Preface: The Fall
If any one of the factors were missing, the planet may have survived, but combined, they formed a lethal cocktail of destruction. People always expected that the end would come explosively. Someone would start a nuclear war, someone else would retaliate, and poof, the end of civilization. But the nuclear war had come and gone, and still people remained. No alien attack with anti-matter weapons, no massive center-earth explosion, or catastrophic atmosphere collapse. Perhaps one of those options would have been better than reality. It would have ended nearly the same, but it would have been quick and relatively painless. Unfortunately, reality is rarely compassionate, and never painless. The end came slowly, forcing the planet’s inhabitants into submission over a great number of generations.
It all started with the wars. Wars had been waged many times before, but the combination of massively destructive weapons and blind, flag-waving nationalism allowed mankind to ignore the terrible things they were doing to each other, while simultaneously increasing the efficiency by which they did them. As the wars escalated more and more, it came to a point where the wars were less about finding the enemy and attacking, and more a game of statistical analysis. Countless formulas were developed to justify the number of enemy or friendly civilians that could be killed in an attack. The truth was that killing enemy civilians required no justification once armies were eliminated in favor of remotely controlled weaponry. One necessity of war is death, and with no army to battle, civilians were all that were left. In reality, no justification was needed, for the leaders were only concerned with victory, and didn’t care who got hurt in the process. It got to the point where victory was no longer even possible. Each leader was so embedded in his underground command center, firing automatically targeted weapons, it wasn’t until a massive uprising around the world resulted in the arrest and execution of these leaders. The result was worldwide peace, at the cost of 60% of the Earth’s population.
The remaining 4 billion people set out to make things right. A new body was set up to prevent such a destructive war from happening again. It was designed to fill the gaps left in the previous United Nations body. The nations of Earth had agreed to mutual destruction of nuclear arms, which was hardly needed, as the world’s supply of nuclear fissile materials was depleted to the point where creating new nuclear weapons would have been nearly impossible anyway. The planet entered into an unprecedented era of peace. This peace did not come with prosperity. Decades after the war’s end, the radiation from countless attacks on every populated area made a large portion of the Earth intolerable for anyone hoping to have children with less than three legs. The effects of the radiation on many people caused another 60% of those remaining to die of cancers and radiation sickness. The population of the planet was forced into the areas that were spared in the attacks, which were, by their very nature, the less desirable places to live. Those that didn’t die from the radiation began to struggle to try to resume life in the deserts, mountains, and frost-covered landscapes that remained untouched.
The technology was not a hurdle in making this life possible, but it didn’t take long before it became obvious that the energy required would be. For a long time, the Earth had been fueled by combinations of solar, geothermal, wind, and nuclear/fossil fueled generation. Since nuclear and fossil fuels were no longer viable energy sources, societies turned to the others for energy, but none of these could produce the consistent, high levels of energy needed to fuel the Local Environmental Refunctioning machines while still keeping lights and water purification machines running. A brilliant young scientist in Australia developed a machine that would solve all these problems. She called it a UAS or Upper Asthenosphere Stimulator. It was a machine that would send a probe deep into the earth to the layer upon which the Earth’s plates move. Once there, it would send out high frequency, high intensity shockwaves, causing the liquid mantle layers of the Earth to momentarily release more heat energy. These spells would last anywhere from 24 hours to 2 weeks. UAS machines were sent to all the major civilizations remaining, and seemed to be the solution to the energy problem. Geothermal power could now be relied upon to power the technology to make life possible in the least desirable places on Earth. The world was celebrating yet another triumph over adversity.
So it came as a surprise when the earthquakes started. The civilizations had known small tremors to be a mild side-effect of the UAS machines, but they never lasted this long, and were never this widespread. It seemed as if the entire planet were quaking simultaneously. This was, in fact, exactly what the planet was doing. The simultaneous use of UAS devices around the globe had achieved a resonant frequency across enough of the Asthenosphere that it began to self propagate. This initially caused the geothermal energy plants to generate record levels of power, but quickly caused them to burn out, leaving the electrical grid dark and silent. After a week of near constant rumbling, something even more unexpected began happening. The vibrations had caused a massive build-up of pressure just under the surface of the Earth, and within the next two days, thousands of new volcanoes were forming across the globe. Every weak spot in the earth’s surface began to rise, and eventually erupt, spewing hot lava and, more significantly, clouds of black smoke into the air. Some civilizations were wiped out in an instant when the ground on which they were built began to rise and explode from the massive under-earth pressure.
The immediate concern was the smoke. As the sky began to darken around the globe, survivors began to discuss how they would get past this one. The theories were all that the smoke would cloud the sky, and the earth would begin to cool, entering a massive ice age. But this is not what happened. This is not what happened, because the smoke clouds cleared only months after they had appeared. It was not clear why this happened, but people began to look past it, and towards the future. It was now 150 years after the end of the nuclear wars, and people determined that they would return to the more habitable areas of the world, eliminating the need for Local Environmental Refuctioning, and allowed the return to solar and wind power. The next 200 years were marked with recovery. The population of the planet, which had dwindled to less than 500 Million was once again growing. Cities were rebuilt, nations reformed, plans were made to prevent future disasters. Life was, it could be said, getting back to normal.
People were growing accustomed to this new world they were given, and one of the things they noticed was that the winters were getting shorter, and the summers longer and hotter. Areas of the globe previously too cold to use were becoming lush farmlands. Rainforests were making a comeback in the tropical regions, and even extended north into North America, Southern Europe, and China. Growing food was easier than ever. Warm clothing was rarely needed, and homes could be built without insulation. This world was an easy place to live. The Earth was warming up, half a degree at a time, and making the entire planet into a tropical paradise. Once the ice caps melted, naturally occurring ice had become a thing of the past. People knew that this warming of the planet was due to the increased carbon dioxide in the air from the great eruptions, but did not fully grasp the problem with this change, nor could they have done anything about it if they had. Eventually, the average global temperatures exceeded 40 degrees Celsius. Equatorial regions were completely uninhabitable, and water was becoming scarce in the polar regions as they became increasingly arid. By the time civilizations started heading underground, it was clear that the surface was becoming completely uninhabitable, they would never be able to return. So they found refuge under the surface, where the temperatures were cooler, and the sun could not damage. The people of Earth were determined that this travesty of destruction would not spell the end of their race.
