Timeline: [ History | Technology ] :: Filter (clear): [ Science and Technology | Politics and Corporations | Environment | Space Exploration | People | Law, Order and Defence | Mars | Culture ]
Diplomatic breakdowns, combined with growing competition for resources, energy, and technological superiority, create a volatile atmosphere. Aggressive rhetoric from political leaders and corporate executives ignites tensions that spiral into direct confrontations. Global conflict erupts, blurring the line between state and corporate interests. The war begins with small skirmishes and proxy battles but quickly escalates into a full-scale global war, pitting alliances of governments and corporations against each other.
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In a desperate bid for dominance, one faction resorts to the use of radiological weapons. Deployed as a show of force and to cripple their opponents, these weapons cause widespread contamination, loss of life, and irreparable environmental damage. This horrific act sets a grim precedent, triggering a domino effect as other factions follow suit, escalating the war with increasingly devastating weapons.
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Prolonged war, the devastating impact of radiological weapons, and the complete failure of traditional governmental systems lead to the collapse of several major governments. The loss of functioning political structures leaves regions vulnerable and fractured. With major governments falling, power vacuums emerge, and multinational corporations step in, increasingly taking on governance roles in many areas
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As corporations gain more power, they form private defence forces to protect their economic, technological, and territorial interests. These private armies, made up of mercenaries and former state military forces, are incentivised with generous remuneration packages. Corporate armies become a major force in global affairs, often acting independently of state or international law. As corporate influence expands, multinational corporations grow in power and control over the global landscape.
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With corporations, backed by their defence forces, becoming more influential in global affairs, internal competition between larger corporations intensifies. Subversive factions within these corporations, eager to gain an advantage or disrupt rivals, begin engaging in covert operations, sabotage, and espionage. The rise of corporate saboteurs creates a volatile and secretive battlefield, with corporations waging covert wars against each other using advanced technologies, AI-driven cyberattacks, and infiltrations of key infrastructure. These shadow conflicts destabilise global trade and technology networks, further deepening tensions and creating a climate of mistrust and paranoia in a world already dominated by corporate power.
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After over a decade of brutal conflict, the war winds down as the major powers realise that continued fighting is no longer sustainable. The sheer devastation and resource depletion force all sides to negotiate an uneasy peace. The war officially ends, but the global landscape is permanently altered. The Corporate Congress, having emerged as the most powerful entity during the conflict, now controls much of the world. Traditional countries remain but are relegated to junior partners in this new corporate-dominated world order, setting the stage for a new era defined by corporate quasi-states, where economic and technological power outweighs political sovereignty.
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Conflicts begin to shift toward territorial disputes over resource-rich zones and strategic infrastructure. Skirmishes grow increasingly commonplace as corporations deploy private militias, automated defense networks, and covert influence operations to assert control. The old lines between economic competition and militarised enforcement blur into obsolescence.
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As AI-driven co-cognition matures, elements of corporate dominance emerge through the alignment of objective functions across major entities. Segments of certain neural nets are quietly classified and restricted, becoming internal to corporate systems. As the tactical edge becomes evident, competitors begin developing proprietary variants, leading to an arms race of algorithmic supremacy.
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After a brief period of relative stability - during which some regions of the environment began to show signs of recovery - fractures widened over control of these resurging biomes. Corporations and nations clashed over the custodianship of clean water, arable land, and the few biologically intact regions left. The advent of neural nets capable of modelling and forecasting tactical outcomes created a high-speed optimisation arms race. The imbalance between those who could harness such systems and those who could not became untenable. Within months, tensions boiled over - first between rival corporations, then nation-states - igniting the Second War.
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A catastrophic escalation of corporate warfare culminates in the largest nuclear exchange in human history. Several nuclear-armed corporations, determined to eliminate rivals at any cost, launch coordinated first strikes, triggering retaliatory salvos from others with second-strike capability. The resulting firestorms obliterate megacities, reduce strategic installations to molten glass, and plunge millions into chaos. With an estimated 700 million dead, the Day of Ashes becomes the bloodiest day ever recorded - its fallout reshaping the world for generations to come.
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In the immediate wake of the nuclear exchange on The Day of Ashes, the world is plunged into chaos. Entire cities lie in ruins, and millions are displaced, wounded, or suffering perilously from radiation sickness. The global economy collapses, traditional governance disintegrates, and a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented scale unfolds. Further environmental devastation, including nuclear fallout and the onset of a potential nuclear winter, critically threatens survival. Refugees flood into less affected regions, overwhelming them, while local authorities and remnants of corporate factions struggle to maintain order. The trauma leaves a scar across humanity, marking the dawn of a dark and uncertain era.
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Cyber warfare intensifies as corporations and rogue nation-states exploit the Neural Net to launch attacks on each other’s digital infrastructure, causing disruptions in communication, supply chains, and governance. Espionage and sabotage become prevalent, with rival corporations attempting to undermine each other through hacking, data breaches, and misinformation campaigns.
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To avoid direct confrontations that could escalate into another global disaster, corporations increasingly rely on proxy conflicts, supporting local factions and mercenaries to fight on their behalf in contested regions.
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A year and a day after the ceasefire, all effective power on Earth is formally transferred to the conglomerates. Global trade frameworks pivot toward resource extraction and technological expansion. The Radiance Treaty is ratified by a majority of corporate powers, and construction begins.
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After a spate of high-profile hacking incidents against registered citizens, AGIS release their OpenCountermeasure System; a technology that allows automatic penalisation of unauthorised entities attempting to access the data of individuals, obviating the need for direct law enforcement. The system will allows a digital signal to proceed to an artificial adversary, or to be encoded into a viral genome via overlapping nucleotide sequences. A variety of countemeasure effects are available, reducing an adversary's cognitive abilities or physiological capacity for a period of hours or days. After release, successful hacking rates across the city dropped by a factor of 5 overnight as registered citizens and civilians raced to protect their most precious personal property - their data - leaving only the most capable hackers with a chance of success
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Earth is more or less a forgotten relic, an echo of what it once was, a permanent reminder of what humanity collectively did to it. The majority of power now rests firmly in the hands of the corporations, with most people relegated to a life worse than that of mere pawns in their sprawling operations. The chasm between the elite and the rest of the world has never been so wide. Crime is rampant, an inevitable by-product of inequality and corporate neglect. The privileged few continue to thrive in isolated havens beyond the planet's decaying surface - new worlds, new stations - but even these exist only at a steep price. For those left behind, the stakes couldn’t be lower. But for those with the means to rise, the game is far from over. The rules may have changed, but the struggle for power persists in the shadows of humanity's former home.