User blog comment:JERealize/What lies beyond Panem?/@comment-13539094-20131220033837

My 1st opinion is that Earth settled on the Moon and something happened on the Moon (Mining problems, Comet hit the moon, Bombs etc. ) that caused the Moon itself to break appart causing large enough pieces of Moon Rock to fall out of orbit and collide with the planet causing Polar problems, a changing Earth Orbit which leads to changing plates, earthquakes, volcanoes... (everything people below me would have already said) this may also cause massive water displacement (ontop of Global Warming, GW takes years and years; it would seem unlikely that Panem was affected by this and more by Water Displacement).

So parts of the Moon would fall on whatever side of the planet faced the Moon itself (or continued around the orbit landing anywhere possible) which looks unlikely to be America as all the fanmade maps show it relatively untouched (but Canada seems to have more settlement and less so in the center of Panem/Mid-West meaning that some type of devestating problem ensued there) basically the Moon falls into the Asian/Oceania region causing major problems there and less problems for Europe/Americas/E.Africa, rising sea levels could just be the moving of the plates and tidal waves caused by any parts of the Moon landing in Oceans.

The parts that made it through the orbit would be around the size of Belgium - Australia in sizes and may have forced enough land into the atmosphere to block out the sun for several years causing climate changes worldwide, at this point most of the world is at the same tech level. It takes around a hundred years for nations to maintain Law and Order, it would be hard to say which nations thrive and fall considering nobody knows; in my eyes as the nation of Panem progresses so does the world with it.

I believe that before the Dark Days, Panem was trying to maintain both a civilised nation, the study of more contact with the outside world and possibly an expedition to find other nations. Once the civil war ensued the Capitol was afraid they would lose their nation and so they used brainwashing to warp the public's opinions leading to the crush of District 13; Panem told the people that their nation was the only one left to exist after the "Global Disaster" as an excuse for their forming of a government that took as much as possible from the poor.

My 2nd opinion is around the same as above except instead of the Moon it was instead an Asteroid that crashed into Earth after the planet failed to destroy it. The thing is we will never know what actually happened to Earth, for all we know the Hunger Games could be set in a parallel universe where no World Wars ever happened; and so Suzanne Collins has done this to let us imagine what the global disaster would be as so many people have done below, but so far it's a finished trilogy and so we will never know whether Panem was truly the last nation left alive...