By spring of 2024, the United States had liberated Mexico from the criminal empires and a colorful revolutionary dictator that ravaged the governmental systems and turned the vast country third world after a three-year internal civil war. Mexico was made the largest U.S. territory in a sweeping agreement from the remaining government officials under corrupt, faux-populist rule, an action that would be detrimental to the innocent civilians trapped in a resource-wasting war between different factions of terrorism. The takeover effort had claimed the lives of twenty-eight thousand people, with most causalities a result of super phosphorus attacks on Mexico City, PMC village executions (with some leaked footage going viral and becoming a major subgenre of conspiracy videos), and thousands of drone strikes on cartel and Mexican government buildings. Dozens of charity and peacekeeping organizations flooded the hectic wasteland of Northern Mexico after the United States Takeover.

Cities and countries along the European Atlantic coast were decimated by Russia’s final airstrikes conducted in the fall of 2023. Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy had all been fire-bombed on more than a third of their respective landmass by the United Eastern Nations. America’s southern border had seen such an uptick in crime and disaster than many emigrated north to the Great Plains to work as farmers and start work on repairing the world’s struggling grain resources.

Many towns and cities in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, the Dakotas, and Wyoming returned to horseback and wagons after oil prices became unmanageable during the course of 2018. Despite the economic bounce-back in the late 2020’s, many of these Plains and isolated states have given up many modern day conveniences i.e. basic 1990’s-style Internet, mainly hometown shopping with locally grown supplies, and phones rarely used socially unless for jobs or emergencies. As roadways became less and less crowded due to rising oil and battery resource costs, many companies began investing or retooling their businesses to operate via river trade, similar to the early 20th century.

For example, in 2022, Maine’s heads of government announced that until alternative means were met, the state would be using horseback transport and wagons made from cars or new versions of horse-drawn carriages. The state gained a surplus of horses from several bankrupted estates during the economic woes of the country ending the trusts funds of several billionaires living in the United States. Maine’s economy is the first to bounce back from depression following the war.

This new generation (known as Generation Alpha or Gen Nu), born between 2010 and 2024 has been greatly scarred by the events of the Final War and hundreds of thousands of young children became orphans in the six years of wartime, either due to war causalities or the lack of resources. Re-sources were scarce in the early 2020’s and many children did not have the opportunities for technology to influence their lives as much as Gen Z before them. Schools became mostly analog (besides basic radio communications and computer student ID systems, with some school systems in the South adopting typewriters).

In the modern age (beginning in 2026), most teenagers do not use phones except for emergencies, music, or photography, often strapping the phones to their arms on fashionable armbands. Most phones are nearly completely transparent concave devices that fit in the palm, with limited use besides basic functions, although many old-style phone companies still produce the older models. Social con-nections and long-forgotten bonds between neighbors suddenly found themselves reforged during war-time. Community became key. Strength was in numbers and not money, which had recently been stripped of its value. Knowledge and education became the forefront of goals for most children as many communities were people under eighteen, their parents and other guardians called to war via the three-month lottery pilot program to draft soldiers as thousands of Americans began dying.

Places like Ripley Way, a city near several major farming and agriculture centers in Virginia prospered better than the rest of the world. Local food markets contained fresh food made by independent farmers not sponsored and funded by corporations and the natural abundance of fertile soil was not tainted during the Ecological Famine Crisis (commonly known as the E.F.C.) that lasted from roughly 2015 to 2028 (with many countries still suffering in the modern day, of course).

Teenagers begin to socialize in person more often, shedding the ever-growing addiction to dopamine-delivery-based social media apps, malls, walkable shopping centers, parks, and recreational activities like skating and playgrounds begin reopening in many smaller cities and towns as tourism worldwide declines and the youth become active, respected members of their community. Mass amounts of free-dom are given to the new generation, soon to be called ‘The Humbled’ or ‘The Greatest’ as a successor to the 20th Century’s Greatest Generation (being the people who lived through two world wars, the Great Depression, and the last vestiges of the old world).

The Internet has become a haven for introverts, poets, criminals, artists. It has reverted how it operated in the late 1990’s, with most websites having dead links or broken webpages after the EMP attacks of July 2021 caused internal damage to many Internet servers, melting fibers and frying barely-maintained computer systems.

But all of this means one thing for the culture: change has begun. True change that only emerges from the depths of chaos.

What does that create?