The deluge: Fanfic of the Novel Flood by S. Baxter

Fanfic based on the novel 'Flood' by Stephen Baxter

2015: Rise of global sea level compared to sea level before the industrialization – 1 meter

Because of the sudden rise of the global sea level, several million people around the world experience a swift and wide-scale immigration inland. Several nations are unable to handle the situation, being unable to provide enough shelter and food for the refugees.

Spain is the first victim of this event some people are already calling 'The deluge' . The nation splits into several waring factions fighting for land and resources. After nearly half a year of constant fighting and several large cities like Madrid, Seville and Saragossa experiencing large scale destruction, the European Union send sends in the whole 'Quick Response Group' of the union, more than 50 000 soldiers to stop the fighting and prevent more refugees flooding into southern France and Portugal, latter one only manages to survive through a now permanent state of emergency over the entire country. While German, Italian and French air-support take out large parts of the Spanish military infrastructure, the country is occupied by soldiers from France and Poland and to a smaller degree Portugal.

Scientists worldwide are perplexed by the sudden and unexpected rise of the sea-level. Nobody is able to explain where the water is coming from, since the global temperature has not risen that much to cause the sea-water to expand, neither has the ice-caps on Greenland or Antarctica melted any faster than during the last years.

By chance a research submarine of a multinational corporation, looking for deposits of manganese nodules in the Atlantic ocean near Iceland, detects a large unknown upward sea-current. A second mission is sent out only days later to detect the origin of that current. As the submarine reaches the ocean floor the crew detects large cracks and sinks of the ocean floor. From these cracks enormous amounts of water stream into the ocean, causing this unknown stream. 

At first the scientific board worldwide is skeptic about this new revelation, since it contradicts all theories on the current rise of the global sea level, many even deny the rise at all. Within one month, several private and government funded missions to the sea-floor around the world reveal that it is not just near Iceland, but there are cracks in the sea-floor all around the world, releasing gigantic amounts of water. The reason for the unknown rise of the global sea-level is found – a huge ocean imbedded into the earth's crust has begun to flow to the surface. There were now only two questions: How much water would pour into the oceans and how much would the sea-level rise?

It takes nearly a whole year for scientists to figure it out, mainly by using the shock-waves of earthquakes (and to a smaller degree the use of conventional explosives to produce shock-waves) traveling through the earth's crust. As it turns out there are enormous amounts of water embedded in the Earth's crust, though it cannot be explained why right now the water started to flow out. 

Many politicians and also the broad masses first refuse to believe it and also many do not have the time to care whether it is true or not, because the rising sea-level has already caused large destruction. Bangladesh, Florida, Louisiana, parts of the Netherlands as well as all river deltas around the world experience severe flooding. England is hit hard by a larger storm, flooding London and washing over the Thames Barrier. In Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France the governments start to raise the dikes to prevent storm surges like in England, though this proofs to be futile as it would prevent storm surges along the shores but not through the river-deltas. 

The rise of the sea-level also causes the rise of the oil-price as storms damage off-shore oil-platforms and the rising sea level destroys the oil infrastructure near the coast.

People also start to move inland to friends and relatives from areas and cities that are not that hard effected yet, like New York City, Tokyo, Shanghai or Rio de Janeiro to larger cities inland like St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Brasilia or Kyoto, causing more tensions in those regions. Large refugee camps are built hastily in many nations, but most times only about 100 kilometers land-inwards (which would mean they would be be flooded later).

Because of the sheer volume of refugees around the world, nobody really listens to the scientific community when they announce that the flood is very likely not to stop anytime soon, maybe even not at all, because they calculated that the amount of water embedded into the Earth's crust is several times larger than the ones of all current seas combined.

About 18 months after the discovery of the cracks in the ocean floor, the world is shocked by a sudden announcement of the Israeli government. They announce that all Palestinians within the Palestinian Autonomous Zones are granted full citizenship and full access to their respective territories if they agree to the national ark-plan. Because as the scientific community has announced it may very well be that the flood may never stop at all and flood all continents, the Israeli government is in dire need for manpower for this project.

