New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Salons and Switchblades

The USA of 2074 has done brilliant work in the area of Public health. They are still suffering in the PLAGUE WARS but their population isn't in serious decline nor has their economy collapsed. The American leaders, who never counter attacked with biological weapons, have proposed that since the USA has clearly proved we can survive decades of bio attacks why don't the nations of the world just end the PLAGUE WARS. The USA cites the vast brutal slaughter throughout the developing world as proof the war needs to end.

Europe: The farther South and East you go in Europe the more chaotic things are. Iceland and Ireland, because of their physical isolation and the fact that Climate Change hasn't harmed Ireland that much and has to a degree benefited Iceland, are better off than the USA in many ways. Germany, both because their early hesitance to embrace fusion power and the Green Party's bitter hostility to Vertical Farming, is in chaos.

Because the technologies that saved the USA from the combined attack of the Plague Wars and the ongoing climate crisis were unpopular in Europe, Europe went through periods of famine. The deep wounds of this are unhealed throughout. Only Iceland and the British Isles escaped famine. Britain especially got mobbed by desperate refugees. Scotland and Wales, unlike England, remain democracies.

Much of the Balkans is a war zone were desperate people are trying to flee to anyplace with food and medicine.

Malta, because it is an Island, is the most stable and secure place in the Mediterranean. It is a major US naval base from which food and medical aid is delivered to much of Europe.

Russia: Moscow's rule over most of it's "territory" is purely theoretical. But Moscow still controls over two thousand nuclear tipped war heads. This means they have influence all out of proportion to the size of their population and economy.

The Russians are among the most likely nations to be the source of these plagues. Whether or not Moscow is the source (or a source) of the plagues, they need to both maintain the suspicious they could be the plague makers and to avoid convincing people that they certainly are. They want to be feared, not slaughtered.