The year is 2050

The Northern Union is holding, despite increasing complaints from Canada about diversion of its fresh water and mineral resources to its neighbor to the south. "The Wall" (really more of a series of fortifications and minefields) across the Mexican border is holding relatively steady, but border skirmishes and loss of life on both sides are a daily event. Mexico has lost all central government, and regional anarchy is tempered by the strict control of various warlords, gangs, and cartels. The same can be said for portions of the US, although central control continues, with occasional lip-service even paid to the old Constitutuion and Bill of Rights.

The massive Indo-Chinese famines of the 2030s are abating and there are signs that China may reunite after the horrors of its 200-million-death civil war and desrtification-induced famine. A nuclear-armed Japan has entered a new era of relative isolation from the world, although its increasingly precarious standard of living is kept hovering above the poverty line by strategic relationships with oil and materials exporters in the area such as a deforested Indonesia and a desertifying Australia.

Northern Europe shows no signs of backing down its strict ban on immigration from the Southern members of the ex-Eurozone, which are gripped by the grim consequences of food shortages, desertification, and mass immigration from the even-more-destitute lands of Saharan Africa. The great famines and droughts of the past several decades, together with several consequent nuclear exchanges, have reduced the population of the Middle East to less than one-third of its pre-crash peak. Nevertheless, petroleum exports continue despite the widespread dangers that nuclear contamination bring. A resource-rich Russia continues to jocky with the Anglo-American bloc for influence in the devistated Middle East, but the struggle is anemic. The Anglo-American side is increasingly hemmed in by domestic unrest and financial difficulties, while Russia is concerned about possible resource wars with Northern China, which have resulted in exchange of hostilities twice in the previous decade.

this is base on what?

Diversion of Canada's water and mineral resources?
We're few but we're fierce!! Maybe I'll move further north for the water

reply to post by silent thunder


Meanwhile here in southern Thailand everything will be exactly the same (okay they'll of had a few more coup's but..) and I'll continue to drink cold beer in the sun on a beach whilst watching the world go by.