Warning, spoilers ahead!

I am a big fan of the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood and its accompanying television series on Hulu. Both offer chilling insights into some of the darker realities present in our world today. In the television series, I especially appreciate the level of detail and care the show’s production team puts into world building and set design. For those unfamiliar with the show, it is set in an alternative United States around 2014 (the date of a key event in the show is published in the Boston Globe (click here for link to a newspaper headline from the show)) during what appears to be a global infertility crisis linked to environmental degradation that has resulted in fewer live births and plummeting fertility rates globally. With the crisis as the backdrop, a shadowy militant religious cult, called the Sons of Jacob, seizes control of part of the United States by successfully overthrowing the US government and instituting a theocratic regime, the Republic of Gilead. In the first seasons, we catch glimpses into how the regime operates through characters who appear to be key figures within the new government and those under their subjugation.   

The regime is defined by its brutality. It reinforces its tenuous claim to power through extreme acts of violence and terror. Many women are forced into reproductive slavery, members of the LGBTQ community are forced into hard labor or worse, sham trials and extra-judicial executions appear common, protest is not tolerated and the reaction of the world outside Gilead appears cautious. We know that Canada and other NATO-aligned countries are not yet recognizing Gilead’s legitimacy and the regime appears to be isolated in the international community. We also know that an American government is operating out of Anchorage, Alaska, with Alaska and Hawaii being the two remaining holdouts not to leave the Union. There are a lot of moving threads and subplots that make the show’s characters rich and the series gripping to watch. I wanted to know more about this world.

I am a geographer who works with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in my day job and became interested in knowing how much territory is under Gilead’s control. There are off-hand comments in character’s day-to-day conversations about “the war” going well, Florida or California being part of Gilead…etc, but Gilead is a closed, totalitarian society and the audience has no reason to trust these claims, they could just be propaganda. While watching one of the episodes one scene caught my geographer’s eye that I figured could help me contextualize the world with Gilead a little more with my own.

There is a scene that takes place inside a Gilead commander’s home office and shows a political map of Gilead on the wall! An attentive viewer posted a copy of it to Reddit (click here for the thread).

As a geographer, I am impressed by the level of detail displayed here and creative license taken by the show’s cartographer. This beautiful map is easy to interpret and incorporates an eye-pleasing design. In this political map, we see military bases (note how many there appear to be –refer to the legend to see the dots are not cities, but bases), the borders of Gilead with its various administrative units embedded within, areas that are disputed and areas marked as “Atomic Wastelands”. That last description I find especially intriguing.

There is a lot in a name and maps themselves are often works of deception in that they exaggerate certain features and downplay or even minimize others to communicate a message. An example of this would be the widespread use of the Mercator projection on official maps produced by the United States and Soviet Union during the cold war, which exaggerates the size of both countries, making both appear larger than they really are. 

It’s interesting that an official map, possibly only seen or in use by those in positions of power, uses the more alarming term Atomic Wasteland over a more downplayed term. One thinks of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as a close enough real-world parallel, a term that conveys both seriousness but also de-emphasizes the reality of radioactivity. The language here matters – the term is being used to instill terror, and rightfully so. In the television show, these areas appear to be the locations for the infamous Colonies, where enemies of the regime are forced into hard labor working in dreary superfund-like sites until they succumb to exhaustion or radiation sickness. This map is scary and as a piece of propaganda is acutely effective.

Finally, one other detail I would like to point out is a brief note in the bottom left corner of the map. As a geographer and GIS Specialist I am well acquainted with legalese on data-sharing agreements and cartographic products and especially appreciate the CYA disclaimer notice:

In addition to looking like a government-produced map, we are given some key information in this disclaimer. It tells us that the borders of Gilead are not fixed and implies rebellion in pockets of areas claimed by Gilead. Indeed, in the show there are references to battles between Gilead and the US Army in the streets of Chicago, though in the map we see Chicago as being within Gilead occupied territory.  

