DU's Finest Minds...I'd like a little help here.

[Mythsaje]

I'm working on my fifth book. It's going to be much more political than everything that's come before it. I can tell that already. A cop in our world (Circa 2022) is visited by a traveler from another timeline.

The economy's a mess, oil is tapping out, the Neocons are still in power, environmental protection in America is a joke, abortion is illegal--more illegal than rape, and civil rights, including women's rights, have been knocked back at least fifty years.

Anybody have any insight that could help me construct a more detailed view of this rather scary futuristic vision?

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. No more public schools

Only charters and voucher supported private schools.

[longship]

36. Well, there's public schools,

but they are handled by volunteer staffs, with no funding and next to no facilities. Concentrated in the urban centers, these schools are the only education available to the ever increasing lower class. Very few of these schools succeed due to the desparate and hopeless conditions in the urban centers. In this time, education has effectively become a luxury for the well-off, with very few students from the remaining volunteer education system schools achieving even a high school education.

The urban populace, uneducated and ill-fit for life in their surroundings, make city life a hopelessly dreary existence. However, the migrant worker force, previously peopled by Mexican immigrants and illegals, is now almost the entire purview of the urban young. Both state and national governments ship them around the country in open box cars so that they can earn a few pennies a lug for harvesting at the big corporate farms. International organizations have condemned the conditions at these farms where children as young as 10 work from day break to dusk in conditions no person should experience.

The corporations have responded to the condemnation by securing the farms from casual oversight. Working in the dangerous and chemical riddled environment of the huge corporate farms is dangerous. High death rates never come to the surface because of the size of the huge corp-farms combined with zero government oversight enables their operators to discretely sweep them under the carpet.

At any rate, deaths amongst urban center dwellers are not tracked accurately due to the huge and corrupt government bureaucracy and ridiculously inaccurate record keeping in the cities. Even in 2010, the national census began ignoring certain inner city areas. In 2019, the federal government announced that all urban areas would be estimated from birth and death records. But since such records had been in a shambles for the better part of a decade, these estimations were easily jiggered to make the result come out in the favor of the one-party in power.

Is that enough?

[Mythsaje]

39. These are good

Thanks for the help!

[longship]

52. No problem.

If you like it, use it.

[onecent]

2. You definitely need something in there about the MSM and

freedom of speech. And the election process.

[annabanana]

72. see Max Headroom for MSM in the future info....n/t

[skids]

3. corporations and churches have merged. n/t

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

4. Well....

Microchips are inserted at birth into everyone's neck (next to the jugular vein). This not only helps the gov't track you, but helps all corporate employers keep informed of your whereabouts/productivity.

[ClintonTyree]

8. And you could be terminated at any time.........

for "crimes against the government". THAT'S freaking scary, and all too possible knowing the Theo-Cons.

[ClintonTyree]

5. Something as regressive as............

"A Handmaid's Tale"? Obviously it's not as futuristic as what you're proposing, but the story-line about the Conservatism would be quite similar.
Have you ever read it? It's a good, quick read and packed with the horrors of a future Theo-Con controlled world.

[Mythsaje]

11. I've read it...

one of the assignments of my college lit class. It was a bit spooky, I'll admit that.

Mine will definitely have a different tone, though.

[AValdoux]

6. State Religion & Intolerance of diversity n/t

AValdoux

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Because of peak oil, it's too expensive for most people, so

only the rich have cars. Since public transit no longer exists, people either walk, ride bicycles, or get carried around in jitney buses, broken down old vans driven by people who charge for rides.

SUVs and minivans are parked in what once were mall parking lots and serve as shelter for the growing armies of the poor and unemployed.

[On the Road]

9. A Good Source for Ideas Might be

Paul Theroux's "O-Zone". Theroux has travelled extensively in the third world, and he used a lot of that experience constructing a militaristic laissez-faire future America. Hard to summarize, but very startling. Don't know why the book isn't better known -- maybe because he's not primariy a science fiction writer.

[wli]

20. that sounds interesting

I should look into it.

[TrogL]

41. I've got a copy and didn't like it

Mostly because one of the characters spends waaay too much time whining.

