Saturday, 23 July 2016

Retrotopia draft map

The author John Michael Greer has been publishing a speculative fiction series currently on his blog, The Archdruid Report called 'Retrotopia'. It is set in around 2065, in a North America that has undergone some changes after the breakup of the USA.


Here is a draft map, based on his descriptions in the comments to a recent post, showing the approximate borders of the successor states to the USA and Canada. I have yet to deal with states that are split between more that one nation in 2065.

The nations of the Retrotopia stories, not including at this time states that are split between more than one Retrotopia nation. No account of sea level rise is made, which is assumed to be 6 feet above present day levels.
I used a map of US counties from here, and US state, and Canadian province shapefiles from here. Update - I switched to using this map of Canadian provinces which includes Nunavut.

I have also used the ETOPO1 bedrock relief topographic map as a background, which shows the elevation of Greenland without the ice sheet. It is perhaps a century or two too early to assume complete deglaciation of Greenland. The portion of Greenland below sea level is not actually connected to the sea here, it would be at a +50 metre sea level as assumed in the 25th century setting of Star's Reach.

Update

I have made some updates based on further descriptions based on John Michael Greer's comments, which account for the states that are divided:

The borders of the Retrotopia nations can be seen by the colours, with present-day US states and counties shown as lines.
The Lakeland Republic is not labelled since the Free City of Chicago label has prevented it from appearing.


In this case the Lakeland Republic label wins out.

These are the borders of the western areas, as far as I understand JMGs comments.


Close-up of the north-east former USA and adjacent part of Canada.
Black and white version.


The shapefile itself containing all of the Retrotopia nations in North America I have made available here.

It is also available as a KML file suitable for use with Google Earth.

Showing 2 meters of sea level rise in blue, with 2-4 metres shaded in lighter blue.