Iran isn’t directly mentioned. Vague terms like “the North” appear, and historically many American evangelicals have identified the USSR with it, because that was the geopolitical bogeyman of the day. I’ve had older evangelicals insist to me that Russia borders Israel as a result.

Iran’s more plausible than Russia, but if we pretend for a moment it’s not all some desert guy’s mushroom trip it could just as easily be Turkey.

Yes. People seem to think the bends always happens on exposure to weird pressures, but it just doesn’t. I guess they’re understandably imagining it’s the same as hot or cold.

(though no idea about the effects on the human body from such a sudden change)

Well, enough delta p is entirely capable of squishing an entire person through a thumb-sized hole, and while there’s no hole here I image there’d still be some sort of shock wave, and the air already in your lungs returning to normal volume suddenly would be uncomfortable. Don’t go too deep the first time, definitely ease into it.

Interestingly just 1 atm is fairly harmless. The first time someone got caught in a vacuum chamber they weren’t sure what they’d find, but the guy just got up and said his ears hurt.

So then I guess C is salamander. Also lays eggs and lives by a pool, but doesn’t do anything extra, and is a necessary step before most of the other modern languages.

COBOL is a coelacanth. To everyone’s surprise, they’re still out there. We thought they were an old, very extinct example of a non-terrestrial lobe-finned fish, but they actually hung on in some odd environments. They cause massive indigestion to anyone that has to consume them.

If Node is a mosquito, Javascript itself is another hymenopteran: the yellow jacket wasp. Just as hated, and with a tendency to injure handlers, but widely successful and defended as filling an actual useful role in nature. They build delicate, arguably pretty nests.

Republican Spain and the “Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria” AKA Rojava.

Republican Spain had some communist factions too, but Rojava is explicitly built around a specific strain of anarchism, and is an “administration” instead of a government. I doubt it looks very anarchist in practice, but that’s neither here nor there, and they’re democratic enough the US has endorsed them in the past to Turkey’s great displeasure.

Off the top of my head, 2. One with no UN seat and one long gone, to be fair, but they still exist and are/were sovereign. You can’t say either turned into totalitarianism.

Maybe you could say they would have or will, but that’s just your guess. I could say the same thing about liberal democracy and be equally as well supported.

No. That is not an a known issue with anarchism, for example.

Mandatory “there’s more than one version”. You might think anarchism is also bullshit but it’s not North Korea.