I suppose this is a similar question to "What might happen if America actually does balkanize?" but applied to the present (or near-future) instead of some point in the 2060s or whatever.
I suppose this is a similar question to "What might happen if America actually does balkanize?" but applied to the present (or near-future) instead of some point in the 2060s or whatever.
megacity states
each claims far more territory than they can effectively project power over. temporary alliances to share maintenance and security responsibilities over rail transport between them are rare.
caveats
the rest of the former US not immediately subjected to violence of the city states over their surroundings and their marauding, demobilized ex-national guard forces degrades into manoralism and occasional warlordism fueled by remote caches of national guard armories. best described as a shifting mosaic of heaven and hell.
I like this idea, it's a little like ancient Greece.
I feel like Atlanta becomes Sparta, creating a military-sport warrior culture which nonetheless fucking sucks at both fighting and sport and relies on apartheid slavery to do literally anything.
NorCal, so far from the others and in an increasingly desertifying climate due to climate change must adapt or die and succeeds due to their resources, recreating the Islamic Golden Age in this analogy and is the first to reach fusion technology of the four (I'm assuming the rest of the world has decided to go no-contact after a little bit, realizing that they will be too busy fighting between themselves to do imperialism on the rest of the world). Silicon Valley continues down the path of trying to hack the human psyche to maximise profit and ends up creating its own religion.
yeah that sounds about right, I hate it here