Any future history for any Sci-fi setting is always partly based upon the writer’s prejudices and beliefs, so my proposed future history is based on my view of how the world will evolve over the next century. So let me introduce my guest from the future: Eint Trumandrox, an S’Nak historian of the Drox Hive from the world which humans call Draco Scorpius III.
“An extract from the History of Humanity from 2008 to 2450 Lecture given to the University of Cambridge by Eint Trumandrox 15 Feb 2451”
“The Twenty First Century, which had started in such great hope, soon turned into tragedy, the election of Barack Obama as the First Black President of the United States and also the last President of the United States, can be seen as the time when the period known to Humanity as the “Ragnorak Years” or the “Time of the Wolf” began.
President Obama’s election had ushered in a sense of great hope amongst the people of the old United States, however the liberal economic policies enacted by Obama and the Democrats failed to improve the US economy and turned the recession into the worst global depression since the previous century. In order to provide the funds in order to spend the US economy out of the recession, many of the Rumsfold era Defence Projects, like the Joint Strike Fighter, the Future Combat System and Littoral Combat Vessel, were either cancelled or put on hold and the money was spent instead on capital projects designed to create mass employment in poorest areas of the United States, however many of these projects were grossly mismanaged by the Federal Bureaucracy, which began to turn even more authoritarian. A problem greatly compounded as the left wing of the Democratic Party, began implementing more and more of it’s political agenda and thus causing great political strife, not only within the US on such matters as abortion and gun control, but also with the other members of NATO, NAFTA, WTO and the Organisation of American States, by introducing Protectionist measures to protect American Job’s and Industries.
As the economy continued to stagnate, the Violent Crime Rate in the US began to spiral out of control, especially in the urban areas of the Rust Belt, so President Obama began to switch more and more of the Federal Intelligence and Law Enforcement Agencies away from fighting Islamic Terrorism and toward fighting crime. By the beginning of 2012, the US was in a state of extreme crisis, Cities like Detroit and Baltimore were nearly out of control, with widespread rioting and other social disorder in the poorest area. In a highly controversial move, the Democrat controlled US Congress not only revoked the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and ordered Federal Troops freshly returned from Iraq into those cities to pacify them, but also proposed amending the Constitution by revoking the Second Amendment, a move met with extreme fury by the Right Wing, who accused the President and the Democrat Party of trying to turn the United States into a Socialist State, and then walked out of congress accusing the President of being a traitor.
So it was on the day of the President’s State of the Union address in 2012, with both the nation and congress bitterly divided, with a number of states threatening to secede if he did not withdraw his constitutional amendments. He began his speech to reunify the Country behind him and that was the moment when Al-Queda lunched their most successful and final strike just as they were being finally defeated, against the US, by donating a stolen Pakistani 50kt Nuclear Warhead within a half a mile of the Capitol Building, effectively decapitating not only the Federal Government, but also the majority of State Governments as nearly two thirds of the State Governors were in Washington. It took nearly a month for the remaining Governors, Senators and Congressmen to put together a semi-functioning national government.
In the interregnum, the world began a slow descent into chaos, as many of the national and regional conflicts that had been suppressed by the United States began to flare. One of the first to erupt was the tension between the Iranians and the rest of the Middle East, with their economy in ruins and with popular opposition to their system of government rising amongst the people, and with the US government in a state of total chaos brought by the Nuclear Strike, they tried to divert the people by start Wars of Liberation against both Iraq and Israel by invading Iraq and firing nuclear missiles against Israel. Unfortunately, for them, the other, mostly Sunni, Gulf States, together with both Syria and Turkey, allied themselves with Iraq and rushed forces to help repulse the Iranian Invasion. Also, the Iranian Nuclear Stike against Israel failed, as not only did the Israeli ABM defences destroyed eight of the ten missiles fired at them, but the other two missiles hit Palestinian Territory, the first impacted just outside the Hebron, but failed to detonate, but the final missile hit the city of Gaza, destroying it. The Israeli government, in a state of total fear, unleashed the fully mobilised Israeli Defence Forces and ordered them to attack the Iranians with everything including Nuclear Weapons, at the same time the US Central Command reeling from the Nuclear attack on Washington and believing that the Iranians were behind the attack, unleashed a full Alpha Strike on Iran using conventional weapons from all available US assets. The result was that within three days of the start of the Iranian Invasion, Iran as a country had ceased to exist. While this war was going on, the rest of the World stood by in a case of extreme shock, with the UN, NATO and the EU in a state of total paralysis.
