Switzerland is surrounded by good farm land though, so will probably be feeding itself only slightly slower than Spain.
Beedok's Maps Thread
- Thread starter Beedok
- Start date
a thought on the map series:
an interesting variation for a different series would be to have, say, all the A-countries isoted as they are in the standard alphabet series, but the rest of the world is also isoted with all its infrastructure etc, everything except living human beings.
that'd avoid the possibility of people dying due to lack of food, and make the surviving countries expand across the world much faster.
an interesting variation for a different series would be to have, say, all the A-countries isoted as they are in the standard alphabet series, but the rest of the world is also isoted with all its infrastructure etc, everything except living human beings.
that'd avoid the possibility of people dying due to lack of food, and make the surviving countries expand across the world much faster.
Also while some European countries aren't able to feed themselves, everyone have storaged large amount of food. In fact the problem for Singapore are not food, but water. As for the Swiss they also use the Rhine to upkeep a deep water merchant marine, and while a virgin Rhine are harder to sail on, to my knowledge they can still sail on it with smaller ships. But I think ironic the first thing the Swiss does are establish a port at the North Sea. The next thing they do are likely trying to establish canals between the Rhine and Danube, so that the Danubian watershed states can easier transport their goods to Switzerland and beyond. In fact this world may see the creation of some kind of new EFTA to integrate the different European economies.
Vuu
Banned
Singapore will be rekt, but they'll live
The carribean states will probably unite. Singapore is rekt. Seychelles no idea. Somalia is already rekt. Syria will mop up the mess and quickly stabilize. San Marino would probably divide Italy with the Swiss. Oceania divided between Samoa and the Solomons
The carribean states will probably unite. Singapore is rekt. Seychelles no idea. Somalia is already rekt. Syria will mop up the mess and quickly stabilize. San Marino would probably divide Italy with the Swiss. Oceania divided between Samoa and the Solomons
That'd be cool, you should make one. I bet you'd see many more rogue bandit States colonize the empty cities and farms. The livestock/pet/zoo mass deaths would be pretty disturbing though, so I'd transport them as well. It'd be more like a post-nuclear world. I wonder how many would move to Europe, North America, Australia and Japan.
I'm now realizing small, isolated nations like Qatar/West Sahara would probably have to redomesticate some wild animals/ plants for improved agriculture. In Beedok's series.
Vuu
Banned
Maybe the kurds, but if it were isoted right now, the support for rebels is pretty much deleted
The Carribean states that come with are all linguistically and culturally different; in a world full of virgin land they would have no reason to unite. Coordinate naval traffic, probably, but otherwise they have every reason to maintain their national identities.
With regard to Syria, I have no idea why you would assume they would quickly stabilize. Assad only began to get an upper hand when Russia began providing him assistance and ISIS was only stomped out due to Coalition interest in removing them, and the Kurds are only as successful as they are because Turkey sends in ground troops and backs friendly rebel groups when the Kurds get too big for their britches. Remove all of these outside forces and you have a Syrian government that is already too weak to unite the country suddenly without its outside influences and facing emboldened opposition. A stable Syria is not on the horizon, no matter which way you cut it.
With regard to San Marino, Samoa, and the Solomons, this seems overly optimistic to me. The Solomons has roughly 600,000 people and Samoa roughly 200,000 This is a number vastly too small to begin any serious colonizing initiative, even with state backing (which there won't be) but certainly high enough for an island nation to begin worrying about food. Those two will almost certainly focus on solidifying their local economies and sustainability of their population/lifestyles. Lots of fishing. San Marino on the other hand, has a population of just 33,000. While there might be a few pastoral communities popping up on the outskirts, San Marino's foreign policy will likely continue to be what has worked for it for the past ~1700 years: quietly acknowledge the power of the day (Almost certainly Switzerland in this case) and live and let live.
I expect the unexpected MVPs of S world to be Senegal and Sao Tome and Principe. Survival will be hard at first but out of all the states, they seem to be in the best position to begin producing sugar, coffee, and cocoa, providing them great incentive to pursue expansion, both as national policy and for individual citizens looking to make a fortune. It seems to me, with Syria and Saudi Arabia, there is likely to be a war over the Suez as both states fall into anarchy and the various interested groups try to control the canal so as to benefit from trade. This would provide incentive for trade between the Atlantic nations as well as travelling around Africa for access to various resources, particularly if you have lucrative hubs of trade and production popping up and expanding all over the Gulf of Guinea and West Africa.
