History Main / FallenStatesOfAmerica

* Parodied [[PoesLaw (probably)]] in Creator/{{Greg Egan}}'s story "In the Ruins", which extrapolates America's cultural AntiIntellectualism to such an extreme that the result is a country in which infrastructure is falling apart because of the populace's embrace of every kind of pseudoscience, and the scientists who are trying[[note]]and failing, due to society's refusal to cooperate[[/note]] to fix things are now derided, being called [[BigStupidDooDooHead "poopyheads"]] [[SophisticatedAsHell even on national news broadcasts]] at best, and outright hated at worst. It's implied that the US took the rest of the Western World down with it, and its place on the world stage taken by the Middle East, which has become secular and democratic. This ultimately means that the direction of "brain drain" has been reversed, as now it's young Americans who want to move to other countries to seek better lives than they would live if they remained at home.
* ''Literature/{{Patternist}}'': In the late 21[[superscript:st]]-Century setting of ''Clay's Ark'', the United States has mostly degenerated into walled enclaves of the privileged, crime-infested urban "sewers", and lawless rural areas dominated by gangs. One character is seen as nearly insane for immigrating from Europe. By ''Patternmaster'', America is entirely gone, replaced by a FeudalFuture and a SupernaturalElite.
* Implied to have happened in ''Literature/TheKillingStar'' before the [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter R-bombings]]. On the eve of her tricentennial, America had exclusive preservationist communities that replicated 20th-century architecture- from the streets to fake TV antennae- to recapture the "glory days." There's a mention of Mexico protesting the growing number of American illegals crossing the Rio Grande, while [[ChinaTakesOverTheWorld China]] was the richest country and last democracy on Earth before the destruction of civilization.
* The classic 1950 sci-fi story ''Coming Attraction'' by Creator/FritzLeiber, set during an ongoing war between the US and the Soviet Union. A Hell-Bomb has been dropped on New York, violent street gangs make everyone afraid to go out at night, and the protagonist is involved in bartering British electronics for American wheat, implying that the US economy has collapsed. Plus both sides are racing to build a MoonBase that can be used for nuclear missiles.
* The Sixth World of ''Literature/TrailOfLightning'' saw the Energy Wars destroy much of the world and the Big Water flood what was left. Of the former United States, the last heir of its government is the Republic of New Denver (as known to the people of Dinétah in the American Southwest, at least).
* ''Literature/AfterTheRevolution'': After the SecondAmericanCivilWar and [[DividedStatesOfAmerica the division of the US]], most of the successor territories of the US became failed states. While the north-eastern American Federation is implied to be mostly stable (although suffering from economic inequality, is dependent on imports of practically everything and is an international laughingstock), the southern United Christian States are a theocratic backwater, Florida has become a BananaRepublic, Texas has turned into civil-war era UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} with a weak libertarian government battling several different ideological and popular uprisings backed by foreign governments, most of the south-west collapsed entirely from climate change and a lack of water, the Republic of California suffering from its own water shortage and a weak economy, and the north-western Cascadia being a stable but ultimately irrelevant rump state in constant conflict with California. Canada outright annexed much of the Great Lakes region to keep the area stable, and the midwest is halfway ruled by the [=AmFed=] and halfway abandoned entirely.
* In the backstory of ''Literature/FitzpatricksWar'', the United States of the latter years of the 21st Century is portrayed as a dysfunctional mess in which gangs and populist movements not only terrorized the streets but had grown powerful enough to control Congress. [[spoiler:It's little wonder the early [[TheConspiracy Timermen]] concluded that unleashing [[ResetButton the Storm Times]] and destroying modern civlization would be an ''improvement'']].
* ''Literature/ViceroysPride'': [[spoiler:Ibis basically conquers the entire world in book 2... only to promptly commit suicide on live television when he swallows a mana crystal in a vain attempt to gain magic. His Illuminati backers try to take over in his stead. In book 3, Dan manages to put things back together ''relatively'' quickly by running his mercenary company and backing a ReasonableAuthorityFigure mayor]].
* ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'' states that the United States still exists, but it is a shadow of its former self, following the disastrous Purity War. Many cities in the Midwest are quarantined as part of an experiment to produce genetically pure people. Nobody knows what happens in the West Coast, as the terrain is too rough to traverse, implying that it is a no man's land.
* In the ''Literature/LegendSeries'', not only the United States has divided in two, the remnants aren't idyllic places to live in. The Republic is a nightmarish dystopia ruled by a totalitarian government, while the Colonies is a consumer-dominated police state.
* In ''Literature/TheMazeRunner'', the U.S. government collapsed shortly after the Flare virus outbreak, and settlements now operate independently.

