Throughout the years leading up to 2666, the USA was struck by a multitude of disasters, both natural and man-made. The Second Superpower Age of America, beginning in around about the middle of the 25th century after the progression of space travel to the Moon, Mars and the habitable planets in the Gliese and Alpha Centari systems, had come to a shattering halt when in 2612 tensions between the Russians and the Americans began to boil. Shipments of Dorvask, a new natural resource, discovered to be in huge quantities in Siberia, which was the substitute to oil and renewable-energy run appliances and was far more powerful, were stopped by the Russians to the United States when US military personal based in Alaska fired indiscriminately on Russian fishing boats. The result, however, was to degenerate into an energy crisis in the US, something that a constitution, whose population was now around 375 million and still built on the government style of Ancient Rome, could not afford to go through. Riots erupted in the streets and shortly afterwards, small scale revolts and rebellions broke out amongst the people, namely in the south and west among the Spanish and Blacks who were receiving less energy rations than any other ethnic group in the US.
Then came the natural disasters. The first: a long predicted, but eventually forgotten tsunami threat from the Hawaiian Islands that scientists had calculated would level most of Honolulu city suddenly materialized when part of a mountainside on one of the islands collapsed due to a mini volcanic eruption in June 2618. As a result, most of Honolulu, though it had been evacuated, was levelled. But the wave did not stop there. It carried on across the Pacific and struck the western shores of the United States and the southern parts of Alaska as well doing damage in Canada and Mexico. Cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and San Diego were mostly levelled and the death toll was in the thousands with many more homeless, injured and missing.
The second, however, was the one most had feared all over the world. Yellowstone, after calming from the early 21st century warnings when it was believed to erupt, suddenly exploded in Christmas 2624, killing hundreds in the surrounding areas and sending an ash cloud into the atmosphere, one that over the following weeks quickly covered most of the United States, then North America and then a large portion of the planet. The following two years were filled with little sun and freezing cold temperatures that dropped to a record breaking minus forty degrees in winter and barely made it past seven degrees in the summer. Water supplies to major population centres were polluted with ash and as for crop harvests, they virtually collapsed. Food prices rose in the US as well as across the rest of the world and the countries that were main food producers only just hung onto keeping famines from sweeping through their populations.
In the United States, many decided to take matters into their own hands. Food riots broke out and the increase in illegal drugs rose rapidly whilst many fled the country in the hopes of finding food and sanctuary from the fighting inside their own country between the different groups and the army; fighting that quickly spread right across the states from New York City to Dallas to Seattle to San Francisco and many other cities in the country. Within Alaska and Hawaii, there was more stability and, in shock to many, the two countries shut off their borders despite protests from Washington DC not to and turned back anyone hoping to enter.
Over the next forty two years the United States was crippled greatly by these multitude of problems and, as a result, the so called 'sinking' of America was the total collapse of It's economy, the widespread revolt of thousands across the nation and, eventually, the culminating invasions by the Mexican army into the south of the country, regaining Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico and Nevada, territories that had once been part of that nation before being wrestled away almost 900 years ago, and the Russian attack and annexation of Alaska, an area that had also been part of Russia once long ago at the time of the Tsars. The American military, powerless to respond and already bogged down in the conflict within its mainland, was forced to give in and allow Alaska to become Russian territory once again, but action was continued against the Mexicans by different so called partisan groups as well as by the US military, though that area of conflict was extremely reminiscent to Yugoslavia in WW2. Different partisan groups fought each other, themselves and the common enemy(s) and all seemed to want control.
And so that was the state the once mighty superpower had collapsed to, a warring factional edifice in which millions fled, many back to their native ancestral homelands, in the hopes of starting a new life. Many blacks, for example, from the US fled back to Africa or across the Pacific to Russia, which had now taken up its role as the new superpower of the world with countries such as India, Brazil, Ukraine, Belarus and Bulgaria close behind. Arabs and Asians were close behind as well, all hoping to seek a new life in the new superpower, though they were faced with great hostility as Russia, having had its native population rise once more after a serious decline in the early parts of the third Millennium, placed a limit on how many were able to come into the country and for the few that did, they could find little work and often faced harassment and racism from the native people, one that was, like most countries, mostly resistant to foreigners entering.
Humanity had re-entered the edifice, it had hoped to save itself from during the 20th and 21st centuries; after many decades of co-operation to expand the Human population to new worlds in the stars.
Now, within the later years of the second century of the fifth Millennium, life had stayed this way and there was virtually no chance of it ever changing.
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