Prologue

Prologue

“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

T.S. Eliot �" The Wasteland

For decades, some of the most intelligent specimens of humanity on this once green planet told us that the life we were living was unsustainable

We failed to listen, and now there are not even enough of us left for a chorus of “told you so’s”.

Unfortunately - as with every problem faced by humanity as a collective �" there is, or was no one “deciding” factor we could point to and say “This is why the war began.”

Our lives were ruled �" consciously or not �" by commodities which would eventually and inevitably run out. We created horrifying weapons, meant not to kill a few soldiers but to annihilate entire civilian settlements, and we waved them in each other’s faces. We let crackpot dictators kill innocent civilians, and imagined it wasn’t our problem because it was happening half a planet away. As if geography made/makes any difference.

We hailed the advances in technology as the beginnings of a new golden age; the Age of Information. We reasoned that �" with universal internet access almost a worldwide standard �" communication and knowledge and intelligence must be at an all time high. How wrong we would turn out to be.

The worldwide web may have been created with lofty ideals, I grant you that much. The problem is that when humanity as a race gets a hold of a noble idea, we always manage to ruin it. We misinterpret and misuse the truths we are given until they are a mockery of whatever it was that they once stood for (see Communism as opposed to Marxism).

For the most part, what we found online was not truth, or fact, or even �" in the strictest definition �" information. It was one of two things, opinion, and distraction. It tended towards the latter.

“Social” networking, gaming, video hosting and pornography were never about learning, or talking or sharing. They were simply another way for the businessmen to sell us a product, and we used them as straw, to fill our hollow heads with as the reality of the word outside or windows became too much for our fragile egos to deal with.

We didn’t spend days and weeks and months on our phones and computers and consoles in order to access reality, we used them to escape it.

We plugged ourselves into an imaginary electronic interface and let it rule our lives for us. We forgot about love and honour and bravery, and put all our efforts into maintaining personal safety above all else.

Worst of all, beyond all our bad ideas and misguided delusions, we failed to listen to anyone who we �" or, more accurately, who the wealthy shareholders of the news networks and their sponsors - considered a dissenter.

At best, we ignored anyone who said that the world could, or indeed should, be different. At worst, we killed them, or let the system do the dirty work for us.

With that, we closed our eyes and put our hands over our ears. We sat behind closed curtains and locked doors and whispered to ourselves that our hands remained clean.  Whether any of the few surviving members of the human race are still able to tell themselves this now remains to be seen.

So, as the fossil fuels ran out, everyone panicked. It couldn’t be fixed by invading another country in the name of peace and democracy and taking what they had, not this time. There was no more to be taken. The mines were long empty, the oil reserves tapped out of every corner of the earth.

What happened next was that the international world began to reflect the domestic. Instead of coming together to seek much need answers and solutions, we all retreated to our respective dens.

And what is a government but a collection of people? They ran from truth just as we did. They viewed self-preservation as priority one, just as we did. Whoever is left can aim to place all the blame at the feet of those with the power, but we cut and ran before they did. They just followed us, like the weak-minded sheep we can all be when times are hard.

That was the truth this time, this final time; whether we can face up to it before the end, or not.

So we hid. We closed the borders, and began to ration out what we had left. We spent weeks throwing our attention towards every distraction that our array of technology could offer us.

Another problem was raised under the suspicion that some countries like, say the United Kingdom, had more to ratio out per head than some other countries, like, say Ghana.  Admittedly, this had been the situation for some time, but �" in the further past �" concepts like charitable international aid had existed to share a little of the wealth in times of disaster or crisis. The attitude of the end-days was “we look after our own” (once known as Nationalism). This averted our attentions, or otherwise erased any willingness we had once possessed to help our fellow man.

Now imagine what happens when the poorer country is ripped apart by disaster, natural or otherwise. The country screams out in despair.

“Help! Please Help!”

And no-one answers, no-one helps.

Now imagine the devastated country has a nuclear warhead, maybe several. They are well aware of who could be helping, but is choosing not to.

If you as an individual were that country (or at least the man with the decision to make), and you had a weapon with which to exact your revenge, would you use it?

Of course you would.

If there are any psychologists left now, they could explain to you how the desire to inflict pain is one of our most basic and animalistic responses to receiving it.

The thing is that we’re the only species of animal to have developed an explosion with the capacity to wipe out and level a city, and then reproduced the design until there were enough to destroy the entire planet.

So that’s what happened. A fired on B and C. B and C fired back, taking out D in their wrath. E gets scared and fires on B.

And so on.

And so on, because pretty soon all our esteemed leaders could do was fire wildly into the night and hope.  It wasn’t even really about who refused aid to whom in the end, it was just about reactionary fear, the type of wild panic which could only lead to great violence and bloodshed.

If one country was the historical enemy of another, a code was entered, a key turned and another silo door slides open to release its payload.

If a country considered the religion or government of another country to be a threat, they made what are called “Pre-Emptive Strikes”. Or, a code, a key and another silo door.

If one country felt that they had claim to the land of another; a code, a key, and a silo door.

Once it started, no-one could stop until they were out of ammo. For many countries, the cycle of retribution and genocide is yet to end.

The war rages on. The people who are left hide in fallout shelters, and caves, and boats at sea. They pray that they will be saved, but the truth is that no-one is coming to save them.

Our gazes averted, we didn’t even notice the end approaching until it was too late for it to become anything else. We were busy “like-ing” our favourite TV shows online, or catapulting cartoon birds towards pigs and brick on our supposedly smart phones.

What we didn’t realise at the time is that the power was ours to change direction. We just missed our chance.

Like they used to say, Hindsight can be a b***h.

We all just took a step backward and turned away, as the world around us ripped itself to pieces.

The Apocalypse is here, by no god’s hand.

We have brought it down upon ourselves, and now there is nothing we can do to stop it.