Hawaii is one of the best-off states in terms of standard of living. It’s got its share of problems, but they pale in comparison to the problems of most mainland factions.
Papua New Guinea isn't a real country, if an entity claimed all of the United States in your scenario it would be as legitimate as the federal PNG government.
Probably so. But it has a large population, natural resources, and was not destroyed by the war, making it a worthwhile trading partner. I doubt it has very strong institutions, but if Africa’s shown us anything, expatriate mining and agricultural corporations can effectively rival the state for influence and control under the right circumstances.
> But it has a large population, natural resources, and was not destroyed by the war, making it a worthwhile trading partner.
What I mean is "it" does not exist. It isn't anything like a Westphalian nation state - or empire. Papua New Guinea is not a de facto entity. It could be broken into 200 countries and nothing but Port Morsbey would change. Perhaps transnational groups would seize the mines, but this would be a layer over many different tribes, though it's not particularly rich in natural resources even if there are a few veins.
Sure, man. If you say so. Just consider it the Port Moresby city-state and whatever hinterlands it and the mining companies still manage to control, I suppose. I just wanted to pick a weird obscure country that nobody thinks of to suddenly emerge as a surprisingly strong trading partner, an amusing reversal of fortunes afforded by the war.
South Africa will become very important later on in this series. They were neutral during the Great War, but Cape Town was destroyed to cripple them just in case they intervened on either side (in such a colossal war, there was a lot of overflow into uninvolved countries). Already straining under severe social and economic tensions, the hardship of the postwar period plunged South Africa into civil war.
Like many other countries that would have been the strongest remaining powers after a nuclear war (Brazil, Argentina, and Nigeria, for example), the country is now fractured into multiple secessionist states and rival rump governments.
The most relevant for America is the Afrikaner Volkstaat, a Boer-separatist state in the Northern Cape region. Their capital, Kimberly, served as the seat of the United States of America-in-Exile, a government formed from the USA’s diplomatic machinery to shepherd its vast diaspora population. Nowadays, the USAIE has rebranded as the United States of America Abroad (USAA), and serves as the diplomatic arm of the United States of America in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The USA-EC continues to receive substantial economic and military aid from the Volkstaat, São Paulo, and other countries across the south Atlantic.
Japan is a different story. They’ve actually maintained continuity of government, but have one of the lowest survival rates in the entire world, under 1%. They were a hyper-urban country with very limited arable land area to grow food on, after all. With no surviving claimants to the Japanese throne, some Shinto believers say that the last emperor was miraculously saved from the bombs and achieved a perfect state of eternal enlightenment, and must never be disturbed from his state of sublime meditation.
The Japanese government controls all the habitable remnants of the main Japanese home islands, except for northern Hokkaido (controlled by the remnants of a Russian invasion force) and Okinawa (controlled by a vengeful U.S. Marine administration, the “Military Government of the United States of America-in-Exile”).
Sounds like I'd want to live in Hawaii
Hawaii is one of the best-off states in terms of standard of living. It’s got its share of problems, but they pale in comparison to the problems of most mainland factions.
Papua New Guinea isn't a real country, if an entity claimed all of the United States in your scenario it would be as legitimate as the federal PNG government.
Probably so. But it has a large population, natural resources, and was not destroyed by the war, making it a worthwhile trading partner. I doubt it has very strong institutions, but if Africa’s shown us anything, expatriate mining and agricultural corporations can effectively rival the state for influence and control under the right circumstances.
> But it has a large population, natural resources, and was not destroyed by the war, making it a worthwhile trading partner.
What I mean is "it" does not exist. It isn't anything like a Westphalian nation state - or empire. Papua New Guinea is not a de facto entity. It could be broken into 200 countries and nothing but Port Morsbey would change. Perhaps transnational groups would seize the mines, but this would be a layer over many different tribes, though it's not particularly rich in natural resources even if there are a few veins.
Sure, man. If you say so. Just consider it the Port Moresby city-state and whatever hinterlands it and the mining companies still manage to control, I suppose. I just wanted to pick a weird obscure country that nobody thinks of to suddenly emerge as a surprisingly strong trading partner, an amusing reversal of fortunes afforded by the war.
To be fair, the divergent point was somewhere roughly in the 1990s/2000s. Maybe in the last 30-60 years Papua New Guinea formed a more stable state.
South Africa will become very important later on in this series. They were neutral during the Great War, but Cape Town was destroyed to cripple them just in case they intervened on either side (in such a colossal war, there was a lot of overflow into uninvolved countries). Already straining under severe social and economic tensions, the hardship of the postwar period plunged South Africa into civil war.
Like many other countries that would have been the strongest remaining powers after a nuclear war (Brazil, Argentina, and Nigeria, for example), the country is now fractured into multiple secessionist states and rival rump governments.
The most relevant for America is the Afrikaner Volkstaat, a Boer-separatist state in the Northern Cape region. Their capital, Kimberly, served as the seat of the United States of America-in-Exile, a government formed from the USA’s diplomatic machinery to shepherd its vast diaspora population. Nowadays, the USAIE has rebranded as the United States of America Abroad (USAA), and serves as the diplomatic arm of the United States of America in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The USA-EC continues to receive substantial economic and military aid from the Volkstaat, São Paulo, and other countries across the south Atlantic.
Japan is a different story. They’ve actually maintained continuity of government, but have one of the lowest survival rates in the entire world, under 1%. They were a hyper-urban country with very limited arable land area to grow food on, after all. With no surviving claimants to the Japanese throne, some Shinto believers say that the last emperor was miraculously saved from the bombs and achieved a perfect state of eternal enlightenment, and must never be disturbed from his state of sublime meditation.
The Japanese government controls all the habitable remnants of the main Japanese home islands, except for northern Hokkaido (controlled by the remnants of a Russian invasion force) and Okinawa (controlled by a vengeful U.S. Marine administration, the “Military Government of the United States of America-in-Exile”).