This is a fictional (dark) future history of the Earth suitable for use with a science fiction role-playing game. The history is necessarily brief, and many holes are left for you the reader to complete. Hope you like it.
Widespread disaffection among the growing Chinese middle class led to labor stoppages during 2006-7, finally resulting in a military takeover and repressive crackdown. Many members of the stagnating Communist party were purged, leaving the national bureaucracy crippled. Food shortages resulted following the 2008 crop failures, and the nation appeared to be descending toward chaos. The Beijing reforms of 2009 brought some relief, but not before many millions had perished. It took over a decade for the nation to recover its economic power.
To protect their borders from the rampant turmoil in the former USSR, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are inducted into the Pan-European Union. Russia and the Slavic states protested bitterly, but there was little they could do.
The human genome project is completed, eventually resulting in major medical advances in disease treatment, life extension, and understanding of the human mind. However, the new knowledge is not enough to prevent two lethal epidemics from sweeping the globe during the decade, proving particularly lethal to the large elderly populations.
Virtual reality has gone from a concept to an everyday experience for all the advanced nations, and a majority of their people spend most of their time plugged into the net. Much of the infrastructure is based on high capacity electronic communications, and most of the physical labor is taken over by automation, robotics, and tele-operated machinery.
The more poorly educated masses are increasingly shut out of the primary economy, as the remaining low-wage skills are shipped overseas to emergent nations. The growing numbers of unskilled and unemployed are trapped in a descending cycle of poverty, and many found escape in VR formula shows or the newly designed psychotropic viruses.
The retrenchment policies of the increasingly corrupt and indebted US government created a growing reactionary movement among the non-technical, disaffected masses. Widespread sabotage of the commercial network by this movement led to a information crackdown and takeover by the techno-elitist. The resulting government was a democracy in name only, with the representatives being elected from among the educated class. This led to a lengthy campaign of active, and often violent resistance by the outcast Popular Welfare Party.
The Hawaiian liberation movement took advantage of the situation on the US mainland to declare the islands independent. Martial law was declared and military forces were redeployed to maintain control. The elitists took advantage of this crisis to reform the Constitution and declare the Presidency a life term.
Interest payments on the enormous US debt were now more than half the federal budget. Taxes were increased to pay for the interest, and to fund the growing internal security forces. However, the expected crisis to the archaic Social Security system was averted by improved medical technology and increases in the retirement age.
During this period, the first commercial fusion plants come on line. Massive and expensive, the plants did not at first live up to their expectations. The government bankrolled the construction effort by further cutting of benefits to the poor and selling their latest military hardware overseas.
The long reign of Pax Americana was finally coming to a close as U.S. strength crumbled under the combined blows of massive debt, social turmoil, widespread addiction, and cheap, well-educated foreign labor. The military forces of the once-mighty super-power were hollow and nearly a two decades out of date. American president for life Shannon O'Reiser relied increasingly on allies and adept diplomacy to maintain the turbulent world peace.
The second Korean War of Unification in 2034 finally established the great power status of the Chinese state. The Trans-Pac Alliance suffered its death knell as the revolutionary neural-net weapon platforms roamed the ocean at will, smashing the U.S. Pacific Fleet and severing vital Japanese trade routes. The price of peace was the loss of U.S. military presence in the orient, the vassal status of Korea, and the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China.
To the west, the Islamic confederation of Iranistan exploited the resulting power vacuum by invading its weaker neighbors. Iraq and Saudi Arabia quickly fell under the nuclear sword of Teheran. Fortunately, Turkey proved a less palatable foe, and the faltering Trans-Syrian army was soon stiffened by the arrival of a Pan-European intervention force. By 2039, however, the Treaty of Damascus established Iranistan as the uncontested ruler of the Saudi Peninsula, and gave the confederation possession of 70% of the worlds remaining crude oil supply.
Starved for petroleum, the North American continent is thrown into a period of economic disruption and fuel rationing. The United States of North America (USONA) is formed as an extension of the old NAFTA accord. Air travel is limited to critical missions, and the entire transportation business suffers a severe economic depression. Research intensifies on coal reprocessing and Hydrogen-based engines. Many large-scale solar farms are constructed.
