Homefront is a Joke

IGN recently published an interview with some of the advisors for THQ's upcoming video game Homefront. The game, set roughly fifteen years in the future, envisions a United States occupied by North Korean forces. In the interview, the advisors detail some of their theoretical assumptions which pave the way for such a situation. While both the advisors and the author dutifully pepper their ideas with caveats and reminders that this is all for the sake of entertainment and shouldn't be taken seriously, the article's title ("Is Homefront Possible?") irks me enough to deconstruct their theories in order.

The article relies on two basic fear-mongering facts: 1) historical precedent and 2) economic decline. The first basically follows the logic that no one predicted the inflation-ravaged Germany would sweep through Europe in the late 1930's, so it might happen again. The second falls back on the current cries of American economic and military decline thanks to a volatile Middle East and our reliance on oil. In unpacking each step of North Korea's hypothetical expansion, we will attack each of these parts as they crop up.