2??? BCD
The initial razing of the planet Earth as we knew it to be.
We had begun the process of relying heavily on nuclear power across the globe; world powers were vain and believed that the resources were plentiful enough to sustain the upper echelon of Earth's population long enough to see the next era. Environmentalists began to sound like doomed prophets, begging their governments to just listen, to acknowledge the projections, the research — but their efforts were futile.
Tensions rose globally as fusion reactors became more commonplace, depleting the heavy water supply due to poor recycling practices; without deuterium to fuel the fusion-powered grids, the future looked grim for every nation. Squabbles broke out along oceanic borders and in international waters, eventually ramping up until it was an all-out nuclear war between every sovreign country. Fossil fuel productions had been scrapped in favor of fusion, leaving the populace without a backup plan.
The first to fall amongst the world powers was the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, China, France, and lastly Russia.
The strategy that was favored was to strike the power production facilities of opposing countries, which caused a devastating domino effect. The resulting nuclear fallout upset the environment, causing global warming to spike suddenly, boiling many bodies of water until they either dried up completely or shrunk to about 40% of their original size; meaning that the planet once covered in 71% water was now only a meager 28%. Billions died, leaving Earth's population dwindling as the years went by. Hardly any civilizations survived; none were bound anymore by geopolitical allyship. Most were so far separated from each other that trade was few and far between, as jet fuel production had nearly been entirely crippled during the war.
The battle that felled the United States was designated the Battle of the Drained Plateau, the "Drained Plateau" being a colloquial name for the area surrounding the former state of Florida, encompassing the Gulf of Mexico and a large percentage of the Atlantic; with the lack of water, it has turned into a desert-like biome. Operation Wildcat was the codename for an operation in which the United Kingdom dropped a hydrogen bomb on the largest fusion reactor in the southern US, annihilating most of the population within mere seconds. This reactor was named Everglade-1 and sat in Tallahassee, Florida; due to Florida’s high water tables, groundwater was easily pumped into the system to harvest heavy water.
Everglade-1's destruction and subsequent implosion was the first instance of a bombing ever hitting its power plant target instead of detonating in the air due to AAW intervention. The resulting firestorm was approximately 20,000 feet in diameter, with the implosion and the bomb expelling approximately 5,500 Rem [55 Grays]. The crater left was over 3,000 feet wide and over 500 feet deep.
2420-2520 BCD
The 'Golden Age' of Neo-Tokyo.
Androids had begun to be produced as civilization rebuilt itself. The records of what group first produced them were lost in the Crash-Down; their name is unknown to date. A city had been hoisted into the sky as a show of innovation, a promise that society had, well, promise. The section of land was large, although the exact dimensions are unknown. It was heavy enough for the thrusters to require nuclear power once again; it made the general public wary but not enough to dissuade from the idea of a floating utopia.
Built to be helpers, androids were prevalent across the city of Neo-Tokyo. They were never intended to gain sentience, but the inclusion of an evolutionalry algorithm into their base operating systems was eventually identified to be the culprit. It had been included with the goal of making a program that could adapt to the needs and preferences of the customer to better serve them; it instead became a cornerstone for the evolution of a section of the OS that would colloquially be called the Salvation Code.