2000s

Decades:
1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s 2050s 2060s 2070s 2080s

Years:
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

2000

• January 1: At 8 AM local time, WSAF reports the discovery of a new species of ferret near the Edgebrook woods in Chicago. The property owner on discovery site takes the ferrets to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for examination.
• January 14: The USFWS informs that the recently discovered ferrets are a completely new species, christened 'Century Ferrets' by WSAF.
• May 26: In response to an economic crisis, the Austrian president dissolves Parliament and replaces it with the 'Stahlmänner', a council composed of corporate figures.
• July 10: The Supreme Court of the United States rules the first Shiawase Decision.
• November 7: Martin Hunt is elected President of the United States.
• November 8: Shiawase Corporation's private nuclear power plant goes online.
• December 14: The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission pursues legal action against Shiawase after TerraFirst! agents attack the corporation's new nuclear power plant, arguing it cannot adequately defend its own property.
  • Shiawase rebukes by stating US federal laws hindered their security efforts.

2001

• January 4 - 18: Tensions in Mexico's southern states increase. Over a two-week period, the governors of Chiapas, Campeche, and Quintana Roo are assassinated, with two of the three perpetrators eventually caught and each judged to have been working independently.
• February 14: (US Nuclear Regulatory Commission vs. Shiawase Corporation) Using the Seretech Decision as precedent, the Supreme Court of the United States rules in favor of Shiawase, determining that a major corporation's private property is not under the host country's jurisdiction.
• February 20: Initially wanting to be seen as the vanguard against growing corporate power, the French government refuses to recognize Shiawase's extraterritoriality but remains the sole opposition, the country receiving years of corporate sanctions as a result.
• March - May: Germany's eastern länder are evacuated due to groundwater contamination and the Baltic Sea suffers an ecological collapse due to chemical sludge. Hundreds of thousands of people are relocated as governments try to address these troubled areas.
• July 20: During the G8 Summit in Genoa (Italy), private security forces open fire on anti-corporate protesters, killing 12. The pro-corp Italian media describe the shootings as 'defense against an act of terrorism' and protesters are forced to switch tactics in light of corporate crackdowns.
• August 15: The USA Food and Drug Administration approves P4MO (synthetic blood replacement) for general use.
• August - October: NASA sends robot probes to Mars but, after discovering structures resembling pyramids together with a skeleton, refuses to release the images.
  • Planning begins for a follow-up secret manned mission under Veil's (the United States Department of Defense's top secret agency) jurisdiction.

2002

• New tech enables the production of optical chips immune to EMP.
• January 21: The Resource Rush begins after the USA government appropriates millions of acres from Native American reservations and hands them over to corporations for exploitation. ^{Conspiracy Theories says 2005}
• April 5: The Sovereign American Indian Movement, SAIM, is founded in Denver in response to the continued theft and destruction of the Native Americans' ancestral lands.
• June 14: Nicholas Aurelius consolidates his business assets into founding Ares Industries, which quickly gains extraterritoriality.
• June - July: Landfills in former East Germany begin leaking toxins into the groundwater, prompting the German government to issue evacuation orders.
  • A few weeks later, both the Baltic Sea and the North Sea ecologically collapse under the severe pollution.
• September 23: The 'Bündnis 2000' party sweeps to power in Germany's federal elections on an ecological platform.

2003

• March 24: BAE Systems and the Japan Aerospace Corporation introduce their joint development project: Ghost, a suborbital plane capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 76 minutes. Corporate orders generate a wait list several years long.
• May 13: Originally bred to detect water pollutants, GloFish are publicly marketed as aquarium pets.
• July 8: The USA government dissolves Washington, D.C.'s municipal government, assuming direct control.
• November 19: The worst flash flood in recorded history hits Germany's North Sea's coast, thousands dying during the flood itself as well as during the following few weeks from chemical poisoning. The German government orders nuclear power plants be shut down to prevent further catastrophe.

2004

• April 26: USA president Martin Hunt is revealed to have been bribing his Mexican counterpart Miguel Ávila to allow American corporations to extract Mexican resources.
• June: During shutdown, Germany's Biblis Nuclear Power Plant accidentally releases radioactive gas into the air. The ensuing investigation reveals the reactor core came dangerously close to meltdown.
• The Dungeness Nuclear Power Station core in Kent (England) suffers a partial meltdown and releases fallout over both New Romney and Camber Sands, eventually killing over 6000 people.
• September 10: The 10 Minute War takes place.
• November 2: Phillip Bester is elected President of the United States.