* ''The Fire Next Time'': This 1993 TV movie has global warming turn the USA into a nation of climate refugees seeking entry into Canada.

* ''Series/{{Incorporated}}'': Climate change has devastated the United States so that outside the corporate-owned "Green Zones" the country is one big slum. The pilot shows a news report about Canada building a wall to keep out illegal American immigrants and the fourth episode opens with a Chinese ad soliciting donations to aid children in America.

* Creator/GamesWorkshop's now-defunct TabletopGame/DarkFuture had an [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture America of the mid-90s]] wracked by environmental damage, essentially owned by Japanese {{megacorp}} [=GenTech=] in which the cities were divided into Policed Zones and No-Go Ghettos and most of the Southern States were effectively independent of Washington.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}}'' has the trope bad, as it takes place in an AlternateHistory where America collapsed instead of the Soviet Union. The US still exists, but is only really in control of the Eastern seaboard. The Midwest and Southwest are dominated by corporate enclaves, roving nomad bands and subsistence farmers trying to eke out a living and avoid being swallowed by big agribusinesses. Texas, Utah and Nevada have all broken off from the Union. California has seceded, broken up into [=SoCal=] and [=NorCal=], and is owned in all but name by [[MegaCorp the Arasaka corporation.]] In the Pacific Northwest, Militech has for all practical purposes taken over the function of the Federal, State and local governments, and Wyoming (of all places) is a socialist state that pays lip service to the Federal government, but is ''de facto'' independent.

* In ''VideoGame/MentalOmega'',a GameMod of VideoGame/RedAlert2, the poor US falls ''twice''.
** Throughout Act 1, a re-tread of the Third World War from the base game, the Allies do ''much'' worse against the Soviets than they canonically did (as in, they spend the entire Act getting their faces smashed in), including the US...which isn't helped ''at all'' by the other Allied subfactions, the Euro Alliance and Pacific Front, slipping into UngratefulBastard mode and deciding to help themselves to the US' laser technology instead of fully help them against the Russian/Latin Confederation invasion. End result? The whole country's conquered by the end of Act 1, re-organised into the ''Soviet'' States Of America.
** Act 2 has them falling prey to the influence of the newly-emerging Epsilon Army (the mod's version of Yuri's faction), starting with Stalington DC getting mind-controlled by a Psychic Beacon and [[spoiler:ending with the ''entire'' country being mass-brainwashed, along with the rest of the world, by the [[AntagonistTitle Mental Omega]] [[MindControlDevice Device's]] activation at the end of Act 2.]]

* ''Webcomic/BluRiversRevolution'' features the fractured United State, a massively corrupt and unstable republic controlled by corporate interests in the midst of a civil war.

