This investigation is sponsored by Floodland,
available right now on Steam. If you’d like to try and rebuild human civilization amidst
the ruins of the old world, you’ll find a link in the description.
The end of the old world came quickly. For decades, those involved in the study of climate
change had warned of a tipping point, a moment in which humanity’s impact on the planet would
become self-perpetuating… and irreversible. Yet when that moment arrived, its effects, at least
at the start, were nothing more than another show on tv, another article to scroll past.
The great droughts that swept the equator, the deaths of entire communities to sudden heat waves,
the exhaustion of arable land, to those who could afford to ignore the escalating crisis,
it all remained a distant concern. Something happening somewhere else.
By the time the effects were felt in even the most powerful nations,
half the world was already gone, swept up in revolution, famine, and social unrest.
With every attempt at a collective solution abandoned, narrow self interest took over.
The Third World War should have been a moment of awakening, a piercing realization across what was
left of humanity to just how close it had come to extinction. And perhaps for a time, it was.
We know that as resources dwindled and even the fiercest conflicts sputtered out,
a single chance arrived to correct the mistakes of the past. Whether it was some grand new
technology, or vast government program, for the briefest of moments the world began to heal.
Global temperatures dropped, water returned to the wastelands and even the potential for clean,
limitless energy seemed to be in reach. But even then, that narrow self interest remained.
What is today known merely as “The Event”, was the final stroke. Another
global catastrophe and another challenge that mankind could not rise to meet.
The old world was finished, and while the Event alone was not the cause,
it was responsible for the new world that arose in its wake; The Floodlands.
Ultimately, the Floodlands are merely an abstraction,
a characteristically human attempt to make sense of the world in which they now live.
But the Floodlands have no borders, no names, no unbroken line of history.
How far they extend, what peoples have taken root upon them, and what lost secrets they might hold,
can only be speculated. For now, the nature of the Floodlands is locked within the limited
perspective of how far the naked eye can see and how distant a simple raft might travel.
Yet the overriding, glaring, element of the Floodlands is its oceans, seas, lakes and
rivers. Since The Event they have all risen and intermingled, making it impossible to conclude
where one begins or ends. Rising tides swallowed the old world, covering much of what was once open
plains and fields, cities and communities. Only scraps of land, and the tallest ruins remain.
But even these have invariably turned into a new kind of ecosystem. Entire cities have been turned
into artificial reefs, home to a labyrinth of bays, inlets, islands, lagoons and tidal marshes.
Nothing in the Floodlands is entirely natural or unnatural, but a strange intermingling of both.
The most valuable territory in the floodlands is any strip of land that remains permanently above
the waterline. Such places are exceedingly rare and limited to small natural islands,
or ruins that have collapsed into each other over the decades,
and mixed with sediment to create semi-artificial isles.
Most are quite limited, with even the largest land masses exceedingly small compared to those of
the pre-event world. Their coasts are strewn with debris, garbage and junk, from the enormous wrecks
of cargo ships to the endless drifts of consumer waste spilling from collapsing skyscrapers.
Perhaps surprisingly, life has not only managed to survive in this new,
alien environment, but thrive. The diversity of marine life has grown exponentially,
with enormous ecosystems capable of supporting an unprecedented abundance of species.
Ruined cities in particular have become thriving habitats for every manner of fish, shellfish,
and marine mammals. Above the water, birds and insects have also exploded in number,
with the tallest buildings becoming enormous nests for such animals.
Larger predators too exist in the Floodlands, both on the surface and beneath the waters. They
are driven by the evolving migration patterns and hunting grounds of the new world, that for now,
remain unpredictable. But it is disease that has thrived above all in the Floodlands,
with its deadliest tropical varieties now rampant across a planet now perfectly suited to them.
Human life, though far less suited to such an environment, has nevertheless, also managed
to endure. Burgeoning communities have started to form on whatever land can be found, imitating the
style of the old world, yet constructed from the resources of the new. Ruined buildings,
shipwrecks and natural landforms have all become the foundations of improvised settlements from
which anchorages, ports and marinas all extend the new boundaries of human civilization.
Yet few of these encampments are permanent, for it is only a matter
of time before even the most promising area grows unsafe, or its resources are depleted.
But the Floodlands are not without their dangers and human survival
is not guaranteed. The waterways are rife with disease and predators, and
whether a ruin holds valuable materials that might be salvaged, or dangerous contaminants
that might threaten entire communities, often comes down to the flip of a coin.
Most resources remain scarce, and scarcity will always lead to desperation and conflict.
Human civilization, such as it is, has become largely clan-oriented,
with clans typically based on a kind of fictive kinship.
Their social ties are typically based on a shared belief, history, or method of survival. Clans have
been established by former workers of off-shore drilling platforms, surviving military units,
convicts and religious groups, and even pre-event celebrities leveraging their cult of personality.
Most Clans are simply concerned with surviving the new world and obtaining the resources necessary to
support their growing populations. But there have also arisen conflicting ideas of what the future
will look like. As human civilization recovers, what form it will take has become a pressing
concern. Some are adamant that the past must be recreated as thoroughly as the Floodlands allow,
while others see the new world as a new opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the past.
More so than ever, the world is a smaller place. Gone are the vast nations and territories of the
Old World, replaced with tiny communities of survivors clinging to scraps and ruins.
It may have room enough for mankind, but not necessarily all its ideas. If the Event has
proven anything, it is that the survival of human civilization is not guaranteed, and its ingenuity
can be as great a danger as or as powerful a tool as anything else in the Floodlands .
Thanks again to Floodland for sponsoring this investigation into its eponymous world.
Floodland is a societal survival game set in a future that's been transformed by climate change
where you’re tasked with forming a colony of human survivors. Grow your community,
enforce its laws and provide for your citizens, and rediscover the
technology that will allow you to survive. Floodland is available on Steam right now,
and we’ll be streaming it on our Twitch channel one hour after this goes live.
If you’d like to grab a copy for yourself, you’ll find the link in the video description.