The United States of America (Often referred to as the "US", "USA", or "America", is a country spanning roughly the center of North America, below Canada and Above Mexico. Founded in 1776 after gaining independence from Britain, the country soon industrialized, developed, and became a superpower. Once synonymous with the values of liberty and democracy, sometime during the Cold War after World War 2, the United States became engaged in a war against a hostile coalition including China and The Soviet Union around the mid-to-late 1980's. This fierce conflict has radically altered life in the country as it has undergone drastic change within a few years of the war. Initially becoming a police-state, it shortly thereafter morphed into a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship.
History during the films.[]
Sometime during the 1980's, the United States became entangled in a brutal and total war against both China and The Soviet Union. Presumably as a result of this massive conflict, crime rates have drastically risen around the country. Due to these two factors, the country has slowly deteriorated into an authoritarian police state, forming an oppressive central police force at the federal level, The United States Police Force, and turning the entire island of Manhattan into a massive, walled-off maximum security prison, where criminals are left to their own devices in the decaying city by 1997.
By 2000, the United States experienced even more change. A massive earthquake occurs in Los Angeles, causing a flood that renders the city isolated from the mainland. A theocratic fundamentalist candidate uses this to win the election, transforming the already dystopian and authoritarian state into a totalitarian theocratic one. Ideologically Christian-Fundamentalist, the government proceeds to enact strict morality laws, prohibiting activities such as alcohol, smoking, premarital sex, and even profanity, firearms and red meat. Much like New York City, the ruins of Los Angeles are essentially turned into a massive prison. Criminals are given the choice between losing citizenship and being deported to Los Angeles, or "repenting" and being electrocuted to death. The United States is also implied to be seeing a resurgence of imperialism, as during the first film, a terrorist leader refers to it as such, and during the second, a full-scale rebellion by subjugated Latin American countries is occurring, with mention also made of "New Vegas", seemingly a new US territory in Asia. While the US government's complete disregard for American principles is obvious, in the second film it is much more pronounced, with people of all kinds who stray from it's fundamentalist law, from Islamic people to prostitutes to runaways, being systematically deported to the lawless and dangerous Los Angeles for their supposed transgressions, along with violent and hardened criminals. During the beginning of the second film, they are seen herding "moral criminals" of all kinds, including children, into the Los Angeles processing center to await deportation to the Island, often aggressively and with force.