The primary setting of The Collapse of Western Civilization is the fictional neo-communist country of the Second People’s Republic of China in the year 2300; however, the majority of the book focuses on modern Western civilization. To merge the primary setting and sub-setting, the historian announces that they use the old names of the countries:

Throughout this essay, I will use the nation-state terms for the era; for the reader not familiar with the political geography of Earth prior to the Great Collapse, the remains of the United Kingdom can be found in the present-day Cambria; Germany in the Nordo-Scandinavian Union; and the United States and Canada in the United States of North America (2).

Along with informing the fictional audience of the old country names, the historian also explains cultural elements of the Western world. The historian explains that the Western world used consumption to measure national success—“most countries still used the archaic concept of a gross domestic product, a measure of consumption, rather than the Bhutanian concept of gross domestic happiness to evaluate well-being in a state” (8). Although these remarks are written as explanations to the fictional audience, they serve to indirectly develop the primary setting.