[AValdoux]

10. Also...

... really bad music like Toby Keith. :puke:


No more artistic creativity, everything must be vetted by Gov't. Oh yeah, we would still have porn but it would be really twisted because the leaders are.

AValdoux

[Mythsaje]

14. Oh...

Prostitution is still legal in Nevada. It's one of the possible deals a 'baby-killer' can make to avoid going to prison.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

12. Health insurance is so unfordable that you literally have people

dying of very preventable diseases. Homeopathic remedies are outlawed. Catfood sales have gone through the roof as many in the senior population can't afford anything else. Starvation on the whole is commonplace. The water supply has been horribly polluted, and bottle water more precious than oil. There is though, government issued thorizine to keep people in line. Also, everyone is microchipped.

[ClintonTyree]

13. Think.........

"The Road Warrior" meets "THX-1138". THAT would be pretty shitty!

[sojourner]

15. I wish I didn't believe that when people write this stuff and others read

it then it HAS to manifest in the material world. I keep hoping someone will write something that demands we manifest something worthwhile...*sigh*

That said...sounds like a good read. Try looking at PNAC and see how that would play out on a global scale together with the vision you've already outlined.

[RagAss]

18. All the poor have one kidney...

the lucky ones that is.

[Mythsaje]

19. Good suggestion

One of the good points about this book is that it offers hope...twisted, unreal hope, but hope.

The male protagonist is given a very powerful gift.

One of his guests from another universe remarks that this world needs a superhero.

Loki, in normal fashion, remarks, "This world doesn't need a superhero. It needs a revolution."

Leave it to Loki.

[Mythsaje]

16. I'm not going to do the microchip thing.

As much as they'd like to, they can't afford it. LOL

No public transportation, no public schools...those are good ones.

[sojourner]

17. Oh! Sorry...just saw this was for DU's Finest Minds....

Please disregard my previous comment. :)

[Mythsaje]

21. I noticed it got a lot of hits real fast...

didn't you?

[sojourner]

32. LOL

:9

[dave502d]

22. The RAPTURE came in 2020 and God only took 7 people.

[Mythsaje]

26. Oh, the religious angle's the really interesting one

It's all a lie. Perpetrated by a race of savage aliens that use it to manipulate prospective worlds into compliancy.

If "God" only took 7 people, it's because they looked particularly tasty.

I know...I'm evil.

Or am I just a bit like Loki?

[wli]

23. iterative refinement

Try numerous times, and maybe have some people help "poke holes" in the situation. Keep poking holes and solving the problem with the predictions over and over again.

Looking at history would also help. It will be unique but share characteristics with other historical occasions where democracy failed, nations were impoverished, and so on.

[AzDar]

24. I think there will be Debtor's Prisons...which of course, you may be

able to avoid by joining the military for a 10-20 year stretch.

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

25. FDR and the Founding Fathers are brought back to life via

clandestine scientific breakthroughs by Democratic scientists. These men of historic greatness review the actions of the theocratic neocons and through their vision and articulate, bold leadership, the masses revolt against their oppressors.

A happy ending.:evilgrin:

[Mythsaje]

28. Oh, don't think I haven't thought of it. n/t

[texastoast]

27. The environment

Clean water is almost impossible to find, except among the privileged. Glaciers are almost gone. Many, many species are extinct. Illness is rampant.

And a few old wise women are in business under cover of darkness, trading medicine for food.

[julialnyc]

29. Gay people are forced

to go to religious based re-identify programs to make them realize they're straight (when they are caught in any homosexual act, which is now illegal)

[WilliamPitt]

30. Hm

Iraq collapsed into civil war, dragging Iran and Syria into the mess. Pakistan fell to fundamentalists and their nukes wound up in Wahabbist hands, which were then used to blackmail the Saudi royals out of power. Mush of the Mideast is a wasteland of warfare, depleted uranium, gas and radiation. Oil production is at a standstill, OPEC has collapsed.

Gasoline is $9 a gallon in America, the auto industry crashed and burned, and there are oil rigs all up and down the Gulf coast. Three separate accidents during hurricanes dumped millions of gallons of crude into the sea, annihilating Florida's gulf coast tourist industry.

