#another question in my mind is.. unsurprisingly where tf levi onya gabi and falco are

[levmada]

Hii regarding your tags on that autism fueled-rant post, you mentioned talking about the ramifications that the aftermath of the rumbling would have and!! I have been thinking about that nonstop for the past couple of weeks and I’ve been searching everywhere for posts discussing it and I haven’t found much in depth stuff!! I haven’t read the entire manga but I have read the conclusion and I really don’t like how it just timeskips and doesn’t discuss much about what life is like after. So rn I’m working on a post-rumbling fic to fill in the blanks of what things would be like the following year. If you’re cool with exchanging ideas about it, what do you think would have transpired?

MANNNN you have no idea how long i've wanted to talk to someone abt this!!! i totally feel your pain😭

sooo we know that the world map of aot is just backwards + upside down version of the real world. this is even more supported by names like the Port of Acrifa (Africa) and Salta (Atlas) - to explain the names of regions in the map below.

what we don't know is just about everything else. cultures, technology, populations everywhere except for Paradis, Marley (and very roughly) Hizuru? nope. so this is going to require some speculating.

credit to this reddit post for the best approximation of aot's world map.

I highlighted Paradis in yellow, marked L for Liberio, and i marked X where Fort Salta is. really all you need to know about that place (if you don't already) is that's where the Rumbling stops.

therefore, the Rumbling got this far:

so, what the fuck does THIS mean?

WELL FIRST OF ALL...

this is a map of where the Walls are canonically situated on Paradis Island:

...did Eren actually get the Titans to stomp out all life on the majority of the fucking island???? did the Wall Titans just step around all people inhabiting those areas?? are there enough gaps between the individual Wall Titans to preserve the island?

also, did just the Wall Maria Titans walk? otherwise the only preserved part of Paradis would be all the land in Wall Sina.

if i'm missing something, please let me know. i'm going to operate on the assumption that it's a plot hole, because otherwise, Paradis would be a destroyed nation after the Rumbling.

therefore, the timeskip where Paradis is shown to be a thriving fascist military state simple wouldn't make sense.

moving on, during the Rumbling, 80% of humanity is just exterminated. so the vast majority of the human population was apparently concentrated in Marley (the African continent), and parts of the Middle East and Asia.

we're never given a number for the human population on AOT's earth before the rumbling, but say we placed it at 1.5 billion like our earth in 1920—to adjust for the technology apparently available seen mostly in Marley (black and white photographs, model-t cars, etc).

120 million people. so it seems a bit more realistic that 120 million people could be left in the unshaded region.

it doesn't need to be said that Marley has practically been wiped out. so what does that mean for the world?

at best, it's gone from the leading world power to a “third-world” country. That's pretty much the bulk of the devastation from a political perspective, but the leading world power is gone.

imagine modern China or the USA just disappearing off the face of the earth. Marley contained the majority of the world's population too. so total economic collapse, right?? a global recession, economic ruin for decades to come.

would war immediately break out for that land?

FUCK NO!! it's pure wasteland coated with blood, flattened ruin, and carrion. totally inhospitable. there is nothing left. (that's depicted in a panel from ch139 that i won't show just in case of spoilers.)

but you can bet your ass that nations after the Rumbling are going to turn on Paradis. right, Eren frightened the world into submission—but he said himself that it'll be decades before there's a counterattack. so in the meantime, Paradis canonically becomes a fascist military state.

WORLD WAR.

a few decades after the Rumbling ends, there will be all-out war, and not just out of the fear and hatred we're familiar with.

however, in the following year like you asked, by-far i imagine people globally would be in a complete state of shock, still reeling—especially politically—from the devastation. that's the best way I would sum it up.

probably imagine the state of the world after WW2, except the political and socio-economic equivalent of the USA and parts of western Europe were bombed into nothingness.

and resources?

what effect did such decimation of life on earth the Rumbling caused do to the entire continent of (what is) Africa, the Middle East and a part of Asia?

i don't know enough about Africa, the Middle East and Asia to explain accurately, honestly. but undoubtedly, Eren fucked everyone over in severe respects globally and he didn't even succeed in exterminating humanity.

But also, we can't assume that the world of AOT is a perfect replica of our own in terms of... well, anything besides size and climate. the most useful info we know is that the vast majority of the world's population is (was) situated in those places.

climate map:

the majority of the world's deserts and tropical grasslands + much of the grassland is just.... gone.

so much farmland. at least I don't think that the world would be starving, but considering the economic breakdown i mentioned earlier, there would be plenty of anarchy in the first year following the Rumbling.

surely there would be a global shortage of oil? essential minerals found only in deserts? many types of animals would be extinct or pushed to the brink of it.

as for the ocean, Wall Titans are seen swimming through it, but what kind of impact would all that heat have on marine life?? NOT GOOD ONES.

sorry that i'm simply not knowledgable enough to give out many specifics, but for anyone who is, please add on if you'd like :) there's a ton of factors to consider in what the world would be like post-Rumbling, many of which i think would have to be filled in by fans since Isayama doesn't fill many blanks.