Rememberences of Map Contests Past

[B_Munro]

Scarecrow's map:

[B_Munro]

Tormsen:

In this world, Kim Jong Il felt his position as the heir apparent was stronger in OTL, and decided to open up slightly to the West and modern capitalism as urged by China. This culminated in a somewhat successful joint hosting of the 1988 Olympics by Seoul and Pyongyang. Relations became positive enough that North Korea was even removed from US nuclear targets in an effort.

Things were going swimmingly. Until, a hardline coup in the crumbling Soviet Union went spiralling out of control and a largely accidental nuclear war resulted. Though South Korea, China, Japan and the Soviet Union were all heavily hit, North Korea managed to sit the war through without any direct strikes. When the dust cleared, Pyongyang was the last standing government in East Asia.

The North Korean population, after being given a taste of the consumer goods and freedom of the West and then watching as it was all blown to hell became restive in the aftermath. Desperate to maintain control, Kim Jong Il took a sharp hardline shift back to the traditional Juche policies of isolation and self-sufficiency. That said, North Korea's economic policy of "just manage to survive while putting maximum resources into military and security forces" worked much better as a recipe for surviving a post-apocalyptic war world than it had in winning the Cold War.

All things told, the DPRK has been modest with its territorial expansion. The South was occupied relatively rapidly, as it's government had been for the most part decapitated by spiteful Soviet nuclear strikes and it's military severely demoralized. Gains made against China (which was a complete mess) were mostly of regions populated by ethnic Koreans and were later acknowledged by the ex-PLA warlords who rose in Manchuria.

Japan was a different story. Even though it had been largely laid waste by Chinese and Soviet nuclear strikes, Kim remained cautious of Japanese reorganization. Keeping Japan in separate pieces was seen as prudent. The JDPR is mostly run by locals with some oversight, while the horribly artificial state of Guju is run by ethnic-Koreans born in Japan and, through forced migration and re-education, is in the middle of a project to make the mostly Japanese population into Korean citizens. Saguk is officially on a 199 year lease from the JDPR, and sees DPRK security forces lording over a population of agricultural slaves.

The "Slav Trade and Settlement Zone" predates DPRK recognition of the Far East Republic ruling from Magadan, and was originally part of a project to create a Korean-dominated Russian state along the lines of Guju. This was quickly abandoned for racial reasons, and instead became a dumping ground for Caucasians living in former South Korean, Japanese and Chinese territories. This odd mix of Russian refugees from Vladivostok, American soldiers, English teachers and assorted oddballs exists under the malign neglect of DPRK security forces.

It is 2020, and Kim Jong Il's death saw the rise of his first son, Kim Jong Nam, to supreme power (with Tokyo Disneyland destroyed, he avoided embarrassing Pyongyang with his foreign trips and big mouth ITTL). This map was produced by a group of foreign DPRK supporters, and still depicts those regions still considered dangerous to enter due to radioactivity.

[B_Munro]

Iori (which, seriously, needs a bit more background):

The Long War was a war that would fundamentally change Europe and the world.

Following staggering death tolls, the use of Chemical weapons and the various atrocities committed and planned on both the Allies and the
Imperial Alliance's own minority's the public and governments of the victorious allies were out for blood, literally.

While some of the minor members of the IA were spared, most were not.

In the end it was decided that Russia, Germany and England were simply to dangerous to allow to continue to exist, thus began the creation
of the 'Reclamation Zones', while the treatment of the peoples in these zones differed, from the forced removal of the Russians in the Baltic's
and Finno-Karelia to the execution of everyone in every level of government in Prussia to the destruction of entire towns in England, they all
shared one common trait; they were to be changed and the identity of the previous nations was to be eradicated from all but History books.

The Allies of course were for the most part not intending on committing Genocide (well, apart from the Bosnians, who themselves had suffered
the same from the Serbs), however hundreds of thousands would die in the first few years as agricultural production and infrastructure in the
zones was next to non-existent and the Allies were barely managing themselves.