In a public speech to the General assembly in the new headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva (after large parts of NYC have been flooded) the Israeli prime minister presents the project 'David's Ark' . The plan consists of building several large floating cities on the higher parts of the Golan Heights and the highest mountains in Galilee, to be finished before the flood would reach those parts of the country, while the population of Israel would be resettled in the hinterland until then. 

At first the world is perplexed by this announcement, thinking it to be a hoax to calm down the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. But after not even two weeks after the speech at the UN Israel nationalizes large parts of the industry and the agricultural sector of the country and begins the construction of the the island-docks on the Golan Heights. 

This causes severe tension with Syria, because with the arrival of the first working teams, also large parts of the normally demilitarized zone would come under control of the IDF, to protect the construction sites from terrorists, as the Prime ministers states, though in reality it was directed against the thread of Syria. Only later through negotiations through Russia, Syria would be given the right to build their own islands there too.

The agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians can be sum up as this: You help us to construct those large floating islands and we will give you enough of them for all your people to live on them too. (which will cause problems later, because the Israeli government agreed only for the Palestinians living in Westbank and the Gaza strip and within Israel, not the ones living in Syria and Jordan and the rest of the Palestinian' diaspora)

While Israel starts to build provisionally settlements for the displaced people from the coastal cities to live there until they can move into the settlements on the floating cities. They also start to relocate large parts of their industry on higher ground. The estimation of the global scientific community now is that until the year 2035 the global sea-level will have risen by 600 to 800 meters, that is why those settlements and the industry will largely be rebuilt on ground higher than this. At the same time, food production within Israel is given a strong boost with the irrigation of parts of the Negev desert with water that would have normally used for cities like Tel Aviv or Haifa, which are now already partly under water. This is done to produce large reserves of food for later when Israel would not be able to produce any anymore. The tipping point will be 800 meters above pre-flood level, because then 50 percent of the former dry land will be submerged. 

While the world watches in surprise and shock as Israel begins to reconstruct its own economy to self-sustainability, another shock comes when New Zealand announces its own ark-project, called 'Kon-Tiki II'. 

Just like Israel vast parts of the coasts were already under water, the government of New Zealand starts to relocate the people from there to higher ground and start to prepare the highest mountain tops for the construction of the arks. To everyone's surprise the Israeli government did put the plans for them online, open for everyone to improve them. 

The arks would look differently than anyone would imagine. Not like oversized ships, but like floating islands. They would consist of two large hollow steel tori connected by large steel-frames. The top of the tori would form a large platform which would then be used to build large apartment blocks and other buildings on it, while the tori themselves would house most parts of the power-production, navigation, transportation (subways inside the tori), propulsion etc. 

At first the Israeli government thought about using nuclear propulsion for the floating islands, though it become clear that in the event of a malfunction it would render the island uninhabitable, which is the reason why they switched to 'Ocean thermal energy conversion engines' . Those, to describe it quickly, can produce energy by using the temperature difference between cold water from deep down in the ocean and the much warmer water near the surface. This kind of energy production would be able to produce all the energy needed to power the cities on the islands and for the propulsion. Around the islands would be large floating raft sections several kilometers in radius, which would be used to grow vegetables and grain and also partially for leisure.

Each island which is designated for being used for just harboring people will be able to take in about 700 000 to 800 000 people, maybe even 1 000 000. Even with the lowest estimation, it would be really, really cramped on those islands. It is estimated that Israel alone would need about 12 of those floating islands just to house its population. For the Palestinians it is estimated that about 10 to 14 islands will be needed, though it is questionable if all those islands will be able to be built in time. And they would need even more islands that will be solely used for food production and industry, as well as storage room for various cultural heritages. For example the plan would be to dismantle the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other monuments of great importance to the Israeli people to rebuild them on the floating islands.

