piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I answered question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here.

The fourth question comes from an offline friend and is for the Faerie Apocalypse

What does the world look like in the year 2150?

The short answer is: I don’t know yet. I’ve only specced out in any detail at all through about fifty years after the apoc.

What I know:

Starting from a noncimated population of about 31,000,000 at the end of 2012, the American population did not grow for at least a generation (say, until 2035) – disease, starvation, contaminated water and food sources, and a lack of expected medical supplies, as well as remaining returned gods, isolationism, small territory wars, and monsters spawned by the Collapse conspired to keep the population very low, actually trickling down a bit more to around 29 million people.

By 2050, the population was beginning to grow again:
33 million in 2050, 57 million by 2080. By that rate, it’s safe to assume that, by 2150, the population of what had been the United States might get to be around 120,000,000 or a little over 1/3 of what it is IRL today.

140 years is a long time in terms of oral history and predjudice; the first generation of humans after the war almost universally hated fae; even those who had experienced positive relationships with specific fae didn’t like all Ellehemaei. There were maybe “a few good apples” in an otherwise rotten bunch.

And predatory Ellehemaei did not help that impression: especially directly after the war, there were more than a few fae who set up their own little nation-states – some not so little. There were humans who did the same, of course, but the fae “cheated,” using magic and their innate durability and longevity to hold positions of strength over “lesser” humans.

In general, by 2060, there are some humans who believe that fae are all right, maybe less than 25% of the whole population. By 2150, the numbers have shifted in the other direction, and nearly 75% of the population believes, if not that Ellehemaei the equals of humans, at least that they should be allowed to co-exist. And many in both eras know they can be useful (“just get someone who can make the collaring stick and use it!”)

By 2060, Addergoole and Addergoole East were already having a strong influence on the world around them: their graduates became teachers, mayors, despots, doctors, city-builders. By 2150, two creations of Addergoole grads are also shaping the world: a teaching hospital and Doomsday Academy, both formed around 2060.

~

This is a bit all over the place, back to government for a moment. In 2060, the remains of the United States is governed in primarily settlement-based city-states, with as little contact with other settlements as possible, save by those who wander, either to sell goods or offer services. By 2150, many of those settlements have begun to coalesce into small countries; there are 6 major-geographic-area nations and at least 25 smaller ones, many of who battle over land on a semi-regular basis.

The world will never again be what it was before the Collapse, but what it could become is still wide open.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/692874.html. You can comment here or there.