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Description

They'd known that climate change would be a hard bullet to bite for decades, and the nations of Earth cooperated to mitigate its effects. They had plans; they had timetables; they had commitment. And maybe it would have been enough, in another world. But this was not that other world. In this world, black swans were prone to rear their ugly heads. In this world, their grand plans, and their grand world, millennia in the making, collapsed.

The culprit came as a stowaway with the pretty trinkets, slimstones, exported to Earth from Titan at tremendous expense to adorn the necks and wrists of the the fashionable and pretentious. In the diligence of their avarice, the Titanians sought the scintillating pebbles deep in their moon's Methane seas. Aside from the stones they cared little for what was in the hydrocarbon abyss, which cursory study had shown to be lifeless and uninteresting. They were wrong. The lifeforms of Titan were nothing like even the single-celled organisms of Earth and Mars. They were diffuse, non-cellular chemical patterns at home in the deep volcanic rifts at the bottom of Titan's seas.

The life form, later branded the Othrys Plague, found its way to Earth lying dormant in slimstones, unlooked for and unrecognized. The critical leak was tracked down to a single slimstone bracelet lost on a ship in the Arctic Ocean in 2083. Once the Othrys arrived at the sea bottom, it began to spread. After evolving in the sparse liquid water of Titanian cryovolcanoes, the deep ocean of Earth provided a bonanza. The only thing that had kept the Othrys Plague from spreading elsewhere was another critical component to their life cycle: high pressure methane. This was available in spades in the form of clathrates locked in the marine permafrost. The Othrys Plague's flourishing produced just enough ambient heat to thaw the permafrost, releasing the methane into the atmosphere.

According to the "Clathrate Gun Hypothesis", once large amounts of methane were released, that methane would further warm the ocean, leading to further releases of methane in a positive feedback loop as unstoppable and violent as igniting the powder in a gun. Climatologists had calculated that Earth would just barely escape this catastrophe, but the Othrys Plague pushed the climate over the tipping point. In the space of three years, global temperatures rose to five degrees above their preindustrial levels.

Nearly the entire globe suffered long burning droughts followed by brief and violent flooding. Vast forest fires raged out of control, decimating the world's carbon sinks and leading to massive soil erosion. Areas once fertile and temperate fell to sun-scorched rock. Rising temperatures and acidity destroyed marine ecosystems, collapsing fish stocks. The world struggled to phase in vertical farming and move populations into arcologies. Perhaps they would have succeeded, if they'd had more time. But each new storm or drought or flood or famine or fire came on with vengeful rapidity, adding to the burden and reducing the strength to bear it.

In the summer of 2086, the tropics, home to nearly a third of Earth's population, became uninhabitably hot for a span of several weeks. Nations to the north and south strained to take in the refugees in addition to caring for their own people. It was a sign of things to come. The off world colonies too were expected to carry some of the burden. Waves of new colonist were sent out to every body. However, as the extent that the disaster would inevitable reach eventually dawned on people, they realized the terrible truth, though few accepted it: there was not enough to spare for climate refugees. One way or another, most of humanity was doomed.

Mars was the first to run short of compassion for the dying Earth. The Martians had little love for distant Earth, which governed them with disinterest and distain. And besides that, Hellas Planitia was near its carrying capacity, and could not comfortably support any more inhabitants. A spate of refugee massacres in 2087 snowballed into all out revolt across all fourteen colonies. Earth would send a few token forces to try and regain control, but in practice Mars withdrew from system-wide affairs in that year. Certain Belt colonies would follow suit, seeing the Earthan collapse as a disease to be quarantined. The Vesti Cossacks, Ceresian Sikhs, and Pallasian Christians formed a pact pledged to resisting invasion and immigration from Earth. Titan refused to even acknowledge Earthan communiques.