One of the nukes spirited out of Pakistan was parked in a van near the Smithsonian and Washington DC was wiped off the earth. The seat of American government is now in Philadelphia. The resulting chaos from the nuke strike caused the Pro-Tem congress (the original was erased in the nuke attack) to pass the Permanent Emergency Acts, which reinstated the draft and placed all able-bodied people between 17-45 under arms.

American presige is at its lowest ebb. China dumped the dollar and has attached the yuan to the Euro, and cashed in all the equity they hold in our economy, resulting in 40% unemployment across the board. China and Russia have entered into a mutual assistance pact and have deployed significant naval forces across the Pacific. Taiwan was overrun in a week. Europe has likewise developed a NATO-like pact of mutual self-defense against the rogue states in the Balkans and Mideast.

Another of the Pakistani nukes was brought into Tel Aviv and detonated. The state of Israel has basically ceased to exist as a power in the region and no longer acts as an American ally; they have too many problems of their own, and America can no longer help them.

How's that?

[VelmaD]

33. Jesus h christ

Remind me never to ask you about your nightmares. :scared:

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

34. Ya really.

Bummer, dude.

[Mythsaje]

37. Some of this I already hit on

like the Russia and China and the EU.

Some of the other stuff you bring up will make great background fodder.

Scary vision indeed.

[nickgutierrez]

46. And yet...

it all sounds plausible, doesn't it?

[Mythsaje]

47. And THAT'S perhaps the scariest thing about it...n/t

[tavalon]

84. Wow

That makes my nightmares, seem, well, plebeian. I've had most of those aspects invade my landscape but never all at once.

Yuck.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

92. Shit!

Excuse me, I think I'll go hang myself now.

(LOL)

NEVER ever base a crappy future in a reality.

Too many ways that could happen.

[Ikonoklast]

31. How about a Cabinet position

for Religious affairs? Makes sure that everyone worships "correctly" and if not full citizenship (voting rights, land ownership, access to higher education, etc.) is curtailed/revoked?

The cop could work for the Justice Dept. making sure that the edicts from the Christian Secretary were being carried out.

[julialnyc]

35. Hawaii is now Chinese territory

N/T

[TrogL]

38. don't forget

• fundamentalism
  
• Asimov's "simpleton"
  
• unearned respect for authority
  
• conservatism in dress and demeanour
  
• "Southern Manners" as cover for sexism, racism
  
• collapse of the educational system
  
• multi-tier health care
  
• taxation issues
  
• collapsed infrastucture especially due to shoddy low-bid construction with kickbacks and "look the other way" inspectors
  
• rape as semi-official punishment
  
• homophobia
  
• closed borders
  
• protectionism
  
• Canada as haven
  
• corrupt police, inspectors, politicians, military, media
  
• *wink wink* vigilantism
  
• Jim Crow, KKK, John Birch etc.
  
• glass ceiling employment issues, religious, moral, conservatism tests
  
• loyalty oaths
  
• secrecy and the death of FOIP
  
• massive rise in crime esp. looting, domestic violence, unsolved murder, rape, gangs, crimes against homeless (eg. Clockwork Orange)
  
• legalized child abuse, child labour
  
• childred forceably taken from liberal homes for placement with fundies
  

Need a co-author?

[Mythsaje]

42. A lot of good ones here...

I'm going to have to keep an eye on this thread. LOL

Not sure I need a co-author at the moment, but it's something I've been considering.

[julialnyc]

40. All media and entertainment is run by the government

to re-enforce their ideas.

Kirk Cameron wins the Oscar for Mel Gibson's big sceen version of "Left Behind".

[Mythsaje]

43. Oh, that just makes me ill...n/t

[julialnyc]

44. Anne Coulter is the new "Peter Jennings"

with her prime time head anchor job.

[Vinca]

45. It ends with a mass suicide? Sorry - sounds depressing. nt

[Mythsaje]

48. Actually

that's where the visitor steps in and helps someone to try and turn things around.

It's actually not meant to be depressing. Just frighteningly realistic in some parts.

[Vinca]

53. Sorry . . . not my genre, but maybe it would be fun to screw with

the fundies and make them think their maker has returned, when in fact it's E.T. in drag.

[Mythsaje]

54. Bioengineered "Angels"

appearing to screw with the "faithful."

