Welcome to the Library of RAE University. We are terrible sorry, but some idiot played with an old pulse rifle in nearby laboratory and he managed to hit this room. But don’t worry. Our best programmers are working on the damaged datafiles and a large group of volunteers is doing their best to recover data from backups and hardcopies. We have only few titles right now to offer to you, but there will be more soon.
Main Librarian Vladimir Koziar
I am sure I could find among you those who would scoff at the name of the lecture, but through the lecture I will explain to you my view, and possibly persuade you to my ideas. The apocalypse, the Great War, The Day When The Bombs Fell. All are synonyms of one event – the Third World War. Many among you see the remnants of Pre-War civilization as the legacy of better times. Much of it is an enigma to us, irreparable even with our modern science. Many of you feel that the Pre-War world was great and beautiful; no mutants, radiation, or hunger. Many of you feel that the world was in a utopian state until the ‘evil’ Chinese started a war that resulted in the loss of countless lives and the destruction of our planet. A destruction so profound and absolute that it took many generations before we could once more set foot on the irradiated soil and begin to rebuild our once great civilization. Many of you believe that the war came like a plague in the night, obliterating our planet in one fell stroke, an unknown and unthought-of possibility. But that is untrue, the Apocalypse was inevitable.
Luckily for us historians there have been enough historical documents to survive the war, in written or video form, to allow me to prove the validity of my theory. These documents also show us that the world prior to the war was not the Garden of Eden we have came to imagine. The world was, in fact, overcrowded. Every day, despite the best efforts of those leaders with humanitarian mindsets, new armed conflicts and wars began between rival countries. These conflicts, though contained and subdued in general, were still significantly bloodier than the sporadic skirmishes between raiders and military police today. During the twentieth century humanity veritably depleted the globes’ natural resources, oil especially. Wars were waged over the pitiful remnants of ancient wealth. The atomic war between China and the United States of America was simply the culmination of years of bloodthirsty capitalism. The Old Europe was one of the most critical battlegrounds. Armies had been on the march, here in the lands we now call home, for decades prior to the great war between Chin and America.
In the beginning of the twenty-first century it was painstakingly obvious that something would happen. Many people, who preached about the inevitable end, were branded as fanatics. But as the years progressed humanity began to recognize the troubles that were on the horizon – too many humans, irreparable damage to nature, and exhausted resources. Humans, as all organisms must, had to expand or face stagnation and deterioration. But room soon ran out, our ancestors had nowhere left to go. Many scholars from those years, as well as some of today’s savants, believe the greatest mistake the prewar civilizations ever made was abandoning space. Had humanity continued with space exploration, past the borders of our weakened Earth, they would have perhaps found new resources and possibilities. Some of the old records contain notes pertaining to attempts to send colony ships financed by private companies to other worlds, but the records are fragmentary and unclear. As such, we cannot be sure if those ships so much as left the surface of the Earth, let alone reached their destinations.
The end came swiftly. Unrest increased throughout the globe, followed by rampant terrorist acts committed by various extremist groups, and soon after a war began over the remaining oil reserves in the Persian Gulf. I will not go into detail at this time in regards to who fought whom, but relative information can be found in my tome ‘Last Minutes Before the Culmination of History’. We can be sure of one thing, though. Without drastic steps in the early 21st Century the Apocalypse was inevitable. Whether by atom bomb or unsustainable mass, civilization was destined to collapse.
Of course I do not applaud the exchange of the nuclear warheads, we were very close to erasing all life from the planet’s surface. But perhaps it was better for humanity in the end. Thanks to the construction of the many shelters and the preparation for the war, enough of the human genetic code survived to allow us to be here right now, discussing our future and past. The average, the plain, and the mostly useless died. When the radiation levels finally dropped, our ancestors left their shelters and started the rebuilding of civilization. In my humble opinion we will reach the cultural and scientific level of our great prewar ancestors in but a few generations. Yes, we sill have much to achieve, most of our knowledge came from the interpretation of prewar wares, but the trend is clearly visible within our enlightened country. We can hope that it’s the same for other parts of the world, of which we still lack contact. We will soon fill the Earth again. What then?
Yes. Maybe a second apocalypse will be inevitable. History repeats itself in innumerable cycles. But maybe we will be able to avoid the mistakes of our predecessors and hopefully we will find the way to further spread humanity in a sustainable manner, perhaps even beyond our solar system. Every one of us here must help humanity to reach this bright future. It is duty to ourselves and a homage to those that died in the Great Atomic War.
