MotF 93: Making a Mark on the Map

Dead Sea Canal:



Note: Everything was made by me, except for the canal cross-section diagram which I obtained from a third-party source with permission. While not officially part of the entry itself, I thought the diagram helped tie the map together.

Screw it. I'll just throw up this unlabeled and undetailed because I really can't get a proper one in time and I'd rather be working in a new challenge.


During the 21st, 22nd and 23rd centuries, two rival world ideologies emerged and clashed. The first advocated the idea of a unified and centralized state, with a singular and powerful national identity above all regional identities. Environmentalism took a back seat in polities of this camp, and urban sprawl is incredible. The Arab Federation, The European Union, the Eurasian Federation, and the Southern Conradery are or where exemplary instances of this system. The second ideology valued decentralization and conglomeration, with cities growing taller but smaller and massive swaths of lands being reclaimed by nature. One of the principle powers to eventually take this route was the United States of America, especially after the redefinition of state to mean a singular metropolis such as those at Denver, Chicago, or New Seattle. Nowadays, there is hardly a speck of green in Europe but North America is mostly forested. Nowadays, too, the two ideologies have agreed to disagree and standing armies exist in only a few states.


In the early 24th century, after almost a century of peace, war broke out once again. It was not a war between countries, but one of secession. The United States, who's army had long been de facto only an minor extension of the police forces, stood no chance against the revolution. The states of the far South, in old Mexico, took up arms. The country collapsed. Now, in the year of the old system 2407, the area is once again stable. The States of Tiruana and New Vegas, superpowers in the region, have come to an agreement. The decaying and decrepit Hoover and Three Lakes dams have been destroyed, recreating the long dead Colorado Delta and Salton Sea in an incredible and heavily controlled display of engineering. Ancient species which once inhabited the region are being reintroduced with genetic engineering, and terraforming is beating back the desert and the jungle. The future seems bright.


Map of the Salton area as projected for the year of the old system 2410.

In 1963/64, the United States had the idea to save trouble with the Panama Canal by building an alternative canal, both for political and physical reasons.

ITTL, the Soviet Union gives its OK to the American employment of nuclear detonations on foreign soil that is necessary due to a treaty whose name I've forgotten but some of you might still know. Furthermore, the US is more spending happy and less afraid of potential nuclear intoxication of affected environments.

In the beginning, Nicaragua or Colombia were considered as sites for an American Canal 2, but the latter was ruled out due to political instability and as Nicaragua too much fell into the cliché of just another Central American state that may be prone to fall for undesirable political elements causing trouble just like Panama, the Americans resorted to Mexico whose Isthmus of Tehuantepec missed international border issues raising elsewhere. Furthermore, ecological concerns were little as well as there wasn't a lake like in Nicaragua too feed the locals etc.

In 1968, Mexico, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union agreed on a treaty that would allow the nuclear-enhanced construction of a canal in the very east of Mexican provinces of Veracruz-Llava and Oaxaca, roughly between Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz.

Construction started in 1969 and ended with its grand opening in 1977. It's called Tehuantepec Channel instead of a mere canal because it's operating without any watergates, but makes for a level-free access between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

It's approx. 230 km (145 miles) long and 180 m (600 ft.) wide and already became the more important of the two American canals/channels in 1985. The Panama Canal on the other hand was likewise extended from 1993 to 1997 to offer similar amenities as the channel in Mexiko does and likewise turned from the Canal to the Panama Channel.

Since 2002, both channels have accounted for at least 40 per cent each of the entire trans-American sea traffic and therefore became very friendly sisters.