* In the Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom story ''[[Literature/FearLoathingAndGumboOnTheCampaignTrailSeventyTwo Rumsfeldia]]'', the American government implements a hyper-capitalist economic policy, dismantling all corporate regulations, completely eliminating all forms of welfare, and even implementing an "investment certificate" system as a substitute for wages so that corporations don't have to actually pay their employees. Without any social services or worker protection, living standards in the United States go down the toilet with widespread poverty, terrible working conditons, and rampant disease caused by the gutting of the healthcare system.
* A civil war in the U.S. prior to the events of the ''WebVideo/SMPEarth'' Octangula ARG has led to Wyoming becoming "Laramie" and Oregon, California and Washington becoming "Cascadia".
* ''Website/AtlasOfMedievalAmerica'' imagines a world where human civilization is blasted back to TheMiddleAges overnight, and what the USA (which had no medieval period to revert to) would become by the 26th Century. The site remains unfinished to this day, but some of the resulting countries are named. The [[VestigialEmpire rump United States of America]] is an oligarchic maritime republic centered in Baltimore that controls isolated enclaves and the major shipping lanes along the East Coast extending into Canada; the Great Plains are inhabited by a loose confederation of nomadic tribes; the Confederate States (including an independent Georgia and the "Red River Territory") have reverted to plantation slavery but not along racial lines as [[InTheFutureHumansWillBeOneRace everyone in the South is biracial]] by that point; California splits into the northern "Republic" and the Scientologist-controlled southern "Free Zone"; the "Territory of Iowa" is a military dictatorship controlling all land between the Missouri and Wabash rivers; the "State of Deseret" is a Mormon theocracy controlling Wyoming and parts of Utah and Ohio; Washington DC became a city-state under the control of the American Non-Denominational Church similar to the Holy See, with the Supreme Court and Chief Justice filling the roles of the College of Cardinals and Pope; it also mentions several warlords in the East and Ancient Egyptian-style kingdoms clustered around rivers in the Western desert.

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[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/Fallout3 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fallout_3.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Land of the broken, home of the slain...]]

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[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* The setting of MediaNotes/{{the Bronze Age|OfComicBooks}} Creator/MarvelComics version of ''[=Deathlok=]'' was a future United States where [[ANuclearError a limited nuclear war]] has left the country devastated, with roaming gangs and independent groups vying for control with factions and remnants of the CIA and the military.
* In the Creator/DCComics series ''[[ComicBook/JonahHex Hex]]'', set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture (from the readers' perspective), the United States seems to have fragmented into various locales ruled by warlords or, in the case of UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, by a successor to Franchise/{{Batman}}.
* Something like this is also the result of the supervillains' takeover in ''ComicBook/TheWastelands''. The United States is divided into the warring fiefdoms of various major Marvel villains, so that, for example, the Red Skull controls what used to be the Eastern Seaboard.

* ''ComicBook/JourJ'': In "Apocalypse sur le Texas", the Cuban missile crisis went hot, with the US and the USSR nuking each other. While the USSR was completely destroyed (and they couldn't be sure until several years after the incident due to the radioactivity), the habitable areas of the US are effectively independent territories split off from each other (led by, among others, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and Charlton Heston), with France and the UK being the only nuclear powers (in fact, the only ''world'' powers) left. The actual Texan Apocalypse referred to is caused by Heston's religious lunatics trying to launch unfired nukes in Texas, countered by a Franco-English landing. [[spoiler:In the end, the nukes wouldn't have launched because their fuel had been siphoned out years before.]]
* The series ''Post Americana'' is set several generations after a nuclear war destroyed America, turning it into a mostly barren wasteland sparsely inhabited by scavengers and small communities clinging to sustenance... and then there's The Bubble, an UndergroundCity based out of the NORAD complex where [[TheElitesJumpShip the descendants of the rich and powerful who rode out the war]] have been living comfortably, and are now prepared to reconquer America.

