One of my readers said she would like some kind of timeline for the world I described here. The problem is I hijacked the phrase zero day, which is used by the zero-carbon movement for the day we manage to stay within our carbon budget. In TOABF Zero Day is the day that the military stopped with their aiding and abetting the theft in other countries, after realising what they were being asked to do had nothing to do with defending anything more than greed and lazy oligarchs’ accumulation of stolen wealth.
The zero day for carbon is very close. The zero day for the world’s soldiery is, sadly, much further away.
2021 – Mass food autonomy movements reoccupying land. Will be covered in the story Mine & Yours. The international commons founded by the people who now have commons to manage. The crowdfunding Social Levy is used to fund house building and land reclamation. It relies heavily on automation. Living within the commons shelter, food, education and health care are established as basic rights.
2047 – Parallel living. People start migrating to the autonomous zones so they can eat and have health care instead of the break down death spiral. Will is covered in the story Better Way.
2055 – The Needs Must group nuke La Palma. Will be covered in the story Desperate Measures. The Reconstruction and Recovery (Reco) group becomes the biggest faction in the commons and starts making longer-term plans.
2057 – Zerø Day. The last holdout military operations join Reco and put their considerable firepower behind its aims. The old empires cease to be relevant. The story Zerø Day will cover the period 2050-2057, describing how the Western armies start to wake up.
2067 – Reco moves into as high a gear as it can. This is the period described in The Retreat.
2090 – The world becomes integrated and heterogeneous. The story Air Clipper will describe the lives of people who live on a dirigible that moves people and goods around the world.
2130 – Colonisation of the solar system begins. Dust describes how autonomous machines are used to create colonies that grow and educate their own humans once properly established. The dust is then sent out into interstellar space.