GLMZ EXTERNAL INTELLIGENCE DIVISION
COMPILED REFERENCE — ANNUALLY UPDATED
DOCUMENT CLASS: RESTRICTED
RELIABILITY: VARIABLE (SEE INDIVIDUAL ENTRIES)
LAST REVISION: 2226-01-01

THE FIFTY STATES — LAST KNOWN STATUS

Compiled from traveler accounts, signal intelligence, satellite imagery, and rumor. None of this is fully verified. Much of it is contradictory. The reliability rating varies from state to state. If you are reading this document for operational planning purposes, we recommend you also read the supplemental "Known Unknowns" appendix, which has not been updated since 2219 and may itself be unreliable.

--- GREAT LAKES / MIDWEST ---

ILLINOIS. Contains GLMZ and the broader Great Lakes Metropolitan Zone. If you are reading this document, you are probably here. The known world for most residents. Population estimates range from 8 to 14 million depending on who is counting and whether they include the Understory. Governance compact intact. BCI infrastructure functional. This is the baseline. Everything else in this document is measured against the assumption that Illinois is normal. We are aware of the irony.

MICHIGAN. Part of the GLMZ. Detroit is a vertical ruin — upper floors inhabited, lower floors flooded since the lake level adjustments of 2158. Estimated 600,000 residents live above the waterline in what used to be the Renaissance Center and its surrounding towers. The lower twenty floors of most downtown structures are submerged. People boat between buildings. There is a functioning economy. There are children who have never touched dry ground. The western part of the state is agricultural and mostly stable. The Upper Peninsula sends a signal every eighteen months that translates to "still here." We believe them.

WISCONSIN. Part of the GLMZ. Milwaukee functions. Madison functions. The Quiet Zone is expanding in the north — an area where BCI signals degrade, electronics malfunction, and people who enter too deep tend not to come back, or come back different. The Zone was forty square kilometers in 2210. It is now estimated at three hundred. Nobody has authorized an investigation. Three investigations have been proposed. All three proposal authors subsequently transferred to other divisions.

INDIANA. Part of the GLMZ. The southern dead zone. Dust. The soil died first, then the vegetation, then the groundwater. The Indiana Dust settlement persists near what was Bloomington — approximately 2,000 people living in sealed structures, breathing filtered air, growing food hydroponically. They trade with GLMZ via the I-65 corridor, which is maintained by Arcturus Defense Solutions under a perpetual contract nobody remembers signing. The northern third of the state, near the GLMZ border, is functional. The middle third is transitional. The southern third is moon.

OHIO. The Ohio Corridor is a fortified transit route running east from the GLMZ toward what used to be Pittsburgh. It is maintained, armed, and operational. The territory between cities is described in reports as "wrong" — a word that appears in seventeen separate field assessments without further elaboration. Columbus maintains a population. Cleveland maintains a population. Cincinnati sent its last transmission in 2203. A trader who claimed to have passed through Cincinnati in 2221 said the buildings were still standing but the streets were "rearranged." He could not explain what he meant. He became agitated when pressed. He left GLMZ three days later and did not return.

MINNESOTA. Technically part of the GLMZ's extended influence sphere. Minneapolis-St. Paul is a functioning city-state with its own governance compact that they insist is not a governance compact. They trade grain, lumber, and fresh water. They do not trade information. Their BCI network is incompatible with ours. When asked why, their representatives change the subject. Population estimated at 1.2 million. Reliability: moderate.

IOWA. Behemoth country. The Iowan Behemoths — autonomous agricultural machines that went off-network in the 2160s — till soil, harvest nothing, and repeat. Satellite imagery shows perfect geometric crop rows extending hundreds of kilometers. No human settlement detected. No human presence detected. The machines maintain infrastructure that serves no one. Occasionally a Behemoth crosses into the GLMZ border zone and has to be redirected. They comply. They always comply. This is somehow worse.

MISSOURI. Flooded swamp. The Mississippi expanded in the 2140s, the levees failed, and the water never receded. St. Louis is partially submerged. There are reportedly settlements on the higher ground near the Ozarks, but contact is intermittent and unreliable. A signal claiming to be from Jefferson City surfaces every few years, always requesting supplies, never providing coordinates. We have sent three supply convoys into Missouri. One returned. The other two are listed as "status pending" in our records, which is how we say "lost" without saying "lost."