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/SoylentGreen'' has America among many other nations ravaged by environmental changes with humanity and society both physical and psychological is falling apart, especially with the oceans polluted and the world economy collapsing.
* ''Film/TheLastChase'' has America being ruled by a new fascistic regime where those who oppose it are eliminated. Not good for societal development.
* Implied in the Film version of ''Film/VForVendetta'', which opens with Lewis Prothero claiming the 'Ulcered Sphincter of Arse-erica' has become 'the world's biggest leper colony' and its government is desperately petitioning the British government to supply it with humanitarian aid and medical supplies.
** Considering [[PropagandaMachine what the guy does for a living]], however, this information should probably be taken with [[UnreliableNarrator a large grain of salt.]] America ''is'' however in the middle of a second civil war, so there is apparently ''some'' truth to it.
* ''Film/EscapeFromNewYork'' and ''Film/EscapeFromLA'' feature a war-ravaged USA under a dictatorship in all but name, and former great cities used as penal colonies.
** Not only that, but the US military strength is not what it used to be, considering that an invasion by several South American nations is seen as a real threat, and the only way to stop it is to use a superweapon.
** WordOfGod is that Snake may be in part to blame for the state of the world in the second film, after stealing and (presumably) destroying the President's tape. According to the creators, the tape had the [[spoiler:secret to cold fusion]].
** The tie-in [[ComicBook/EscapeFromNewYork comic series]] goes much further with the concept, with dialogue and certain panels showing that the country is fractured in various ways. When Snake reads a map in the first issue of the series, one can see that at least ten states (including New York) have been crossed out with red X's, implying that they've been either completely destroyed or abandoned. The "Join or Die" historical image from the inside cover of each issue loses the segment representing Pennsylvania from the second issue onwards, implying the same thing. Finally, after the TimeSkip between the third and fourth storyarcs, the world has progressed into a NewOldWest state, with infrastructure having heavily degraded in the interim.
* In ''Film/TheForeverPurge'', as a result of the GovernmentConspiracy's plan GoneHorriblyWrong a significant portion of the United States has devolved into BombThrowingAnarchists seeking ToCreateAPlaygroundForEvil, and ultimately succeed in their plan by destroying the government.

* ''Film/TheRunningMan'': The world's economy is in shambles, along with the United States, which has become a police state. In [[Literature/TheRunningMan the book it was based on however, it's even worse,]] being a polluted {{Cyberpunk}} dystopia where everyone is kept docile through the use of BloodSport BreadAndCircuses TV and the poor are ridiculously, horribly poor.

* In ''Film/TheDayAfterTomorrow'', the US becomes so endangered by a climate change superstorm bringing temperatures down that Americans had to emigrate to Mexico. There was even a speech by the Vice President thanking Mexico for their hospitality.

* ''Film/BarbWire'' is a blatant ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'' rip-off set in a dystopian future where continuous wars have turned the US into a third-world dictatorship with obvious Nazi overtones. It's telling when the protagonist demands that she be paid for the job in ''Canadian'' dollars, meaning American dollars aren't worth much, and everyone is trying to emigrate to Canada.

* The news reports in ''Film/ChildrenOfMen'' mention that the USA has collapsed, with a nuclear bomb going off in NYC, and militias taking control of the cities of Spokane, Cincinati and Bozeman.
* ''Film/{{Interstellar}}'': America has become a rural scavenger society, with dust bowls, dwindling resources and food shortages commonplace thanks to a global blight. Technologies such as [=MRIs=] either no longer exist or can't be made in mass quantities, while regular people like Coop salvage solar cells from surveillance drones for their cars. In addition, militaries and agencies like [=NASA=] have been publicly disbanded, with references to them having bombed starving civilians, and schoolchildren are taught that the moon landings were a hoax designed to bankrupt the Soviets, all to convince them that they should stay on Earth to try and fix it, rather than leave. And America, while hanging on by a thread, is implied to be doing ''better'' [[CrapsackWorld than many other countries]].
* ''Film/America3000'' is set in a future where the United States is devastated by nuclear war. Out of the ashes, female warlords (war-ladies?) called Tiaras fight for dominance among the ruins of American cities.

* Brandon Sanderson's ''Literature/TheReckonersTrilogy'' is set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture after individuals with super powers (called Epics) have arisen and taken over the world. While at first the governments tried to stop them, they proved utterly incapable, so the United States devolved into the Fractured States. Basically any territory the Epics have no interest in.
* In ''Literature/SnowCrash'', America is just a stub-state, existing in the cracks between independent corporate domains.
* ''Literature/TheManInTheHighCastle'', by Creator/PhilipKDick. America loses UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and is divided up by the Axis powers.
* ''Literature/SprawlTrilogy''. Because of [[Creator/WilliamGibson Gibson's]] love of the incredibly vague description, it's not certain, but the US Government has been destroyed following a financial collapse (ironically similar to what happened to the Soviet Union after the books were written). The most frequently seen part is the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Area or "The Sprawl", and most of the US outside the Sprawl is implied to be very, very unpleasant.
* In ''Literature/ParableOfTheSower'' the United States has collapsed into a dystopia filled with gangs, prostitution and slavery. (It's set in a TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture California)
* In Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka's ''Literature/{{Warday}}'', the US and USSR engage in a limited nuclear exchange; years later, the US is a third world nation slowly balkanizing into separate countries.
* In the AlternateHistory novel ''Literature/BringTheJubilee'' by Ward Moore, the US is defeated by the Confederate States of America in the Civil War. While the CSA is prosperous, the rump United States is plagued by poverty, unemployment, racism, and political corruption.