By 1950 it was clear that the original zones were simply to large, thus parts were broken off and given to other states, with the inhabitants
given three choices; Continue living where they were, swearing loyalty to their new country, move to another part of the zone or immigrate
out of Europe, toa willing country (Central America, Oceania and Persia being popular), or, in the case of North Germany made independent.

By the present day the zones and their original goal still exist, and while the Reclamation Zones of the modern day are better off than in the past,
the people who live their are only afforded basic freedoms, punished (severity depending on the zone) for speaking of the previous nation positively
and live in an environment originally meant to punish them for being born their.

The rest of the world has moderated as well.
While the South African government encourages mixed-race relations, past are the days when it was illegal to have a relationship with someone
of the same ethnicity/race, though same-race marriages are still not recognized.

Oceania has become less strict as well, while most non-RZ Europeans are still viewed as suspicious at best, the military junta intent on destroying
Europe and restoring the British Empire was removed from power in a bloody civil war two decades ago.

None-the-less the world still has many negative aspects, from the immediate execution of anyone associated with fundamentalist groups in India
and most of Africa to the U.S. blackmailing Mexican Congressmen who oppose the proposed Union to the perpetual Cold Wars (that occasionally
turn hot) in Southern Africa and South-East Asia.


The future of the world is uncertain, while even the major liberal groups don't call for the immediate end of the Reclamation Zones, they still stand
far from the worryingly large minority on the Right who've come to believe that the most efficient way to end the 'RZ problem' is to exterminate all
natives living in them.

[B_Munro]

Ephraim Ben Raphael:

In 1962 an incident concerning the placement of Nuclear Missles in Communist Cuba triggered a Global Thermonuclear War. Between the USSR and the United States civilization was all but destroyed. But it would get worse.

The bleeding sickness was rumoured to be a biological weapon accidentally released by one of the superpowers, though no one ever knew for sure. Over a period of five years it swept the globe, with a 96% fatality rate even the handful who survived the disease found themselves wandering alone to be quickly killed off by a combination of environmental hazards and the simple fact that the population density was now to low to be self-replicating.

By 2010 mankind is reduced to only a couple surviving pockets of humanity. Ironically the largest of these is in a place that was never meant to maintain human life- Antarctica. The researchers and military personel present on the southernmost continent survived the "End" and the bleeding sickness that followed thanks to their isolation and unimportance. Surviving on the seeds of antarctic grasses, lichens, and sea weed, as well as fauna such as penguins, seals and sea birds their descendants continue to eke out a precarious existence, frequently flirting with extinction yet remaining the largest single population of H. Sapiens on Earth with continent wide numbers hovering around 20,000.

The largest single settlement in Antarctica is the city of Jubany in the south Shetland Islands with a population of almost 1,500, followed by the city of New London (former Base D) with 1,000 inhabitants. Politics in the Antarctic Peninsula are complicated with the most complex states on offshore islands and organized villages dotting the mainland. Deception (officially the Kingdom of Britain) has fallen from its dominant position due to volcanic eurptions in its capitol, but the lure of warmth and sulfur deposits keep them coming back to Deception Island. The "Republic" of Jubany is on the rise with its own sources of sulfur for gunpowder and trade with the mining villages of San Martin that provides it with copper. At the same time the Kingdom of Arturo Prat and the "Republic" of New America (founded by an American vessel that was in the area in 1962) are minor powers seeking to disrupt the established order by extending influence into the independent villages of Esperanza, Higgins, New England, and Paradise.

Antarctican society is exterememly harsh, cannibalism is the rule (now incorporated into a somewhat unplesant version of Christianity, "this is my body and this is my blood" etc) not the exception and the sick or elderly are regularly killed for their flesh, a practice present even in the more "civilized" island kingdoms. The first steps have begun towards domesticating penguins and technology is strange, gunpowder is used in a very primitive manner alongside seal-skin kayaks and hunting spears, and basic electricity exists in a couple places next to igloos and copper swords.

[B_Munro]

So rvbomally won, with Scarecrow second and Tormsen third.

Oh, and I almost forgot - here's the BIG version of Zauberfloete's map from
"Welcome to the DMZ." It's VERY big, so you may need to resize your views!

