Playing with world-building snippets for my Restoration stories again…
The end of world was a global event, but it wasn’t an end. It wasn’t an event. It was a process, a slow collapse that only looks inevitable in retrospect. It was never seen as apocalypse even when cities burned and missiles flew. Perspective is tricky, and denial is a powerful force. If globalism was the theme of the twentieth century, the lesson of the twenty-first was that connections can transmit chaos as easily as commerce .
During the span of decades comprising the Revision Years, governments toppled and economies disintegrated, businesses failed and took governments with them, social and political institutions crumbled and billions perished. Bastions of political stability were eroded by surrounding conflicts, and alliances proved as deadly as enmity. No place on the planet went untouched by the upheaval.
Some sciences progress by leaps and bounds in times of conflict, but others cannot be maintained in chaotic environments. Most modern technologies rely on complex supply chains and require engineering support that cannot be maintained in war zones. Many of the 21st century’s advances in materials sciences, nanotechnology, genetics, biologic pharmaceuticals and other sciences got lost during Revision. Projects were abandoned, data was destroyed by electromagnetic pulses, and critical private records were erased or locked into forms no longer accessible by surviving equipment.
The handful of years encompassed by the name “The Revision Period,” will have an impact on human understanding of the universe for centuries to come.