--- SOUTH / SOUTHEAST ---

KENTUCKY. All contact lost. Satellites show green. No structures. No heat signatures. No electromagnetic emissions. No movement. Just green. Unbroken canopy from border to border. The vegetation does not match any known species in our botanical database. Overflights have been attempted twice. Both aircraft returned with corrupted navigation data and flight recorders that contain only a low hum at 23.4 Hz. We do not send aircraft over Kentucky anymore. The entry for Kentucky has not changed in forty-one years.

TENNESSEE. Fragmented. Nashville is controlled by Meridian Sound, a media corponation that broadcasts music continuously on every available frequency. Memphis is underwater. Knoxville reportedly declared itself a "free city" in 2198 and has maintained that status through means that are unclear. The eastern mountains are Appalachian territory. See: Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina.

VIRGINIA. The Appalachian states went feral. This is the clinical term we use because the actual term — "reverted to a pre-industrial social structure organized around kinship networks, oral tradition, and territorial violence" — is too long for a briefing. Virginia's coastal areas are submerged. The interior mountains sustain an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 people living in ways that would be recognizable to someone from the 1800s and completely alien to someone from GLMZ. They do not want contact. They have made this clear. Repeatedly.

WEST VIRGINIA. See Virginia, but more so. The last outside observer to enter West Virginia and return (2209) described "a functioning society that has decided, collectively and with complete conviction, that the 21st century was a mistake." They use no electronics. They have no BCI. They have dentistry, agriculture, and a legal system based on precedent going back to the 2090s. They are, by several metrics, healthier than the average GLMZ resident. This fact is omitted from most briefings.

NORTH CAROLINA. Coastal half submerged. Mountain half is Appalachian territory. The Research Triangle area — Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill — sends an automated signal that indicates functioning server farms. No human communication accompanies the signal. The servers appear to be running. What they are running is unknown. Reliability: low.

SOUTH CAROLINA. Underwater south of Columbia. Interior status unknown. A trading vessel that made port in GLMZ in 2224 carried cargo marked with South Carolina tax stamps dated 2225. Either South Carolina has a functioning tax authority or someone is very good at forgery. We have not determined which.

GEORGIA. Atlanta is a corponation zone — Peachtree Meridian Holdings, a subsidiary of a subsidiary of something we cannot trace. They maintain a walled city with an estimated population of 300,000. They do not respond to diplomatic contact. They do respond to trade inquiries, but only via a specific frequency, only on Tuesdays, and only in a pidgin that mixes English, Mandarin, and something our linguists cannot identify. Southern Georgia is swamp. Savannah is a memory.

FLORIDA. Florida is not a state. Florida is a story. Everyone in GLMZ has heard something about Florida. Nobody agrees on what they heard. The versions are irreconcilable: Florida is a paradise where the weather is perfect and the corponations never reached. Florida is a wasteland where nothing survived. Florida is exactly as it was in 2024, frozen in time, shopping malls and palm trees and retirees who don't know two centuries have passed. Florida is underwater. Florida is above water but wishes it weren't. Florida has its own government, its own technology, its own language. Florida doesn't exist and never did — it was a pre-collapse fiction, like Atlantis, and the maps that show it are wrong.

The intelligence division's position on Florida is simple: we don't know. This is not a classification issue or a resources issue. We have satellites. The satellites show a peninsula. The peninsula has features consistent with habitation. Expeditions have been organized. None have reached Florida and returned with consistent accounts. One team reported lush vegetation and empty highways. Another reported a thriving city-state with technology decades ahead of the GLMZ. A third reported nothing — literally nothing, a featureless plain where Florida should be, as if someone had erased it and forgotten to draw something in its place. All three teams traveled the same route in the same year.

Shelf children tell Florida stories the way previous generations told fairy tales. Florida is where you go when you die, if you were good. Florida is where the sun always shines. Florida is where your lost things end up. A popular Shelf bedtime story begins: "Once there was a girl who walked south until the road ran out, and when she looked up, she was in Florida, and Florida was everything she ever wanted, and she was never seen again." The story is meant as a warning. The children hear it as a promise.

The most common question in the GLMZ about the outside world is not about Kentucky or Missouri or the Behemoth plains. It is: have you ever met anyone who's been to Florida? The answer is always no. The follow-up question — does Florida exist? — is considered rude, like asking whether someone's god is real. Florida is an article of faith. You believe in it or you don't. Either way, you've never been.

ALABAMA. Last confirmed contact: 2211. A convoy from the Ohio Corridor reported seeing lights in Birmingham. They did not stop. Subsequent satellite passes show no lights. Either the convoy was mistaken or Birmingham turns the lights off when satellites pass overhead. Both explanations are troubling.

MISSISSIPPI. See Missouri, but worse. The river does what it wants now.