Bruce

[B_Munro]

Hokay - now could one of the mods sticky this? Pretty please?

Bruce

[JSmith]

Originally Posted by B_Munro

Mine (talky first):

A somewhat more intense Spanish Flu epidemic butterflies the leadership of the US and USSR from the 20s on, and a somewhat different WWII is fought, leading to Red Army on Rhine. China goes Communist as OTL, and a Cold War even more tense than OTL ensues. The balloon goes up in 1971.

The US suffered horrendous damage, especially in the mid-west, some areas of the east coast, and California. As a result of a government lopped off some ways down the chain of succession and conflict between the armed forces leadership and the left-ish (supposed) new President, two essentially independent successor governments emerged in the West and the North, and when the one took a turn to the left in its emergency measures, while the other took a turn to the right, the US essentially broke in two, although it took some years for it to become official. The Republic of America, going with the old "if you can't beat them..." chestnut, has become a left-wing dictatorship, although less ideological and more technocratic than their Chinese allies: indeed, they would be more natural allies with the Soviets, if it weren't for that little nuking thing.

The USSR, although suffering casualties even higher than the US, failed to collapse, instead its surviving leadership - and much of the surviving population- simply left the devastated regions, forcing at atomic gunpoint the less-damaged Mediterranean and Middle Eastern nations to extend them hospitality. Allying with the local Communist parties, they settled in and continued the Long Struggle to bring about lobal socialist success.

The less badly damaged east of the USSR broke away as a seperate regime, and allied itself with the Chinese, which having stayed out of the war only had to deal with fallout and thereby rather gained in relative power. The UAS consider themselves the _true_ successors to the old USSR and think of the new Soviet Union as dreafully bourgeois. The Chinese, with UAS help, have modernized in an old-fashioned Stalinist-Kruschevite manner up to about OTL 1970s USSR standards of development (with loads of ICBMs).

Ideological confict between the Chinese/American block and the Soviets left space for the emergence of a third leftist movement, the third-world Agrarian Populists, which vary from West India, which is a respectable industrial power and allows from the Soviet or Chinese point of view an alarming amount of Capitalism, to the almost Pol-Potesque unpleasantness of Greater Ghana. The weakest of the three groupings, the APs attempt to maintain strict neutralism while maintaining an almost universal Nation at Arms to discourage invasion.

Aside from the Communists, there are the right-wing anti-Socialist states, the powerful military dictatorship of the USA [1], the authoritarian Confederation, the racially segregated South Africans, and the paranoid and Very Anti-Asian New Australians, plus a few dibs and dabs of territory here and there. Although capitalist, their economies suffer from limited trade, corruption, the burden of massive security states, and in the case of S. Africa, serious underuse of their human potential.

The world is probably doomed. There are more nuclear weapons than there were at the Cold War 1980s peak OTL, with no less than 14 atomic arsenals, six of them large. Pollution is terrible, and global warming marches forward while coal is burned in huge amounts. The Chinese and the People's republic of India are pressing against the limits of their systems, and if the Monsoon is interrupted by climate change, Bad Things will happen. The technocratic Soviets and the US are actually making some progress with computerized planning, mass food production in indoor greenhouses, etc. but things are overall a mess. Apocalyptic Christianity is on the rise in the US. Glimmerings of hope exist, in the semi-civilized Socialism of central Africa and West India, in the democratic undercurrents that still flow in parts of Europe and North America, in the upcoming 2011 world Peace Conference, once again trying to find a formula to shrink nuclear arsenals. But will anything break the cycle of hatred and paranoia before environmental collapse, global nuclear war, or perhaps global nuclear war triggered by environmental collapse?

Bruce

[1] It does have elections, but there is only one legal party - the fusion "American Party", which generally asks "how high?" when the military says "jump."

Is this one in the asb thread or on ur site?

[B_Munro]

Originally Posted by JSmith

Is this one in the asb thread or on ur site?

I believe it's on the Deviantart site.

Bruce

[B_Munro]

I need to contact a moderator (other than Ian) about stickying this: apart from the now absent Dr. What, I cannot recall offhand who is a moderator or not.

