers and these over the course of the last century, have almost completely disappeared as they migrated to safer areas or succumbed to hunger or disease.
For much of the rest of the world, humidity has sky-rocketed, together with the heat, bringing vector-borne diseases to many regions that had never before felt the effects of dengue, malaria or typhoid fever. Rivers across Europe and parts of Asia have swelled from constant increased rainfall and a lot of once arable land has been overtaken by swamp.
Global climate changes has not only affected the map of the earth and the way humans live, it has also affected its flaura and fauna. By twenty-fifty, over 15% of the worlds plants and animals existing in 2010 had gone extinct or were committed to doing so. As man turned increasingly in the twenty-fifties and sixties to wood-based charcoal for energy, the extinctions accelerated as many habitats were burned. By twenty-one hundred extinction rates neared 50%. The massive loss of biodiversity, especially in the worlds oceans has greatly affected the ecosystems with the loss of one animal species leading to the loss of several others dependent upon that first species. Fisheries in particular have been hit hard and coral reefs are all but extinct. Species thought to have gone extinct include all species of gorillas, all species of hippopotamus, all species of tiger, Javan, black, and northern white rhinos, several sea turtle species, Asian elephants, Bactrian camels, Ethiopian wolves, Iberian lynx, axolotls, Philippine eagle, California condor, Chinese alligators, the blue whale, narwhals, Asian elephants, giant pandas, snow leopards, Bornean orangutan, Tasmanian devils, and many, many more.
Ultimately while the rate of acceleration of climate change has fallen dramatically in the last twenty years, presumably as a reflection of humanitys greatly reduced fossil fuel usage, it does continue to rise and is expected to continue to do so, though at a reduced rate, for the foreseeable future.
Population Crises and Crash
Politics, Rise of the Mega-Corporations, Wars and Conflict
i am open to a LOT of ideas here. I foresee canada and russia becoming superpower and subsequently collapsing and i've outlined a bit when some nations are going to return to pre-industrial levels... but otherwise things are wide open. I REALLY like the idea of nations being divided by ideologies and methods of survival more then race or language and can easily imagine that modern languages will probably evolve VERY quickly in the years between present and 2100. the same goes for culture.
So I want to run a future NES set in 2100. Below you will find a time-table and description of events leading up to twenty-one-hundred. I have tried to make it as well-researched and plausible as possible but would greatly appreciate your assistance with anything that you find improbable, unlikely, or non-factual.
Lastly, the project is not complete and I would greatly appreciate any community assistance in fleshing it out as I go. Though the ultimate goal should become obvious once you start reading.
At this time i am not accepting reservations because the nations/factions are not complete. I am just throwing out some ideas for people to bounce around.
There is no fantasy element in this NES.
Twenty-One-Hundred
Introduction
It is the turn of a new century and the world has survived to 2100 but it is very different indeed from the world of nearly a century ago. As most futurologist of that time predicted, climate change, exploding human population and depletion of the worlds fossil fuels have given rise to irreversible changes that have caused massive human suffering.
Oil and Energy
The first oil well was drilled in 1859 and since that time demand has constantly met supply. There has never been a moment in human history where consumers were not eager to purchase and any amount of oil produced anywhere in the world. The moment that oil supply peaked and demand continued, we had a problem. Saudi Arabia was the last to peak, in 2017, but by then, Kuwait had peaked (2010), so too had the United Arab Emirates and Iraq (2009), Nigeria (2007), Canada and Algeria (2006), Mexico (2007) and the rest of the world including the USA had already peaked by 2007. The worlds net peak production, in retrospect, was found to be 2007, a rather optimistic outcome, often attributed to a growing green-movement and green policy successes amongst many world governments. As Hubert had predicted, while oil prices continued to rise dramatically, especially in the twenty-teens, by 2017 it absolutely sky-rocketed. Between 2017 and 2018, the cost of one barrel of crude went from 120$ to over $800. At the time, the oil industries controlled one-sixth of the worlds economies. One quarter of the worlds shipping carried oil. After 2017, every year the world had to make due with 2-5% less oil then the year before. By 2058, the worlds oil consumption was cut to less than 1% from the 2007 peak. The world never really recovered from the western worlds depression of the twenty-teens and by 2018, the depression was truly-world wide and none could imagine recovering without some new, magic-bullet technology for energy production.
As early as the 1980s governments and private corporations sought desperately to find alternative fuel sources and indeed many nations were forced more and more to adopt greener technologies but unfortunately, a growing population and climate change often made these difficult or when successful, such as the Spanish or north African solar energy fields of the twenty-twenties, simply inadequate to meet the ever-growing need.