[Vinca]

58. I love it. Have you been published?

Any titles we can look for and read? I've written a book, too. Your basic former cop-pens-a-mystery tome. It's currently hidden under the bed, destined for the shredder before I expire.:rofl:

[Mythsaje]

59. That sounds great!

I'd love to read it. I like that sort of stuff myself.

Yep. I'm officially e-published. A small press, but you gotta start somewhere.

And e-books are definitely eco-friendlier. No fuel costs for distribution, no trees destroyed for paper products.

My first novel is called "Loki's Sin" and it's available from http://www.wingsepress.com...or you could just start out on my website (check my sig line) and have a look around.

I'll be going to trade paperback in Print On Demand (also a more eco-friendly alternative to mass production) within the next year.


edited to fix a typo

[julialnyc]

49. we all have identity chips implanted

after the terrorist attacks in 08' (right before the election) we all had to have a tracking device implanted for our protection.

[Ian David]

50. Check-out Solyent Green, 12 Monkeys and Logan's Run

Also see:

Science Fiction Predictions Joe Haldeman
About the predictions of major sci-fi writer Joe Haldeman in his book The Forever War including ones about the future of military and weaponry.

PREDICTIONS FROM SCIENCE FICTION

Predictor: JOE HALDEMAN

<snip>

* Cities on Earth are burned in food riots; the U.S. takes over distribution of food and gradually establishes world government (2004).

<snip>

* Criminals are reimplanted with new personalities (2023).

* Half of the world's population is unemployed and supported by doles from the world government (2023).

* Due to population pressures, private ownership has been limited to the confines of one's own room(s); society frowns on apartments larger than two small rooms.

* People in the year 2023 live in giant complexes of 7 million persons or more.

* Algae cultivated by giant sea rafts for livestock feed.

<snip>

* All media censored by the government.

* The world government rations each individual's caloric intake (2023).

* Everyone is rated at age 70 for his usefulness; those who get a zero rating receive no further health care of any kind (2023).

More:
http://www.trivia-library.com/b/science-fiction-predictions-joe-haldeman.htm

[Mythsaje]

56. I read that book

a long time ago. It's one of the ones I remember from grade school or junior high, actually. My dad's a big sci-fi buff.

[spacelady]

77. Soylent Green is PEOPLE!! Oh my, was that a spoiler?

[Mythsaje]

82. It's only the most famous line

if you don't know it by now, you haven't been paying attention.

:D

[AlienGirl]

51. Complete split between a few mega-rich and many poor

The mega-rich have access to life-extending technology so good they might as well be immortal, while the masses of poor people die young and suffer from a multitude of illnesses, from formerly-preventable childhood illnesses to nutritional deficiencies like goiter to new environmentally-caused illnesses.

The mega-rich are all also preternaturally beautiful, the result of genetic engineering and other "enhancements." They are famous, followed around by cadres of tabloid-TV reporters who display their spectacular lifestyle for the masses to dream about--this escapism is about the only pleasure left to the average poor person.

In short, the very rich have become like the gods of Olympus. The mortals--everyone else--live in squalor, all the time still being sold the lie that if they only work hard enough and BUY BUY BUY the "right" products, they too can rise to the peaks as gods.

Tucker

[Mythsaje]

55. This is almost frightening in itself

because it doesn't seem too far-fetched.

[AlienGirl]

it's a concept I've had of the future for a long time now

It just takes present trends and magnifies them.

Tucker

P.S. It doesn't consciously borrow from "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree, Jr., because I had not read that story when I first thought of this version of dystopia. But there are admittedly similarities.

[Mythsaje]

60. Sure

It's all extrapoloation from what you see happening now. There are bound to be parallels.

[AlienGirl]

64. Plug for Tiprtree here...

If you like good, scary dystopias that are based on an ex-CIA agent's evalustion of cultural trends backed up by a Ph.D-level psychologist's knowledge of human and animal behavior, you'll love Tiptree. Find a copy of her collection Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. It'll blow you away.

Tucker

[julialnyc]

57. guns 101 is taught in all schools

so that kids enter the world equipped to protect themselves.

[Mythsaje]

62. I think they'd find a way to eliminate guns as much as possible

eventually, even if it did end up pissing off the NRA. The Neocons use gun-nuts as much as they use everyone else. Once their power was consolidated, they'd do whatever they wanted.