After similar nativist sympathies started cropping up on Mercury, Venus, and Luna, Earth responded with force, sending heavily armed occupation forces to every major city from Earth orbit to the surface of Mercury, and launching a war to win back the Belt. These efforts strained the diminishing strength of Earth and those of the colonies, but still they did not provide enough aid. As the sub-polar nations fought desperately to sustain the ever growing flood of refugees, some of them started to balk. In 2090, England, Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland issued a joint statement that they would take in no more immigrants. Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, Nenetistan, Chukotka, Yakutia, and the Canadian Province of Nunavut each affirmed shortly afterwards. The other sub-polar countries and the vanishing tropical ones were livid. Sold on the idea that it was the duty of all countries able to take in as many refugees as possible, were convicted that the nativist coalition was condemning millions to death just to maintain their own standards of luxury.

It all came to a head when England torpedoed a ship of refugees in the channel. The event was the flashpoint for a war against the nativists. The fire of war spread instantly to those colonies that were still accepting refugees, giving birth to the most destructive conflict humanity had ever seen. half a billion died of climate chaos and massacres in the first three months of conflict, and the losses off of Earth were just as extreme. With populations dying off and critical infrastructure being destroyed, a few of the nations of Earth resolved to end the war as quickly as possible, and saw no alternative to tactical nuclear strikes. And of course, when this stared, it could never be undone. So many secure decades after the Cold War, the nuclear holocaust came in 2091.

After that exchange, there was little to fight over, and little to fight with. What was left of Earth could do little to prepare for the nuclear winter that followed, as debris blocked out the sun for three years. After the thaw, the Earth's temperature rose sharply before settling into a gentle upward curve. But by then, the damage was done. Future generations estimated that there were twelve million humans left alive on Earth. Of those, most lived in barely habitable regions as herdsmen, subsistence farmers, or hunter-gatherers. Others lived in the far northern and southern "civilized" regions, where rudimentary states still existed, at least in some cases. The lucky ones lived in the few arcologies that had survived the war, and lived withdrawn from the world in their self-sufficient mini-ecosystems. The rest of the system too, regressed, and the human species and all its works died back. It was a new age of ruin and loss. It was known as the Quiet Eon.

Humanity, once so serene in their assurance of their empire over matter, had fallen.

Description

They'd known that climate change would be a hard bullet to bite for decades, and the nations of Earth cooperated to mitigate its effects. They had plans; they had timetables; they had commitment. And maybe it would have been enough, in another world. But this was not that other world. In this world, black swans were prone to rear their ugly heads. In this world, their grand plans, and their grand world, millennia in the making, collapsed.

The culprit came as a stowaway with the pretty trinkets, slimstones, exported to Earth from Titan at tremendous expense to adorn the necks and wrists of the the fashionable and pretentious. In the diligence of their avarice, the Titanians sought the scintillating pebbles deep in their moon's Methane seas. Aside from the stones they cared little for what was in the hydrocarbon abyss, which cursory study had shown to be lifeless and uninteresting. They were wrong. The lifeforms of Titan were nothing like even the single-celled organisms of Earth and Mars. They were diffuse, non-cellular chemical patterns at home in the deep volcanic rifts at the bottom of Titan's seas.

The life form, later branded the Othrys Plague, found its way to Earth lying dormant in slimstones, unlooked for and unrecognized. The critical leak was tracked down to a single slimstone bracelet lost on a ship in the Arctic Ocean in 2083. Once the Othrys arrived at the sea bottom, it began to spread. After evolving in the sparse liquid water of Titanian cryovolcanoes, the deep ocean of Earth provided a bonanza. The only thing that had kept the Othrys Plague from spreading elsewhere was another critical component to their life cycle: high pressure methane. This was available in spades in the form of clathrates locked in the marine permafrost. The Othrys Plague's flourishing produced just enough ambient heat to thaw the permafrost, releasing the methane into the atmosphere.

According to the "Clathrate Gun Hypothesis", once large amounts of methane were released, that methane would further warm the ocean, leading to further releases of methane in a positive feedback loop as unstoppable and violent as igniting the powder in a gun. Climatologists had calculated that Earth would just barely escape this catastrophe, but the Othrys Plague pushed the climate over the tipping point. In the space of three years, global temperatures rose to five degrees above their preindustrial levels.