Coal continued to survive as a useable fuel source for some time and though the total mass remaining in the ground did not peak until late in the twenty-forties, the net energy required to recover the coal in comparison to the energy produced had already peak long ago in twenty-twelve. The last to peak was China whos massive reserves still, to this day, remain un-depleted, though the net energy ratio peaked in twenty-twenty-eight. Well before that the massive strains placed upon energy consumption by the super-hot Chinese economic engine had driven coal prices up one-hundred fold from its prices in the twenty-ten, resulting, in combination with depletion of other energy sources in a massive and irreversible depression acceleration (they were already in constant depression since twenty-eighteen). The resulting energy crisis, by twenty-twenty eight, ended the industrialized lifestyle for 95% of Chinese and 98% of the remainder of far-east Asia.
Natural gas continued to be used in north America for a relatively short time, its production in the USA already having peaked by 2009 and in Canada by 2019. Europe, via Russia, continued to have access until nearly 2049 but its peak had already passed in 2038. Natural gas had been increasingly hoarded by Russia, China and some parts of European elites (especially for the production of much-prized fertilizers) and by 2035 was so expensive as to be beyond the reach of most Europeans, Russians or Chinese. An ever declining number of elite private corporations, mostly Russian, as well as the Chinese governments industrial machine depleted the last of the natural stocks by 2050. By then the majority of the population of these states had already reverted to pre-industrial lifestyles.
Nuclear power continued to gain favor but already by 2005 the world had reached it peak production of uranium. For decades uranium continued to be a very small proportional cost of energy production from nuclear power plants and even dozen-fold increase in its price had very little change in the cost of energy production from nuclear power plants. Unfortunately the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011 came at a bad time and greatly reduced public support of nuclear energy despite the obvious stains on fossil fuel and coal-based electricity production. Many governments were slow to move to nuclear and their economies reached accelerated depression much earlier and among those were some who were completely unable to reverse the trend because nuclear power had already moved beyond their financial capacity to acquire. By twenty-thirty, as the world became more and more reliant on uranium-based energy, its price sky-rocketed and Australia and Canada, who had become the worlds only remaining producers of the metal after depletion of mines in the remaining parts of the world were under increasing pressure from the industrialized world to mine faster and bring more of the metal to market. Ultimately this acceleration led to depletion of all known sources of uranium much faster then originally anticipated and by 2042, there was no more uranium to be found. Non-uranium fuels, introduced as early as the twenty-teens extended the lifetime of the power plants and thorium-based atomic energy continues to power much of the worlds remaining heavy industry though the expense of its production makes it available only to a select few corporations and governments; the energy produced proved to be, counter to expectations from the twenty-teens not nearly as efficient as originally foreseen. None-the-less, along with solar and to a lesser extent wind and tidal power, thorium-based energy remains the source of modern energy, at least amongst the elite.
One of the last sources of useable energy was the massive oil-sands deposits of Alberta, Canada and the Orinico belt of Venezuela as well as additional fields identified in Siberia only as late as 2021. Unfortunately, the extraction of energy from oil sands was itself a very energy-dependent process and additionally caused massive damage to local fresh-water ecosystems and released massive amounts of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere, further accelerating the worlds rate of climate change. This last source of energy peaked in 2038, and was able to keep the Canadian, Russian and American (who had seized Venezuela) economies ticking along without the complete collapses such as those seen in China, the middle-east or Europe until then. In 2039, a new wave of depression acceleration brought the industrialized lifestyle to a near-complete halt except for the very privileged few. By 2047 the oil sands were depleted.
The last source of natural gas, methane hydrates from the floor of the Arctic Ocean, proved extremely expensive to recover, even with the massive melt of polar ice, and beyond the means of the majority of the worlds remaining economies. None-the-less, two of the more energy-endowed nations, Canada and Russia, raced to develop these last precious resources and in 2039 fought a limited war over their possession with neither side coming out the obvious victor and an uneasy treaty resulting in the division of the worlds last energy reserves in Canadas slight favor. While the energy produced was significant, in the short term, for some remaining elite Canadian and Russian corporations (though not the general public), the burning of methane was as bad or worse for the environment as the extraction of oil-sands had been. Paradoxically, rising atmospheric and ocean temperatures resulted in the release of more methane gas from the polar ocean floor in a positive feedback cycle that, though having peaked in 2071, continued until 2078 when it abruptly ceased and the last of the mega corporations and their walled enclaves of industrialized lifestyles-enabled populations joined the rest of humanity.
