People have always been fascinated by alternate realities, what ifs, and their hypothetical repercussions. Whether it’s as mundane as what if Billy Buckner hadn’t booted that ball in the 10th or as complicated (and unlikely) as the Confederacy winning the US Civil War. There seems to be an endless appetite for alternative realities. There’s an entire sub-genre of alternative history entertainment. It includes everything from books, to movies, to comics, and everything in between. Change agents range from the repercussions of minor incidents and chance meetings to the ridiculous. The latter includes Harry Turtledove’s award winning The Guns of the South novel. Time-traveling white supremacists bequeath AK-47s to the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia delivering victory to the South.
While the genre is strongly rooted in a nerdy sub-culture it’s also found its way into the mainstream. In addition to nearly endless debates about sporting gaffes and decisions, you can find playful what ifs in our humor. A decades old Saturday Night Live episode skewered the genre with a skit asking; what if Napoleon had a B-52?
So why do we have this fascination with things that might have been? Perhaps it’s a holdover from of our survival instincts. It’s a tool we use. We replay the past correcting the errors to learn from our mistakes. Maybe it serves some deep-seated psychological need. Perhaps we only appreciate life by contemplating the bizarreness that results from seemingly minor or even absurd changes. I don’t really know, but we do seem to like them. This being a blog about maps, I thought it would be interesting to share a few alternate maps of the US and North America.
The Maps
The first one comes from The Nine Nations of North America by Joel Garreau, a book I picked up in an airport back when I used to travel a lot. Published in 1981, before cheap computing power made crunching census data easy, Garreau uses social and economic issues to reapportion the continent into nine cohesive nations.
In 2013 Colin Woodward from Tufts University,created a new map of the continent with 13 cultural nations.
Next, Parag Khanna’s Connectography alters the current political boundaries. Khanna replaces them with a new interconnected world based on mega-cities and trade flows. Below is his updated map of the US. It features some truly giant cities. I particularly like that he depicts my current city (Rochester, NY) as a border town between the Northeast and the Great Lakes.
Our last map honors the dystopian slant of many alternate history stories. It comes from Russian academic Igor Panarin. In 2010 he proposed that break-up of the US into six new entities. While no doubt popular in his home country, it also landed him exposure in the Wall Street Journal.
As always thanks for reading.
Armen
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Note to Pay the Bills: The award winning Misaligned series features it’s own alternative reality. One where the mysteries of science, legends, and paranormal activity intersect within the details of String Theory. Don’t let that scare you. Science and history form the basis of the stories, but at the core the series is a retelling of Arthurian legend in present day upstate NY. If you find that intriguing check out a summary of the series here or find links to purchase books here.
I’m especially amused by Greater Appallechia. It seems to have expanded greatly since initially identified by President Johnson. I wonder if, the way the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, it will continue to expand. Just thinkin’.
I agree that Greater Appalachia doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’ve lived in western Texas as well as southwestern Virginia, while both have extraction driven economies (oil & coal respectively) I’m not sure they belong in the same “nation.” I also think that northern Alabama doesn’t fit well either.