Living space would be tight and security even tighter. Apartments would be small compared to today's standard. Some even think about building them like gigantic Kibbuzim, with large community space, for example one dozens apartments would share a large community kitchen and a community bath to have more extra room by reducing all unnecessary room. Though this is all just in the planning stage yet, since it is expected to be nearly 15 years before even the first island will be finished. 

As it becomes more and more clear that Israel, together with the Palestinians, and New Zealand are serious about their plans to relocate their populations on large floating islands, people all around the world start to demand from their governments to do the same. The problem is that various nations simply do not have any higher ground or the technology or industry to build these islands. Very soon the first fights for higher ground in Western Africa and South-East Asia begin. There are also fights starting between India and Bangladesh for higher ground. 

To prevent the world from plunging into a global conflict that could endanger the ark projects, the UN founds the 'Flood Coordination Agency' or FCA for short. This agency will be funded by the most powerful industrial nations as well those that have the most advanced technologies to build the arks and is instructed to coordinate and also negotiate the re-settlement of displaced people until they can live in the floating islands. This agency also will develop technologies to make them as self-sustainable as possible as well as. There are even rumors to put the UN peacekeeping corps around the world directly under the command of this agency to fight pirates, terror groups and stabilize nations that are already failing. Three years after the founding of this agency the first troops land in Antarctica to claim it as a UN territory, despite the claim of several nations to the area there. Antarctica has several rich deposits of iron, copper, coal and other minerals of great value for the various ark-projects worldwide. There are also several large mountains that can be used as construction sites for floating islands. The Antarctica-treaty is disbanded unanimously, which until today has prevented the exploitation of the resources there or the build-up of any industry. 

Within one year all nations around the planet have found their own ark-projects to save their people. Another effect of the deluge is the disbandment of pretty much all environmental-protection agencies and environmental-protection laws around the world. Or as one Senator from Arkansas said: 

'Why should we care for this mother Earth if it is this mother which is trying to kill us?' 

The disbandment of those agencies gives rise to a much stronger pollution of the environment, but also gives more opportunities for mining of ores needed for the construction of the floating islands. Large parts of grassland of the great plains of the US are converted into crop fields, mono-cultures of a scale never seen before, copying the plans of the Israelis to produce large food reserves for later periods, when those parts of the country will be under water. 

While in the decades before various mines around the world have been closed for being unprofitable, now even the smallest deposits of ore are being mined because the construction of those floating islands will need billions of tons of stainless steel, as well as other metals for the electronics. Canada and Venezuela start to mine their deposits of oil-sands, no matter the destruction of the taiga forests / tropic forests or the enormous amounts of water needed, since in a few decades those areas will be destroyed anyway. 

In Europe and northern Africa the nations bordering the Mediterranean decide for a bold plan, that could prevent the flooding of their nations for probably several decades – the nearly forgotten Atlantropa-project. Made up in the late 1920s the original plan meant to build a gigantic dam in the straight of Gibraltar to produce electricity for nearly the whole of Europe and provide jobs for several hundred thousand people in Africa and Europe for years to come. Now it was planned to simply construct an enormous sea-wall, though with several water locks for water transportation, to seal of the Mediterranean sea from the rest of the world. 

When large parts pre-flood coastlines around the world would be flooded, cities like Rome and Venice would still be over water, which gives the people there more time to re-settle and build the floating islands. It also gives them more time to rebuild their industry on higher grounds. Within one year, construction of the Atlantropa-dike has begun. All nations bordering the Mediterranean work on it, but also others like Germany, Romania, Bulgaria and Switzerland contribute to this second most important project on Earth, because it prevents people from flooding into their nations, while they have enough problems themselves. 

Because of the high urgency there is little delay and already 5 years later the damn rises over the surface, cutting the Mediterranean off from the rest of the world's seas for the first time in millions of years. Similar, although smaller projects are also done in Spain, Morocco and Egypt, where there are also dikes built inland to prevent the rising seas from spilling over the continents around the dike into the Mediterranean. 