Contact is lost with old Voyager probes within a half minute of each other. Scientists have no explanation to offer.
After a lengthy period of social turmoil, the Unification party was finally thrown out of power in the USONA. The Techno-socialists, under a revisionist mandate, began a period of strict government regulation of the economy. Immigration laws are finally loosened, and a flood of intellectuals cross the pacific, fleeing the repressive Sino-Japanese hegemony.
With many of the worlds key natural resources under the dominion of foreign monopolies, the USONA government decides to gamble on a major expansion to their Space-Industrial base by building a large fleet of relatively cheap, reusable aerospace vehicles. By the year 2059, a mining center had been established near the Sinus Iridium region of the moon, and orbital industrial plants were constructed from the lunar ore shipments.
Unfortunately, the new industrial base was expensive to maintain and the output had only a modest impact on the economy. However, the orbiting factories gave the USONA a dominant military position which it used to coerce improved trade relations with Iranistan and the eastern bloc. Quickly the other major powers began their own expansionist space programs. The race was on to colonize and exploit the moon.
Despite the arrival of the electronic cottage and the rural movement earlier in the century, much of the world remained addicted to petroleum products. The widespread use of expensive Fusion plants did not significantly reduce the net emissions of combustion by-products. However, the long-feared runaway greenhouse effect has been forestalled, thanks to ingenious climate control technology.
Nevertheless, the surface temperature of the Earth had risen nearly 7 degrees over the past century, and the melting ice caps inundated the old coastal cities. Ocean waves now lapped against the crumbling bases of once- glorious skyscrapers.
Efficient sonic fishing nets have stripped the oceans bare, leaving only the coastal commercial fish farms to supply the worlds requirements. Pollutants and toxins are gradually destroying the Plankton supply, leaving millions of filter farmers without a cash crop.
The land is not in much better shape. Most of the world is industrialized and nearly every piece of arable land is being used to grow crops. All of the great forests have been harvested for housing or paper, and the few remaining primitive stands of trees are jealously guarded in climate- controlled domes.
Increasingly, the resources of the Earth are being pushed to the limit in an effort to feed and support the 20 billion inhabitants. Scientists are making prodigious efforts to satisfy the ever growing food requirements.
Governments are all-too aware of the increasingly unstable nature of the world economy, and many are taking steps to prepare for a major conflict over the diminishing resources. The development and purchase of armaments is at record levels across the globe.
In 2071, the Ukrainian government announced a ban on all grain exports. Food futures in the world markets sky-rocket to unprecedented levels, triggering a stampede to horde grain supplies. Shop shelves and storage rooms are quickly stripped as hungry consumers panic.
In the Pan-European Union, martial law is declared and paramilitary forces are deployed to suppress the food riots. In desperation, President Stosslein issues a strongly-worded ultimatum to the Ukrainian Secretary- General, and secret mobilization orders are issued to the military forces.
Within a year of the Union's invasion of the Crimea, most of the world is at war. Iranistan guaranteed the borders of the Ukraine, and sent an invasion force to counter the Pan-European forces. Escalation ensued, and the battle lines spread to the Caspian.
With the western nations preoccupied, China invades Siberia in a bid to capture prime northern grain lands. In response, Russian armies mobilize and a nuclear exchange takes place near Vladivostok. The USONA is drawn into the conflict when their orbiting factories are destroyed in a preemptive surprise attack.
Prime targets for conquest during the war were the grain fields of the Ukraine, midwest USONA, Argentina, and Siberia. Strategic weapon exchanges devastated much of the landscape and destroyed most of the crop lands in a scorched-earth policy. Large numbers of hunter-killer robot weapons are manufactured for the battles in automated factories, leaving a terrible swath of death wherever they passed. New, ever more unthinkable weapons of mass destruction are rapidly designed, manufactured, and unleashed, slaying untold billions of people and sentencing billions more to death by starvation and disease.
