Mapping Panem

I love thinking about the mechanics of the Hunger Games universe. Even before I was making up stories in my head about my favorite characters, I was intrigued by the puzzle of how this post-apocalyptic society functions. I've devoured all the metas I can find, and my reading preferences tend strongly toward the elaborate world-builders of the fandom.

Until recently, my favorite Panem map was Vanja1995’s (scroll down for some excellent reasoning for his district location choices). My few quibbles with his choices were that I located the Capitol in Denver, flipped the locations of Nine and Ten, flipped the locations of Two and Five, had Four a little closer to Louisiana, and figured the size of One and Three to be much smaller.

fernwithy's excellent essay and map have changed my mind on a number of points. I strongly recommend reading her essay, as she's noticed a number of points in the books that I think almost conclusively pinpoint the Capitol and Thirteen which, in turn, provide some strong hints about where several of the other districts are located.



Fernwithy's Map
( The Capitol )

( Districts Twelve and Thirteen )

( Districts Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten )

I also concur with her theory that, like Twelve, the urban districts are probably small, fenced in cities, and surrounded by a wilderness that the citizens are not allowed to enter. If the population of Panem is as low as Beetee suggests at the end of Mockingjay, it makes sense to concentrate the population where possible, in order to conserve resources such as power and gas. From the Capitol's perspective, it also makes the urban districts, which probably have a higher population and access to greater technology/potential weapons, easier for Peacekeepers to 'secure'. I think this 'security' is implemented not just to keep the workers from running off and trying to make it in the wilderness, but keep the urban districts from developing the natural resources around them. The more the Capitol controls access to crucial goods like power and food, the greater leverage the Capitol has to quell any attempts at rebellion, and ensure the urban districts cannot develop into economic rivals to the Capitol.

That said, there are a few areas where I have some different theories:


Penfold's version of Fernwithy's Map

District Three: I've got a massive amount of headcanon about this district. Although I agree that some of the districts are colonies created by the Capitol sending segments of its population (including refugees from around the world who sought more habitable land after the cataclysms and resulting wars, as fernwithy writes), I think several of the districts started as independent organizations of survivors (including some refugees) who were later absorbed by the Capitol, either through what was intended to be a mutual protection pact that devolved into a colonial-type relationship, or were forcibly annexed. I like this idea because I think it gives the districts a longer period of time in which to develop their distinctive cultures and genetic 'looks'.¹ I also think it's likely that survivors of the cataclysims and wars would concentrate in a few locations, rather than just one or two, because of how difficult it probably was to travel after what appears to have been a severe technological crash, and how relatively dispersed the population of the US is. Generally, I think the cities are better locations for survivor city-states, so, in my headcanon, Three, Six, and Thirteen were independent political entities before or concurrent with the founding of Panem.²

Regarding location, I don't think we get any real hints in canon, apart from the numbering of the districts, as to where they may be located, and the numbering may signify the order in which the districts were added to Panem, rather than their relative distance to the Capitol. Some areas are eliminated just because the canon hints seem to put another district there, but that still leaves a lot of empty space.

In this space, I chose Phoenix. It's the sixth largest US city by population; most of the top ten are either under water or beyond Twelve. Three doesn't have to be a very big city, but I think it helps if both the research and manufacture of almost all technology occurs there. Larger cities are also more likely to have some redundant systems that would help keep or get them running. I also like Phoenix because aerospace and technology are its major industries; if Silicon Valley is underwater, Phoenix might be your next best choice for that type of expertise. It's also got plenty of sunshine and nearby large, empty areas to put solar and wind farms (at least until the Capitol rips them out). And Phoenix is still close to Salt Lake City (at least as compared with Six, Seven, Eight, etc).

District Four: Don't have any real disagreement here just a couple of slight quibbles. First, I extended the district boundary back to encompass more land (and pushed Ten back to maintain a no-mans-land), in part to provide more room for canning/other processing or preservation and shipping facilities, and in part to make the district more comfortable. As Four seems to be on more positive terms with the Capitol than the non-career district, I think the Capitol might give them more space to expand and live comfortably, perhaps even to do some local farming. I also wanted to expand the living area in Four a little closer to Louisiana; all of the characters we meet from Four have Irish-sounding names, and New Orleans is the closest area that once had a large Irish population that I know of.³

District Five: I like fernwithy's placement of Five at Yellowstone, given the natural resources available, however, given the Capitol's choice to concentrate power generation in a single district, I think they'd be better off if Five is structured like the other natural resource districts, with a capital and multiple smaller settlements. I spread the boundaries out to encompass large parts of Wyoming and the Dakotas, in order to capture existing hydro facilities on the Missouri River, existing wind farms in each of these states, the shale oil in North Dakota, and plenty of open land where more wind and solar facilities could be built.

District Six: As fernwithy notes, we don't get any textual clues. I like Omaha, for practical and sentimental reasons. Omaha is pretty much in the middle of this vision of Panem, and would be a good location for bringing in goods from Four, Eight, Nine and Ten. Omaha was also the center of the First Continental Railroad, and in the Nineteenth Century, every major railroad served Omaha because of the Omaha Stockyards. It's still Union Pacific's headquarters. If the US has a railroad city, I think Omaha is it.

Of course, this is all just guesswork, but I love trying to work it out. Major thanks to fernwithy, who upended my thinking about the location of the Capitol and Thirtieth, consequently rearranging my speculation about most of the other districts. If you haven't read her Hunger Games fan fiction, I highly recommend it.

¹ Though, of course, no one knows how long Panem existed before the Dark Days, so if you postulate a very long period of time, you could reach the same result that way.
² But not Eight, because it is so bugnuts cold in Minneapolis (colder than Toronto!), and because of its relatively low population density.
³ Or the Capitol settled a bunch of Irish refugees there and the names have nothing to do with Four's location.