Mors Americana

Prelude to Collapse

Author’s Introduction

Hello everyone. This is the Oceanic State, and I would like to announce something different that I have been working on. I am, you could say, a bit strapped for cash at the moment as I am transitioning from college life to a stable career. So, in order to rectify this problem, I have decided that I am going to try my hand at storytelling. Ever since I was a kid, I have had an interest in writing and publishing my own novel. Like most childhood plans, saying you are going to do something and actually doing it are two different ball games.

However, now that I am in the process of job searching and have had lots of time to think, I believe that I have arrived at an idea. I am a big fan of the alternative history and speculative future genres, so I figured I would attempt a speculative future myself based upon my political outlook and what I see as the end result of mass political polarization in America today.

The way this novel is organized is that it is a series of tales. Each tale will take place in a different area of the former United States, documenting political systems, social and economic life, etc. alongside an overarching plot.

My plan for this is simple: I am going to release my drafts on my Substack page so that you guys can have a sneak peek at my work before it can officially come out.

My introduction which comprises the first twelve pages of this story will be free for all to view. After this, every month starting September 2026 I will release a new tale behind a paywall. Don’t worry though, my regular content covering the news and politics will remain free.

I am hoping that those of you who read this introduction will have your interest piqued enough to pay for a monthly or yearly subscription so that I can continue to develop this story as well as the others that come after. The payment plans are your standard Substack $8 per month or $80 per year (I would prefer the monthly plan due to my current situation, but either one will do).

As I am paywalling, if at any point I am forced to stop working on this and cannot fulfill my promise of one tale per month, I will make a public announcement for those in my email list as well as in notes so that you can update your plans accordingly.

Enough from me though, for now, please enjoy my introduction to Mors Americana. Thank you for your support.

Prelude to Collapse

It is important to understand that the Great Collapse did not occur all at once. Rather, it was a combination of multiple small issues that created the cascade effect into what is now known as the Great Collapse. Perhaps the best example of these issues is the demise of the theme park. Those who were young in the early 2000s could remember a time when a roller coaster would never stop operating, and when maintenance was needed, it came in a timely manner that ensured the rides would be up and running for guests.

As the years went on, these young people would begin to notice a considerable decline in the quality of these theme parks. Rides which were once must experiences were suddenly put into maintenance for months on end. The lack of maintenance would end up causing the parts to rot away, which would ultimately result in the condemnation and destruction of a once prestigious display of mechanical fun.

Eventually, this would continue to persist until the parks themselves were shut down. The reasoning? Operation of complex machinery and the technical knowledge on how to maintain them were increasingly becoming lost arts. The engineers of old had refused to pass down their knowledge, and instead of pulling from a pool of domestic talent, big companies preferred to ensure short-term profits by hiring labor from overseas that did not follow the strict standards set by old America.

Theme Parks weren’t the only sign of the impending collapse. Malls, once the shining marvels of American consumerism, suffered after the 2008 recession. Those young enough to remember the warmly lit hallways and vast storefronts with multitudes of people can also recall the transition of many of these megastructures to lifeless hollowed out shells, a reminder of a long-dead culture destroyed by monopolies and the advent of online shopping.

Social life in America was nearly completely destroyed by the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic, which also resulted in a massive transfer of wealth from the smaller business and people who were not deemed “essential” to the top earners who controlled the big monopolies and could afford to stay open in order to keep some semblance of the economy going. Trust between friends and family was broken over differing political stances taken during this decade.

Political polarization, while always a factor in American politics, came to a decisive head from the late 2010s to the early 2030s. Political differences used to come down to approaches towards economics and the welfare state. From the 2010s onwards, they became increasingly cultural and irreconcilable: Whites against Blacks, women against men, gay against straight, foreigners against citizens, religion against secularism, rich against poor.

There became increasingly big questions that the politicians and the people could never officially answer: What is an American? Who is an American? Is someone who just stepped off the boat from Africa just as American as the man whose family had been among the first frontiersmen? Should we continue to have a police force? How about prisons? Any borders at all? Are White people the most privileged racial group?