LOUISIANA. New Orleans has a King. The surrounding bayou territory is navigable only by locals. Baton Rouge is a ruin. The Gulf Coast has retreated approximately forty kilometers inland. Trade with New Orleans is possible but requires knowledge of protocols that change seasonally. The King's authority is recognized by several Gulf trading networks. We do not recognize the King's authority. We do trade with the King's representatives. These two facts coexist.

ARKANSAS. The Ozark settlements maintain contact with Missouri survivors. Little Rock is abandoned. Northwest Arkansas — the old Walmart corridor — is allegedly controlled by a logistics corponation that still moves goods along routes that no longer connect to functioning economies. They move cargo from warehouses to warehouses. The cargo does not appear to serve any purpose. The routes are maintained immaculately.

--- NORTHEAST ---

NEW YORK. New York City is no longer habitable. The flooding, the infrastructure collapse, the cascading BCI network failure of 2187, and the subsequent corporate exodus left Manhattan a vertical ruin without Detroit's adaptive reuse. Upstate New York is fragmented into small settlements. Albany sends intermittent signals. Buffalo is part of the GLMZ's eastern influence zone. Long Island is underwater. The Statue of Liberty is visible at low tide.

NEW JERSEY. Northern New Jersey is part of the NYC exclusion zone. Southern New Jersey is pine barrens, which it always was, but now the pine barrens extend to the coast and there are reportedly people living in them who have been living in them since before the collapse. They do not consider themselves post-collapse. They consider themselves continuous. Reliability: anecdotal.

PENNSYLVANIA. Pittsburgh is the eastern terminus of the Ohio Corridor and therefore functional, fortified, and paranoid. Philadelphia is a partial ruin with an estimated 100,000 residents who maintain a fierce independence and refuse to join any governance compact. They have their own currency. They have their own BCI network. They have a bell they ring every morning that can be heard for six kilometers. Central Pennsylvania is farmland and Behemoth territory — different Behemoths than Iowa's, smaller, possibly derivative models.

CONNECTICUT. Subsumed into the New England Compact. See Massachusetts.

MASSACHUSETTS. The New England Compact governs Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and southern New Hampshire from Boston, which has managed to survive through a combination of sea walls, stubbornness, and a university system that never stopped functioning. MIT and Harvard merged in 2171 and now operate as a single entity called the Cambridge Institute, which is the Compact's de facto government. Population: 800,000. BCI compatibility: partial. They think they are the real continuation of American civilization. They may be right. They are certainly the most annoying about it.

RHODE ISLAND. Part of the New England Compact. Providence is a port. The entire state is essentially one city now. See Massachusetts.

VERMONT. Independent. Population approximately 40,000. They generate power from hydro and wind. They trade maple syrup, timber, and handmade goods. Their BCI adoption rate is zero by choice. They send a polite annual message to the GLMZ declining all offers of integration. The message has not varied in fourteen years. We suspect it is automated. They would find this suspicion insulting.

NEW HAMPSHIRE. Split. Southern half is New England Compact. Northern half is uncontacted wilderness. The White Mountains are, per one traveler's account, "full of something." The traveler would not elaborate.

MAINE. Unknown. Last contact: 2194. Satellite imagery shows intact forest cover and what appear to be structures, but no electromagnetic emissions of any kind. Either Maine has gone fully dark or Maine is empty. A fisherman from the New England Compact claims to trade with "people from up the coast" who refuse to say where they are from. He describes them as "pleasant but evasive." This describes most of New England.

DELAWARE. Does not appear to exist anymore. Not underwater — the land is there. There simply appears to be nothing on it. No structures, no people, no signals. We have checked. Multiple times. It is the least interesting mystery in this document and somehow the most unsettling.

MARYLAND. Baltimore is a fortified port city allied with but not part of the New England Compact. Population 150,000. They control access to the Chesapeake, which is wider than it used to be. Washington, D.C. is in Maryland now, technically, since Virginia's coastal territory is submerged. D.C. itself is a ruin that multiple factions claim but none occupy. It is maintained as a symbolic site by unnamed parties who remove any attempt at settlement. How they enforce this is unclear.

--- PLAINS / MOUNTAIN WEST ---

NORTH DAKOTA. Behemoth country. Wind farms still spinning. No human presence detected. The Behemoths here are larger than Iowa's — some estimated at forty meters in length. They appear to be strip-mining, but for what and for whom is unknown. A signal originating from Minot surfaces occasionally, always the same twelve-second burst, always untranslatable. Reliability: satellite only.

