[ IP ] Come up with the story behind this map .

I was seven when the United States stopped being united. My father taught me that it was caused by climate change across the whole continent, causing previously fertile regions to become barren, shifting the passage of the rains. The Confederates were mostly unaffected, that's probably why the seceded first. That or old passions ran deeper than people thought. Either way, the Confederation had most of the fertile growing land in the country, and were n't about to give it away. The government could n't really do much about it, they could barely feed their army, forget paying them. By the time they rounded up the soldiers who had n't deserted, the new Confederated States of America already had twenty states under their belts. 
 
 The New confederacy only lasted about four years in any case. The Central Confederacy ( or North Rebs as we call them here in Utah ) consolidated their power in Kansas City, and the South Rebs kept their capitol in Houston. After that was the insanity that was the Great Plains War. Rumor has it that you could hear the Siege of St. Louis all the way in Chicago. I believe them too. The images on BBC of the aftermath seemed like it was nothing more than a collection of craters with a river running through it. 
 
 After seven years of war, The Virginias and Lousiana split off within a week of each other. The Virginians said they were tired of their people dying over scraps of bombed out pasture and corn fields. Do n't rightly know why Louisiana broke with the South Rebs. The Swampies sure as hell are n't telling. Since declaring themselves a sovereign nation, there's been no broadcasts from them, and the borders are locked tight. 
 
 The Great Lakes Union must have decided that after eleven years of half the country tearing itself to bits and the government doing nothing, they'd be better off on their own. They're real friendly with the canucks, trading across the lakes freely. 
 
 Less than a year after them, The Republic of Western America declared itself. Washington finally managed to get its shit together and tried to do something, but what could they do? By that point a fifth of the people alive on the continent were in California alone. The one thing they actually competed over was who owned the Rockies. We solved that nicely by saying that we did. Officially we're the `` United States of Utah'', but most of the time we call ourselves the Rockies Republic. They like to scoff because we're the least inhabited country around, and only marginally richer than the North Rebs. They seem to forget that we have the lion's share of the nukes. 
 
 After the west left, all that was left of the good old USA was New England. They still fly the stars and stripes with fifty stars though. Kinda sad really.