This fantastic map gave me enough information to answer some of my burning questions about Gilead, the rebel areas and more using Geographic Information Systems and open access data sets. Assuming this map is not a propaganda piece (it was on a commander’s wall and appears to be for official use, which would make this unlikely) and recognizing that the borders of Gilead are fluid and contested, we can use US Census Bureau data at the census tract level to get generalized population counts using a process called geo-referencing and spatial analysis using population estimates provided by the Census Bureau. Before I go into my methods, I should address a few limitations.

Limitations

Given that this is a fictional map, it should be noted that the accuracy is going to be subject to several factors, including some important aspects of the fictional world. First off, I am going to be relying on US Census Bureau data from 2014 (the year the conflict started in the television series) to get my population estimates. This poses a potential problem because in the show we learn that humanity is suffering from a fertility crisis brought on by environmental degradation. We don’t know how big the infertility crisis is or how long it has been occurring. If it has been going on for some time, the total population of the former United States before the rise of Gilead would be expected to be lower. Without knowing more about how this has affected the current population, however, I decided to stick with US Census 2014 population statistics.

A second limitation is not knowing what occurred in the so-called Atomic Wastelands. These could have been created by nuclear weapon detonations, meltdowns or industrial accidents. Without more details, its hard to say how many people survived and were able to relocate. A third issue presents itself in the glimpses we are afforded into Gilead. Public executions occur with frequency and it’s safe to assume there is a high number of civilians being killed by the theocratic regime. A fourth limitation is that we do not know how many US military personnel were activated (and remain loyal to the US) and how many Americans were abroad when the war began.

Finally, we do not know fully what the international response to the crisis has been. We have some insights, for instance it is revealed in the show that NATO-aligned troops are patrolling the Canadian-Gilead border. We also know that Canada has admitted many American refugees (though at one point in the series Commander Waterford referred to the refugees in Canada as “illegal immigrants” and was negotiating with the Canadian government for their forced repatriation). We are also unsure of how many Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) the war created (those who fled their homes but stayed within the borders of the former United States). It’s possible that many people were able to flee to rebel-held territories or vice versa, depending on their allegiances, circumstances and means.   

This being the case, and assuming US Census data is largely accurate with the world in the show (excepting the idea that a fertility crisis implies dramatically fewer live births), we can take this fictional map and overlay a spatially referenced map of the United States embedded with census population data at the census tract level using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to determine a generalized but accurate population count for areas occupied by Gilead, areas under rebel control and areas that are atomic wastelands.   

Methods

In this analysis, I want to address three questions to get a sense of the scale of Gilead and its resistors: 1) what is the estimated population of territory under Gilead’s control? 2) what is the population of the rebel areas? 3) what is the population of the atomic wastelands, pre-incident?

 To answer these questions, I downloaded a jpeg of Gilead’s official map, shown above, and pulled it into a GIS program. I then found a shapefile of the United States from the US Census Bureau’s TIGER data set and used the state borders to align with those in the jpeg image. This allowed me to spatially reference the Gilead map using a technique called geo-referencing. Once I had my map referenced, I traced over the territories marked as Gilead, creating a polygon that I then saved as new boundary shapefile. I repeated this process for the area denoted as Rebel-Occupied Areas and Atomic Wastelands.

 Next, I imported US Census tract boundaries, deciding on this scale because they are some of the smallest population units for analysis available in the United States and allow for a granular population analysis. If I were doing a public health analysis related to something like detecting statistically significant breast cancer clusters, I would want to use the same scale because the data provided is so granular and small geographies let one pinpoint things with more accuracy. I then downloaded 2014 population data from the Census Bureau’s American Fact Finder and linked the population data to the census tract boundary files by joining the data to the census tract file, using the census tract’s unique identifier code (present in both files) as the basis for my data join. Armed with population data at the census tract level, I select tracts based on location for each of my three newly created polygon boundaries: Gilead, Rebel Areas and Atomic Wastelands. From this data, I was able to add up the total populations of all the census tracts in each area using 2014 American Community Survey population estimates. I then had my results.  

Results

Population of area under Gilead Control: 239,790,958

Population of area under Rebel Control: 72,195,122

Total Population of Atomic Wastelands: 44,552,414

Population of Atomic Wastelands in Rebel Areas: 5,865,777

Population of Atomic Wastelands in Gilead: 38,686,637

Other Regions

In the television series, a remnant of the United States consisting of Alaska and Hawaii continues to resist Gilead and the US military is still operational, though the strength of US Forces remains unknown. I am adding in population data from 2014 for those states and other United States territories, whose status in this world remain unknown, below.    

