Post-Change North America
After the Change, millions of North Americans were denied the technology upon which they had been dependent. The Eastern United States and California were some of the worst hit, as starving urbanites ate the remaining food in the area before resorting to cannibalism. Pockets of civilization, mostly around the Great Plains, survived where there were no large cities around. Several new nations sprang up to keep order in the changed world.
The new governments were organized along a feudal structure, with American terms adapting to describe medieval concepts. Memory of the United States continues to affect the culture of these nations. Many of these nations fly the US flag, and several leaders take the term "President of the United States" along with their other titles.
The Sioux and Haida also carved out sizable nations in North America. The Haida returned to the practice of slavery, raiding the Oregon coast for new slaves. The Sioux live a nomadic lifestyle, taking care of their herds and hunting buffalo, though also raiding their neighbors unless they are paid protection money. The Sioux made an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Fargo and Marshall, and fought a war with the Church Universal and Triumphant that led to a peace treaty seen as somewhat unfavorable to the Sioux.
In Hawaiʻi, the population of Oʻahu wiped itself out, but civilization still exists on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. The island produces coffee, a rare commodity in post-Change North America. Prince Edward Island also survived relatively intact, becoming a part of the British Empire. Mexico and Central America, including the Caribbean, were almost completely depopulated by overlapping Death Zones. South America adapted to post-Change life much as North America did, with rural areas far from large cities maintaining much of their population and adapting to the new laws of nature. Chocolate was imported from the Caribbean Sea, but only after trade routes were reestablished by settler populations from the south and from the British Empire. By 2050, Britain laid claim to the east coast of North America and Jamaican merchants traded in British ports.
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Famous quotes containing the words north america, north and/or america:
“We might hypothetically possess ourselves of every technological resource on the North American continent, but as long as our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be “revolutionary” but not transformative.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,
With Li Po’s name forgotten,
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.”
—Li Po (701–762)
“There is no such thing as a free lunch.”
—Anonymous.
An axiom from economics popular in the 1960s, the words have no known source, though have been dated to the 1840s, when they were used in saloons where snacks were offered to customers. Ascribed to an Italian immigrant outside Grand Central Station, New York, in Alistair Cooke’s America (epilogue, 1973)