The human race that wanders the wastelands of the world is not what it once was.
Long gone is the era in which it achieved miracles, never to return.
To the scavengers who pick apart the carcass of mankind’s civilization, the question of how
this came about is of far less interest than whatever trinkets might be found in the ruins.
Yet clues remain, swapped and sold in the markets of New Vegas, Megaton, Bunker HIll and The Hub.
Most who come to possess such items are ignorant of their original purpose,
caring only for how they might benefit from their use in the wastes. But to those who have dared
study the darkest chapter in human history, has come a deeper understanding of the world,
and how it ended; a terrible conflict known to those who began it, as the Sino-American war.
A culmination of disastrous events marked the mid 21st century, but it was the imminent
depletion of the world’s fuel reserves that perhaps made conflict inevitable.
Corporations and governments raced to find alternative solutions but even the advent
of promising fusion reactors was too little too late. That the world had entered a more desperate
era was made apparent in the year 2052 when the European Commonwealth attacked its rivals in the
Middle East for the last drops of fuel. A limited nuclear exchange left tens of millions dead,
but perhaps the greatest casualty was the United Nations, dismantled after its
failure to prevent a conflict that would mark the beginning of the Resource Wars.
The United States of America, one of the great superpowers of that era, was spared some of the
most dire effects of the fuel crisis thanks to its increasing reliance on nuclear power.
Yet it was impossible to insulate the nation entirely from the deteriorating global situation.
Its economy began to struggle and its population grew restless. The rapid spread of a New Plague
in 2053 was yet another crisis the United States could ill afford, with masses of
ignorant and selfish people growing petulant over the introduction of a National Quarantine.
Rather than attempt to ease the escalating national hysteria, the American government
instead moved to repurpose it. The New Plague was said to be the work of communists, and
those attending rallies were labeled subversive elements. Vigilant citizens were encouraged to
report any Communist activity, with hotlines and programs established to coordinate the effort.
The Third Red Scare, as this movement would come to be known, was not entirely unfounded.
The People’s Republic of China, the greatest rival of the United States, had been impacted far more
severely by the Resource Wars, escalating tensions and hostility between the two superpowers.
China grew more aggressive in its negotiations and spies on both sides began probing for weaknesses,
performing espionage and sabotage within each other’s territory
in increasingly dangerous operations.
In a terrible irony, the burgeoning technologies that might have solved the fuel crisis
and Resource Wars were instead used to escalate them. The scarce few fusion batteries produced
in the United States were reserved for military use, enabling the deployment of
a new type of mechanized infantry equipped with revolutionary powered armor in 2066.
Unable to match American production, the People’s Republic of China made the decision to attack,
before the United States could fully exploit its growing advantage.
The first battle of the Sino-American War was fought in Alaska. Despite American efforts to
fortify its borders, Chinese paratroopers landed almost unopposed, securing the region’s pipelines
and fuel reserves. In a daring move, the attack had occured in the dead of winter,
complicating any American counter-attack. Most responsible for the victory was People’s
Liberation Army General Jingwei, commander of all Chinese forces on the Alaskan front.
The rapid deployment of American powered armor in an operation commanded by General Constantine
Chase successfully blunted the initial Chinese offensive, turning the front into a stalemate.
The battlefields became defined by their extensive trench networks linking together
heavily fortified positions. Stable supply lines became of critical necessity to fight a war in
such a remote and extreme environment. With the Chinese Navy still active across the West Coast,
the American government increasingly pressured neighboring Canada to allow its armed forces
to move unrestricted across Canadian territories. Ottawa would eventually relent,
but the presence of US forces within Canada would slowly begin to resemble a military occupation.
To fund the escalating war effort, Canada’s natural resources were
consumed despite growing resistance and anti-American sentiments across the nation.
In 2072, Canada was officially annexed, its territories governed by military rule
and its population left without any representation in the United States congress.
To break the entrenchment across the Alaskan theater, the United States moved to escalate
the conflict, sending forces into the Chinese sphere of influence. In 2074, American
divisions performed an amphibious assault on the coastal cities of Shantou, Shanghai and others,
opening a new theater in mainland China. Similar offensives were launched in the Gobi Desert,
but as in Alaska the fighting deteriorated into a stalemate.
By 2076, the Sino-American war had entered its final stages. On both sides, dwindling resources
made any further conventional escalation of the war impossible. Internally, public
support had evaporated. The prolonged conflict had traumatized the populations of both nations.
In the United States, soldiers returning home helped spark a growing movement of protests
many of which were fired upon. Conspiracy theories ran rampant, including that a secret communist
“ghost fleet” was prowling American coastlines. Chinese territories meanwhile, particularly its
satellite states and others it had occupied during the war, collapsed into open revolt.
Neither side was able to capitalize on the other's weakness however. Energy and
food riots became commonplace and a state of emergency was declared within the United States
Over a decade after the initial invasion, the combination of extreme weather, attrition warfare
and American Power Armor had left the Chinese armies in Alaska in an untenable position.
In January of 2077, a final counter attack launched by General Chase reclaimed the Alaskan
Commonwealth’s capital of Anchorage. This was a decisive victory, but with the battlefield
of mainland China now similarly entrenched, it did little to affect the progress of the
Sino-American war. Each nation now possessed some of the largest armies in human history,
but were unable to concentrate this power in any meaningful way. Their respective homefronts
meanwhile, had become warzones themselves where angry civilians clashed with government forces.
In the early morning of October 23rd, 2077 a fleet of Chinese submarines were detected
off the coast of California by the United States Pacific Fleet. Meanwhile, flights of bombers were
tracked moving across the Bering Strait. The first launches occurred at 9:13, Eastern Standard Time,
though whether these were targeted towards military or civilian sites remains unknown.
At 9:26am, a retaliatory strike was ordered and a full scale nuclear exchange began.
For two hours nuclear weapons rained down across the Earth, bringing an end to thousands of years
of human civilization. The destruction was not limited to the United States of America
and the People’s Republic of China alone, but came to envelop every nation in nuclear fire.
The historians of the Wasteland have elevated this final conflict above
all the others that had come before. They have labeled it the Great War,
distinct from the Sino-American struggle. But no matter by what weapons it was fought,
or how terrible the devastation it left behind, the motives behind it were the same.
And indeed, these motives would have been instantly recognizable to every
single general and soldier to ever take up arms against his fellow man since antiquity.
Great or not, it was simply another war… and war… war never changes.