Can somebody give a poor absent-minded poster a name or two?

Bruce

[Turquoise Blue]

Originally Posted by B_Munro

I need to contact a moderator (other than Ian) about stickying this: apart from the now absent Dr. What, I cannot recall offhand who is a moderator or not.

Can somebody give a poor absent-minded poster a name or two?

Bruce

Me!

To be serious, TheDarkMessiah?

[Alex Richards]

Originally Posted by B_Munro

I need to contact a moderator (other than Ian) about stickying this: apart from the now absent Dr. What, I cannot recall offhand who is a moderator or not.

Can somebody give a poor absent-minded poster a name or two?

Bruce

I just PM'd Glen for the UCS News Thread. Just include a note about why you'd like it stickied.

[Analytical Engine]

Originally Posted by B_Munro

I need to contact a moderator (other than Ian) about stickying this: apart from the now absent Dr. What, I cannot recall offhand who is a moderator or not.

Can somebody give a poor absent-minded poster a name or two?

Bruce

Doesn't it say at the bottom of each forum page who is the moderator?

*Checks*

Ah, there it is. If you go to "Books and Media" forum, and check at the bottom right, there they are - Max Sinister and Glen.

[B_Munro]

Too much to do today, so I didn't get around to it, but MoF 26 and 27 tomorrow.

Bruce

[B_Munro]

MoF 26:

Guns Germs and Steel

The Challenge:

Make a map that depicts a world where Europe did not achieve global domination. The map may depict the globe, or a region of the world.

The Restrictions

The POD must be before renaissance, before the OTL European expansion into the New World. However no 'Land of Red and Gold' style crop packages outside of OTL, so no POD in pre-History. The POD must be through human activity. No ASB maps. If you have any doubts about these conditions please PM me.


Jman:

A religious map of the world, circa present day. Atenism catches on in Egypt, and remains the state religion after Akenaten dies. In time, it becomes an evangelical religion, spurring geographically isolated Egypt to expand throughout the Mediterranean and Africa. Egypt wages war against the budding Greek and Italic city-states and conquers them, thus preventing the rise of the Roman Empire and ensuring that Europe north of the Mediterranean rim is a complete backwater, with the heart of civilization instead centered on the Nile.

Other successful religions include Baalism (based in a stronger alt-Carthage called Qartag, which was bolstered by the refugees of states conquered by the Egyptian Empire) which spreads to the Americas after the fractured successor-states of the Qartaginian Empire carve up the New World amongst themselves (eventually a religious reformation and a wave of revolutions frees the Americas from colonial domination), and Astrocism (apologies to Francis E. Dec for the name), a sort of alt-Zoroastrian religion with astrological preoccupations (Medina Astrocism is an alt-Islam, but not nearly as successful). Minor religions include Zentirism (apologies to D&D) which is polytheistic in theory but heavily favors the snake god Zentir in practice, Legalism (alt-Confucianism, sort of, but ITTL there's more of the flavor of Imperial Rome: worship who you want, but respect the deified emperor, or in this case the Holy Laws), Norse paganism similar to OTL (maybe a little bloodier), Japanese ancestor worship, a strange alt-Gnostic mystery religion in Tibet, and surviving native religions in various obscure corners of the globe (more so than OTL).

Map to follow...

[B_Munro]

Jman's map, which although not fancy, has some interest in concepts...

[B_Munro]

Beedok:

Inspired by the years of Rice and Salt I decided to go for a more realistic approch. Firslty there is the fact that several patches of Europe were barely affected OTL, thus these regions shall survive. It was also annoying how Iceland was totally ignored so that has been fixed. The Plague was made worse through different human reactions that magnified it. More widespread rebellion only worsened things.
Currently Tehran and the Native Coaliton are locked in a cold war with the Buddhist-Christian alliance and Istanbul.