[julialnyc]

67. I was thinking more along the lines

of them forcing everyone to play a part in their war machine. Training their "army" young.


I think of the current army and national guard commercials I see every time I go to the movies (where war is made to look cool............ the ads look like Top Gun, or video games).Those are aimed at immature minds..

[julialnyc]

88. maybe it comes sooner than I thought

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4225804

[Mythsaje]

89. And to think

I WENT to Kentwood. One semester...I think. We used to call it "Kentwood State Pen" because it looked so much like a prison.

I also lived in Federal Way for years and a protege of mine graduated high school there.

[julialnyc]

90. Strange to think huh?

I can imagine friends of mine at that age thinking it would be really cool. These kids are way to young for this!

[Mythsaje]

93. WE wouldn't have

but we were long-haired metal-headed problem-children. WAY too establishment for us. Two guys I hung out with back then when into the military--one was raised in a pretty right-wing Christian home, while the other was so inept in civilian life he really had no other choice.

[julialnyc]

91. I wonder if gay kids can participate?

or does don't ask don't tell apply to teenagers through a school course?

[BlueIris]

61. I honestly don't believe the planet will hold out until 2022.

Not so much because of the ongoing environmental meltdown, but because of continued nuclear proliferation. Could you pull it back 5-10 years?

[Mythsaje]

63. I think full scale

nuclear bombardment is unlikely, myself. A few random acts of terror, perhaps, or a limited engagement between a couple of warring "3rd World" countries, perhaps.

I just don't see anything bigger.

[longship]

65. Zero corporate oversight.

Consider the conditions of the current administration taken a couple steps further. Corporations control just about everything. An exception to this rule might make an opening into which you could shoehorn a revolution against the government.

Alliances may be important. With this country gone completely nuts, there could be foreign help from former allies who want to help bring things down.

Science in this society might be utterly corrupted by corporate excess and the ennervation of academic science. Healthcare, all for profit, would be full of quackery--anything for a buck. Big science, e.g., Fermilab, would have been abandoned for lack of government support. Universities might have corp names, just like the sports complexes of today. With the dearth of Nobel Prizes, the government started their own science awards, shamefully promoted by the media conglomerates and shown in prime-time featuring winners from corrupt, celebrity-like corp-scientists whose foolish science is connected directly to profit grubbing healthcare quackery, systems for the weapons industry, and of course, better ways to entertain, distract, and keep the populace away from the seat of power.

Government and corporation would be intertwined to such an extent that it would be difficult to detect where one ends and the other begins. The whole thing would be completely corrupt with no limits at all on anything.

The official version of any event would be twisted and spun to promote the commerical agenda of the media owners, the sponsors, and the one-party. Events presented by the media would be selected for the exploitability, not their newsworthiness. Major events would thus be either totally unreported or swept under cover stories to minimize their import or maximize their exploitability. This would be considered normal by many.

[Mythsaje]

66. This sure isn't

much of a stretch...

If you know what I mean.

[longship]

69. It's amazing

how just a little bending of the situation makes for a very scary outcome. The question answered by "The Handmaid's Tale" is the same one, "What would happen if faction X got their way without checks and balances?" In "The Handmaid's Tale" it was the rapture right.

Great book, by the way.

[blm]

68. The Handmaid's Tale.

.

[baby_mouse]

70. For starters

Gay community fragmented after a series of "muslim" bombing attacks on gay areas and almost completely silent politically, sodomy re-established as illegal in at least 30 states, sting operations on the rise

DNA samples taken at every arrest, simple "pain compliance" refresher course for all arrested citizens regardless of whether or not combative now mandatory procedure in all police districts as an authority-establishing measure

People's movements focussed mainly on food distribution and headed by left-wing christians being busted regularly by cops for fronting as illegal medication stamp-share rings

Tax for poor only, rich never use any public services and privately owned national infrastructure now almost completely overwriting state-funded analogues

Identity politics have shifted focus, publically permissable lifestyle choices now rooted only in religious ideology - this comes down to clothes, how doctors can operate etc

Wholesale environmental destruction - massive despeciation, ignorance of even the most basic tenets of biology

Homeless shelters stuffed with University professors

etc

[madeline_con]

71. "I'm working on my fifth book."

