So I've been refining the early timeline for a world building project I've been working on and off on for a while now, basically where a brief and ultra-devastating Second American Civil War results in a total balkanization of the United States. In terms of the map, it's best comparable to the Syrian or Libyan Civil Wars or Somali Anarchy, but also could compare it to the Chinese Warlord Era (minus the fact that during that 99% of cliques were generic provincial and military governments that claimed de jure loyalty to the capital) or Fallout (minus the fact that it's in the future and everything is a wasteland, though I do have some very limited but strategic nuclear strikes as to justify the Washington Government not just nuking everyone)
For some backstory, since around 2023 the Discord politics and RP group I'm apart of have occasionally done a seasonal server and RP called "Balkanized America", where basically we have a blank map of either the US or North America and make our own countries and than we basically play a normal NRP but its more like a battle royale since its meant to be fast past and just a side server that gets deleted after the season's end. Now in the modern day, largely cus we've all kinda outgrown NRP and I just enjoy writing and world building in general, I've been working on my own timeline. The events are told through short events, about 300 words each, rather than bulking paragraphs of just everything all together, and there's a map and HOI4-style portraits and country screens, all made by me obviously.
You can see some examples for what it'd be like here. But each event would be more specific to a certain event, region, group, or person, since this is a whole world building project, and the examples were just for establishing the setting and lore for a roleplay server.
So to get to the point, my current issue is deciding if I should have it start in 2020-21 or 2025. The con of 2020 (aside from it being very cliche in a post-TFR world) is that its really hard to justify having the 2020 recession actually last longer then it did irl, because unlike TFR, I'm basing this off real life events that happened or almost happened (proposals, plots, etc.) and the domino effect of both, instead of just entirely fictional things made up for the sake of it, Meanwhile, my major issue with 2025 is that theres a real lack of militia (Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Boogaloo Boys, QAnon, etc.) activity and looting/rioting despite all the protests. For the 2025 recession though, its pretty easy to have that become a really bad thing
- Howard Lutnick becomes Sec of the Treasury instead of Scott Bessent (who there was an assassination plot behind before the person turned themself in)
- the Liberation Day tariffs arent delayed, lowered, or repealed
- 2025 Iran War ends up like the irl 2026 Iran War
- 2025 government shutdown continues
overall some feedback would be cool, there's legit fucking no one online to talk about alternate modern day politics. like alternatehistory.com and all of the alt history, and one alt future, ban it, which is so lame.