No new non-renewable sources of energy were to be developed and the world was completely dependent on increasingly insufficient wind, tidal and solar farms as well as those thorium-based atomic energy plants governments and corporations were able to build prior to the almost total collapse of their economies. Already the massive deforestations of the twenty-fifties and sixties were forever changing the face of the earth.
By the late twenty-thirties, the majority of electricity available to the worlds general populations was derived from hydroelectric, wind or solar plants. In some nations that governments wisely invested their remaining energy from fossil and non-renewable sources in the extraction of the aluminum and silicon needed for their construction and there are more useable plants. Later thorium power would emerge amongst the richest nations. For many, especially among what was once called developing nations, or nations where money for these projects was diverted by corruption or war, there is no electricity whatsoever. For the lucky, despite these sources, for nearly two decades they had been suffering from recurrent large-scale brown outs, then days without power, then finally the total shutdown of the electric grid. There was much interest in building public and private renewable energy systems, but by then it was near-impossible to find the money. People spoke sorrowfully of the selfishness and shortsightedness of previous generations who neglected to use part of their energy wealth to bequeath renewable energy systems to their descendants. By twenty-forty, with the exception of Canada and Russia, energy from even the renewable sources is so expensive and so precious that only the centralized governments or mega-corporations of the world possess access to the electricity produced. By twenty-fifty, the populations Canada and Russia had joined the rest of the world.
Agriculture
The green revolution of the 1960s, the arrival of artificial fertilizers, motorized farm equipment and petro-derived herbicides and pesticides changed agriculture forever. Before then, some 100 genera of microscopic life annually unlocked the elements of the last generation of plants to make food for the next one. Artificial fertilizers killed those microbiotics but provided the necessary nutrition and so it didnt matter. In two-thousand, 85 million tons of fertilizers were spread on the worlds fields every year. This fertilizer was manufactured from five-hundred million barrels of crude oil. For very kilocalorie of food produced, ten kilocalories of petro-energy were used to manufacture it. Add transport energy costs and the picture was very grim indeed and certainly not sustainable. Fertilizers, motorized farming and chemicals meant that food production continued to keep pace with the growing world populations well beyond the natural capacity of the earth to support them. International development agencies helped spread the green revolution to developing nations and the cycle expanded.
By twenty-ten, nearly 10-15% of all fossil fuels, especially natural gas, are consumed in the production of artificial fertilizer, and as the loss of cheap natural gas progresses, artificial fertilizer manufacturing in all but a few locations shuts down, the majority of farmers completely unable to afford their use. The same is true of herbicides and pesticides. Fuel for the use of motorized farming equipment is no longer available. The megalithic agricultural corporations from the twenty hundreds and twenty-teens are falling apart and increasingly farming is performed by independent small-scale families and communes who are desperate to switch from massive, large-scale seasonal mono-cropping to growing a mixed crop of organic product. The thousands of years of a human agriculture that developed over 497 varieties of lettuce and 307 of sweet corn, due to modern farming practices has reduced these numbers to 36 and 12 respectively. The same is true of every other human and livestock crop. And while these last few varieties had been stowed away in the food crop vault in Norway prior to their extinction, there is precious few varieties that remain that are naturally suited for the millions of microclimates across the globe no longer able to rely upon chemical assistance.
Meat and egg producers are switching from electricity and grain-dependent factory farms to pre-industrial pasture based herding. Automated watering systems and the network of food distribution collapses. Increasingly labor is provided by draft animals where available and human labor where it isnt. Productivity, despite man-kinds best efforts, drops dramatically, accelerated by the droughts and extreme weather phenomena of out-of-control climate change. Indeed, the effects of climate change greatly complicated re-establishment of an organic agricultural base as few species were adapted to such extreme weather conditions. For most in North America and Europe, farming has been someone elses job for several generations and there is little tradition of food production without industrial assistance. By twenty-twenty Americans and many in the Middle-East are getting leaner and leaner and already suffering from periodic, extended, food shortages. Fast-food, as most chain-restaurants have all but disappeared. In Asia and Latin America, where traditional organic food-farming was much more common only a generation ago, the change is not so abrupt as many return to their grand-parents professions. None-the-less, highly expanded populations mean domestic squabbling over land and the formation of petty warlords throughout these areas.
In present times, most people grew food in a way very similar to their ancestors of the middle ages, on small homesteads on small private lands though they make use of a much wider variety of crops and animals that had been traded from all over the world in better times.
Runaway Climate Change and Extreme Weather
Since twenty-ten the average planetary temperature has risen 8.7˚C. Sea levels have risen 14m. Many had predicted such changes in 2010 but most futurologist would have called them pessimists. While many had understood the potential for what was known as Runaway Climate Change, none could foresee the numerous overlapping factors that would give rise to the phenomenon.
