What (future) year should my setting take place in?

Hey guys, I could use a little help. For my WIP, the setting takes place after wars and flooding and other (Non-specific) disasters had shrunken and changed the landscape of many countries, leaving the Earth populated by a cluster of big islands that each make up a nation. I was thinking that the people who had formed each nation had done some sort of artificial-land creation process type thing (pardon the Buffy Speak) where they made much of the land themselves save for the mountain ranges and such.

However, this also takes place after these nations had been in place long enough to have wars, set up long lasting governments, cities, trade, etc and for the specific nation where this takes place, for them to isolate themselves almost completely (as far as the citizens know...it's a long story).

So I was thinking at first about 2335 AC, but that's starting too feel a bit too early for all these events to have happened. Any suggestions that I could change it to? It doesn't entirely matter in the grand scheme of things, but I want it to be realistic for the setting. Also, no need to be too specific, like "2738". I just need a general idea of what century this story should be taking place in.

Thanks guys!

Don't state the year, at least in relation to our calenders.

Since it'll basically be a new world, you don't even need to date it. In fact, it'll be better if you don't. Just say it's in the distant future and you should be good.

edited 3rd Nov '14 8:08:02 PM by Ekuran

I found a map online that shows where coastlines would be if you melted all the ice in the world:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map

The changes aren't that extreme. A lot of coastal cities get submerged (along with all of Florida), but most continental land stays comfortably above sea level.

So this means you're going to need something more in order to submerge all that land. This basically boils down to three options (or any appropriate combination of them): One, add more water to the Earth's surface; two, put more dirt in the oceans; or three, remove some dirt from the continents. Either way, the scale involved would have to be huge, big enough to raise questions about whether humanity or even life itself would survive the process.

The most realistic mechanism I can think of for accomplishing this would be a vast industrial reverse-dredging operation, taking dirt from the continents and filling it into the oceans. This would have to be done by robots, or if not, the necessary human-operated machines would have to be enormous (or run for a very long time). Maybe the rationale could be to expand the available land for crops and human habitation in the face of population pressure. However, cities and most land biomes would not be preserved by the process, so if you want the land to be recolonized by nature and humans alike, that would take maybe a few hundred years after the end of the operation itself. The upside of this approach is that the same technology used to flatten out the Earth's surface could presumably be used to build islands after the ice caps melted. The downsides are that one, it doesn't really qualify as a 'disaster' per se, and two, it leaves the survivors with very powerful technology that might ruin the other aspects you have in mind for this setting.

Anyway, let's say that the operation itself starts by the middle of the 21st century and takes about 100 years (remember that humans have to be shuffled around while it's going on, in order to keep them out of the way of the earthmoving machines), and that the recolonization takes another 100 years, aided by technology. That makes 2250 CE about the earliest available date. Lower technology would extend the time taken for recolonization, probably by some centuries.

I would do that, except that the characters bring up the year a few times, so now I'm thinking they could use how many years their nation had existed instead (so like "year 215",) then it can be explained later to both the audience and the other characters when someone asks.

My original idea would be taking liberties due to Artistic License and Rule of Cool, but now I'm wondering if they even need to live on islands. Maybe they populated the areas of the world that were not destroyed by polution, radiation, extreme temperatures, etc. and shaded out the rest of the map. I can even work this into the story somehow.

For the record, the main country takes place in Future Greece; it fit my map and I wanted something more unique than "Future America". It makes no difference to the story (at this point), I just thought it'd be cool. I of course need to research how the climate and all that but for now it's fine.

Anyways, thanks for your advice!

edited 4th Nov '14 3:37:15 AM by Sibuna

You could take a page from Anno 2070. Most of the world is still technically habitable, but resources are largely exhausted and climate change has turned once-fertile lands into desert. The new islands are where all the good stuff is.

Yeah, that could work.

Alternative calenders could work as well. In Mobile Suit Gundam when humanity first made the Minovsky Reactor and made space colonies, they crowned it the start of the "universal century" UC 0001 to be precise.

Why not have it take place on a alternate calender after some large event?

I've started considering that. Then I can leave other things up to fan speculation :D (just going to assume I will have fans)

The word is either Geo- or Terraforming, depending on the context.