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After Second American Civil War of 2025 and the following Drone Wars across the globe, the nation-state system will fall. It'll be replaced by a mix of city-states near the coasts and corporate territories in the hinterlands, with the two existing in an uneasy tension. Several city-states (notably SFBay, NYC DC, Pearl River, Amsterdam, Venice, Florida, and Houston) will be wiped off the map, either by the Drone Wars or by rising sea levels and increasingly violent storms. Also, regions like the American Midwest, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Bengal/Burma/Myanmar area will be severely depopulated as regional conflicts and border skirmishes lead to the near-extinction of the local populace from drone cleansing efforts. Sub-Saharan Africa (now split between the Corporate States of Alcoa, DeBeers, and BP) will still be populated, but not by Africans. The Corporate State of ExxonMobil in Northern Athabasca will be a rising power, as will be the Corporate States of Monsanto in Canada and Russia. The City States of Barrow, Cambridge Bay, Taloyoak, and Fort Ross will be rising economic powers on the Arctic Ocean, as will be there lesser-populated equivalents in Siberia. The Corporate State of SpaceX will just be establishing the first Mars colony. Standards of living for the survivors will be high. The near complete destruction of existing infrastructure in the Drone Wars will allow surviving cities to rebuild with more modern technology; in particular, the widespread adoption of robotics in that conflict means that most daily transportation and logistic problems are taken care of by machines. Everything is electrified, powered by renewable solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal sources. The severe depopulation in the Drone Wars means that the survivors are able to bargain for higher wages and better working conditions, and many Corporate States are run as egalitarian worker collectives (albeit at the cost of oppressing or exterminating the native populations they displace). City States face continued inequality, though, as they struggle to care for skill-less refugees that were not killed in the Drone Wars. |