[B_Munro]

Mine:

Okedokee: a world where The Hindu states of India avoided getting that "sea travel contaminates you" meme and eventually developed a more nuanced approach to the caste thing (although Untouchables are still in the sh*t). Islam is forestalled by a heretical offshoot of Judaism that is less successful at spreading outside the Arabian peninsula. Meanwhile, in Europe, the Pope gets squashed by stronger western Emperors and ceasaropapism in in like Flynn, only for the Mega-HRE to attract *Mongol invaders who find it a jucier-looking target than OTL's western Europe.

The Hindu Indians had their Age of Discovery, picked up the printing press and proper paper-making from the Chinese, and had their version of the Scientific Revolution, albiet a rather different animal from the OTL European one. A dominant and outward-looking India made Hinduism a religion of conversion, although its more about getting your Karma right than specifics of the number of arms or noses of God.

Technology is roughly 1930s, and things are a bit dieselpunk, with dirigibles, propellor aircraft, big-ass battleships, and lots of trains. (Television has recently arrived, and the Hindus are already making big-budget musical numbers )

India is of course seen as the Center of Civilization, although Hindu Indonesia and SE Asia is comparably advanced, as are some of their overseas colonies and settlements. The Persians, whose autocratic state (which does have an efficient test-taking bureaucracy, copied from the Chinese model) has managed to (mostly) keep up technologically through centuries of warfare, are developed enough to be considered "semi-civilized", as are the Chinese, who have recently had a revolution in which a modernizing militarist regime has taken over.

The Ishamelites Iudeans (to be distingushed from the Isaachite Iudeans, which form scattered populations in the Zarathustran and Hindu lands) are barbarians (that is a Greek-derived word, but the Indians have come up with their own terms of contempt for foreigners), as are the Christian Europeans, most of which live under either outright theocracies (the "protestant" antions arising from the ejection of the *Mongols) or absolutist ("catholic") monarchies with the church in their back pocket. Europeans were largely stuck in the 16th century sans a renaissance, but had enough organization and guns that, combined with their geographical distance, the Indians largely left them alone until the era of steam and rapid-firing guns arrived: the last century has been rather traumatic for the Europeans and their fellow Christians in North Africa ( a generally more easy-going bunch).

Several large Indian and Indonesian colonies have been established in the Americas, although Northeast America was distant enough and poor enough to have largely been left alone until fairly recently, allowing local Indians time to develop enough immunities to have a fighting chance, although they are further bedeviled by adventurous Europeans seeking their fortune and land in the mysterious "devil-worshippers continent" to the west. The Kechwana Empire, a former Indonesian colony, is unified under a new religion arising from a hybridization of Hindu and native Andean beliefs, and having kicked out their former colonial masters, are busy modernizing and have a acquisitive eye on still-Indonesian ("Yahyva") territories to the north and south.

(a few names stolen from maps by Diamond and a couple others. I am as ignorant as a potato of Indian languages)

[B_Munro]

And here is the map.

[B_Munro]

Mark 4 Morrel Barrel:

Basicly more nval travel means more diffusion of ideas and foods. Vinland survives and iron weapons diffuse throughout the new world. The Europeans try to colonize but are mostly unsucessful. In 1800 the british colonies along with occupied Vinland rebel. The Iroquois and Cherrokee help.

[B_Munro]

I won that one, Jman came in second, and Mark 4 etc came in third: there were some more maps, but they failed to make me say wow, although Ephraim ben Raphael had a cute idea.


Ok, on to MoF 27.

Over Mountain, Plain and Sea


The Challenge

From the Silk Road to the American Transcontinental Railroad, trade routes have always been a major determinant of world history.

Your challenge is to make a map set in a world where a major (or at least significant) trade route existed where none existed in our timeline, or where a relatively minor trade route from our timeline is made much more popular and important.

Your map may depict anything from a simple line showing the trade route itself, to the nations along the route, to a war concerning the control of the trade route, or even just one nation that is particularly significant to the trade route.


KCammy:

Silk Road 2.0

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Most of the info is on the map, in all it's cliche school-textbook style. This is from my TL, Pax Ottomania, (In my sig) and is based on stuff that has not yet transpired in it. So don't look if you read my TL and want the next update to be spoiled for you!