...predicts Russian professor Igor Panarin.
"When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise," he remembers. He says most in the audience were skeptical. "They didn't believe me."
At the end of the presentation, he says many delegates asked him to autograph copies of the map showing a dismembered U.S."
Sounds like a fun conference.
"He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.
California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia."
A dubious claim, Texas' gross domestic product alone exceeds that of Mexico. Additionally, how is a civil war going to work with all sides armed with state of the art hydrogen bombs? Still, that map would make for an awesome steampunk RPG campaign setting. Come to think of it, maybe Igor's been playing a bit too much Crimson Skies lately.
Um, that map doesn't look too different than the U.S. map from the old Cyberpunk and Shadowrun RPGs 20+ years ago. The south becomes the Confederated American States, the north becomes the United Canadian and American States, and California becomes its own country.
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Cyberpunk is so 90s. Steampunk is where it's at.
ReplyDeleteCanada grabs nothing, and in fact loses most of Ontario to New York and Wisconsin.
ReplyDeleteOh, well, US economy suddenly fell and it affected the whole Earth. Nostradamus talked about a "black pope" and now you have an afroamerican president, so... The USSR existed once and it "suddenly" disintegrated, right???
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