Nations that have more high land to build floating islands than they need to rescue their citizens are given the opportunity to come out wealthier of this global catastrophe than they have been before. They lease mountain tops and high plains to other nations who don't have them, like Spain, Turkey, Romania, Austria and Switzerland to nations like Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium or the UK. The US even give the mountain tops of Alaska for free to Japan. Even though Japan is a very mountainous nation, most of them are of volcanic origin, so constructing there is not a viable option, since the growing water passes add more pressure on the ocean floor, which could cause more volcanic and seismic activity. 

Latin-American nations lease mountain ridges to several African nations, which most by now have banded together to loose unions to pool their resources and industry. Nations too small and insignificant by industrial and financial power like Bhutan and Liechtenstein do not start to construct floating islands. They instead offer their high ground to other nations, just like many others do, and use the money they earn by that to construct fleets of 'normal' ships to be constructed directly on their territory, waiting until the flood will make them float. But they also use their ideal location to offer their territories as safe-havens for server-farms. There the data would be safe and not be threatened by war or uprisings or the flood itself. Within ten years most of the sever-infrastructure has been moved to three nations: Bhutan, Liechtenstein and Bolivia. By 2025 about 60 percent of the electricity production in these nations would be needed for the sever industry. They would also act as a storage place for museums from all around the wold. Pieces of art like the 'Mona Lisa' or 'The Thinker' would be stored in gigantic vaults in those nations.

One of the last industrialized nations to begin construction of the docks for the floating islands are surprisingly the USA. Because several members of congress did not want the US government itself to start the US ark-project, called 'Mayflower II' by some already, because it would require a state-owned and -controlled industry, which is seen by several politicians as communism. They instead wanted to let the free market to solve the problem. But this would have meant that only the very wealthy would have been able to be saved while the pour masses would be left behind to just drown in the rising seas. In this tense state the US president does something unheard of – he declares a nation-wide state of emergency and orders the arrest of all those politicians that wanted to opt for a market-based solution, under the accusation of being 'enemies of the American people'. There would be no second try to let the free market take care of the problem. 

The next step of the US was the nationalization of all the heavy industry, including the oil and gas industry, which was already badly damaged because most of it was built near the shore. The largest accumulation on the planet of the petrol-chemical industry was in southern Texas near the coast, most of it just three to five meters above sea-level. The US military hastily constructs large sea-walls to prevent the flooding of this vitals industry so it can be moved inland. Similar scenes are seen in the middle East. Drilling platforms in the North-Sea between the UK and Norway are elevated to keep them working. All these actions cause the oil-price even to drop at first because every nation that has large deposits of oil starts to pump them out of the ground as fast as possible since in a few years it would not be doable any longer. 

While several nations have already failed or been swept away by the rising seas a new problem arises: some nations simply have too many people to be rescued, the most noteworthy being China and India. But there are also others like Nigeria or Indonesia who simply have too many people to rescue them all. But the governments of these nations of course cannot really tell them that they cannot be saved without causing a massive uprising. So several of these nations have only one option. Reduction of the fertility rate. While China starts its Zero-One-Child policy (every couple is allowed to have one child, no exceptions for anybody, criminals and corrupt people and their families are not allowed to have any at all, which also means that suddenly a lot of contravention are considered crimes), India starts to sterilize part of its people in secret by adding certain chemicals to the water-supply. China also starts to sterilize its minorities. But even so, it came nearly to a war between the two most populous nations on Earth because China had way more land of the Tibetan high plains available for its people than India and it was only because of the FCA that a war was prevented. In the end China would allow India, and also what was left of Bangladesh to build their own islands behind the Himalayan on Chinese territory. Both nations hope that their population would drop to below 800 million by the time large parts of their nation would be flooded. But also pretty much all other nations around the world encourage people to have as little children as possible. 

