So a Russian academic
has predicted that the USA will break-up into 5 or 6 different ways as portrayed below.
Now this is a pretty screwy idea but it's not the first time somebody has envisaged this, and of course parts of the USA have seceded before.
Below is another alternative configuration of the North American continent.
From
The Nine Nations of North America by John Garreau
The question is, does anyone see the USA realistically breaking up, and if so how?
Posts
Oh, but to dream.
Certainly is, but it's things like Cascadia I'm hoping to wheedle out of the woodwork.
And no one wants to be like Alabama.
My money would be on Texas, New Mexico, and maybe Oklahoma and Louisiana. The Republic of Texas would then, depending on whether a Republican or Democrat grabbed power, either destroy itself or be awesome for a few years and then destroy itself. Oh, and have good old fashioned shoot outs.
Edit: And what the Hell is Utah doing in the California Republic?
Spending lots of money so the gays can't marry?
Hell, Virginia and North Carolina are only in on a trial basis as it stands.
Seriously. New York would probably take over the North East, but it might just concentrate on its own little island letting Boston take New England. The Rust Belt area would become the Dominion of the Great Lakes, and ruled over by Chicago's enlightened fist. You think Detroit can compete with us? What are they gonna do, build some shitty car bombs that nobody wants?
Next up, a swat team member from Wyoming will explain how China's provinces will split and form alliances.
I thought that was a nice touch too. It honestly looks like he was basically just trying to find large cities in the rough center of his random lines. Which is why Detroit beats out Chicago and New York, and how Kansas City beats out St. Louis. Because having a larger population and control over the Mississippi is totally meaningless in this dark future.
Hell, why isn't the Mississippi even given any recognition in either of those maps? It's the equivalent to the fucking Nile. I'd say that Chicago - St. Louis - New Orleans as a strip civilization would make more sense than any of the other proposals aside from New England.
Even Communists dig Miami Ink.
Utah would Isolate itself, or would break into two just south of the point of the mountain reaching over to vernal, and probably leaving Moab to colorado.
In the events of a continental split, there is no way would not go with the rest of the south, the civil war freaking started there after all. North Carolina, Virginia and West perhaps.
Florida would be invaded by Cuba, in fact, now that the borders were practically unmanned due to lack of resources, Texas and the likes would be flooded.
On the second map, I dunno, Quebec would deffinately probably take New Brunswick instead of it going to New England, I mean, NB is the only Billingual province, so its Quebec's best bet at taking some more land....
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Yeah, and why would Detroit or Kansas City be a capital instead of something like Chicago?
It'd more likely go St. Cloud, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, Peoria, St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, New Orleans.
St. Louis would be central, but Chicago has the utter corruption.
Washington DC is a lawless nuclear waste ala Fallout 3.
Appalachia is ruled by countless barbarian mountain clans who vie for power and whose rituals conform to hillbilly stereotypes like inbreeding and jug bands.
New Orleans and Florida are flooded from global warming and the people are slowly evolving webbed limbs and gills.
The Amish have adopted technology and quickly become the most advanced civilization on earth. They command robot armies and live in hyper modern barn-like structures raised overnight.
The Mexican borderlands are city states ruled by powerful drug barons who vie with the Cowboy revivalist ultra conservative theocracies for control of Texas.
Man, I've only spent 10 minutes on this and mine is already way cooler than this Russian guys. He's just not trying hard enough.
And the jazz-music.
Kids these days, with their hippin' and their hoppin' and their pippin' and their poppin'. They don't know what the Jazz is all about.
Also, Chicago has the Saint Lawrence Seaway and railroads for access to Manhattania et. al.
And they'd probably win the war too.
Honestly though where do they even get this shit?
Seriously, the mexicans around here? they aren't mexicans. They're tejanos, they're with us. So when Mexico decides to annex us and have "their people" rise up they won't have jack shit.
And we got all that state pride, so our military will be full and glorious and godly and all that other stuff.
So, uhh... where do the volcanic eruption causing indian shamans come into this?
Because I'm quite partial to that version.
Well, this is a long term prediction. The Russians are waiting until Chuck Norris dies so they can kick off the ground offensive.
I'm strangely attracted to the burbclaves from Snow Crash, and even more to the phyles from The Diamond Age. Some times I wish the silly notion of nationalism would just go away.
Of course, as soon as we discover the Zerg and Protoss we're all going to form the Terran Federation anyway.
Texas would form its own country and the new government would probably lynch anybody who even joked about joining up with Mexico.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'd think the nation would be more likely to divide on red state blue state lines, with the pacific states being one region, the northeast and midwest being another, and the south being the third.
In truth, though, even that would be hard because the nation is really divided more on rural/urban lines. People in Pennsylvania or rural parts of New England can be just as conservative as people from the deep South.
He's assuming that the US would break up on ethnic lines like the USSR did, but outside Texas, the deep South, and maybe California and some parts of New England there aren't loyalties to the individual states and regions in the US, and there certainly aren't distinct regional ethnic groups in the same was as there were in the USSR, with different languages and such.
And beyond that there really aren't politically divisions that could easilly form seperate regions the same way as there were in Russia, the only possible states that could stand alone as nations are maybe Texas and California.
Also someone has been stealing that man's precious bodily fluids.
The plot:
*The 2008 season is bitterly divisive, sees an Electoral College tie, and the eventual winner turns out even worse than Bush. (Think Hillary vs. Giuliani, with the GOP enthusiatically behind Rudy and no economic meltdown to carry the Dems over the line. And then Giuliani wins the tie somehow, probably from a popular vote win.)
*People realize he sucks immediately, martial law declared.
*Supreme Court stops the 2012 election by DQ'ing all the other candidates from holding office, essentially handing President Numbnuts a second term. Public reacts as you might well expect.
*Someone nukes the 2012 inauguration, with predictable deathy goodness.
*EU moves into DC to protect international interests.
*California says 'fuck this shit' and secedes.
*Texas decides that's a hell of an idea, they secede.
*Rest of country fractures.
*Hawaii slowly backs away from the whole mess while nobody's looking. Nobody notices they're gone because they have bigger fish to fry.
*Palin sees Russia from her house. Rest of Alaska does too, because Russia has claimed Alaska as theirs.
The final map looks like so:
San Francisco got driven out of California by SoCal separatists and hooked up with the green guys, Pacifica (which is really more huddling together out of what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-the-rest-of-you-people incredulousness than anything else).
I would think the mini-regions comprising Michigan/Indiana and Ohio/Pittsburgh would be together for an eighth region, but other than that this map is about as plausible as I've seen.
Game spoiler, seriously:
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X