As a result of these questions, the political and economic ruling classes began to enact damaging policies which harmed the fabric of the nation. The borders were neglected, and people on both sides of the political spectrum found ways to justify it: we needed labor to do the jobs Americans didn’t want to do at a cheaper price, and that refugees are welcome here so we should not have borders at all because no one is illegal on stolen land.

That last bit was also a point of contention. The part where it was a question of whether the United States of America ought to exist at all. The country could not agree on who was an American, what makes an American, and whether or not America should exist. The rational person reading this in current year might think of all this as an absurdity, a circus. Yet this was real life for around thirty years before the Great Collapse.

Who was to blame for this situation? Everybody and nobody. The United States of America was a rising nation, a great power that rode high off of the triumph of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The next century was meant to be the American Century. Yet, like every great empire, the United States fell into the same trap of complacency and uncaringness that eventually led to stagnation and decline.

Americans, satisfied with their newfound status, checked out of national politics and increasingly voted in politicians who seemingly did not care for the long-term future of the country, prioritizing short-term gains so that they could look good come the next election cycle, which was every two to four years. Whatever long-term plans of actual benefit that could be enacted were usually rescinded shortly afterward when the opposing party took power. This led to increased deadlock and a political class that did not actually want to work. Asking the government to do anything became a years-long process so that by the time the thing was done, it was too late and the thing may as well not have been done at all.

Politicians prioritized what was good for the market over what was good for the people. As a result, as national identity phased away, many citizens felt as if they did not have a stake in their country any longer. Younger Americans increasingly felt like strangers in their own land, where they were forced to compete with the entire world to gain success and the favor of a political and business class who decided somewhere along the way that young Americans were not worth investing in. This resulted in an ever-increasing national apathy among the youth who believed that nothing mattered as well as in the old who believed that everything was going to keep on churning along.

For a while, the powers that be got away with this with minimal visible damage. Then came the Great Recession of 2008. Unemployment stayed above 9% well after the official end of the recession, and recovery in employment and output to pre-crisis trends took years in what became increasingly known as “The Zombie Economy,” where American economic outlook became increasingly and publicly bleak.

As the economy post-2008 dragged on, Americans looked for increasingly radical solutions to their everyday lives. Administrations and Congress would alternate hands until the Republican collapse of 2028, which was a result of disillusionment from broken promises and allowed the newly formed Progressive-Socialist Party to make solid gains among the electorate in areas where they would otherwise have had trouble. In 2032, a growing coalition of Progressive-Socialist and Democratic politicians were elected to office due to the growing cosmopolitan and apathetic nature of the American electorate. Among these was the new President, Hilda Maqoob. Maqoob, a daughter of Saudi immigrants, made no secret about her distaste for American culture.

The Maqoob Administration took their landslide election victory as a mandate to enact their more anti-American policies. Among the first actions undertaken was the Citizenship for All Act, where birthright citizenship was enshrined as the law, the Department of Homeland Security was abolished, and the Border Patrol dissolved. The Act was most infamous for essentially dissolving the US-Mexico border and allowing anyone who wished to enter the United States a fast-track to citizenship.

Symbols of the old America were systemically destroyed to rid the country of the great sin of racism and White supremacy. The reformed Department of Education ensured that the Founding Fathers were slandered as slaveholding racists whose legacy should be shamed and forgotten. Statues and monuments were toppled and melted down into new statues to commemorate the new cosmopolitan order. Problematic literature was banned from public libraries and schools. Mathematics and English were cut from the curriculum as it was deemed a byproduct of White supremacy. History was revamped to become less Western-focused with an emphasis on colonial struggle. Any trace of Americanism was stamped out by this cultural revolution.

The Supreme Court was packed by order of the Congressional supermajority, until it eventually abolished itself. The Senate was also abolished, which caused an uproar among states where support for the administration and the PSP was low. PSP machines in the cities ensured that their Congressional supermajority would remain. Large groups of homeless people were constantly taken to polling places and told to vote for PSP candidates. Where the numbers were lacking, targeted migration was used to register new voters.

In essence, the new cosmopolitan republic was American in name only. Those responsible for this monstrosity had hollowed out the skin of the nation and wore it as a suit. They were the American authority, but the state and government were anything but American in culture or nationality. This became most evident when the mass amnesty occurred in 2033 and illegal aliens were put in key government posts, such as Homeland Security before it was abolished as well as the Department of Education.