During this armageddon, the few losses suffered by the sparse lunar colonies served to enlighten the inhabitants about the futility of warfare in a vacuum. Despite urgent orders and threats from Earth, the majority choose to sit out the deadly war, exchanging little more than heated words and diplomatic visits.
The world war devastated the planet. Billions of people died from starvation, and the survivors began a rapid descent into barbarism. Millions of tons of debris orbit the Earth, making it extremely hazardous to approach the planet. The lunar colonies are effectively cut off from their home, and could provide little in the way of assistance.
The Earth is now a bleak world and the great civilizations are in ruins. The total population is soon counted in the hundred millions, and those lead a desperate struggle to survive. Brutal tribes of cannibals and slavers roam the barren landscapes, preying on the weak and helpless. Deadly strains of biological agents kept the infant mortality rate high and food crops infertile. Strange mutations began showing up with disturbing regularity.
Many islands of lethal radiation exist where nuclear weapons had been detonated. Automated death machines still roamed the landscape, their masters long dead and instructions hopelessly scrambled by sophisticated software viruses. In several locations, including parts of what was once the eastern seaboard of the USONA, featureless lakes of gray goo expand slowly yet inexorably outward.
Only a few regions of civilization remained amidst the terrible ruins left by humankind. Small techno-priesthood colonies lived on in remote locations, such as Iceland, the northern Oregon Coast, and New Zealand. Like the Christian monks during the European dark ages, these technocrats guard the remaining fragments of mankind's once vast knowledge base.
In orbit above the Earth the shattered hulks of space stations and orbital factories are constantly bombarded by a rain of man-made debris. The only safe route between the Earth and the Lunar Colonies is through the relatively clear polar regions. Ultra-fast neural network computers are required to compute a safe passage, allowing an occasional shuttle flight to travel between the moon and Reykjavik.
With the arrival of peace by annihilation, the lunar colonies declared a permanent truce and finally began dealing with the problems of their isolation. Despite their supposed self-reliance, the colonies had still required shipments of finished parts from Earth for their factories, and tanks of hydrogen for organic materials and food production. With the desperation of their position growing increasingly clear, cooperation between the colonies was now vital if all were to survive.
In a hazardous operation, several ferry shuttles were recovered from near Earth orbit. These old, but sturdy ships were refurbished as freighters to ship ice from the moons of the outer planets. The engineers retooled their small factories to supply most of the missing parts and fulfill the daily requirements of the colonists.
Fortunately for the Lunar colonies, much of the latest computer technology was brought to the Moon prior to the war. The colonies could also boast of many of Earth's best and brightest minds, allowing quick solutions to be implemented for the many pressing problems.
The critical situation soon forced the replacement of the representative government by a more highly-centralized bureaucratic state. Yet the strict controls enforced by this regime are resented by many, and a resistance movement soon begins to form. Initially, most of these groups are non- violent in their methods, primarily working to decentralize the imposed political institutions.
New, larger factories are built to turn out much needed materials. Cloning technology is employed to increase the sparse human population. High speed magna-lev trains are built to travel rapidly between the growing lunar cities. Huge, self-repairing domes are erected to house farms and recreation areas. Persistent medical problems caused by the low gravity and high radiation conditions are treated by new designer drugs and symbiotic life form implants.
Self-replicating factories soon begin to produce robot ships to survey the solar system, looking for scarce resources. Several lightly-manned mining ships are constructed for use in the asteroid belt. One of these ships discovers what could be the find of the century, the remains of an ancient mining site that pre-dates mankind. Scientists are dispatched on board the research ship LSS Plato to investigate the first definite traces of an extraterrestrial life form. --
What does the future hold? A revolt against the Lunar Tyranny? Super technology from beyond the stars? More alien relics? Expeditions to recover technology from the ruins of Earth? A lunar invasion of hunter-killer robots? A battle for the abandoned fortresses at the Lagrange points? Missions to establish mining colonies on the moons of the outer planets? Who can say...
Copyright © 1995 Apocrypha, All Rights Reserved.
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