A deliberately disturbing bargain over the value of destruction.
Everyone expects
Forests are saved by agreements and incentives.
What I found
The forest survives because nobody will buy its wood.
Suppose a superpower confronted with a climate emergency intervenes to make a forest’s products commercially unusable, then leaves. The premise is not conquest. It is denying the value of extraction.
Inside this fictional bargain, radioactive contamination makes timber and other products commercially unattractive through stigma, restrictions and the difficulty of selling them. Participating communities judge the additional risks preferable to the dispossession they otherwise expect.
That is the conflict: institutions have failed to stop the destruction, and a coercive intervention changes what outsiders can gain. Other communities ask for the same arrangement. Environmental campaigners divide.
The scenario joins ecology to Negative Territorial Power: alter the landscape so particular uses no longer pay, without accepting responsibility for governing it. It explores the institutional and moral bargain, not an implementation proposal.
“For forty years governments promised to keep ranchers and miners out and failed.” — A voice from the scenario.
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This is an original public scenario. Bring your subject, research or planning question to develop a world and explore its consequences.
Strategic foresight and scenario developmentThey didn’t invade. They made sure nobody could live there.
Everyone expectsRobot wars will be about killing.
Armies that mass to attack are seen and hit within minutes, so taking territory costs more than it’s worth. In this scenario, an aggressor stops trying.
Follow how it could happenDo as we say, or no rain.
Everyone expectsGeoengineering is a shared climate response.
What if an intervention that improves conditions for one country worsens them for another?
Follow how it could happenThe government can decide anything. It just can’t do it.
Everyone expectsThe government decides to take back control.
A government recognises a dangerous dependency and decides to act. The suppliers have gone. The skills have faded. The infrastructure is committed elsewhere.
Follow how it could happenA subject, a technology, a question or a body of research.