Obviously the single greatest source of climate change was the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Later increasingly desperate governments and corporations sought energy, any energy for consumption without concern for the long or short-term effects upon climate, the use of the oil sands energy by Canada, the former USA and Russia as well as the use of methane hydrates from the polar ocean floor all being excellent examples thereof.
The rising temperatures not only led to rising sea volumes, but also decreased capacity to passively absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, warming waters being unable to absorb as much of the gas.
Rising temperatures also led to the thawing of the permafrost in Sibera, northern Canada and Alaska, which in turned inverted their function from net carbon sinks to carbon emitters and caused the release of approximately 90 gigatons of methane and 40 gigatons of methane clathrates from tundra areas. These gases had effects up to ten times that of a similar mass of carbon-dioxide and once this process, along with the reduced buffering of the worlds oceans due to increased temperatures and the massive deforestations undertaken by much of the worlds population in the twenty-fifties and sixties desperate for energy began, a very rapid and obviously irreversible trend in accelerated climate change began. This was known as Run-Away Climate Change and, together with the energy shortages of the century, was directly responsible for most of the economic and human suffering we have observed.
Rising temperatures ultimately led to an inversion of many of the worlds ocean currents, ultimately leading to the great freeze that currently grips the British isles and much of Scandinavia and the extreme weather phenomena including hurricanes, cyclones and frequent tornadoes that continually harass much of the worlds population.
Run-away climate change has sunk innumerable small islands, including the entirety of the Malidves, the majority of the Netherlands and amongst other major cities, London and New Orleans.
Areas in purple are completely flooded and areas in blue suffer from seasoning and/or tidal oceanic flooding.
Run-Away Climate Change has also led to massive droughts, especially in western North America, north-eastern Brazil, the Mediterranean basin, Iberia, Southern Africa, and Oceana, often due to reduced mountain glacier spring run-off but just as often not. Drought in these areas has also, in turn, led to greatly reduced agricultural productivity and frequent wild-fires brought on by ever-increasingly numerous lightning storms.
High altitude areas retain less ice and as a consequence many delta regions have suffered due to reduced river flow and rising sea levels Indeed one-sixth of the worlds population, in 2100 was dependent upon meltwater from mountain glaciers and these over the course of the last century, have almost completely disappeared as they migrated to safer areas or succumbed to hunger or disease.
For much of the rest of the world, humidity has sky-rocketed, together with the heat, bringing vector-borne diseases to many regions that had never before felt the effects of dengue, malaria or typhoid fever. Rivers across Europe and parts of Asia have swelled from constant increased rainfall and a lot of once arable land has been overtaken by swamp.
Global climate changes has not only affected the map of the earth and the way humans live, it has also affected its flaura and fauna. By twenty-fifty, over 15% of the worlds plants and animals existing in 2010 had gone extinct or were committed to doing so. As man turned increasingly in the twenty-fifties and sixties to wood-based charcoal for energy, the extinctions accelerated as many habitats were burned. By twenty-one hundred extinction rates neared 50%. The massive loss of biodiversity, especially in the worlds oceans has greatly affected the ecosystems with the loss of one animal species leading to the loss of several others dependent upon that first species. Fisheries in particular have been hit hard and coral reefs are all but extinct. Species thought to have gone extinct include all species of gorillas, all species of hippopotamus, all species of tiger, Javan, black, and northern white rhinos, several sea turtle species, Asian elephants, Bactrian camels, Ethiopian wolves, Iberian lynx, axolotls, Philippine eagle, California condor, Chinese alligators, the blue whale, narwhals, Asian elephants, giant pandas, snow leopards, Bornean orangutan, Tasmanian devils, and many, many more.
Ultimately while the rate of acceleration of climate change has fallen dramatically in the last twenty years, presumably as a reflection of humanitys greatly reduced fossil fuel usage, it does continue to rise and is expected to continue to do so, though at a reduced rate, for the foreseeable future.
Population Crises and Crash
Politics, Rise of the Mega-Corporations, Wars and Conflict
i am open to a LOT of ideas here. I foresee canada and russia becoming superpower and subsequently collapsing and i've outlined a bit when some nations are going to return to pre-industrial levels... but otherwise things are wide open. I REALLY like the idea of nations being divided by ideologies and methods of survival more then race or language and can easily imagine that modern languages will probably evolve VERY quickly in the years between present and 2100. the same goes for culture.
. You don't stand a chance against my machinations.
