Great War
“This is it, I want every single man, woman and child in North America dead by this tomorrow evening.
No sentient should be left alive.”
The Great War started and ended on Saturday, December 21, 2012 when Nuclear Weapons were launched by all the nuclear-capable nations on the planet of Earth, mainly between the United Nations and the Chinese Federation. The exchange lasted for approximately two hours, but managed to kill over two billion people. However, various Nuclear shelters like the Vault-Tec Vaults and the Vivos underground Fallout shelters came very much in use. Over 1,600 Nuclear Weapons were fired at the United States of America, and several electromagnetic pulses as well as Chemical Warfare attacks damaged much of Earth. Once the last atomic bomb and nuclear warhead had fallen, the Human Empire began a large operation to move all American Citizens to large Mega-Cities and most of the United States fell into the deep darkness of a Nuclear Winter.
The attack completely destroyed the entire economic, social, and military infrastructure of North America. Japan was also attacked by a high amount of radiation, which led to a mass-evacuation after it being decreed no-longer safe to live. Not only that, but a Stock-Market crash which would later become known as the Economic Meltdown, was ushered as a result of the war. This was ten times worse than the Great Depression and likely killed twice as many people. This also led to several previously hugely popular currencies, including the Euro (€), the Pound (£), the Aiht Baht (฿) and the Dinar (₡) practically ceasing to exist within just days. It took decades for Earth to get back to the state it was in before the war; but for some areas in particular like California and Kansas it would take centuries, but it could be said it never reached the peak it had between 1676-2012 ever again. This immediately initiated World War IV, which would leave to the death of another 908,000 people over the course of nine years.
Background[edit | edit source]
The cause for what happened on the day is long and complex. The planet of Earth, which had began exploring space since 1862 and colonizing it since 1912 was in a horrible geopolitical situation, in that it was on the verge of the onset of a worldwide energy crisis when the supplies of fossil-fuels, particularly petroleum, finally began to run out by the year 1964. This energy crisis was in part the result of the ever-increasing amounts of fossil-fuel required to power the populations's large and far from energy-efficient technologies. Multiple planets, including Leipzig, Breton and Taris decided to donate aid to help them out. However, much of this was mis-handled and almost a third of the countries on Earth didn't receive any of the aid. Cars, Spaceships and other motorized mechanical contraptions were forced to switch to Diesel, which was still freely available. But with a population of twelve billion Humans alone using it, and with an estimated 24 billion investors in Earth technology in total by 1986, soon even Diesel was running out.
The European Union had reacted to the rapid raising of oil prices to unacceptably high levels by the Middle East of Earth's oil-rich states in 1987 by unleashing military action in that region of the world. This intervention ultimately resulted in the destruction of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv in December of that year by a terrorist nuclear device and a limited nuclear exchange between the conflict's participants in 1987, with the destruction of Downtown Baghdad as a result of the Peacemaker Nuke being used against it with the permission of the Galactic Senate with the excuse of "overthrowing" Saddam Hussein, which led to the accquisition of power by the Taliban. Later in 1988, the country of Mojang in Legoagaino was discovered to have a large amount of resources, which tackled the issue of the planet-wide Passion Fruit Famine which Earth was struggling through at the time. Since 1978, Earth has had an Empire known as the Human Empire which has been on a quest for more resources for the nearly dried-up planet. When the supplies on Legoagaino were found, all of the countries got a small share in the supplies, exept for Burma, North Korea, China and Nepal. This was because these areas were either close allies or part of the Chinese Federation, which meant these areas were under the control of Kim Jong-Il. Kim-Jong Il took over power from Kim Il-Sung (1931-1983), who had established a large galactic authoritarian regime under the Sith Empire which lasted for six brutal years, until a rebel group called The Alliance to Restore Democracy had killed him, along with his Darth second-in-power Anakin Skywalker.
Kim-Il Sung was notorious for his attempted Genocide of Jedi practitioners and hatred for all non-Humans, who was responsible for the Vietnam War and the Galactic Civil War during the time he was in control of the declining Empire. Kim Jong-Il, who shared the exact same beliefs as his last-in-power, was not given access to the resources. In responce, he started the Iraq War which was an attempt to aid the country after the nuking of their capital with the aim of performing a coup de'tat in Canada. Kim Jong-Il soon started sending in spies accross several notable large American cities as well as the state of Alaska. After Alaska became part of Canada in March 2009, the "secret invasion" of American soil by the Chinese millitary eventually led to the 2011 Annex of Canada. Despite it being lauded by the press, it did nothing exept heighten hostilities. This did not help the fact that in 2008 the Balochistan conflict had started between the Red Eagle Army (The U.N's Intergalactic branch) and the Azjerbaijan, a rebel group who wanted complete control over the colonization of the resource-filled planet of Panga led under Enver Hoxha, which the REA eventually lost.
All it needed was for one tiny thing to go wrong, and something brash would happen. The threat of a Nuclear War was now far more likely to happen than not. And in December 2012, U.S president Robert L. Booth ordered the hijacking of all Chinese/North Korean radios to propagate capitalist propaganda proclaiming the listeners in both Chinese and English as "Sick dog-penis eating bastards", to which Kim Jong-il decided to launch a Nuclear Warhead at Virginia in revenge. The United Nations retaliated in minutes. Over 1,500 nuclear weapons were fired from landing platforms in Beijing and Nanajing to strategically-planned cities so that as many people as possible would die. A severe amount of Radiation hit the rest of the planet immediately afterwards, creating hundreds of thousands of Feral Ghouls. Areas as far south as Arequipa were affected by radiation in the air, with some cases of Acute Radiation Sickness, Nuclear Poisoning, and in some extreme cases, Troglodite Degeneration Contagion being reported most commonly in Brazil and El Salvador . A mass evacuation of Earth was quickly organized; see Operation DrEAmA.
