As I started fleshing out the world, I thought a rough timeline would come in handy.
The Timeline
- 2020 - The Modern Era
The modern era continues much as it has and technology continues to improve. Humanity reaches for the stars. Stress between people based on differences continues to ebb and flow. Nothing is ever solved. Climate change continues and weather patterns become more intense. Global temperatures continue to rise, and we get to a place where they will continue to rise despite our inputs into the environment. Sea level begins its gradual climb.
- 2200 - Global War
The stresses of the modern world finally come to a head, for the next 100 years the world is locked in an all-out war fought between the communist factions and the capitalist factions; dictatorships vs democracies. The war is fought largely through conventional means, but some nuclear weapons are used against targets of extreme importance. Total armageddon is avoided, but large areas of the world are laid bare and unlivable.
Global temperature rise comes to a standstill due to the layer of dust thrown into the atmosphere by the small scale nuclear war.
- 2300 - A Thousand Years of Conflict
When the war ends, the conflict doesn't. Nothing between the nations is resolved, they are all simply broken and scattered into component nations. For 1000 years mankind remains trapped in small nations and kingdoms, the shattered remnants of their former glory. For 1000 years war keeps these nations small and technological advancement down.
After 1000 years, the dust from the wars has largely subsided and the temperature begins to rise again. The sea levels have steadily climbed over this time period as well. As more and more dust came out of the atmosphere the temperature rise steadily grew faster until the sea level had risen some 100 meters.
- 3300 - Resource Peace
The small nations begin to band together, their governments forming together to rebuild semblances of their former selves. Resources are largely exhausted and humanity is forced into an uneasy peace.
- 4300 - Rise of the Corporations
With resources largely depleted the governments do what they can to hold their nations together. The corporations grow steadily in power. They still hold the means to production
- 4400 - Corporate States
With the corporate states holding the means to production within each new nation, the interm governments are quickly replaced by the corporate bodies that control everything within the borders. Nations become CorpStates.
- 4500 - Rebirth of Tech
CorpStates trade with each other to exist. What one has, the other needs. The human population is a ghost of its former self and the resources that fueled humanity are gone. Still despite this, and built on the back on the old world, tech has increased. Its level within the CorpStates has outgrown the old world. Breakthroughs in computers and energy systems have pulled humanity back to a place of greatness.
- 5000 - Barbaric Future
2500 years of conflict and climate disaster have rendered the memory of the old world a fairy tale to most of humanity, only a few who have kept or who have found old records know of its existence.
Humanity lives mostly within the cities of the CorpStates but a few live in the broken shell of the old world. The people living in the cities live behind walls with their lives controlled and monitored by the Corporations. Although personal weapons and armor are allowed for personal defense, the equivalent of modern firearms and greater is tightly controlled. The occasional person may wield a crossbow, but even those archaic ranged weapons are frowned upon.
Cities that fell during the climate upheavals left places of shelter and life for those strong enough to take it. Much of these places have fallen into complete disrepair and are overgrown with life, only those who know to look can really see. To survive in these places humanity formed into tribes not dissimilar to the dark ages. Major differences being their access to high tech weapons and equipment as they trade with the CorpStates or live off of their spent garbage.
In the wastes beyond civilization lie mutants and radiation zones. Beasts mutated from what was there before and the twisted remains of humanity. Despite these dangers, the wastes hold much of the technology of the old world. These places were once the libraries and strongholds of the old world. Targets of the nuclear strikes hoping to break the backs of some long-forgotten enemy.