Nearly the entire globe suffered long burning droughts followed by brief and violent flooding. Vast forest fires raged out of control, decimating the world's carbon sinks and leading to massive soil erosion. Areas once fertile and temperate fell to sun-scorched rock. Rising temperatures and acidity destroyed marine ecosystems, collapsing fish stocks. The world struggled to phase in vertical farming and move populations into arcologies. Perhaps they would have succeeded, if they'd had more time. But each new storm or drought or flood or famine or fire came on with vengeful rapidity, adding to the burden and reducing the strength to bear it.

In the summer of 2086, the tropics, home to nearly a third of Earth's population, became uninhabitably hot for a span of several weeks. Nations to the north and south strained to take in the refugees in addition to caring for their own people. It was a sign of things to come. The off world colonies too were expected to carry some of the burden. Waves of new colonist were sent out to every body. However, as the extent that the disaster would inevitable reach eventually dawned on people, they realized the terrible truth, though few accepted it: there was not enough to spare for climate refugees. One way or another, most of humanity was doomed.

Mars was the first to run short of compassion for the dying Earth. The Martians had little love for distant Earth, which governed them with disinterest and distain. And besides that, Hellas Planitia was near its carrying capacity, and could not comfortably support any more inhabitants. A spate of refugee massacres in 2087 snowballed into all out revolt across all fourteen colonies. Earth would send a few token forces to try and regain control, but in practice Mars withdrew from system-wide affairs in that year. Certain Belt colonies would follow suit, seeing the Earthan collapse as a disease to be quarantined. The Vesti Cossacks, Ceresian Sikhs, and Pallasian Christians formed a pact pledged to resisting invasion and immigration from Earth. Titan refused to even acknowledge Earthan communiques.

After similar nativist sympathies started cropping up on Mercury, Venus, and Luna, Earth responded with force, sending heavily armed occupation forces to every major city from Earth orbit to the surface of Mercury, and launching a war to win back the Belt. These efforts strained the diminishing strength of Earth and those of the colonies, but still they did not provide enough aid. As the sub-polar nations fought desperately to sustain the ever growing flood of refugees, some of them started to balk. In 2090, England, Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland issued a joint statement that they would take in no more immigrants. Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, Nenetistan, Chukotka, Yakutia, and the Canadian Province of Nunavut each affirmed shortly afterwards. The other sub-polar countries and the vanishing tropical ones were livid. Sold on the idea that it was the duty of all countries able to take in as many refugees as possible, were convicted that the nativist coalition was condemning millions to death just to maintain their own standards of luxury.

It all came to a head when England torpedoed a ship of refugees in the channel. The event was the flashpoint for a war against the nativists. The fire of war spread instantly to those colonies that were still accepting refugees, giving birth to the most destructive conflict humanity had ever seen. half a billion died of climate chaos and massacres in the first three months of conflict, and the losses off of Earth were just as extreme. With populations dying off and critical infrastructure being destroyed, a few of the nations of Earth resolved to end the war as quickly as possible, and saw no alternative to tactical nuclear strikes. And of course, when this stared, it could never be undone. So many secure decades after the Cold War, the nuclear holocaust came in 2091.

After that exchange, there was little to fight over, and little to fight with. What was left of Earth could do little to prepare for the nuclear winter that followed, as debris blocked out the sun for three years. After the thaw, the Earth's temperature rose sharply before settling into a gentle upward curve. But by then, the damage was done. Future generations estimated that there were twelve million humans left alive on Earth. Of those, most lived in barely habitable regions as herdsmen, subsistence farmers, or hunter-gatherers. Others lived in the far northern and southern "civilized" regions, where rudimentary states still existed, at least in some cases. The lucky ones lived in the few arcologies that had survived the war, and lived withdrawn from the world in their self-sufficient mini-ecosystems. The rest of the system too, regressed, and the human species and all its works died back. It was a new age of ruin and loss. It was known as the Quiet Eon.

Humanity, once so serene in their assurance of their empire over matter, had fallen.