Shattered Union

A good friend of mine worked on a video game several years ago called Shattered Union. The premise is that an increasingly divided U.S. finally falls apart when someone nukes Washington D.C. In the aftermath various groups of states form their own alliances: the California Commonwealth, Republic of Texas, and New England Alliance for example. As they all fight it out, an EU peacekeeping unit is sent in to reunify America. All very interesting stuff, even if the implicit premise that there can only be peace when the union is restored is wrong.

Well news has just broke that two big names in Hollywood are working to bring the story to the big screen: Jerry Bruckheimer and J. Michael Straczynski (Bablyon 5).

Now the trailer at the linked page is from the video game so the closing Lincoln quote does not necessarily tell us the perspective of the film. But personally I find it fascinating and even encouraging that a major film is being made that considers the United States breaking down into smaller units, even if this is viewed as a very negative event. Maybe I missed something, but I can’t recall any big budget film ever that even considered the possibility (the article mentions a TV series named Jericho which I somehow had never heard of). (Maybe The Postman, kind of sort of.) The Union has just seemed to be assumed as permanent and practically established by the Lord Himself.

If the film is actually made, even if it is co-authored by the Lincoln Cult, I still think it would be a great opportunity for decentralists to raise some questions. Chief among them being: Why would the California Commonwealth and the Republic of Texas (or whatever) go to war? Why couldn’t an independent Texas and California get along as well as the US and Canada?

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5:17 pm on November 1, 2009