Aftermath[edit | edit source]
North America and Canada[edit | edit source]
Many citizens did not heed the air raid sirens on December 21, 2012, believing them to be signaling just another drill. The Vaults sealed their inhabitants in as the planet burned in atomic fire. This may be due to the fact that it occured at 9:47 EST (40:02 UTC), which meant that many people were un-able to get to a shelter, as they were just getting home from work. A few citizens took shelter where they could: sewers, and subway stations, drainage centers, Pulowski preservation shelters, or in the case of the Keller Family, the National Guard Depot. However, without a very strong outer shield of dense metal or rock to defend them from both the heat and kinetic shockwave of the nuclear blasts (such as Lamplight Caverns or Raven Rock), few civilians survived the full-out nuclear exchange. Some who were exposed to high levels of radiation became Ghouls, and some of these ghouls, in turn, formed their own communities. Those who survived the nuclear exchange would form the basis for the brutal civilization that existed for the next 20 years, until the first Vaults re-opened.
Despite the semi-global destruction caused by the war, many areas remained habitable, with low and tolerable levels of highly radioactive fallout, with the most notable example being New York State. The surviving humans were in some parts of the Americas able to continue living in the ruins of the pre-War civilization, establishing new communities and even small cities.
Around a week after the initial nuclear explosions, Acid Rain started to fall; however, none of it was drinkable. The rain was black; tainted with soot, ash, radioactive elements produced by the nuclear explosions and various other contaminants produced by nuclear weapons. This rain marked the start of the terrible Fallout that marked the true, permanent destruction caused by the Great War. The rain lasted four long days, killing thousands of species that had survived the initial destruction of the bombs, be they Animal, Plant or Micro-organisms. Those few living things, person, animal or plant, that survived after the rain ended were left to live in the now barren wasteland that had spread across the whole of the continent, where nearly all pre-War plant life had died either in the initial explosions or from the intense radiation produced by the fallout.
Some major global cities were not completely destroyed by the explosions because of their relatively low explosive yields, and cities such as Washington, D.C even managed to maintain intact buildings despite relatively close detonations. However, most city streets across the post-nuclear United States were and continue to be blocked with rubble from collapsing edifices. In the ruins of the capital, most of the city's Metro system of subways remained intact. Though many Metro tunnels were blocked by collapsed masonry caused by the shock of the atomic explosions, the Metro's tunnel network remains the easiest way to move around the city ruins.
One of the most obvious examples of the nuclear devastation was with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Because of the infected water and poisoned sky it began to cause neurological damage to those exposed to it. People became more hostile, violent, and short-tempered; these people were nicknamed "Wildmen". Their emotions began to run out of control, often teetering on primal. In severe cases, mutated humans devolved into savage beasts bearing almost no resemblance to a Human as an example of extreme Zombification. Over the first 20 years, The Pitt quickly degenerated into a dangerous urban jungle; even cannibalism was not uncommon. Rumors of the horrors of The Pitt spread throughout the Wasteland, and all travelers knew to avoid it at all costs. However, The Pitt became one of the most self-sufficient communities in the Wastes. One of the worst-affected areas by far was California, which suffered a state of technological regression, with it soon coming into a possision similar to the Medieval-Period. In fact, in 2124 along with some small areas of Oregon and Montana it became a kingdom known as Tamriel, with the old remnants of the Space-Age being considered the stuff of legend. The Great War was to them a creation myth and when the MC-1 Government attempted to enter to modernize the forgotten area the primitive peoples killed them and then invaded New Vegas in the close state of Nevada.
Other areas on Earth[edit | edit source]
After the end of World War IV and by the end of 2021, the outbreak had caused all levels of organized government to collapse, except for roving Military squads. Visiting the planet was very dangerous, since large amounts of power were now essentially up for grabs by anyone. Soon, the areas which were not evacuated (like Spain and Russia) were now in a situation reminiscent of Medieval times; Roving groups of barbarians (bandits) pillaged the land, so the peasants (survivors) gathered together in large fortified bases (castles) for mutual protection. Over time, these bases eventually grew into small towns. These small and anarchic towns squabbled over the resources available, though some of them did band together for mutual protection, much as medieval lords did.
In the countries were government of a nation acted quickly and managed to pull together and protect its citizens from the outbreak (Like New York State and Japan), society changed relatively little in the aftermath. There are were large areas declared "safe zones" or "refugee camps", where refugees could live in relative peace and safety while the military cleared dangerous areas. However, these areas had a dark side; it gave the government and the military extraordinary power, and the governments of many of these areas soon became oppressive, as was the case with Honda City. Or worse, some of these "safe zones" were left unpoliced, allowing bandits to harass the citizens and even take control.
See Also[edit | edit source]
- Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - First major usage of nuclear weapons.
- Human Empire
- Kim Jong-Il
- Nuclear Attack on Israel