Memories of the 28th Century

I’m not planning to retire for a few centuries, but I am thinking that with all these boomers approaching retirement it might be a good idea to develop a retirement community, or something along those lines. Different people have different desires and needs for a retirement location, but I think that there are a few characteristics that I could include when I develop such a thing that would be interesting to many people, to the right people anyway. Attracting the right clientele is more important than attracting everyone, or even great numbers, especially since I would want to attract misanthropes. Toward that end I would put the retirement community in a relatively isolated location. For purposes of comfort I would want it in a warm area, and I would want the governmental and regulatory systems to be manageable. Putting all that together I decided that the best bet would be to take over a small country in the Central Pacific. The government would be no problem after taking over; the climate is quite comfortable, and that region is somewhat isolated.

I consider finding the place to be of paramount importance. The details will fall into place when the right place becomes available. I had been thinking of countries that are ripe for taking for immediate use. I’m not greedy. I don’t want a huge country or even a large one. There are advantages in taking over small countries. William Walker couldn’t have conquered Mexico or Columbia. Even in the 1829’s they were too big for one man with a small band of adventurers to take. James Brooke didn’t take his little yacht to Java. He went to the North coast of Borneo, and he and his nineteen adventurers retook Brunei and got Sarawak as their reward. More recently Bob Denard ran four coups d’état in the Comoro Islands, and he was a central part of the government for more than a decade. Mike Hoare wasn’t so lucky; he did have some bad luck. The Seychelles should have been a reasonable target; they still have a population of only about a hundred thousand, so they are a potential target.

We would not want to displace any people, and it would be nice to have a population from which to hire necessary labor, but we would not want a large population, because it might resist. There are more than three dozen countries with populations under one million, but some of them are really big, too darned big, and some would be unacceptable for other reasons. The Vatican City would be a horrible place to conquer, and Italy probably wouldn’t allow it. Iceland has a population of only about 325,000, but it is a large island, and it is also a member of NATO, so an attack would be answered by the rest of NATO. Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, and the other, small European countries are also rejects, because there is too much chance of an attack by a large neighbor.

I’m looking for a small country that is far enough out of the way that I might be ignored. I have been thinking of Kiribati. With a population of just over a hundred thousand, it might be possible, and many of the atolls in the country are uninhabited, so they could be used as bases. It might be possible to occupy some without even bothering to tell the central government and maybe not being noticed.

There are some other Pacific Ocean island countries that would be possibilities. Tonga has a population of only a hundred thousand, and Tuvalu has a population of about ten thousand; they might even like a conquest for the money it might bring. There a many good reasons for looking at those Pacific island countries as potential targets. They have small populations and are fairly isolated, so it might be possible to conquer and hold one of them for some time before anyone noticed. And there isn’t much of value in those islands; they are just coral atolls without mineral resources, unless we take to mining the ocean. Some of them have tourist traps, but the cost to get there is too high for great numbers of tourists.

There is possibility that some country might let itself be conquered in the hope of gaining something from the matter. Maybe a former colonial country would save them and rebuild the island into a resort. And there is the possibility that the U.N. or a regional treaty organization would step in, but that didn’t happen in the Comoro Islands, and that was rather recent, so maybe the regional club would stay out. Finding a country that had a widely hated dictatorial leader probably would improve my chances of avoiding additional armies jumping in.

In addition to the characteristics mentioned that I am for something has a small military, or none, and is so insignificant that when the news came out people would react with “I wonder where that is.” Any place that might come under the Monroe Doctrine would be out, because too many U.S. Presidents would love to have a successful military adventure. One interesting place that just about makes the cut is Brunei, but it is too well known, and the Sultan is too wealthy, but it was the Sultan of Brunei who awarded Sarawak to Brooke. Maybe I could engineer something there, but the Central Pacific is at the top of the list for now.

Do you want to sign on? If so which country? Other than loction, what characteristics would make you want to retire in some particular retirement community?