Born Then2011–2024
Life during the Syrian civil war
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
The government's violent response to the 2011 protests led to a civil war involving rebels, jihadist groups, Kurdish forces and foreign powers. About half of Syrians were displaced; the Assad government fell in December 2024.
Deaths: about 500,000 or more; about 6 million refugees abroad and 7 million displaced inside Syria.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- Bracero program and Mexican migration to the United States 1942–2007
- Apartheid 1948–1994
- Korean economic miracle 1962–1996
- Colombian armed conflict 1964–2016
- Migration to the Gulf 1973–2025
- China's reform and opening 1978–2015
- One-child policy 1980–2015
- HIV/AIDS epidemic in southern and eastern Africa 1985–2015
- Collapse of the Soviet Union 1991–1998
- Rwandan genocide 1994
- 1997 Asian financial crisis 1997–1999
- Second Congo War 1998–2003
- War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) 2001–2021
- Iraq War 2003–2011
- 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami 2004
- Mexican drug war 2006–2025
- 2008 financial crisis 2008–2010
- Syrian civil war 2011–2024
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami 2011
- Rohingya genocide 2016–2017
- COVID-19 pandemic 2020–2022
- Myanmar civil war since the 2021 coup 2021–2025
- Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022–2025