prologue - 2

Let's go back a bit. In the year 2043, global warming had gotten so bad that it finally started causing problems bad enough to push the world into action. With examples of how bad it had gotten being the Sahara desert, which had expanded as far south as Zimbabwe, covering 80% of the continent in sand. Not to mention the melting of the ice caps in mass in recent years. As of now, they have risen over 250 feet in the past 3 years, sinking large swaths of the planet. The world was becoming less hospitable, along with enforcing green energy and emission drops, the governments tried to stop it. However, we had pushed the planet too far. Just stopping would not help.

So one of the leading research countries, China, proposed a chemical solution, that if dumped directly into the atmosphere to try and cool the earth, would begin capturing carbon from the air using the chemical to surround and weigh it down, thus having it drop down to earth like snow, reducing the carbon in the atmosphere. The proposal went to the UN, and after what appeared to be some skipped steps and bribes, the proposal passed. The compound was manufactured in mass to be prepared for large-scale dumping of it world wide. After a few months of preparation and manufacturing, the day came.

April 15th, large planes of all makes and models took off from major airports and military runways world wide. After rising to sufficient altitude, they began dumping the chemical. The solution was codenamed "Operation Reset".t*.

At first, everything was going well. On day 3, post drop, the carbon levels dropped an astonishing 45%! However, what people did not realize was the chemical combined with oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere to form a cloud layer blanketing the world. Images from satellites showed the earth as a big, white ball, with holes here and there, but otherwise the earth gained a new cloud layer. At first, it was thought to be temporary... however... after a few days it was discovered that this layer was growing, not shrinking...

After the first week, the cloud layer grew to be about 5 kilometers thick and stayed that way. A month passed. Global temperatures had dropped to levels as low as almost -70 degrees F. The Great Freeze had set in. At month 3, the temperature stabilized at an average of -58 degrees Celsius globally. It wasn't exactly hospitable but aside from the first few billion, more humans were surviving.

Although at this point, the oceans had begun freezing. The governments held out for another month, but eventually, with the satellites being inaccessible, most world governments fell apart. By November, about 50% of the population had died off, with most surviving on non-perishables and such. Most of, if not all of, the tropic countries would die along with India and the South Americas being some of the worst hit.

When December came, as if a New Years or Christmas gift, the cloud layers began to fade. At about the end of January, global temperatures had returned to about normal, pre-industrial revolution levels. The carbon had been cleaned, but obviously with a cost far higher then what was intended.

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What followed was a month of silence, as the world governments that survived began to regroup and organize. As it turns out, most of Asia and the Middle East had died along with those in the African continent. They just were not equipped for the cold. The same went for places like Australia and other tropic and desert regions.

As such, a few new world orders arose. Primarily the three great powers that retained the ability to establish order were the United States of America, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, before the governments could get their bearings, one last sucker punch came from this mini ice age. Breaking off from the arctic shelf, which was no longer cold nor thick enough to hold it, an ice continent about the size of the state of Texas slammed into Norway, Sweden, and Europe. The iceberg, with the still rising sea levels to help it, all but flattened most of Europe, from the north coast to about Serbia, leaving small islands and new mountains and ridges in its wake.

With the land flattened or pushed out forming new mountains and ocean, the European ocean was formed. Ironically, the new 'ocean' was both wide and deep enough that it dropped the ocean levels back to almost. pre-melt levels. Over the course of a year, the new political landscape was formed, with Russia taking over Asia and India along with most nations in its area, including the now mostly uncovered Japan. They formed the new Trans Russia Asia union or TRAU.

The British, being an island nation already, sent out their newly recovered naval fleets, and took control of Africa, the European ocean, and parts of the Middle East which remained post freeze and flood. Using boats as the main method of transportation, they used the new mountains as protection from the east, and the ocean to the west to protect their borders. They formed the New British Commonwealth or NBC.

As for the USA, Canada willingly joined them as they no longer had any active or effective infrastructure, and Mexico joined willingly due to low population and no real government remaining. The survivors of the South American countries along with the newly unflooded areas in and around the Panama canal, were all annexed by the United States, which changed to the United Federation of the Americas or UFA. Post freeze, most people refer to these big three as the Federation,, the Commonwealth and the Union.

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As for technology, most countries after organizing themselves and recovering to the best abilities they can, became military governments under the new leadership. Which meant that dealing with congress, the senate etc. was no longer a problem. So what did they do next? Obviously they started researching military technology.

The UFA went down the route of land and air-based machines primarily, due to the large area they had to traverse.

Meanwhile, the NBC took the route of sea, primarily due to the now island-like landscape.

As for TRAU, strangely enough, they took the path of bio mechanics. It seems that due to most of the Russian population surviving, as they had adapted to cold temperatures somewhat close to the global freeze temperature, they decided that creatures are stronger than machines. When TRAU was formed, this was reflected in the research and development direction of the nation.