Another case where it nearly came to a war was Jerusalem, to be exact the case of the Dome of Rock. Israel at first refused to let dismantling groups from Egypt and other Muslim nations into their territory. The plan of the group which has already given itself the name 'Islamic Island Fleet' was to gather all important buildings and sights of high importance to Islam and bring them to the construction sites in Pakistan. Only after several hard-fought negotiations between those nations under the supervision of the FCA an agreement was found. Now the dismantling of the Dome of Rock could begin. Other important buildings that are dismantled around the world are the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Tower of Big Ben together with the houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace from the already flooded city of London, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, the Opera House from Sydney (which would be brought to the Uluru (Ayers Rock) construction site), 100 meters of the great Chinese Wall as well as the Imperial Palace in Beijing, the great Pyramids (the Egyptian president practically had to beg the international community to save the only ancient wonder of the world left from being submerged. As it was dismantled workers found a hidden chamber deep inside the largest pyramid filled with large amounts of gold and gems from an yet unknown Pharaoh together with an entire library of papyrus rolls). Other things proofed to be more difficult to dismantle, like the city of Petra or Mount-Rushmore. In the end they had no other choice but to only remove the outer layers of both sights and not cut them out in full blocks like Abu Simbel. Those outer shells would later be built over a steal frame to resemble the original state.

The only nation that will probably totally be saved will be the Vatican, since the Italian government assured the Pope that all monuments and buildings within the Vatican will be rebuild on the island of Nuova Roma.

Another effect of the deluge is that for the first time in history there are more scientists moving around the world than soldiers. Because forests, jungles and deserts will be flooded in the near future botanist, zoologist, archeologists and others scientists are hastily doing their research, looking for yet unknown plants that could provide medication in the future, trying to create the largest genetic databank in history, collecting seeds and plants in the billions, or trying to find the sites of ancient civilizations, trying to complete human history before they would be gone forever. 

Before the launching sites in Florida and French Guyana were flooded, ESA and NASA began an emergency launch session. Within two years more than three hundred satellites were launched, most of them would be back-ups for satellites that are already in orbit to replace them if they should fail. ESA also launched more than 50 ATVs filled with fuel for satellites themselves. Many satellites that have been launched before would still be in working condition if it were not for them having exhausted their fuel. That means all satellites that were launched during the panic-launches would be refuel-able, the ATVs acting as gas-stations for them. Russia and China were more lucky since their sites are inland, so unlike Europe or the USA they did not have to rebuild them. The USA buildt a new launch site near Denver (the city has already become the new capital of the US since it is one mile above the pre-flood sea-level) while Europe buildt one in the French Alps.

Until 2025 the global sea-level had risen by about 100 meters. Denmark is by then gone, the whole population was evacuated to Sweden while the people from the Netherlands and Belgium were evacuated to Germany and France. From orbit the UK looked like a gigantic patchwork, the British people were evacuated to Scottish highlands and other higher parts of the British islands as well as the British islands sites in the alps. Pakistan and Bangladesh reunited, the vast part of the people from Bangladesh were either dead or evacuated to northern India and West-Pakistan. The USA had lost Florida, Louisiana and many other parts of the gulf-coast. Brazil would have experienced an enormous loss of land because large parts of the amazon jungle is just a few dozens meters above pre-flood sea-level. This was only prevented by large dikes, though within the next few years they would be overflowed too. Russia and Australia gained large new inland lakes as the sea flowed into the land-sinks in Siberia and central Australia. China had lost large parts of its north-eastern territory, while the Persian gulf was now washing over the outskirts of Baghdad. The only parts of the world that did not experienced large flooding by now were nearly all in Africa and the shores along the Mediterranean, but it would be only a few more years when the water will flow into the Mediterranean. Some experts said this will even cause the rising sea levels to go down a bit because of the filling of the empty space between Africa and Europe, as well as the Brazilian plains. 

