After months of speculation, investigation and plenty of smuggled images and leaks, we
finally know the cause of the next major global conflict.
In the year 2042, after decades of escalating natural disasters, energy shortages and economic
collapses, the United States and Russia, the world’s last two superpowers, are fighting
over the few resources that remain.
Now previously, the Templin Institute pitched a few ideas of what we’d like to see in
the next world war, and the alternate reality of 2042 is notable for being nowhere on that
list.
Even still, I think this has the potential to be an interesting alternate reality.
Even if a large part of it simply doesn’t work.
So this episode of Incoming, I’d like to take a brief look and give my thoughts on
the world of Battlefield 2042.
Now details at this moment are still sparse, but we do have some revealing insights into
the state of the world.
The first of these is that in 2033 a major hurricane, the world’s first category 6
storm, did ...something.
Judging from some of the architecture in the cities of this future, it looks like rising
sea-levels and unpredictable extreme weather is a major concern.
The Earth’s deteriorating environment causes global fuel and food shortages, sparking a
Second Great Depression.
In 2035, the European Union officially disbanded following the collapse of Germany.
This is an especially interesting detail because it provides solid evidence, or at least makes
it very likely, that this takes place in a different timeline, from the one in which
the EU and Pan Asian coalition are fighting to escape a new ice age.
This is where things get a little strange however.
“No Pats” or the Non-Patriated seem to be a big part of this future world.
The idea behind them is, that all those displaced by this societal collapse band together into
ragtag refugee fleets and convoys.
They are described as “families, farmers, doctors, engineers and soldiers… the once
privileged and the impoverished with backgrounds that are worlds apart, forced together determined
to survive.”
Apparently by 2037, there are roughly 1.2 No-Pats, and while the worst effects of the
disasters of the previous years have been mitigated, there’s no easy way to repatriate
these people.
Apparently quite a lot of them have become distrustful of the governments that quote
“exiles them” unquote, and they’ve created a new sense of identity.
#WeAreNoPats becomes a rallying cry.
Now in the midst of all of this, tensions rise again between the United States and Russia.
Apparently both are vying for a place of dominance within the new geopolitical landscape.
In 20402, quote “a sudden space debris storm creates a “Kessler Effect”, causing 70%+
of all orbiting satellites to malfunction and crash to Earth”.
“Geopolitical distrust surges overnight.
No one can spy on each other, so no one can trust each other.
Both Russia and the US claim the other is responsible for the Blackout, while some suspect
No-Pats were behind it and accuse them of trying to sow anarchy.”
So, in the middle of all this chaos, both the United States and Russia decide to leverage
groups of No-Pats as proxy soldiers.
Quote
Now, there are some cool ideas here, escalating environmental calamities, society thrown into
chaos, a sudden technological disaster rendering global communications and intelligence gathering
near useless, these are things that would make a world war much more likely and believable.
But I’m also a little turned off here.
One of the reasons I like the Cold War so much is that depending on the era, both sides
are at the top of their game.
Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact have worldwide influence, they both have ideologies competing
for the soul of mankind, and everyone is just waiting for that spark to ignite.
To use a boxing metaphor, well, I actually don’t know anything about boxing, but this
is like… the big boxing match… whatever the biggest event is called”.
In 2042, both the United States and Russia have suffered for decades and much of their
infrastructure and institutions are crippled.
While unstable governments like these are much more likely to go to war, it does mean
that instead of two heavyweight fighters in their prime going at it, you have a couple
sick and tired geriatrics, on their last legs, feebly jabbing each other with the last of
their strength.
This type of scenario, in my opinion at least, is maybe more believable, but not as interesting.
There’s a few other details that stick out to me.
The Templin Institute’s own space program is just getting going, so I don’t know a
whole lot about satellites, but I’m not sure I believe a “debris storm” could
take out 70% of them.
Aren’t they located in all sorts of orbiting distances, from geostationary to Medium Earth
Orbit?
Maybe only that latter group survived, and this actually makes sense, but whenever I
see a percentage, it always feels kinda arbitrary.
I’m also not entirely sure why just because a large part of the satellite grid is down,
the internet, communications, navigation, surveillance and storm forecasts would no
longer be possible.
In the modern world satellites are certainly a big part of these things, but there are
multiple aspects to them.
There’s still oceanic cables linking parts of the world together, there’s still spyplanes,
and from what I understand, a large part of weather tracking is still done on the ground.
So while these elements seem a bit uneven to me, the whole Non Patriated thing falls
completely flat.