*''Literature/ElevenTwentyTwoSixtyThree'' by Creator/StephenKing: the main character goes back in time and stops Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating John F. Kennedy. When he returns to the present, he finds that preventing Kennedy's death has changed history for the worse: the United States is impoverished and wracked with racial tension, crime, and political extremism. The situation is so bad that Maine has [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere voted to secede from the Union]] and is now a Canadian province.
* Creator/KurtVonnegut's ''Literature/SlaughterhouseFive'' has the United States of the future bombed "by angry Chinamen" and [[BalkanizeMe Balkanized]] into a number of heavily-militarized zones so as not to be a threat to anyone.
* ''Literature/TheRunningMan'': The world's economy is in shambles, along with the United States, which has become a police state.

* Creator/KimNewman and Brain Craig's ''Literature/DarkFuture'' novels for Creator/GamesWorkshop greatly expanded on the base concept of a crapsack US of A, piling economic collapse on top of a reduction in the President's status from Most Powerful Man In The World to somewhere around 138th Most Powerful Man In The World.

* Many modern Russian sci-fi writers tend to be anti-American and will gladly include at least a mention of America that has fallen on hard times, had another Civil War, or [[spoiler:[[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking has become all-black]]]]. Naturally, the glorious Mother Russia rises again.
* ''In The Presence of Mine Enemies'' features a globe-girdling German Empire consisting of the Reich proper, satellite states in Europe, and Occupied North and South America. The USA in particular was nuked, blasting Washington, DC off the map. The new capital is in Omaha, and the US dollar is practically worthless.
* Mack Maloney's ''Wingman'' series of modern pulp novels takes place in a world where World War III led to the United States soundly beating the Soviet Union in Europe, only for the traitorous Vice President to lower the missile defenses and lead to a nuking of the United States. The entire Midwest is a mostly deserted radioactive wasteland, and at the time the series begins the nation has collapsed into warring states and city-states and SkyPirates. A major part of the series involves the protagonist and his military friends gradually rebuilding America and fighting the remnants of the USSR.
* In Brendan [=DuBois=]' alternate history novel ''Resurrection Day'', the United States has fallen on hard times ten years after the Cuban Missiles Crisis turned the Cold War hot. Washington, New York, South Florida, Omaha, and dozens of old SAC bases around the country are radioactive craters. Although ostensibly still a democracy, a military dictatorship effectively rules what's left, and people are subject to rationing, curfews, censorship, travel restrictions, and being shipped off to do decontamination work in the restricted zones if they get out of line. The nation is reliant on humanitarian and food aid from the UK, and the rest of the world treats the country as a pariah, since as bad as the US got, the Soviet Union fared far, far worse in the exchange.

* John Birmingham's ''Literature/WithoutWarning'' series is focused on what happens when a NegativeSpaceWedgie known as the Wave suddenly "removes" most of the population of the US, effectively removing the world's only remaining superpower on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The second novel in the series is even called ''After America''.
* In the beginning of ''Literature/AtlasShrugged'', it's a moderately decadent United States that merely [[DownplayedTrope downplays this trope]]. The events of the book involve the society of the United States undergoing a degeneration into extreme economic collapse, both because of the actions of the looters in the government, as well as the ways in which John Galt and the strikers react to these actions.