By now, already 300 million people worldwide were living in semi-finished floating islands, beginning to customize to the new environments. Some islands were even already afloat, heading for their new destination around the equator. 

By 2040 the global sea-level his risen by 1800 meter. Nearly all of Europe and Australia were gone, most parts of the Antarctic ice-shield had molten. Because of disease, small wars, 'social encouragement' and secret sterilization the global population had dropped to below 4,5 billion. Two thirds of them were already living on floating islands, the rest within the Alps, Turkey, the Andes, the Rocky mountains, the highlands of Iran, Central Asia, the Tibetan plateau and the African highlands in the east and south were waiting for the last few hundred islands to be finished. 

17^th May 2052

Over one thousand ships and floating island had gathered over a certain point that the people born before the flood have known as the Himalayan. Several billion people around the world in front of holo-screens and near the sight watched in awe and also sadness a small piece of rock protruding out of the water. Two flags are erected on this piece of rock, one is the Union Jack of the former United Kingdom, the other one of the United Nations. Millions of people watch the water rise by the minute, hundreds if not thousands of smaller boats and rafts circling around the rock. 

At 13:52 the typhons (ship-horns) of all the floating islands and ships around the rock wail at the same time, being heard for hundreds of sea-miles as the sea washes over the top of Mount Everest. From now on Earth has become a waterworld, all dry land was now under water.

So, how is life in this waterworld like, after the new sea-level has stabilized itself roughly 15 kilometers above pre-flood level?

Life on the islands fleet is different to the ones before the flood, though not that different. There are no cars or trucks, all islands are nearly totally free from cars. Transportation on the islands is mostly done via the tori-tubes, the subway system inside the tubes that keep the islands afloat, or tramways or monorails on top of the platforms. Also cycling or electric bikes are very popular. The islands themselves are connected either by fleets of ground-effect-vehicle, like the Russian built Lun-class ekranoplan, or simple ferries, if you are not in a rush. An exception is the twin-city of San Francisco, which consists of two floating islands connected by the rebuilt Golden Gate Bridge, although today it is only used by pedestrians or cyclers. There is still some sort of air-travel, although only a fraction by pre-flood standard. Only the largest islands (in most cases the capital islands) have floating airstrips connected to their sides for airplanes to land on. 

Social life compared to living on dry land is not that much different, although private space is much rarer than before. The cities are not that cramped and filled like in the movie 'Soylent Green', but nevertheless pretty filled up with humans. Some even compare it to the Quarian space ship fleet of the computer game series 'Mass Effect'. For most people life would go on similar like pre-flood times. Bakers would bake bread (although it is much more expensive since growing grain at the same scale as before the flood is impossible), policemen would secure the order (already smaller contravention are punished on most islands with severe civil penalties like cleaning all the dustbins on the streets for half a year for public urination), teachers would teach their students, sailors would patrol the seas and so on. But there are certain jobs that went nearly extinct like the real estate broker, since every single square meter on those islands is already used for something. But some real estate broker now sell yachts and smaller sailboats instead. And everyone who is not able to swim by the age of three is considered a barbarian now.

Unlike earlier times when children were asked what kind of job they want to do when they grow up, they do not say astronaut or similar (the global astronaut crops has shrunken dramatically in the first decades after the deluge, although later they would sky-rocket, more on that in a later part), but instead they say 'engineer'. The engineer is surely the most important job on each island and entire armies of engineers keep them working. They are the ones that keep the water flowing out of the tap, the apartments illuminated, the subways working, the waste water processed, the azimuth thrusters spinning and the ships afloat. They are the new heroes of this age.