Soon other conflicts began, both political and religious, as both old and new grievances erupted and so began a series of intermittent and bloody wars that tore the old order apart and lasted for nearly fifty years. During which time, many of the old nations both rose and fell in power, new ones were created and artificial ones were destroyed, old alliances were both either destroyed, strengthened or renewed, while others were created as axis of power shifted from the Atlantic Rim to the Pacific.
The old United States was one of those nations that fell, in the aftermath of the Nuclear attack on the Washington and with most of the Country’s leadership dead, a Triumvirate of three Republicans, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani, took control and split the US into three regions. The area south of Ohio and Missouri Rivers and east of the Rio Grande came under the stewardship of Fred Thompson, the Governor of Tennessee. While area west of the Rio Grande became the responsibility of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had appointed the temporary Governor of California after the death of both the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor in Washington DC. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani was left with trying to re-establish government in the old North. However, the political and regional differences, which had been so exacerbated during the Obama Presidency and which had been temporarily forgotten in the aftermath of the strike, resurfaced and the Country began to disintegrate into two new major states: the Bear Republic in the West and the Virginia Confederacy in the South, while the Northern and Mid West States, abandoned by the South and the West, and fast becoming a failed state was annexed by Canada along with Alaska, while Hawaii and the Pacific Territories became an independent Nation again, allied with the Japanese.
By the Earth year 2067 CE, this World was in the process of beginning to recover from nearly five decades of conflict and was beginning to have hope again and in this moment, was when the S’Nak of Hrox hive began their invasion of Earth and so thrust this world into the Galaxy at large. But that, as you say, is a story for another day or rather after lunch.”
“A second extract from the History of Humanity from 2008 to 2450 Lecture given to the University of Cambridge by Eint Trumandrox 15 Feb 2451”“
As I was saying before lunch, Humanity in the year 2067CE was in the process of recovering from nearly five decades of almost continuous conflict with itself when five S’Nak Colonization Ships from the Hrox Hive entered Earth Orbit and began their assault on earth using Mass Driver and other weapons, they assumed that they had the technological advantage over humanity, but in reality, even the poorest and least advanced human state had not only more advanced, but more effective weapons.
What the Hrox Hive discovered to their cost, was that we S’Nak were only slight more technologically advanced than Humanity and only then in the area of Space Technology, especially Faster Than Light Technology. So while we S’Nak were able to dominate the High Orbit, humanity dominated the Close Orbit and planetary areas of engagement. Especially, the surface where centuries of conflict had led to humanity of weapons and tactics far beyond what we S’Nak had even conceived of especially armoured fighting vehicles. The result was a stalemate and after two years of conflict, eventually the Hrox Hive had to surrender, they had suffered heavy casualties, not only in loss of thousands of S’Nak lives, but also in the destruction of three of the Colonisation Ships, however, in the end the surviving two queen’s had no option to surrender as retreat was impossible as their voyage had been a one way trip of over ten parsecs and they had no fuel left to travel to either of your systems gas giants to refuel.
This attempted alien invasion, united your race in a way never seen before, at least for a short while, and spurred your people’s charge for the stars and a charge it was. Humanity’s ancient paranoia’s against strangers, which had been so inflamed by the attempted invasion of the Hrox led to Humanity to try to conquest known space in order to defend itself from another alien race. The capture of the S’Nak ships and other technologies, which had been reversed engineered almost since the start of the invasion, allowed humanity to develop military Starships. By 2075 CE, Earth Ships were capable of travelling nearly two parsecs in a single Jump, in fact the two Human Scientists, who had first managed to reverse engineer our technology, Hiro Suzuki and Ang Lin, actually managed to substantially improve the performance of our FTL technology. Such was the case, when the second wave of ten Hrox Hive ships arrived in the year 2081, this time Humanity was waiting and earth’s defensive forces were able to defeat the invasion without the invading forces being able to enter high orbit, due to it’s now superior technology.
By this time, Humanity had also began exploring and settling the nearest star systems, partly in order to set up military bases and partly to ensure humanity’s survival in case of earth’s fall and humanity’s destruction. Soon this cautious expansion became a tidal wave as humanity began an exodus not seen before by any of the known alien races. And this expansion, came in three parts, the first wave of colonisation was led by United Nations, the Major Nations and Power blocks, the second wave was organised by the big multi-national corporations seeking new sources of materials and markets, while the final and largest wave was comprised of a wide and diverse menagerie of different groups seeking to escape Earth and in order to create their own personal utopia and as result your race’s genetic evolution accelerated, but not however it’s cultural evolution, in fact rather than uniting your race diversified even more."