For what is apparently a large focus of the world, “a permanent fixture in all economic,
military, and social policy making.”
I still don’t really get what they are.
From their brief description, they almost sounded like a group of nomads who wouldn’t
be out of place in the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Australia.
But with 1.2 billion of em, that can’t be right.
And where are their geopolitics looking like?
Are they concentrated in what we today would consider the Third World?
Are there instead scattered pockets of them all over the place?
What do they even want?
Do they all want the same thing?
It’s mentioned that Ex-Pats were both abandoned, but then also exiled.
They want to return home, but they also refused to re-assimilate because they don’t trust
the government?
This seems very convoluted all over the place.
But the idea that the United States and Russia would hire No-Pat groups to use as proxy forces
seems pretty absurd.
This kind of approach sometimes works when you’re dealing with smaller scale, or more
regional conflicts, but with the fate of humanity seemingly in the balance, maybe mobilize those
giant military-industrial complexes you’ve spent all that money on, rather than arming
some weirdo’s wandering the desert with nothing but an anti-government attitude and
a lame twitter hashtag.
That these forces are being used by either side as a way to maintain plausible deniability
is also counterproductive when you put it in the wider context of the world.
If both sides are fighting over resources, things I imagine like mineral deposits or
oil fields, or arable land, the whole point would be to lay claim to it right?
What is the point of capturing something only to turn around and say “that wasn’t us,
I don’t know who took that”.
And the scale of the conflict seems so huge, that it would be impossible to deny the involvement
of either side, even if No-Pats are doing much of the fighting.
If a few rebels ambushed a convoy somewhere in the middle of nowhere, I can see the United
States getting away with claiming “yeah we weren’t involved in that”.
But an Amphibious Assault on a space launch center in French Guiana?
A blitzkrieg into Songdo, South Korea?
These aren’t things you can just throw together.
If Russia brings this up at the next Security Council meeting, is anyone gonna believe the
United States when they say “oh yeah, we have no idea how those No-Pats got their hands
on F-35 Joint Strike fighters and our new modernized Abrams tanks.
And it’s just so crazy they also had the fuel and spare parts and logistic networks
and support personnel needed to keep them all running”.
Someone is really gonna have to look into how they managed to invade Singapore” In
this instance, maintaining plausible deniability seems actually more damaging, as it paints
the United States and Russia as hopelessly incompetent and ignorant.
And why would the No-Pats agree to this?
It’s mentioned they refused to re-assimilate and don’t trust the government, but then
a bunch of them decide to become proxy soldiers?
To go back to that earlier quote.
it’s mentioned No-Pats have to choose sides… why do they though?
And if both Russia and the United States are using No-Pats… then the No-Pats are just
fighting themselves, which contradicts that whole idea of unity their community is based
on?
But it’s the line No-Pats are “fighting not for a flag, but for their future” stands
out to me and I think reveals the fundamental misunderstanding of why wars are fought.
That quote seems to infer that flags and the future are separate, but they’re actually
inexorably linked.
Nobody is fighting for a flag because they’re a big fan of cotton rectangles, they’re
fighting because of what that flag represents, their duty, their nation, and ultimately,
the belief in a better world.
Ideologies of every sort form a pivotal foundation of human society, and in a world like the
one we see in 2042, their power would have only deepened.
Displaced, betrayed people like the No-Pats would in my opinion become driven almost purely
by ideology, because what else do they have?
It’s hard to distill my central point here, but I think it’s that nationalism, politics
and ideologies are at the core of every major conflict.
Control over resources and territory is usually a symptom, not the cause.
To have these elements ripped out of a future global war and replaced with Twitter hashtags
and inclement weather, doesn’t interest me as much.
Now, when analyzing alternate worlds, I often like to pass judgement on whether they work
or don’t work.
For Battlefield 2042, I’m inclined to say the latter, but I also have to accept that
in a world where a pilot can jump out of his F-35, shoot down a Su-57 with a rocket launcher,
and then get back into the cockpit, maybe geopolitics can get away with being similarly
absurd.
Better to let all this just fade into the background and enjoy shooting stuff.
But that of course is just my opinion.
And even though I and I alone have arisen from the chaos of the world within an isolated
bastion of perfect arguments, I’d like to hear your thoughts.
What do you make of the world of Battlefield 2042, does it work?
Does it not?
Do you wanna be able to pet that robot dog?
Let me know in the comments below, and until next time, this has been incoming.