2005

• March 25: United States President Phillip Bester eliminates public funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Public Broadcasting System breaks up shortly thereafter and private broadcasters quickly consume its resources.
• May 13: Belarus invades Poland and the Ukraine, beginning the Border Wars.
• August 12: a 5.8 earthquake flattens Manhattan, killing more than two hundred thousand people.
• The United Nations moves to a provisional headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
• September 2: President of the Republic of Korea Dae-Jung Rhee is assassinated. General Kyung Han Yoon, Commander of the Army, takes power and accuses the Democratic People's Republic of Korea of sponsoring the assassin. Japan supports Yoon's actions and the Second Korean War begins.
• September 19: The East Coast Stock Exchange moves to Boston.
• Jaelle Lester establishes the Church of the Whole Earth, Inc.
• In the wake of the bribery scandal, a special election is called in Mexico. The PRI is swept from power and replaced with a FDN-PAN coalition.

2006

• Russia moves to stabilize Belarus, sparking fear of Russian expansionism.
• April 10: Japan launches a series of solar collector satellites and beams the energy to Earth via microwave.
• May 12: Boeing's High Speed Civil Transport completes a successful test flight.
• July 27: The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) announces the birth of a healthy Tasmanian tiger cloned from frozen DNA samples.
• October 17: A verdict is reached in the years-long court proceedings of Texas Instruments Corporation v. Miroyama Electric in favor of TI. The Japanese courts order Miroyama's assets turned over to TI, revitalizing that company. Miroyama's executives commit seppuku to spare their subordinates from dishonor.
• November 17: North Korea launches nuclear missiles toward Japan. The warheads fail to detonate. The attack prompts Japan to greater participation in the Second Korean War. Japan eventually refounds itself as the Japanese Imperial State, allowing it to maintain a military and begin a campaign of territorial expansion.

2007

• Newly privatized North Korean corporations merge to form Kwonsham Industries to avoid a buyout by South Korean or international megacorps.
• Spring: Ghana and the Ivory Coast begin the process of withdrawing from the United Nations.
• August 14: The Medellín, David, and Masaya drug cartels buy out a major resource development company in Villahermosa, Mexico and name it ORO Corporation after the heads of the cartels: Juan Ortega, Julio Ramos, and Diego Oriz.
• November 2: The United States Supreme Court declines a review of the federal government's decision to disband the municipal government of Washington, D.C. President Philip Bester's approval ratings begin to decline.
• William and Harry, the two Princes of the royal Windsor family of the United Kingdom, die in an airplane crash.

2008

• The Harris-3M space station Wheelchair (formerly the Russian Mir) is struck by a meteoroid and suffers catastrophic decompression. NASA's Freedom remains the only manned space station in Earth orbit.
• March 4 PANAMA: The ORO Corporation announces the discovery of molybdenum deposits off the coast of Panama. The corporation had acquired a monopoly on molybdenum exploitation, extraction, and processing prior to the announcement.
• April 18 USA: In Texas, a new kind of militias is created, allowing governments to assemble armed groups of private citizens to fill gaps in law enforcement..
• June CENTRAL AMERICA: Several Central American countries withdraw from international copyright treaties. The ORO Corporation positions itself at the head of the emerging technopiracy industry.
• August 23 GERMANY: The German coalition government collapses as the strain of the ongoing series of ecological disasters take their toll. The government weakness translates to ongoing social instability and violence in the streets.
• November 4 USA: Jesse Garrety is elected as the 45th President of the United States. William Jarman is his Vice-President.
• Aurélie de Paladines, future president of the French Republic, is born in France.

2009

• March 4: The Cattenom nuclear power plant in France suffers total failure of both primary and secondary cooling systems (3:58 a.m.), followed by core meltdown (9:31 p.m.), core breach (10:05 p.m.) and eventually the explosion of power plant block 2 (10:08 p.m.). Official reports state that 37,241 people were killed immediately; the death toll will reach 135,728 by 2045. The contaminated areas are later declared the Saar-Lorraine-Luxembourg Special Administrative Zone (SOX).
• April 7: Charles, Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, is crowned King Charles III of the United Kingdom at Westminster Abbey.
• April 29: As the chaos following the Cattenom catastrophe spreads throughout Germany, the military declares all parliaments and governments dissolved. A military council lead by Bundeswehr general Horst Stöckter assumes power.
• May 4: Bavarian resistance to martial law in Germany ends.
• May 5: United Oil Industries receives the oil rights to one-quarter of the remaining national parks and one-tenth of the remaining Native American reservations in the United States.
• September 18: The Lone Eagle Incident. A SAIM commando force takes control of the Shiloh Launch Facility in northwest Montana. The raiders issue an ultimatum: return all the stolen land or they launch the Lone Eagle ICBMs.
• September 28: After a ten-day standoff, US Armed Forces retake the Shiloh Launch Facility, but not before SAIM launches a Lone Eagle toward Russia. Although the US President warns his Russian counterpart, the missile disappears over the Arctic Circle.
• October 19: In response to the Lone Eagle Incident, the Re-education and Relocation Act is passed in the United States, ordering all Natives with the remotest connection to SAIM to detention centers. In Canada, the Nepean Act is passed, legitimizing internment camps for First Nations while dismantling the Inuit territory of Nunavut.