* The ''Daybreak'' series is about a radical environmentalist group using nanotech, biological agents, and fusion bombs (super nukes) to destroy modern technology and infrastructure, sending the world back into (at best) early [=1800s=] tech. While this is a global event, the main focus is on the United States, and its disintegration over the course of the series. By the time the series is done: after the nuking of DC, two rival governments emerge -- the Provisional Constitutional Government, based in Olympia, Washington, which directly controls the Pacific Northwest and has influence over the entire western half of the country, and the Temporary National Government, based in Athens, Georgia, which controls most of the South (and which is later taken over by religious extremists who declare the region the Christian States of America). Utah, Texas, and California (which is taken over by a neo-feudal movement and declared a duchy) become highly autonomous, with the latter two eventually seceding. Alaska secedes early on. Hawaii dissolves into chaos and loses contact with the mainland. Arizona loses territory to California and Nevada, as well as the Apache and Navajo nations, which declare independence. Oklahoma likewise loses its eastern half to Native American independence, resulting in the Allied First Nations and Western Oklahoma. Montana is part of the PCG, but has strong movements for both independence and federating with Alberta. And then there's the Lost Quarter, the entire region north of the Carolinas and east of Kentucky and Illinois, which is so heavily devastated by the immediate and after effects of Daybreak and overrun by pro-Daybreak tribals that any large government in the area is impossible. That said, there are a few centers of civilization -- Castle Earthstone in Indiana, a tribal stronghold that declares independence from Daybreak and eventually establishes a Domain around the eastern Great Lakes region; Pelissipi, several counties along the Virginia/West Virgina border region which banded together to drive off the tribals and found a new state; and Manbrookstat, which is technically just a city-state operating out of the ruins of New York City, but whose totalitarian leader, the Commandant, declares nominal control of all Lost Quarter territory not claimed by the TNG/CSA or the Domain. And further complicating things is the Commandant founding the Atlantic League (a confederacy of similar city-states around the Atlantic), and opening the Lost Quarter to colonization by his partners.
* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': The Nations of North America have been gone for at least 175 years. The United States and its Republic are even noted. In their place is Panem, a totalitarian state composed of thirteen Districts and the Capitol, which possibly represents the last bastion of humanity.
* ''Armageddon 2419 A.D.'' takes place in this sort of BadFuture, where America was weakened by a [[HilariousInHindsight Second World War]] in which all of Europe formed an alliance against them, and is subsequently conquered by Mongolian invaders who sacked the entire country but don't bother subjugating the populace because there own technologically advanced society is too self-sustaining to have any use for America's resources or manual labor. As a result, America is left as an anarchistic wasteland where the ruins have been almost completely reclaimed by nature, and the closest thing to a government is a handful of loosely affiliated "gangs" (basically fiefdoms).
* In Vera Nazarian's ''Literature/TheAtlantisGrail'' series, the United States has fallen into second-world status due to several causes such as damage through climate change (Manhattan is specifically mentioned as now being a city like present-day Venice) and the rise of China and new nations (such as 'Greater Scandinavia' and 'United Industan' - the merger of India and Pakistan into a single super-power). Also, it's heavily implied that the West Coast of the U.S. has fallen on hard times due to radiation from the 2011 Japanese tsunami and nuclear accidents, as the main character's family moves to Vermont from California after the mother develops cancer (from radiation exposure suffered during their time in Los Angeles).

Not explicitly stated, but implied in order for the settings of video games where you play as a VillainProtagonist who did criminal acts, mostly WideOpenSandbox games, like ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'', ''VideoGame/SaintsRow'', and ''VideoGame/PAYDAY2'' to exist. Those games feature largely autonomous city-states run by criminals with easy access to military-grade firepower fighting against systematically-corrupt and highly-militarized police forces, while the political leaders are even more cartoonishly corrupt than they are in real-life, approaching an odd mix between post-collapse former Soviet states and war-torn African nations.

* The setting of UsefulNotes/{{the Bronze Age|OfComicBooks}} Creator/MarvelComics version of ''[=Deathlok=]'' was a future United States where [[ANuclearError a limited nuclear war]] has left the country devastated, with roaming gangs and independent groups vying for control with factions and remnants of the CIA and the military.