SOUTH DAKOTA. The Black Hills contain a settlement of approximately 5,000 people who identify as Lakota sovereign territory. They have maintained continuous habitation since before the collapse. They do not participate in any external governance or trade network. They have not requested aid. They have not been offered aid, because every emissary we have sent has been turned back at a perimeter we cannot locate on any map. Mount Rushmore was disassembled in 2178. The granite was repurposed. For what is not our business, we were told.

NEBRASKA. Behemoth country. Omaha's last transmission was a weather report. The date was 2199. The weather was clear.

KANSAS. Behemoth country, contested. There are reports of human settlements in the Flint Hills that subsist by scavenging Behemoth parts. These "machinists" allegedly maintain a nomadic lifestyle, following the Behemoth herds the way the Plains peoples once followed bison. This comparison has been noted by every analyst who has written about Kansas. We include it here because it is unavoidable. Wichita is a Behemoth graveyard — deactivated units arranged in rows stretching to the horizon. No one knows who arranged them or why they stopped.

OKLAHOMA. Corponation territory. Specifically, Helios Extraction — an energy corponation that controls the old oil and gas infrastructure and has repurposed it for geothermal. Oklahoma City is a company town. Population: unknown, estimated 200,000. They export energy via a grid connection we cannot map. Tulsa is independent, fortified, and hostile to outside contact. A trader described Tulsa as "the most heavily armed city I have ever seen, and I have been to Pittsburgh."

TEXAS. Texas is a sovereign corponation-state. Lone Star Consolidated governs the entire territory from Houston, which is partially flooded but functional. Population estimates range from 2 to 5 million. They have their own military, their own currency (Φ-denominated but pegged to energy output rather than the GLMZ standard), their own BCI network, and their own space program, which is either a joke or not a joke depending on which intelligence source you trust. Dallas-Fort Worth is the manufacturing center. San Antonio is the military headquarters. Austin was abandoned after the water crisis of 2189 and is now a ruin that Lone Star uses for military exercises. El Paso is a border fortress. The Rio Grande is a border with what used to be Mexico and is now something else entirely. Texas does not discuss its southern border. Reliability: moderate to high. Texas wants to be known. That is part of the point.

COLORADO. Denver is a high-altitude settlement that markets itself as "the last clean air city." Population 300,000. They have extensive greenhouse agriculture and a functional BCI network that they claim is superior to the GLMZ standard. They trade in water rights. The mountains west of Denver are uncontacted. The eastern plains are Behemoth-adjacent. Colorado Springs is a military installation of unknown allegiance — it responds to no governance compact, no corponation, and no external authority. It simply persists, defended, transmitting nothing, receiving everything.

WYOMING. Largely empty. Yellowstone is active — more active than historical norms. The caldera has not erupted but the geothermal activity has rendered much of the park uninhabitable. Eastern Wyoming was annexed by the Free Peoples Republic of Idaho. Cheyenne is a waystation on a trade route that connects Denver to the northern settlements. Population: minimal.

MONTANA. Western Montana was annexed by the Free Peoples Republic of Idaho. Eastern Montana is open range — nomadic settlements, Behemoth sightings, and a persistent rumor of a community of several thousand living in the mountains near Glacier National Park who communicate exclusively by radio and refuse to identify themselves. They broadcast weather reports, crop yields, and, on Friday evenings, live music. The music is good. We have recordings.

IDAHO. The Free Peoples Republic of Idaho. Population approximately 800,000. No BCIs. Copper currency called "the Stone." They annexed western Montana and parts of Wyoming in the 2190s and have maintained a functioning agrarian republic since. Boise is the capital. They have a legislature, a judiciary, and a standing militia. They trade with Denver and the GLMZ via intermediaries. They will not accept Quanta. They will not accept BCI-equipped visitors unless the BCI is deactivated, and they have equipment that can verify deactivation. They are, by most external assessments, a successful state. They are deeply suspicious of this document's existence.

--- PACIFIC / WEST ---

WASHINGTON. Seattle is no longer habitable. The Cascadia Subduction Event of 2163 and subsequent volcanic activity from Mount Rainier rendered the Puget Sound corridor uninhabitable. Eastern Washington is dry, irradiated from Hanford containment failures, and empty. Spokane sends a quarterly signal that says "operational" and nothing else. The Olympic Peninsula is supposedly inhabited but by whom and in what numbers is unknown. Portland, across the border in Oregon, is also gone.

