General Timeline (First Century)

This is a general overview timeline of the 21st century in First Century.

DISCLAIMER: Although I am including dates before 2019 on this timeline, keep in mind that all events transcribed before the current year will be 100% historical, as to not violate Future Wiki’s rules on alternate future scenarios.

2001

 * September 11: The 9/11 attacks, a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States, occur. The attacks consisted of 4 plane hijackings, two that hit the Twin Towers in New York City, one hitting the Pentagon, and another having been successfully thwarted after passengers on board fought against the hijackers and later crashed in a field near Pottsville, Pennsylvania. They killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 others, and caused at least $10 billion in damage. This was, at the time, the deadiest terrorist attack on US soil, and directly contributed to the subsequent War on Terrorism.

2011

 * January 14: After several weeks of protests, Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali resigns, sparking the Arab Spring, which toppled several oppressive dictatorial regimes across the Middle East, and left the region an unstable powder keg for much of the rest of the 21stcentury.
 * March 15: Protests against the Syrian government and dictator Bashar al-Assad begin, leading to civil unrest. This would be the beginning of tensions that would eventually erupt into the decade-long Syrian Civil War, considered to be the first proxy war fought during the Second Cold War.

2019

 * January 23: Juan Guaido declares himself President of Venezuela after a heavily disputed 2018 presidential election, thus precipitating a chain of events that would eventually lead to the Venezuelan Civil War.

2024

 * April 27: Spurred by the ever-increasing leaked information from the outside world, around 45,000 North Koreans from the border city of Sinuiju storm the border with China. This action is met with military force from the North Korean military, and an estimated 33,000 are killed, with the remaining 12,000 managing to escape to China. China, tired of the North Korean antics, allows the 12,000 defectors asylum as refugees. Although the Kim regime would try to stop the spread of this information, details of the attack would spread nationwide, albeit slowly. By the end of 2024, full rebellion was in order, and the North Korean Revolution had started.

2025

 * January 8: On North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un's 41st birthday, revolutionaries storm his residence. Kim Jong Un and every member of his family are murdered on the spot during Kim Jong Un's birthday feast (excepting Kim Han-Sol, who had joined the revolutionary ranks earlier). An interim government is declared, with Kim Han-Sol in power.
 * May 26: In an event eerily similar to the destruction of the Berlin Wall, both North Koreans and South Koreans storm the DMZ en masse. Many happy reunions were made.
 * May 29: North Korea and South Korea officially reunify as the United Republic of Korea.

2026

 * April 30: After years of stalemate, the Syrian Civil War ends with the Ankara Peace Accords. An independent democratic Republic of Northern Syria is established north of the Euphrates River, and the Assad regime maintains control over Syria proper.

2027

 * February 28: The first major signs of climate change begin to show themselves, as Karachi, Pakistan, becomes the first major city to completely run out of water. Although running water is restored to the city within a few days, this event is a major wake-up call for the dangers and effects of climate change.

2047

 * July 1: The Chinese "one country, two systems" policy over Hong Kong officially expires, and the Special Autonomous Region is annexed into Guangdong Province.

2053

 * July 14: After years of climate change, the southern tip of the increasingly unstable Greenland Ice Sheet almost completely calves and melts into the Atlantic Ocean. This event, now known as the Deluge, raises sea levels by an average of 3.8 meters worldwide. The Deluge would go on to drown major coastal cities, kill millions worldwide and cause hundreds of millions to become displaced, and cost trillions in property damage. It was the main defining event of the 21stcentury, and has continued to have lasting effects upon all of humanity.
 * August 3: Pakistani Deluge refugees fleeing into India, and vice versa, exacerbate the already tense political situation between the two nations. As the Indian army begins movements to secure the border and block all illegal immigration from Pakistan, the Pakistanis, apparently mistaking Indian military movements along the border for an Indian invasion of Pakistan, preemptively fires nuclear missiles at major cities and military installations in India, sparking the Indo-Pakistani Nuclear Exchange. Although concrete numbers are not known, 244 nuclear bombs were dropped, causing the deaths of approximately 385 million people, and further exacerbating the already-dire Mid-Century Refugee Crisis, the worst humanitarian and refugee crisis in recent history.
 * August 5: Stock markets worldwide, already trending sharply down due to recent calamities, completely crash, with many losing around 60-80% of their value. Many lose their life savings in a single day, and many large companies, including Google, Walmart, and Disney, dissolve due to loss of funds. The entire world is plunged into the Second Great Depression, a time of socioeconomic decline and political upheaval lasting well into the 2080s, and the old, pre-Deluge world order would be radically and completely altered.
 * August 9: A joint UN operation involving the militaries of 35 nations enters the devastated and irradiated remains of the Indian subcontinent, with the main goal of evacuating civilians from destroyed areas, quelling humanitarian crises, and eventually re-establishing order to the nuclear war-ravaged Indian and Pakistani nations. The UN Interim Mandate of the Indian Subcontinent is established, headquartered in Darshana, Bangladesh, a small town on the Indian border turned refugee camp.
 * October 17: Already an extremely poor nation dealing with militant groups, ethnic tensions, and lack of adequate food, water, and electricity, Afghanistan, after the Indo-Pakistani Nuclear Exchange, is also left dealing with vast influxes of refugees from the Indian subcontinent (estimates suggest at least 40 million and perhaps as many as 100 million refugees passed through Afghanistan during the autumn and winter of 2053 alone). This enormous new population to feed and house proves too much for the already-struggling nation, and the Afghan government completely collapses as militant factions blow up government facilities across Kabul (which had been lacking electricity, running water, and adequate food stocks for a month and a half prior), and basic resources such as food and potable water in the former Afghan nation become scarce-to-nonexistent.

2054

 * June 4: The Black Revolution in Iran, named for the black shirts revolutionaries would wear, occurs, in response to rapidly deteriorating quality of life and immense numbers of refugees and migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The previous Islamist government is overthrown, replaced by the fascistic, xenophobic, nationalist, and totalitarian Kazemid regime. This regime would be responsible for numerous human rights abuses, including but not limited to genocide, and endures to the present day.

2058

 * June 1: By the late 2050s, China, although officially still ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, has been reduced to a de facto anarchy run by feuding warlords. The Second Chinese Civil War is sparked in June of 2058 by the self-declared independence of Uyghuristan (Xinjiang), Hong Kong, and Tibet, as well as a Japanese and American-backed Taiwanese invasion of Fujian Province. Soon after the outbreak of war, the Korean army marches into the Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture and occupies it.