In the mid twenty-first century, a series of small armed conflicts over oil rich lands broke out between the western powers, and a then united Chinese and Russian communist parties. Originally taking the form of the many proxy wars that had dominated the later half of the twentieth century, they soon broke into open hostilities. As larger numbers of troops from the major powers were sent as advisors, trainers or aids, it became inevitable that the backers of the many militia would meet and exchange fire. Initially the incidents were swept under the rug, the public on both sides kept in the dark by their respective governments.

But this became impossible after equipment failure led to misidentification of a Russian forward operating base, resulting in an American B-52 dropping its forty thousand pound payload on the position. With the death or injury of several hundred men, the Russian government opted to retaliate in kind, pummeling a British airstrip with artillery and air-to-ground missile strikes. Of the injured and KIA, many were troops from the UK, America, Australia and Germany. The American President and British Prime Minister spoke out against the “unprovoked attack” and demanded the UN back them for war.

China, fearing an overwhelming missile strike from American military assets in Japan, was the one to step in and call for diplomacy. While this quelled all-out war for the time, it did little to stop open hostilities in the middle east and arctic circles. Several months went by and both sides increased their military spending, recruitment drives, and propaganda demonizing the other. As the fighting began to spill into eastern Europe, India, and northern Africa, it seemed all but certain the curtain on the next world war would open on a fallout.

However, thanks to the mass hysteria over the coming war, the sudden disappearance of a Yersinia pestis sample went under-reported. It was at the last hour, as troops from both sides began massing for their first large scale assaults, that it was reported. The Black Death had been released on the world again. Several pockets of the deadly disease popped up in Brazil, numerous middle African, France, Germany, China, Russia and the southern states of America. Governments scrambled to get the infection under control. Borders shut down, troops recalled and quarantined, shipments of all goods stopped in their tracks. The world came to a screeching halt.

But it was already too late. Only after the first few weeks of study did virologists discover that the disease had mutated, and seemed immune to all the best antibiotics of the time. It was announced after three weeks that this was likely the result of genetic manipulation, and was part of a rogue terror attack. The virility of this new Black Death was unprecedented. It spread across urban and rural populations alike, and cared little for the supposed “quarantine”. Within the first two months, over thirty percent of the world's population had contracted the disease.

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It set the record for most deadly pandemic, killing nearly fifty-nine percent of all it infected within the first three days. This rose sharply to nearly ninety-seven by the fifth day. The world began to collapse. Most of the major powers had been in wartime production as the disease hit, reducing the output of consumer goods. They were not in a position to quickly switch to the production of disease fighting equipment. Furthermore, many had become lax after believing they had learned well from their experience only a few decades earlier. By the six month mark, nearly seventy-five percent of the world had lost their lives to this super bacterium.

As humanity clung on for dear life, the last thread was nearly shattered when a massive meteor was discovered on a collision course with the earth. Enemies only a half year prior were sudden, and desperate, allies. The few governments of the world still standing came together to combat the problem. In their desperation, a nuclear strike was determined to be the best option. A dozen of the largest available warheads were modified and made ready. All that the world could do was watch with bated breath for the next three months.

The day the warheads were launched marked the day the world saw nine of every ten humans dead. For the first time in nearly a quarter millenia, less than a billion humans drew breath on the earth. It was with heavy hearts that the world watched on in melancholic fear as the warheads cracked the meteor into a half dozen large chunks. While the earth itself had been saved, the resulting shower of space rock shattered what little hope was left of a quick recovery.

Fragments of the shattered rock rained down upon nearly the whole of the world, with particularly devastating effects in the Americas and Australia. Two of the larger pieces actually made it to the ground, one landing in a northwestern region of Russia and the other all but wiping Australia off the map. Of those that survived the Black death, fewer than fifty percent survived the initial impact and radioactive fallout.

What happened next can only be described as impossible. Those that became infected shortly after the impact, began displaying symptoms one might associate with the walking dead of pop culture. A lack of intelligence, aggressiveness towards everything around them and a hunger for raw meat. The Black Death had found a new vector to spread on. Fear from the last remaining humans spiked when it was discovered that this newest version did not kill its host and had become zoonotic, spreading like fire through the wildlife in areas affected.

In a last ditch effort to save humanity, the world governments came together under two flags. The Bastion of Humanity in the British Isles, and their sister state in the Japanese archipelago, The Compendium of Man. Working together as best they could given the state of the world, they gathered as much of the remaining population as feasible to the two island nations. Anyone showing any signs of any sickness were denied access, resulting in fewer than one hundred million souls between the two sites. The rest were left to their fate on the mainland.