The Department of Justice was used as a wrecking ball against all forms of traditional American authority. The famous Immigration and Customs Enforcement was especially targeted. Those who were found guilty of crimes against people’s communities were sentenced to life in prison, in the same prisons that were emptied of most inmates in favor of rehabilitative justice and an end to punitive policing.

With the encouragement of the federal government, many cities controlled by Progressive-Socialist Mayors began the process of defunding and abolishing their local police departments. This resulted in a massive surge in criminal activity and the onset of vigilante justice. Engaging in vigilante justice would become a federal offense, especially if it resulted in the death of the target. Ironic, coming from a society where police, order, and law were increasingly ostracized.

Society was liberalized to a point unseen in human history. Most criminal activity was downgraded to misdemeanors. All forms of drugs and debauchery were legalized. Many major cities became dumping grounds for the newfound homeless population that roamed the streets after the abolition of the prisons. Murder and rape were punished by community service which, predictably, caused both crimes to skyrocket with the more lax punishments.

It had gotten to the point where certain areas had to take the law into their own hands. After the State of Texas was reprimanded by the federal government for attempting to enact their own version of border control, private militias were formed to handle the border issue themselves. Alongside this important duty, these militias would commit to community service and crime watch. Of course, once again, the only solution to these militias would be for the government to use defunded police forces to put them inside of prisons that were supposed to be abolished.

On November 11, 2039, one of these militias, the Reaper Battalions, controlled by the mysterious Chief Director, declared all-out war on the gangs controlling Tampa. Numerous people accused of criminal activity would be hanged on lampposts or shot. The city came under de facto control of the Reapers, who had been quietly creating an underground network and smuggling arms from overseas for years.

The Reaper Revolution, as it came to be called, started to spread beyond Tampa and into the rest of the Florida peninsula. By July 1^st, 2040, the State Guard was overwhelmed. The Maqoob Administration had to act. Florida was declared a territory that was in rebellion, and authorization was granted from Congress to utilize the Insurrection Act and use the US Military to quell the violence.

This proved to be a disaster. The United States Armed Forces was not the fighting force is once was. Entry requirements had been loosened, basic training had been simplified, and discipline became lax. There were old veterans who were effective, but many of the newer recruits struggled in an environment where they would have to do more than sit at a desk. This was combat, this was occupation.

While the Administration promised a quick victory, the fighting continued throughout the decade. In the coming months, the government was forced to bring frontline men and women back from conflicts in the Middle East and Europe in order to bolster the domestic response. By this time, word of the success of the Reapers had rapidly spread over social media, and many men and women across America started Reaper cells of their own. The Florida insurgency had evolved into a national uprising in little over a year. Armories were raided, criminals were killed, border militias forcibly stopped migrants, local police forces were overwhelmed.

In the chaos, other players not associated with the Reaper Revolution began to carve out their own little chunks of land, from the renewed Northwest Territorial Imperative in the Pacific Northwest to the Republic of New Afrika in the Southeast. Some cities, like Chicago, were so ridden with crime that mobs took control of them, not at all unified.

Ethnic enclaves that were formed by the American government’s neglectful immigration policies would arm up and enforce their own interests, such as the Republic of New Somalia in what used to be Minneapolis-St. Paul, now known as Mogadishu North.

Mexico, a longtime enabler of the mass migration problem, was understandably surprised at the developments in America, and in response to multiple cross-border exchanges between opposing groups, sent their armed forces to create a stabilization zone along the border. Canada would also end up having to do this, especially after anti-government terrorists in Michigan bombed and destroyed the Ambassador Bridge that connected Detroit to Windsor.

By this time, the country was too unstable to hold elections, so the Maqoob Administration was blessed with the ability to remain in power until the situation stabilized. Unfortunately for Hilda Maqoob, that stabilization would never come.