Did you get this much help for your first four? ;)

[Mythsaje]

73. Nope...

They weren't as overtly political as this one's going to be.

[Mythsaje]

74. THANKS ALL

Here's a little excerpt for those who'd be interested.

“Well, that’s the Reverend-President Folsom. He’s been in office a couple of years. I guess the last President died or something.”
“Reverend-President?”
“Don’t ask,” Jarvis growled from his bedroom doorway. “He’s the first jackass who’s actually used the term. He’s a big-time Evangelical preacher who ran for President and won.”
“How? I don’t understand—“
“Nobody votes anymore. Just the people who like things the way they are. It’s all a farce—the votes are meaningless, counted by machines that offer no way to trace the results of individual ballots. This system is what’s kept the neocons in power for twenty-two years.”
“How did the people allow—“
“—The people didn’t catch on for a long time. The media, bought and paid for by the power brokers, didn’t see fit to tell anyone there was a problem. The efforts over the internet helped some, but it just wasn’t enough. When the Child Protection Act of 09 passed, it pretty much spelled the end of the internet as we knew it.
“Free enterprise my ass. They consolidated all the servers on the ‘net under corporate giants. If they didn’t like what you had to say, they could stop you from saying it. AOL started it. It didn’t take long once they realized how much a danger the internet actually was to them.”
“So there’s no internet anymore?”
“Oh, there’s the ‘world-wide-web,’ which, primarily, is a consumer wonderland showing us all millions of images of things we can’t actually buy. More corporate disinformation, more of their ‘Loyalty to Employer is Loyalty to Country’ public service announcement bullshit.
“They didn’t have to make ‘free speech’ illegal. They just commercialized it to death.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t bio-chip everyone.”
“What would be the point? They can trace our activities easily enough through our credit—and, honestly, the mega-rich didn’t give enough of a shit to want to know what we’re doing. Some of the corporations regularly bio-chip their employees, but that’s because they practically own them anyway.”
“Huh?”
“Corporations hand-pick executives ahead of time—pay for their schooling and other needs while they’re in school. Then the employees work as indentured servants of the firm until the debt is paid. They also pick up laborers by giving debtors a choice of going to prison or entering a contract with a corporation. A percentage of their very low wage goes to pay off their debts. They work for the Corp until they die or until they pay their debt. Without incurring more, of course.”
“That sucks.”
“Doesn’t it? It’s the free-enterprise system, baby.”

[wli]

75. my guess is that forces beyond human control will dominate

Transportation breaks down as the flow of oil dwindles to a trickle. The masses starve as fields turn to desert without irrigation, dehydrate as water pumps stop running and freshwater sources dry up.

The rich erect isolated islands of vestigial civilization, vastly more brutal versions of Mother Jones' "Sinister Paradise." Wage slaves maintain the infrastructure, defend the gates, and imprison debtors and kidnap the starving hordes for outright slaves. Those taken in are shackled and stunbelted on assembly lines, and when incapacitated or dead from overwork their bodies unceremoniously used for fertilizer, water extraction, thermal depolymerization, and the like. Intubation for for mandatory preemptive force-feeding and recapture of waste materials (for water and methane) are likely, among other mutilations (e.g. such as would make intubation uniform across the sexes).

Life in one of these islands is terrifyingly repressive and comprehensively surveilled. Heavily-armed and armored police (mostly foot soldiers) are ubiquitous, every vital aspect of life is very expensive, and luxuries exist for no one but the super-rich hidden behind armies of bodyguards and in penthouses of skyscrapers. Any difference of opinion with the super-rich leadership or offense to the religious mores they impose is a criminal offense, as is failure to pay imposed debt. The illusory freedom consists of little more than the freedom to go back and forth between one's job and Spartan living quarters and not being mutilated. There is no more internet; only official announcements are piped into collective viewing areas. Debt relief is promised in exchange for snitching on political or moral offenses, and the wage slaves all live in fear of each other and in terror of the debtor prisons awaiting them all at the end of the rigged debt repayment for natural resources game.