OREGON. Portland was destroyed by the same seismic events that took Seattle. The Willamette Valley is reportedly fertile and inhabited, but contact is minimal. Eugene sends trade inquiries approximately once a year, always for medical supplies, always offering timber. The coast is reshaped — new inlets, new headlands, new geography. Crater Lake is larger. We do not know why.

CALIFORNIA. Los Angeles is no longer habitable. The fires of the 2140s, the water collapse, and the seismic restructuring of the San Andreas fault left the southern half of the state a ruin. San Francisco is partially submerged and partially functional — an estimated 200,000 people live in the hills and towers above the waterline. Sacramento is a fortified agricultural center that controls the Central Valley, which still produces food at industrial scale. Northern California is redwood wilderness. The Silicon Valley is underwater and has been since 2155. The data centers relocated. Where they relocated to is a matter of active intelligence interest. San Diego is a military installation controlled by an entity that identifies itself only as "Pacific Command." They are not affiliated with any known governance structure.

NEVADA. Las Vegas ran out of water in 2161 and was abandoned by 2170. It is now a ruin that allegedly serves as a meeting point for traders crossing the western desert. Reno persists as a small settlement. The Nevada Test Site is off-limits — not because anyone enforces the perimeter, but because everyone who has entered in the last fifty years has developed symptoms consistent with acute radiation exposure. The radiation should have decayed by now. It has not. This is noted without explanation.

UTAH. Salt Lake City is a theocratic city-state governed by a council that claims continuity with the LDS Church. Population 150,000. They are self-sufficient, organized, and unwelcoming to outsiders. They trade in preserved food and textiles. They do not discuss their internal governance. The Great Salt Lake dried up in the 2080s and is now a salt flat used for solar energy collection. The rest of Utah is canyon wilderness. It is beautiful. This is not operationally relevant but the analyst felt it should be noted.

ARIZONA. Phoenix was abandoned when the water ran out. Tucson persists as a small settlement, population 20,000, sustained by deep aquifer access that engineers say should have been exhausted decades ago. The Navajo Nation maintains sovereign territory in the northeast and has expanded its borders since the collapse. They do not participate in this document's intelligence-sharing framework and have asked us to stop flying satellites over their territory. We have not stopped. They know we have not stopped. The relationship is professional.

NEW MEXICO. Albuquerque is a trading post. Santa Fe is a cultural center that somehow still attracts artists, which tells you something about artists. Los Alamos is sealed — the facility went dark in 2172 and the perimeter is maintained by automated systems that are still functioning. What is inside Los Alamos is a question that appears in every annual intelligence review and is never answered. White Sands is Behemoth territory — a different type of Behemoth, smaller, possibly experimental.

HAWAII. Contact lost in 2188. Satellite imagery shows vegetation, structures, and what appears to be a thriving population, but no electromagnetic emissions. Either Hawaii has gone dark by choice or our satellites are showing us what someone wants us to see. A naval vessel from the Pacific Command (see: California, San Diego) allegedly made port in Honolulu in 2220 and reported "a functioning society that does not want to be found." This report is unverified. The vessel's crew was reassigned to classified duties upon return. Reliability: very low.

ALASKA. Too large, too remote, too cold. Anchorage sends an annual signal. Fairbanks does not. The North Slope oil infrastructure is maintained by autonomous systems. The Aleutian Islands are contested between Pacific Command and an entity operating from the Kamchatka Peninsula. The interior is wilderness. The indigenous communities of Alaska were never contacted after the collapse and, based on satellite evidence, appear to be doing fine. Better than fine. This is a pattern we have observed elsewhere and do not fully understand.

--- CLOSING NOTES ---

This document covers the fifty states of the former United States of America, a political entity that formally dissolved in 2089 and informally dissolved decades before that. The GLMZ does not claim sovereignty over any territory beyond its defined borders. This document is compiled for intelligence purposes only and does not represent diplomatic recognition of any entity, state, faction, or King mentioned herein.

Entries marked "no contact" may indicate destruction, voluntary isolation, communication failure, or something we do not have a category for. The absence of information is not the absence of people. We know this. We include it as a reminder because analysts who work with this document for too long tend to forget that blank spaces on a map are not blank spaces in reality.

Several entries in this document contradict each other. This is intentional. We report what we receive. We do not reconcile. Reconciliation implies a confidence in our sources that we do not possess and do not pretend to possess.

The reliability of any individual entry should be assessed in the context of the following: we have direct, verified, current intelligence on exactly four states (Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana). We have moderate confidence in approximately eight more. The remaining thirty-eight entries are, to varying degrees, guesswork dressed in the language of certainty.

This document is updated annually. It has not changed significantly in six years. We are not sure what that means.