Towards the start of the second half of the 21st century the threat of a third world war was looming above the heads of the people of Earth. The extreme population growth had continued unabated and reached nearly 11 billion humans world wide. Thanks to sudden breakthroughs in medicine and genetic engineering for crops the population was able to exceed the numbers projected by those of the early 21st century. However where there is a rise there is a fall.
An unforeseen problem occurred, the crops started failing. The companies that designed the crops that provided in total more than 3/4ths of the food in the world had made it so that the seeds their crops would produce would grow weaker each generation. They started to produce less and in smaller sizes, they were more susceptible to disease and had fewer seeds. Thanks to various rulings during court cases and decisions by governments from 2035-2041 in the leading nations of the world companies could no longer make it so their crops produced no seeds (thus requiring farmers to purchase new seeds every time they run out). So they used a loophole to make them need to purchase new seeds in order to keep up production.
Unfortunately the effects showed much quicker and stronger than anticipated. After the second generation farms couldn't even provide a 20th of their former output and half of the time they lost their crop to disease. Supply for new seeds was not enough and what was even worse farms that had their crops die to disease couldn't grow the same crop their without it dying once more. The disease lingered in the soil somehow and was able to, without fail, kill even the first generation of the same crop.
As you can imagine this caused global food shortages and even outright nation wide famine. Nations with large amounts of arable land became the new areas of interest in the world. The Americas having the largest amount banded together for protection under the leadership of the United States, Canada, Brazil and Mexico creating the American Protectorate. The continent of Africa and the Middle East were the most affected by the food shortage and joined together to exploit their natural resources forming the Human League. Europe had a completely unified European Union including Russia and Asia had the Free People's Union. The former two were the most antagonistic with the later two allying themselves with the A.P. and the H.L. respectively.
As the people starved the blocs built up their armed forces as tension continued to build. Within a couple of years the problem was fixed to an extent, enabling food to be produced once more but at only 2/3rds of the previous level. In this period of time nearly a billion people died most of which were in the H.L. and F.P.U causing tensions to remain high. The threat of war lingered for a few years until 2051 when everything changed.
No one knows what caused it and why it produced the effects that it did all they do know is that it was the herald of the end of an age. After roughly half the world celebrated the new year it happened. The end times, the apocalypse, judgment day it has many names but the one that stuck amongst the survivors was strangely Ragnarok. Likely it was due to the number of similarities between the prophecy and what happened to us. The sky changed to the color of fire bathing the world in "flames", both the sun and moon disappeared from the sky and tsunamis occurred all over the world.
Ragnarok wasn't the end of the world however, it was simply the end of the world we were comfortable with. Despite the rather flashy changes to our scenery nothing else really changed, there weren't even that many deaths (relatively speaking). Thanks to certain technological developments the majority of the strength the tsunamis possessed were dissipated and what was left only caused minor flooding at worst. For a week nothing happened and people started to come to terms with our never ending "daytime" courtesy of the red sky constantly emitting light at a level about the same as a sunrise or sunset. Of course in the beginning there was large amounts of civil unrest, rioting and panic but it was mostly put down within a few days thanks to liberal use of military force by the various governments.
We were lucky in this regard as this was likely one of the very few reasons why any vestige of humanity survived. Exactly 1 week from when Ragnarok started they showed up. Sticking to the Norse theme they were called Draugar and were similar to zombies. Unfortunately they didn't possess the popular weaknesses zombies: they were superhuman in strength, didn't get distracted, possessed all their senses and worst of all they were intelligent. This meant they traveled in groups, could use weapons and targeted those they perceived as a threat first.
Killing them was difficult as it took a large amount of shots from even modern weapons to inflict any damage. It was as if something protected their bodies from harm as they emerged unscathed from even direct hits from high explosives, though the next hit usually got through. Nothing could be seen around their bodies however, either visually or through high tech readers. What ever it was that protected them had a limit though and it seemed to take awhile to recharge so it was possible to kill them. Similar to zombies destroying the brain or severing the head was the only way to finish them off, although destroying their limbs was effective enough.
No one knows the exact number of Draugar that first showed up but it was easily in the hundreds of millions. Fortunately there was no explosive increase in their numbers in the beginning as they weren't infectious. A bite wouldn't change you into one of them but if you died and they got a hold of your corpse you'd turn into one in the time it takes for them to give your body some of their blood. Still thanks to their sudden appearance, characteristics and numbers causalities were in the billions and towns, cities, states and even whole countries were overrun quickly.
