User blog comment:JERealize/What lies beyond Panem?/@comment-42.2.169.103-20130910170011

Here is my take on the world beyond Panem, note that I have read the ideas of other posters and synthesized them with some of my own:

Europe: After the war of devastation, rising sea levels breached the dykes of northern Europe and flooded the Low Countries, reverting them back into the marshes in Roman Times. Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France are also submerged. Changing climate caused Scandinavia to become uninhabitable, with hundreds of thousands of refugees from these countries flooding into the cities of central Europe. Seizing this opportunity, the European Union gradually further consolidated their power and finally became a single European Government. The fertile plains of Poland and Ukraine became a breadbasket for the region, while England and Ireland has are now little more than small islands. This European Union adopts a zealously atheist policy, and is nominally a democracy, with elections for the Parliament of Europe (in Warsaw) held every decade. However, almost all political candidates come from a handful of powerful families, and by the year of the 75th Games the region has been under martial law for over 500 years. The union adopted an isolationist policy and a huge fortified wall stretching from what is now Nice to Baku is erected to prevent hordes of refugees from entering the region.

Middle East: The collapse of global trade means that the oil-fuelled economy of the Middle East is entirely decimated after the war. Climate change caused the entire region to become an uninhabitable desert joining with the Sahara and stretching all the way to modern day Pakistan, with only small pockets of habitable land clustered around the mountains of Northern Iran, as well as Turkey. Turkey is now an absolute monarchy, with the state religion of Islam. The rest of the Middle East is essentially populated only by nomadic tribes ruled by petty chiefs.

Asia: Japan and most of the Korean peninsula, as well as Taiwan is submerged as sea levels rose. Survivors (about 10% of their combined populations) from those states eventually settled in what is now central china, as most of China’s eastern regions (and thus its major cities and industry) is now submerged underwater or destroyed. China itself, a participant in the war of devastation, saw almost 70% percent of its population wiped out first by the war, then by the rising tides that swallowed the eastern half of their country. The resulting populations moved westward, eventually forming a new, multi-ethnic state of the East Asian Republic. The state is highly technocratic, with the government dominated by scientists, doctors, scholars and engineers; and officials selected on the basis of academic and technical prowess. The state practices selective-breeding.

South and Southeast Asia: Is almost entirely wiped off the face of the earth, with only the mountain ranges of Java, Sumatra and Papua New Guinea poking out of the sea. Singapore though survived in part by manoeuvring a transfer of some capital and people to Perth in the final months before their city was swallowed by water. India is also mostly submerged, with a thin strand of land forming a new state with what is now Tibet. This new state is one of the few functioning democracies left on earth, and engages in trade with the East Asian Republic.

North Asia: Changes in Climatic conditions made the Ural Mountains an impassable barrier, effectively severing Russia into two. The western half, centred in St Petersburg (Moscow as the capital city of a participant stated was razed to the ground in the war of devastation) is occupied by the EU after losing a war over the control of the Ukrainian plains in the year of the 35th Games, and its inhabitants are now trained to be labourers or solders, fighting wars against their own people to the east or to serve the citizens of EU. The eastern half (Siberia) annexed Central Asia (now mostly desert) and became the world’s largest producer of nuclear material, extracting Uranium from its mines in Siberia and Kazakhstan. It is a military dictatorship and rallies its people on the aim of reclaiming “the lost homeland” (western Russia). It has been fighting wars on and off with EU for over 200 years.

Oceania: Australia suffered from rising sea levels and decades-long droughts that effectively turned the country into one large desert. Only the cities of Adelaide, Perth and Melbourne remain, protected against the sea by the construction of huge sea walls that block out the rising waves. These three city-states all believe themselves to be the only surviving settlement of Australia, and by the 75th games have not established contact with each other. These states developed a structure entirely aimed at conserving arable land and water, with draconian laws regulating their use. All three city-states are democracies.

New Zealand has parts of its territory submerged underwater, but escaped the war of devastation relatively unscathed. As the result, it retains a culture and society almost unchanged from pre-war times, with a functioning democratic government, and an economy heavily reliant on agriculture and hydro-electricity. It too adopted a highly isolationist policy and most of the world has actually forgotten about its existence.

South America: Following the war of devastation, most of Central America is either submerged, destroyed or became a large radio-active desert. Flooding submerged the eastern third of the Amazon Rainforest and all of Chile. The remaining Latin American states banded together to form a federated union, centred in La Paz (modern day Bolivia) and is now a theocracy ruled by the Pope and the Roman Curia, having relocated there with a population of European Christians as persecutions against religion becomes more severe in the EU.

Africa: Because Africa is mostly a plateau, most of Africa (save South Africa and Madagascar, which were partly submerged) remained unscathed by rising sea levels. However, dramatic climate change causing the rapid expansion of the Sahara and the drying out of the Congo River and Lake Victoria decimated the region, sending the continent back into a feudal society of small states, squabbling over limited resources.

North America: See the Unauthorised History of Panem for a more detailed description of Panem’s geo-political dimensions.