The super-rich want for nothing, with all the sex slaves, drugs, trinkets, food, and water they could ever want. The poor outside the cities meander in search of arable land and fresh water like the starving masses in Niger now, only to be repeatedly raided and kidnapped using the few vehicles that could be maintained or constructed after oil runs out.

Eventually this breaks down as the starving masses die off, losing the source of the slave population, and even the upper latitudes desertify. The cities' populations dwindle, desperate flights further toward the poles ensue, machinery breaks down and can't be replaced by digging up landfills or cannibalizing abandoned automobiles or architectural steel or can't be moved for lack of fuel, and the stormtroopers finally kill off the super-rich for a final spell of cannibalism and chaos before they, too starve and dehydrate while watching the ever more massive storms form in the distance from the Arctic and Antarctic coasts.

[Jade Fox]

76. Some people have evolved....

a bit beyond the current state of human beings, and are no longer controled
by the emotional experiences/damage of their childhoods. They can see
exactly how others are jerked around emotionally by those in power, being
immune to that sort of manipulation themselves. This gives them more
functional intelligence and therefore more power than other people. But
this group is new at using that power. They are undiciplined, unorganized,
and frightened to take action. They are confused as to why they feel like
they are so different from others. Your time traveler knows these people can
turn things around if they can get moving.

Just came to me, being one of the finest minds and all.......:o

[spacelady]

78. That makes me squint, but I like it.

[Astarho]

79. Here's an idea

Since a lot of my stories and novels involve nomadic groups (I'll explain later).

There are people who have lost everything and just risk it all and wander into the wilderness. Eventually they form small groups or colonies and become migrant workers. The reaction to them is mild tolerance so they can use them for cheap labor to outright violent scapegoating, especially since a few groups have done some raiding themselves.

[Junkdrawer]

80. China sends scrap metal to the US where slave wage workers...

fashions the tin into cheap, pathetic toys...

[BeHereNow]

81. Don't forget Eugenics! Handicapped and elderly

that have no use to the corporation are "eliminated"
do to the fact that they consume without producing.
Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss would insist on it.
Women who bear special needs children are
sterilized, as are the fathers.
BHN

[Lannes]

83. Well dont know about the "finest minds" part but..

Im not sure where the visitor from the future fits into the story so its difficult for me to add anything that has already been posted.

If you havent already I would strongly urge you to read "Robert McKee's "Story".I read the book and attended his seminar and I was blown away.
It focuses on screenwriting but a great deal of what he discusses can apply to writing novels.Who knows?You may want to turn your story into a screenplay.Good luck.Let us know what happens!


http://www.mckeestory.com/homepage.htm


An intensive three-day course that produces proven results for:

Screenwriters
TV Writers
Novelists
Producers
Directors sFilm Executive
TV Executives
Journalists
Playwrights
Actors
Film Executive

McKee Graduates Have Earned:

26 Academy Awards 94+ Nominations
124 Emmy Awards 438+ Nominations
20 WGA Awards 72+ Nominations
17 DGA Awards 45+ Nominations

[Mythsaje]

85. Appreciate the link

Not sure if I'll ever do anything like that, but if I do ever want to turn my stuff into a screenplay...you never know.

[bobbieinok]

86. streets are periodically swept for organ donors

unlike many sci-fi stories, people are not limited to one or two children....there are, however, rigid limits to the number of children a person/couple may keep......additional children are raised by the state to be soldiers, workers, sex slaves, etc

have read this in some stories: each residence is required by law to have a TV set permanently running the 'news'.......the TV also monitors the activity in the residence

scary thing: 6 or so years ago I found it very difficult to 'believe' many of the sci-fi stories I was reading b/c they had a theocratic US govt and/or urban wars, etc, all happening before 2010.....now, unfortunately believability factor is much higher

[agincourt]

87. Child labor, christian polygamy

Young men are sent to wars so old rich conservative shits can have many young girls to choose from. No trees, all Nat'l parks are sold off to corporations. Many books are banned like Catch-22 and Orgin of Species. Mandatory medicines are prescribed to keep the public sedated. If people get too high in debt, they can be owned by their creditor and have to do slave labor at an interest rate that keeps them indentured for life. We'll still have a two party system though to make it look like a democracy, with rigged voting and a subservient prison-bitch democratic party.