Vuu
Banned
I wouldn't underestimate the by now very experienced syrian army - the only insurgents are in the south, not counting the Kurds ("lol m8 why kill eachother look at all that free land ey"), but it'll have some problems
Now, samoa and the solomons won't stay in their current borders for eternity, not even a country full of downies would be that stupid, and in the same logic san marino no matter how small wouldn't immediatelly commit literal national suicide by refusing to claim anything (what switzerland gonna do, throw a fuss over 3 rocks and a hut when they have much better options)
Now the Saudis are screwed
The Syrian army was already well-trained and the only insurgent controlled territory is in the south, there are still insurgents elsewhere. In the early phases of the war, it looked like the rebels were actually going to succeed in ousting Assad. His success comes with the backing of the Russian government, the fear Alawites have of reprisals, and liberal use of chemical weapons and barrel bombs in civilian areas, and even then the rebels have managed to hold together despite being a very diverse coalition. The sudden change in circumstances will not go unnoticed by would-be dissidents and those chafing under the regime, which is a lot of people. Similarly, those who depend on the Assad regime or benefit from it will not fail to notice the distinct lack of Russia in S world. The result of the sudden appearance of a great deal of no-man's-land and the disappearance of powers interested in limiting conflict to within Syria will result in the war expanding outward; the country is in too much of a stalemate, militarily and socially, to do otherwise.
I don't know what a downie is but you know that national borders don't expand for the purpose of filling map space, right? There has to be interest in actually claiming and settling new land, both on the part of the sponsor (presumably the state) and on the part of the settler. That's why people aren't dropping everything to go settle the Sahara as well as why the nations that claim parts of the Sahara aren't interested in rigorously enforcing their control of the region; the lines were drawn to prevent accidental conflict between occupying colonial powers and then they were just there. If you live in Samoa, the priority is ensuring that your family has enough to eat; for some people that will probably mean moving to what was once American Samoa. Otherwise, you stick close to the hand that feeds you, i.e. society. If there's famine, you might get some settlers trying to make their way to uninhabited islands but we've seen throughout history what happens when desperate refugees try to escape their situation by sea: it's never pretty. In any scenario, individual settlers that do make it to other islands and manage to survive their new environment will certainly not be tied to Samoa, which will be focused on maintaining internal stability and cohesion in a chaotic environment and unwilling to invest resources in more land that they can't manage. Ditto for the Solomons; there will be no great Pacific empires here.
And while we're talking about refugees, why not mention how it's overwhelmingly more likely for Syrian refugees to settle Italy than San Marino. 33,000 people is nothing and San Marino is a country that has never, for the millenium and many centuries that it's existed, ever been interested in expansion. They literally can't manage to create a few pastoral communities even if San Marinese fascists took control of the country and mandated a policy dedicated entirely toward reproduction and settlement. Switzerland could twiddle its thumbs for a century and then move in and take Italy if it wanted; ditto for Spain, ditto for Senegal, ditto for Arabian and Syrian refugees and settlers. The most growth San Marino can hope to accomplish is to become an oddly-placed metropolitan center in a number of decades.
I have the mental image of Sammarinese (together with the other Catholic S-nations of Europe) trying to rebuild Rome for the new Pope, and San Marino controlling Italy south of the Po Valley and north of the Southern Appenine Mountains (excluding the Papal Latium).
They're very, very close to the sea, so having a port is within the realm of expansion offered by "a few pastoral communities" but really, they have only 33,000 people. I can't fathom how they would ever be in a better position to deliberately settle any part of Italy than Switzerland or Spain would be to accidentally settle the peninsula. Both countries are several orders of magnitude larger and are not very far away.
The Syrian Rebels are heavily depended on foreign support far more than the Regime, while the Saudi move with them to this world, they gave their own problem to deal with, which leave the Rebels to fight with the Regime on its own.