The diet of most people have also changed dramatically. Of course sea-food is now much more important, but even so there is still a consumption of land-food, although smaller and also different than before. Large animals like pigs and cows are only bred in small numbers, cows mostly to produce milk. The three most important animals groups to provide enough protein for a healthy diet are fish, poultry and insects. The number of fish have exploded since the world turned into a large single ocean, but it is still regulated in which areas to fish and when to prevent over-fishing. Poultry is nearly as important, although smaller then at pre-flood times. The easiest and fastest method to grow proteins are insects. There are several dozens types of insects that reproduce fast and are edible for human consumption. For people of western origin this was one of the largest problems for their new diet, to get used to this sort of food, which is why on islands of European and North-American origin insects are first processed (mostly by processing them into minced meat and add artificial flavors) before they are consumed to overcome their disgust. McDonald’s for example sells a very popular 'Hopper-Burger'. But in general the overall diet of people tends now towards a more vegetarian one. Unlike in the decades before it is rare to have meat on your plate each day, or if, the amount is smaller. The most important food plants are potato, rice, several sorts of grain (mostly wheat, the second most important one is barley, nearly 80% of the global barley-harvest each year is used to make beer), several sorts of algae, as well as several sorts of trees for fruits. Vegetables are mostly grown in automated hydroponic farms. But since all fleets are gathered along the equator, the fleets can produce several harvests are year.

The internet is still intact today, many servers have continuously been moved around the world until they were installed on the islands. Communication is today mostly not via fiber-cables but laser-beams. Several thousand small unmanned blimps in the higher atmosphere, above the weather zone, act as communication-hubs, being armed with large numbers of lasers to send the information back and forth. The transmission rate is two terabyte a second with the newest lasers.

The floating islands are organized in gigantic fleets which are positioned around the equator, since the global ocean has caused two large hypercanes to appear, one on the northern hemisphere and one on the southern. Even though the islands are in no danger ever of capsizing, no one wants to get near a storm with wind speeds of over 400 kilometers per hour. The various European nations together with Russia, the Caucasus republics and Turkey have formed the European Island Fleet, which by pre-flood standards is nearly to be considered a confederation. The Canadian Island fleet is an associated member of this fleet. The USA Island fleet on the other hand has grown into a more loose union, because now each island was even more isolated from the others than the various states before the deluge. Home-grown terrorists several times tried to take over entire islands and secede from the USA, like the Texan incident where several thousand secessionists tried to gain control of the USIS (US-Island-Ship) Dallas and the USIS Austin, which was put down by three battalion of the US Marine corps, which practically has replaced the US Army. 

The two main African fleets are merely a conglomeration of the various tribes from Africa. Pretty much all nations of the former continent of Africa have dissolved and the islands are now banded together by the tribal heritage for example there is a Zulu island fleet or a Massai island.

The two largest fleets are the Indian/South-East-Asian Islands fleet and the Chinese Island fleet, both harboring more than 780 to 800 million inhabitants. Smaller fleets are the Japanese Island fleet or the Iranian Island fleet, the smallest one is the Australian / New Zealand / Pacific Island fleet. Each of them are given their respective territory around or near the equator by the FCA, now the third pillar of the UN, together with the Security council and the general assembly, all three on the island of Atlantis. 

Although within the larger fleets, there are still the national fleets with their own respective currencies, it has become nearly normal that each island has its own unofficial currency. Pretty much all islands of Europe for example has adopted the Euro (the only exception is the island fleet of England, Scotland on the other hand has adopted the Euro), but there are hundreds of unofficial currencies, like for example the Sea-Francs in some Swiss islands. Since this double system boosted the local economies of each island the governments in the end made this dual system official. On a worldwide scale there is not one reserve currency, but a mix of the 20 most important fleet currencies would be used to form the 'Terran Credit Unit', which would be used for example for state bonds or state loans, supervised by the FCA, acting like some sort of global treasury. 

Each island is surrounded by a large raft section which is not supported by steel frames, floating directly on the ocean's surface. On top of them are thick layers of fertile soil, used to grow grain or in the cases of the genetic databank islands, are used as habitats for the last living specimen of nearly all land animals. 