United States Government in Anchorage

The total population reflects US Census Bureau 2014 estimates from the American Community Survey. This does not account for active duty military personnel, internally displaced persons and refugees. The current total population of both states is likely higher.

Alaska:  736,307

Hawaii: 1,415,000

Total Population: 2,151,307

American Territories of Unknown Status | A lack of clarity remains over the status of American territories and overseas military installations. The international community’s response over the legitimacy to claims and to possible independence movements within these territories is also unknown. As of 2014, the populations of these areas are:     

American Samoa:  55,437  

Commonwealth of the Northern Marianna Islands:  54,468  

Guam: 160,967

Puerto Rico: 3,535,000

United States Virgin Islands:  107,884

Total Population: 3,913,756

Analysis

Based on these results, it is apparent that Gilead controls a significant portion of the former United States, both in terms of territory and in population. However, the areas under rebel control have sizeable populations and major metropolitan hubs, including: Miami, New Orleans, Houston, San Antonio, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. The rebel areas also straddle significant portions of the Canadian and Mexican borders and the entire Pacific coastline. Gilead has a more limited extent, touching parts of Canada and most of the eastern seaboard. It also has some territory along the Mexican border, but most of this is denoted as an Atomic Wasteland.

Perhaps most shocking was the total pre-incident population of the Atomic Wastelands region, 44,552,414, with a majority of those affected, 38,686,637, being in areas now under Gilead occupation. Knowing more about when and how the Atomic Wastelands were created may give deeper insight into the world of The Handmaid’s Tale. If the Atomic Wastelands were created before the coup, this would have been a major event with serious and immediate social, economic, political and public health effects that rippled throughout society. Perhaps that even created enough instability to allow the Sons of Jacob to seize power. If, however, they were a product of the war, it would mean nuclear weapons were deployed and that would surely shape the international community’s response and may lead to more caution being exercised by other countries and intergovernmental institutions.   

While through the lens of its leaders and subjugated peoples Gilead appears to be a monolithic and all-powerful beast, this mapping analysis paints a more nuanced picture. Setting aside the limitations of this analysis, as much as a quarter of the population of the former United States has not fallen under Gilead rule, yet. There are 72,195,122 Americans living within the Continental US not under Gilead occupation and they control most of the land borders between Canada and Mexico and all the shipping ports along the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific coast. This is good news for the resistance.

They have access to key supply lines and enough resources to mount a serious threat to the future of Gilead. They can also choke the regime off from most trade. There are cracks within Gilead that are also hard to ignore. Officials in high places are acting as traitors to the regime, choosing to help refugees find freedom through an underground network taking refugees to Canada, which so far has welcomed them with open arms. Here’s to the freedom fighters, hope for the resistance and to the open data that made this analysis possible.

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”

This Series, while fictional, is based on real historical events. You can take a stand by supporting Refugees

If you enjoyed this blog post, please take a moment to consider helping real refugees fleeing violence and persecution. The types of violent acts that take place in the dystopian world of The Handmaid’s Tale occur in our world with increasing frequency to people who are unable to avail themselves to institutions of justice or are being actively oppressed by the state. From Central America, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, refugees and asylum seekers are embarking on fraught journeys, fleeing unimaginable terror. The world’s refugee population is at an all time high and requires a coordinated international response that’s compassionate and sustainable. This kind of work starts at the community level and in Lancaster, Pennsylvania an organization called Church World Service (CWS Lancaster) is doing just that. CWS-Lancaster has built a community-centered model for welcoming new refugees into Central PA, a state that was founded on religious tolerance and a community that has deep roots in welcoming refugees.  Because of this legacy, the warm welcome by members of the community and the hard work of skilled and seasoned staff at CWS, Lancaster is one of the most refugee-welcoming cities in North America and is thriving.

Consider supporting this important work and making a difference in somebody’s life today by donating any amount to CWS-Lancaster by clicking here: https://cwslancaster.org/donate/