Timeline

Significant Events and Discoveries by Year
Year	Event
2008- 2014	The “Double Dip”, worldwide recession.
2016	The stock market Christmas Crash and ensuing worldwide national debt defaults.
2017	Beginning of the US Southwest “Great Thirst” as the rains dry up. Unification of Iran and Iraq begins Greater Islamic Republic. On the death of Queen Elizabeth II, a group of military leaders conduct a coup and seize power in the U.K., the rest of the royal family flees into exile. The Commonwealth collapses and various former members which had the Monarch as titular head of state become republics.
2018	Indian Point, New York, earthquake and nuclear powerplant leak. Northern California (NORCAL) and Texas secede from the U.S.A.
2019	Hurricane Charlie floods Houston and New Orleans. Southern California (SOCAL) and Alaska secede from the U.S.A. The Aral Sea and Nigeria’s rainforests disappear from the map. The UN collapses due to lack of funding and the UNSC is disbanded.
2020	Saudi/Iran nuclear war. “Peak Oil” is reached – from now on, oil is a dwindling and ever more expensive resource. World population passes 8 billion. Wolf Creek, Kansas nuclear power plant melts down during a dust storm, due to lack of cooling water and electrical disruption of instruments.
2021	India/Pakistan war and nuclear strikes. Bangladesh disappears as a nation, overwhelmed by fallout and warming-driven flooding. First “arcology” domes built in the North-East U.S. as an answer to climate change.
2022	Artic Sea now ice-free in Summers. Port Chicago in California becomes the site of a new “model city” built by a consortium of corporations, named “Night City” after it’s architect. The Gen-Nu Disaster.
2023	First “vertical farms” in urban areas. Bubonic Plague and Ebola pandemics first devastate Africa, then spread outward. Free State of Cascade formed by the secession of Oregon and Washinton from the Union.
2024	Beginning in Burma, an especially virulent H2N1 variant flu pandemic causes tens of millions of deaths as it progresses worldwide. Borneo’s rainforests are completely gone. At the same time, the African Gorilla becomes extinct in the wild, with only specimens in captivity surviving. Europe’s “Skylon”, a fully reuseable single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft, enters service.
2025	First true Artifical Intelligence becomes aware at the M.I.T. Labs. The African elephant follows the gorilla into extinction in the wild.
2026	A new variant Multi-drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-T) arises in the Mid-East and will go on to become pandemic over the next decade, killing millions.
2027	Gulf Stream current ceases, bringing colder winters to Western Europe. Utah seceeds, changes it’s name to Deseret. Terrorists explode a “dirty bomb” in the heart of New York’s Wall Street, killing tens of thousands. In retaliation, three Sunni Muslem cities are counter-struck. In the developed nations Muslims largely turn their backs on the extremists.
2028	Real-time virtuality and terrabit data rates transform the former World Wide Web into a fully virtual three-dimensional interactive experience. While still in its infancy, the modern NeoNet is born. The International Space Station is decommissioned. The mile wide asteroid 1997 XF 11 is captured on its close approach to Earth and mining of the asteroid begins shortly afterwards.
2029	Construction of the Hightower O’Neill habitat at L5 begun. The Grand Ayatollah announces the beginning of a Reformation and Modernisation of Shiite Islam.
2030	First commercially viable high-temperature superconductors go on the market. Deseret begins to add territory from surrounding former States, within five years it becomes the second largest nation by land area in the former CONUS.
2031	First Corporate War between Armatech and LMB is fought on U.S. soil, ends when U.S. military intervenes after 2 weeks.
2032	Biological computing becomes common enough to be available to rich private individuals. “Night City” passes 2.5 million inhabitants and is the location of a not-so-covert war between the founding corporations and the Mafia for control.
2033	The first hypersonic (Mach 5) passenger aircraft go into service. Sunni religious leaders meet the Grand Ayatollah to call for, and get, a “Nur Ad-Din” of Reformed Islam which unites the moderate members of both Sunni and Shia branches of that religion worldwide.
2034	It is estimated that air pollution has killed over 80 million people since 2015, mostly in China. Worldwide, wildfires caused by droughts and increasing inductrial pollution have degraded air quality by up to 40% from 2010 levels.
2035	India overtakes China as the most populous country on Earth. The Northern Union, comprising France, Benelux, Germany, Scandinavia and Poland becomes a unified nation and immediately closes its borders against most immigration from Southern European nations overrun by refugees from the Mid-East and Africa.
2036	The Arctic is now ice-free from March to September. The nickname “Night City” for the NorCal metroplex becomes increasingly popular, taking the name from the “model city” built in 2022. The original city itself has been crippled by a decade of stuggle between corporates and organized crime.
2037	Beginning of U.S. “Militia Wars”. Construction of the Hightower O’Neill habitat at L5 completed.
2038	New gene-tailored and vat-grown algae begin to make an impact on food scarcity. Driven by migration and climate-change altering food production, Canada’s population reaches 100 million. The first interplanetary cruise ship, the SS Ad Astra, is launched. With an itinerary including a ‘grand tour’ of the solar system, the tickets for her inaugural voyage take the world record for the most expensive vacation destination, with the minimum price being in the millions of dollars. She is filled with several hundred paying guests and half that number in crew and is launched with much fanfare. Before even leaving Earth orbit, she goes out in a blaze as she re-enters Earth’s atmosphere, exploding in the upper atmosphere and raining thousands of tons of material down upon the coast of China and Japan below, including several tons of nuclear material. The only survivor is the pilot, who is charged with intentionally causing the crash and sentenced to death of personality. The final death toll reaches into the tens of thousands.
2039	H.U.B. (Hightower Universal Bank) declares Hightower its own territory, becoming the first extra-planetary sovereign Megacorp.
2040	Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is pronounced dead, part of a massive extinction of over 40% of the planets biodiversity over the last few decades.
2041	Free State of Texas deploys 30,000 troops as “advisors” to the Mexican government in a decade-long COIN operation. Experts estimate a third of Africa is starving. Driven mostly by refugees and immigration, the U.S. population hits 400 million with most of the growth occuring in urban areas.
2042	A consortium of manufacturers controlled by HUB begin supplying low-cost/high-cargo lift vehicles to corporations with the cash to expand into the Orbital market. Many of them establish small manned stations in both Earth and lunar orbits and declare sovereignty.
2043	The name “Night City” is adopted as the official title of the NorCal metroplex. The original “model town” at what was Port Chicago becomes “Night City Core”, with the main city administrative offices located there. Turkey becomes the first majority reformed-Sunni nation to join the Greater Islamic Republic.
2044	Over one in five Americans are now Reformed Muslims.
2045	A cost-efficient and sustainable method of power generation by nuclear fusion is developed. Canada becomes the Socialist Republic of Canada. The Alaskan Free State is a Canadian protectorate in all but name.
2046	“King Willam V” of the U.K. dies in exile in New Zealand, aged 64, at the hands of an assassin.
2047	World’s first commercial Fusion Power plants go online.
2048	The Antarctic Treaty expires and is not renewed – corporations and nations race to exploit the region’s resources.
2049	Global population reaches 8.5 billion. The Red Sea finally dries up completely.
2050	PRESENT DAY.

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