On March 14^th, 2045, anti-government groups launched a combined attack on Washington DC. President Maqoob, ideologically unable to admit defeat, was killed after a missile struck the West Wing of the White House. Oddly enough, there is no record of who fired the missile, and even more suspicious was the military coup that took place afterwards as the Vice President and most of the Maqoob cabinet seemingly disappeared overnight. Multiple military flights were seen leaving the Capital, and after a week, rebel forces entered the heart of the city with little to no resistance. Rumor was that the Joint Chiefs and intelligence community packed up and headed West.

The period between March 14^th and March 21^st 2045 became known as Flatline Week.

With the death of Maqoob and the collapse of the civilian government, there was no remaining unity among anyone who had supported the federal government. Army units found themselves stranded and cut off in remote areas of the country. The internet had been taken down well before this point, and most major highways were heavily damaged or fell prey to roving gangs of bandits or rebels. The United States was, in essence, dead.

Of the fifty states, only Alaska and Hawaii were spared any major damage. The newly formed Republic of Alaska has become a major oil exporter in the years since independence, able to support its relatively small population with profit sharing from oil revenue. Likewise, Hawaii has become a strategic point in the Pacific, with Australia and Japan competing for dominance over the islands.

The Great Collapse affected the entire world in ways not felt since the Second World War. The immediate global impact was a synchronized financial seizure. The U.S. dollar had been the primary reserve currency and the dominant medium for oil, commodities, and international trade. Trillions of dollars in assets became functionally frozen or deeply discounted. Central banks worldwide faced massive mark-to-market losses on their dollar holdings and U.S. Treasury securities. Equity markets outside the United States plunged 30–50% in the first month; many never fully recovered their pre-collapse levels for years.

Supply chains collapsed, commodities swung violently before crashing. Global GDP contracted by an estimated 15–25%. The loss of the dollar as a stable anchor forced a painful re-pricing of risk across emerging markets. Countries that had borrowed heavily in dollars faced default waves. Capital flight from developing economies intensified. Reconstruction of new trade and financial architectures took a decade or more, with persistent higher transaction costs and lower overall efficiency.

The sudden absence of the United States as the primary security guarantor and economic stabilizer produced an immediate power vacuum. NATO, already strained, effectively became a European-led arrangement with sharply reduced collective capability; Article 5 commitments lost credibility without American logistics, intelligence, and nuclear umbrella. Allies in the Indo-Pacific confronted the abrupt disappearance of the primary deterrent against regional revisionist powers.

China moved quickly to consolidate influence in the Western Pacific and along the Belt and Road corridors, offering liquidity, infrastructure financing, and security guarantees to nations desperate for stability. Russia tested and then exploited openings in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Regional conflicts that had been contained by American presence or mediation, such as Taiwan Strait tensions, Middle Eastern rivalries, Korean Peninsula dynamics, flared or escalated as local actors recalculated the costs of action. Secondary powers like India, Turkey, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Gulf states pursued more independent or hedging strategies, accelerating a genuinely multipolar system.

U.S. military bases abroad became points of negotiation, abandonment, or local seizure. Overseas American citizens and residual forces faced evacuation crises or local political pressure. Friendly nations offered refuge to the now stateless people, and large American émigré populations have flourished in the UK, Germany, Canada, and Japan. Americans in less friendlier regions were forced to evacuate, leaving what was rest of their equipment to be scavenged by whatever power came across them.

Over the subsequent decade the world settled into a more fragmented, higher-risk order. Economic recovery was uneven: some regions adapted by building regional trade blocs and alternative financial rails; others experienced prolonged stagnation or authoritarian consolidation under the banner of stability. The psychological and institutional shock of the sudden disappearance of the postwar order’s central pillar left a lasting legacy of caution, regionalization, and reduced appetite for global public goods.

Long story short, the Great Collapse left the world in a lot of pain, pain that would never fully be healed. Yet, the pain the world felt was miniscule in comparison to the pain that was felt all across the rotting corpse that came to be known as Mors Americana: Dead America, the black spot of the world. While communications have been restored to some of the new nations within the former USA, the vast majority of the land is a dark continent, filled to the brim with bandits, rebels, restorationists, cults, experimental societies, and separatists.

The information archived in this novel is a series of tales from the remains of what once was the world’s foremost superpower. A country that had everything going for it until a backlog of bad decisions added up and the piper came to collect the bill, a bill that was passed on to the inheritors of this great nation that was America.