Earth: The Future is History by Gabriel Dica Page B

telling him to continue with his story as she walks to the
open window and closes it.
    Filip: “The Third World War started over an
area now known as the Syrian Strip, an area of strategic importance
for several, conflicting powers. It’s not entirely clear what
caused the final escalation that lead to the entire world entering
the war, but tensions had been growing for years; the historical
records of that period are conflicting and different entries from
different nations are telling very different stories, so we don’t
even know the exact date when the war started, we just know that it
was somewhere in the Autumn of 2017.”
    Noya: “I want to make something clear to all
of you, because I know most of you are imagining a world war much
like the fighting we’ve had last year: a world war is exponentially
more devastating and consuming than a revolution. A revolution
generally involves less militarized conflict, certainly less heavy
arms – like tanks or armed aircraft – and definitely a lot less so
called “weapons of mass destruction” – like bombs that could
destroy entire cities or weaponized viruses that can eradicate
entire nations; the damage caused by a civilian revolution trying
to overthrow the leadership is considerably less than the heavily
armed forces waging wars for competing nations. A war that involves
the entire world is absolutely devastating!”
    Noya, turning to Filip: “I appreciate your
knowledge on the subject, but let’s jump forward a little. We don’t
want to bore everybody with details.”
    Filip smiles in agreement and decides to skip
some of the details he already had planned. “After the Third World
War, there were almost thirty years of sporadic peace with only
localized armed wars. But previous tensions were never resolved, so
the world again joined in another, even more devastating war. In
the late 21 st century, the peoples of Earth were still
divided, barely surviving, recovering after the Fourth World War.
Years of bombardments and blatant disregard for nature left eleven
billion people struggling with heavy pollution and global water
shortages. Water and air pollution meant crops couldn’t be
effectively grown anymore and famine became one of the highest
problems. To add to the poor state everyone was in, solving these
problems became increasingly difficult as technology prices were
spiking due to the depletion of the much needed rare earth elements
consumed by the wars.”
    Noya: “And that’s just part of the problem.
Competing megacorporation interests, corrupted politics and opaque
religions, all with their own agendas, were effectively blocking
any kind of chance mankind had to survive. Earth was at its worst,
incomparable with any other period in our history. And instead of
solutions, leaders seemed to be preparing for yet another world
war…”
    Noya signals Filip to sit down as she’s
taking over the story.
    Noya: “History’s inaccuracies sometimes
deprive us of the most important details: it’s unclear why, but in
the winter of 2102 the riots started, quickly turning into the
largest revolution the world had ever seen, rivaled in magnitude
only by what we experienced ourselves last year. The trigger is
believed by most historians to be the bombing of a water
purification plant by a group of religious extremists, sparking
rage in the civilian population. The revolutions that started
across the entire globe lasted for months; the loss of life was
unprecedented, but despite the overwhelming odds they were fighting
against, people did not back down, demanding significant changes in
the power structures of the world. And during this lengthy, brutal
fighting, for the first time in human history people realized that
their goals were no longer set by governments or corporations or
religion, but instead they were fighting a battle of their own, all
wanting the same thing – a key moment in a long series of events
that slowly pushed us to being what we are today.