Not explicitly stated, but implied in order for the settings of videogames where you play as a VillainProtagonist who did criminal acts, mostly WideOpenSandbox games, like ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'', ''VideoGame/SaintsRow'', and ''Videogame/PAYDAY2'' to exist. Those games feature largely autonomous city-states run by criminals with easy access to military-grade firepower fighting against systematically-corrupt and highly-militarized police forces, while the political leaders are even more cartoonishly corrupt than they are in real-life, approaching an odd mix between post-collapse former Soviet states and war-torn African nations.

* ''Series/DarkAngel'': After the denotation of an EMP device by terrorist groups in 2009, the United States is barely more than a third world nation.

* Even before nuclear war broke out in the universe of ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', the United States was on the decline, with the government growing increasingly tyrannical and warlike in the wake of resource shortages. Hundreds of years after the bombs fell, there's nothing left of the U.S. government but the Enclave, who are always the antagonist when they show up and were secretly responsible for [[spoiler: the many inhumane experiments conducted on the citizens of the Vaults.]]
* {{Downplayed}} in ''VideoGame/FarCry5'', but radio broadcasts make it clear the United States isn't doing great. The reason the Federal Government hasn't gotten involved with stopping Eden's Gate are the ongoing tensions with North Korea in the Pacific and across the Middle East, with many response teams moved to cities along the coasts. Meanwhile, America is also facing terrorist threats, a multi-state drought, a security breach at a major credit company, a nuclear power plant having to be shut down following a malfunction, and major federal budget cuts and many store chains declaring bankruptcy, suggesting a depression is on the way. [[spoiler: Made worse following a nuclear attack on Moscow that leaves millions dead, eventually spiraling into a full-scale nuclear war.]]

* The news reports in ''Film/ChildrenOfMen'' mention that the USA has collapsed, with a nuclear bomb going off in NYC, and militias taking control of the cities of Spokane, Cincinatti and Bozeman.

* ''VideoGame/AMindForeverVoyaging'' depicts a world where the US is in danger of becoming this. The player experiences several simulations of a possible future, each one set 10 years after the previous one. The situation worsens with each simulation, as the economy collapses, law enforcement becomes more brutal and corrupt, a border security force frequently searches homes (and becomes less apologetic and more harsh about it in each period), racism and religious intolerance become more overt, and dusk to dawn curfews are enforced. In the final simulation, the last vestiges of authority have collapsed, and anarchy ensues with the city streets now home to violent gangs and wild dogs killing weaker people for food. Naturally, the player's goal is to prevent these possible futures from coming to pass.

* Parodied [[PoesLaw (probably)]] in Creator/{{Greg Egan}}’s story “In the Ruins”, which extrapolates America’s cultural AntiIntellectualism to such an extreme that the result is a country in which infrastructure is falling apart because of the populace’s embrace of every kind of pseudoscience, and the scientists who are trying[[note]]and failing, due to society’s refusal to cooperate[[/note]] to fix things are now AcceptableTargets, being called [[BigStupidDooDooHead “poopyheads”]] [[SophisticatedAsHell even on national news broadcasts]] at best, and outright hated at worst. It’s implied that the US took the rest of the Western World down with it, and its place on the world stage taken by the Middle East, which has become secular and democratic. This ultimately means that the direction of “brain drain” has been reversed, as now it’s young Americans who want to move to other countries to seek better lives than they would live if they remained at home.

* Something like this is also the result of the supervillains' takeover in the ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} story ''ComicBook/OldManLogan''. The United States is divided into the warring fiefdoms of various major Marvel villains, so that, for example, the Red Skull controls what used to be the Eastern Seaboard.

* Even before nuclear war broke out in the universe of ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', the United States was on the decline, with the government growing increasingly tyrannical and warlike in the wake of resource shortages. Hundreds of years after the bombs fell, there's nothing left of the U.S. government but the Enclave, who are always the antagonist when they show up and were secretly responsible for [[spoiler: the many inhumane experiments conducted on the citizens of the Vaults.]]