And even though living space is scarce, there are two things that the people on these islands have in abundance: electric energy and fresh water. The electric energy is produced by ocean thermal energy conversion engines, which use the temperature difference between cold depth water and warm surface water. A side effected of this energy production is the production of large amounts of desalinated water. With the addition of small amounts of important salts and minerals this can be used as fresh-water. But the production of this desalinated water is so large that most of it is simply discharged into the ocean which has the side effect that around every island a zone of fresh-water developed, in which plants and animals flourish that normally would have grown in river-deltas or some even in mountain-lakes. 

The only fleet that has not positioned itself near the equator is the North-Korean fleet. North and South Korea haven't been able to unite even with a disaster of such large-scale dimension. They only agreed on a peace-treaty and banded together in a loose union, exchanging modern technology of the South for resources from the North. After the Baekdu mountain sank below the sea the fleet headed for the North-Pole, positioning itself there. Nobody really knows what is going on there since it has cut connections to pretty any other fleet. Reconnaissance from orbit and submarine drones suggest that the fleet has developed into a nearly medieval society, with the Kim dynasty on top while the rest of the population lives in near serfdom. 

Aside from the official fleets there are also large unofficial fleets. If you take in account the number of vessels, the largest fleet is not the Chinese Island fleet, but the fleet of independent merchants, who live abroad the borders of the official fleets. But there are also large parts of them inside the territories of the official fleets, despite the swarms of unmanned submarine-drones patrolling the oceans. Some of those merchants trade with artifacts from before the deluge, some others have banded together and sell rare spices, grown on their ships, others grow poppy seed and hashish on their ships and produce large amounts of drugs outside the controlled zones. And there are others again which have built their own crude floating islands, mostly just very old ships welded together to form a platform for buildings. Some of these islands function as docking stations for pirates, others are large casinos and brothels.

Then there are looter-merchants, that own large swimming drilling-platforms that have been rebuilt, now carrying unmanned submarines on the underside, connected by kilometers of wire, to be sent down to submerged cities for either resources, but in mots cases to bring up parts of certain buildings, for example one billionaire who built himself a fleet of several ships for his own, wanted to own parts of the Great Chinese wall, which mostly had been left behind on the now sea-floor.

Energy for the ships are produced by several ways. The US, England, France, Russia, China, India, Brazil and Poland have built large fleets of nuclear powered freighters. With the exception of Brazil and Poland those nations have largely used their nuclear arsenal to build nuclear fuel rods. Each of these nations have enough stocks to last several hundred years for their entire fleets. Others like Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, South Korea and Chile have refitted their freighters and us electric engines powered by hydrogen fuel cells, with the hydrogen produced by the ocean thermal energy conversion engines of the islands. But pretty much every other nation uses the same old freighters as before, only that they do not burn the dirty fuel oil, but oil that was produced out of certain micro-algae, which are harvested from the ocean. Those ships would not need to be refitted. The same algae are also used to produce jet fuel or fuel for the several thousand zeppelins that are now flying all over the place. But there are also freighters that just use wind, catching the wind with large kites called sky-sails. 

There are several types of floating islands (those will be posted and explained later) but for pretty much all people on those islands one thing is for sure: When will the first floating island sink? Despite being miracles of modern technology, those islands need permanent maintenance and partially also rebuilding to fit the actual needs of its citizens. Some scientists estimate that in the next 200 years the first islands would sink, either because they deteriorated beyond repair or probably war. Under the 'Treaty of the Seas' all islands have to be unarmed, no gun turrets, rocket or grenade launchers or energy weapons of any kind are allowed to be installed on the ships. That is why each of them are harboring fleets of patrol boats and also warships. Nearly all navies in the world use nuclear energy to propel them, but only three nations (the USA, Russia and China) has a small number of nuclear weapons left, each about one hundred (although it is rumored that North-Korea has its own small nuclear arsenal too). It isn't said that at a certain point the fleets wouldn't go to war with each other when the state of their islands would get worse. 

So...to save humankind from extinction there is only one way left – to flee to outer space.

...to be continued in 'Floating Island: Type Space-Port'