User:Auric/Your Next Fifty Years

Your Next Fifty Years is a book by Robert Prehoda that uses futuristics to predict and illustrate trends from the years 1989 to 2029. The predictions are now wildly inaccurate.

1989
The Post-Orwellian Era

The Chinese neo-Maoist dictator "New Leader", often compared to Big Brother, comes to power. He publishes his own little red book, The Thoughts of Mao Tse-Tung as Interpreted by New Leader.

Long hair in men becomes commonplace.

The Videophone becomes commonplace.

1994
Year of the Malthusian Crisis

This chapter predicts in the year 1994, a series of crop failures will result in nearly world-wide famine and starvation.

As a result, starvation and food riots in India result in starving Moslem peasants killing and eating sacred cows, leading to reprisals and a general slaughter of Moslems.

The Sikhs side with the Moslems. A war breaks out in Kashmir, dubbed the "sacred-cow war". When China and the Islamic nations side with Pakistan and cut off oil to India, India retaliates with a nuclear strike, destroying 27 Pakistani Air Force bases and other targets. 16 refugee camps are also destroyed. Pakistan responds by destroying 25 Indian Air Force installations, also with nuclear weapons. The front line of the war simply dissolves into chaos. The Sikhs re-form Sikhistan, which acts as a buffer state.

The chaos allows a despotic general to seize control of India's remaining nuclear arms. He proclaims himself "President of India" and threatens to bomb any city that does not recognize him. Bombay sends a column of troops after him. On October 28, two tactical nuclear weapons destroy the column. A hydrogen bomb wipes out Bombay. The next day, a young airman from Bombay shoots the general. Army units soon capture and disassemble the remaining bombs.

The world famine also affected China, which attempted to employ its starvation policy of feeding some provinces and starving others. The Chinese populace resists this, and New Leader began a series of flights to personally enforce this. Ultimately, his plane lands in one of the starvation provinces and is recognized. He and his entourage are dragged off the plane by a mob of starving peasants and is beaten to death on the runway. China then returns to the Warlord Era, becoming a closed society again. One nuclear weapon is detonated.

The destruction of Bombay catalyzes world nuclear disarmament. The leaders of America, the USSR, Iran, Japan and China sign a treaty to disarm in exchange for mutual food aid. Other countries do so as well.

1999
Visit to Micropolis

The world famine abated in 1996. The official death total is 948,000,000 worldwide.

2004
Robots and the Intelligence Amplifier

2009
The World Set Free

2014
Methuselah's Children

2019: Project Cyclops
First contact announced. Project Cyclops discovers an extra-terrestrial signal at 1420.405 MHz. A more detailed message is discovered to have been transmitted on the water hole frequency (1625.418 MHz), the signal is first received in January 2017. The information is released in March 2019, after decoding. The signal lasted 19 months (584 days) and then repeated. A 7-force unified field theory is part of the data. The aliens also support the Steady State theory. The data also results in a Fourth Law of Motion and confirmation of ESP. The light-speed barrier remains.

The source of the message is a solar system 134 light-years away (like HD 49674 b). The message lacks information on the senders.

2024
The Third Industrial Revolution

2029
Technological Shangri-La