Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Reign of Steel made much more realistic. I love it. Steal from the Hunger Games and have the rich dress both stupid and slutty.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

There is no provision for removing a state due to low population, and changing state lines can only be done with the permission of both states.

However, the states' representation in the house will change at the next census.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The simple fact that there is no provision for dealing with a state whose people no longer live there is part of the problem.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

By definition unforeseen events (or events like abolition which were foreseen but so explosive that it was felt necessary to put them off) are taken care of by amendment procedure which requires supervoting unlike normal procedure. If it becomes needed to declare empty territory Federal land, it was assumed such things would be handled that way.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

But of course it is perfectly possible for the amendment process to be unusable simply because the two parties are so at odds they can't agree on any amendment.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Given a state like the present political polarization of American politics, a tooth and nail fight to prevent a big shift in the balance of power would be expected. If one side of the political divide saw a massive irreparable lost of power looming, digging in of heels to stop all change would be likely.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The premise of flooding out states to create an interesting crisis is good, but 6 meters isn't going to swamp out any states in the US. 6 Meters won't cover the whole of Manhattan. Many Coastal states rise from the sea moderately quickly, like Delaware. Florida will probably suffer the most, with Louisiana giving it a run for its money, but Tallahassee will remain high and dry, as will the northern 80% of Louisiana

15 meters does a better job of what you want, but if you want to wipe out multiple states, you're looking at 60 meters or more. 60 meters actually still eleminates a fairly short list: Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, and maybe Rhode island, Main, and Maryland. South Carolina, Connecticut, and Massachusetts are hit hard, but they have a fair amount of land left, even their biggest cities are gone. New York, Texas, and the west coast are large states and won't be insolvent even with the higher sea levels, and can at least justify statehood based on land. Most of the South has its population centers pretty far inland.

That's 10 states at most, which is a bit, not enough to really form too effective of a voting block in a single house of congress.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Oh well. A realistic( for a given value of realistic) jump in sea level from the collapse of Western Antarctica still creates worldwide crisis. Half the population of Eygpt and nine tenths of Bangladesh are flooded out. Huge Chinese populations are on the move too. The floods of refugees within Europe and coming to Europe from nearby (it is easier for tens of millions of refugees to get to Europe than for even a million to get to the USA) would create the worst crisis since the late 1940s.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

How about a partial Yellowstone eruption that renders most of the midwest uninhabitable, but doesn't hurt the coastal areas as much?

The states-in-exile would be largely politically united, and probably would be the bullwark of conservative control over government.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

If you want to make things worse, have the New Madrid Fault kick off a Richter 9.5 earthquake as the sea level rise hits its designated peak.

That would devastate the Midwest and force refugees from conservative communities where their families have lived for at least a century into the more liberal urban regions.

It would also trigger a global recession as U.S. investment money got pulled back to fund the reconstruction at home. Moreover, the investors would simply decline to fund reconstruction of many poor rural town, making displacement permanent for a demographic already inclined toward apocalyptic world-views.