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Those that survived were either at sea or in one of the few lucky holdouts carved out by the military and police forces of the world. The largest being San Francisco, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow and Rome whether through luck thanks to (relatively) low numbers of Draugar, a large military presence or both. San Francisco had the largest number of survivors at a little over 10 million civilians and roughly half a million combat personal (military and police). Due to being hit by a total of three tsunamis a large number of military personal were sent there for rescue operations and to maintain order. Thanks to this there was a large enough force to prevail against the initial Draugar with minimal causalities. From their they expanded outward clearing the surrounding area in a 40 mile radius before escorting survivors back to S.F.
In order to minimize the potential engagement areas Lieutenant Colonel Harding, who took control of the armed forces in S.F., ordered the bridges leading in to be blown up (including the Golden Gate). A wall was soon built guarding the last approach in to the city from which the we were able to repel all subsequent attacks and as more and more survivors started trickling in, including a sizable naval task force, the perimeter was expanded until a year later it included the majority of San Jose.
Unfortunately the small victories of mankind meant little to the Draugar as they soon took control of the rest of the world. After the rest of the world fell less than a quarter of a billion people remained in their small isolated hold outs and soon the Draugar turned their sights on them. Most of the smaller and less protected areas quickly fell to the armies of the dead before they made an attempt and the largest. They were attacked nearly simultaneously by armies that couldn't be counted and the shallow hope the survivors had maintained until then shattered.
Every man, woman and child that could hold a weapon were on the defenses and those that couldn't were ferrying supplies, but for all their efforts the fight was quickly being lost. It would have taken a miracle for them to survive and that's exactly what happened.
What most people hadn't realized was that when Ragnarok first happened it unlocked a dormant power in all of humanity. This power was the same as the one that shielded the Draugar and gave them strength. Those that figured this out were few but there were quite a few names for this power. Qi, mana, the force (though that one didn't get too popular), physic powers but the effect was the same, it turned fantasy into reality.
Of course the power was all the same in the end and you could use it to make fireballs, strengthen you body or use telekinesis. Naturally just like everything else some people were better at some uses than others. For example one person could make fireballs while barely blinking but would struggle to move even a small rock through telekinesis. There were of course limitations to this power mainly being there was a limited amount of it in a person and increasing the limit took a long time. If a person tried to use more power than they had it would work but their life force would be used up as a result.
When all was about to be lost it was the people that figured out this power that saved humanity. Each of the last cities had no more than a few thousand people that were able to utilize this power (as it was only until a month before that people appeared that could actually teach others how to use it). Despite their increased abilities their small numbers would only enable them to push back the enemy briefly in a direct confrontation. They decided on a desperate gamble, to use all their powers at once to seal off the cities from the Draugar.
The sealing technique was created by a genius who had no limitations in the use of his power and had more than 4 times the energy as the second highest amount. Through his technique we were able to save the last cities but even a genius can miscalculate. The requirements for the formation in terms of energy were incredibly severe and as a result all the Users (the general name for those than can use the energy) died when their life force was used as a substitute.
The sacrifices made to save humanity left only a handful of Users who hadn't been part of the attempt alive in each city. While the technique succeeded and keeping the Draugar out each seal only lasted for a limited amount of time. The longest being estimated at 20 years in San Francisco and the shortest at 5 years in Tokyo. Fortunately the formation can be supplied with more energy but unfortunately there is no means of doing so without the person supplying the energy dying. This has resulted in those of beyond saving and the elderly basically being "fed" to the seal to keep it active in cities where the deadline is drawing close.
San Francisco has been the only city that hasn't resorted to these measures yet but as 18 years have passed since it was first erected it won't be long till they have too. While the surviving members of humanity have been able to train ever large numbers of Users and those Users continued to get stronger so to did the Druagar get stronger, evolve and increase in numbers. Humanity might no longer be at the brink of destruction but it's still only a step away.
Author's Note:
Thanks for reading the prologue of From the Ashes of Terra (yes i realize it can be acronymed into FAT but i like the name atm. Feel free to suggest a new one if you want I'll change it if I like it enough). Hope this turned out okay I kind of started writing at 2 am for some reason so it might be a bit wonky >.<. please point out mistakes. If you have suggestions I'll also appreciate it. Now I'm going to sleep later.
P.S. For those that read my other work on this site FREE it is currently on a hiatus until i find the motivation to continue the story, sorry about that =/.
Thanks,
Ren Waya