Worldbuilding: A New World, a World of Conflict and Sorrow

This is what I have so far for the introduction, with some details of the four most influential 'Trusts' and introducing certain concepts:

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1.1 Introduction​

The world in NWE 340
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The New World Era had such promise for all of mankind, but various groups sought to ensure that this promise never came to fruition. Most of this is due to men who lusted for the past that didn’t exist, those whose greed was greater than their sense, those that believe that their utopias are justified with genocide, and those who want humanity exterminated. As Anno Domini came to a close in its last century, it saw the collapse of the UN, the horrors induced by greedy corporations that would rather see the world burn than their profits decline, the ideas of enforcing a utopia no matter the cost, those who wanting to return to ‘the glory days’ that never were, and blaintent use of genocide to settle ethnic scores.

This, in turn, had radically transformed the landscape of Earth in more ways than one.

Between the rising sea levels and the heavy use of nuclear ordinance, the landscape has changed immensely. Memphis is now a major sea port; LA, San Diego, Hamburg, St. Petersburg, and more are now craters thanks to nuclear terrorism; fresh water is in short supply while mass desalination is used to keep the water needs satisfied; entire bands of the Earth are literally too hot to be inhabitable by human life; great swathes of land uninhabitable due to various acts of bioterrorism… all that and more contributing to this new world.

The world is now split into numerous factions, mostly between the various Mega Corporations -or Meg-Corps for short- and the three major corporate alliances (Global Energy and Resources Trust (GERT for short), Eden Ecological Initiative Corporation (EEIC), and Scientific Academy for Advanced Technologies (SAAT)) and large super-national states called ‘Federal Confederations’ -or FedCons for short. Now there is a sort of ‘third’ faction in NWE 320 called SolForce, and in NWE 340 it is not effective enough to keep the peace but not weak enough that anyone will simply run over it without repercussions. SolForce is basically the armed peacekeepers of this new era. It enforces several international laws that everyone -outside of the most idiotic and insane (in more ways than one) groups- has agreed to abide by… and ruthlessly executes anyone that breaks those laws if the FedCons or Meg-Corps don’t get to them first.

1.2 The Federal Confederations​

The Federal Confederations -usually called FedCons for short- are somewhat complex social-political constructs that are far larger than any nation-state of the pre-Upheavals era. As a whole, they’re similar to the Supranational nations of Front Mission, just far more expanded due to the shear length of time they’ve been operating. For the most part, nations within the FedCons are only of historical and administrative significance. This is partially due to the fact that normal nation-states can’t survive in the New World era, especially since corporations can filibuster -in military terms its is someone(s) who(m) engages in an (at least nominally) unauthorized military expedition into a foreign country or territory to foment or support a revolution- smaller governments into being subversive to whatever corporation did the filibuster.

As such, the various FedCons are the only traditional governments left.

FedCons come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and governments and can have politics ranging from tempered optimistic to Machiavellian to outright tyrannical and everything in between. One of the few things that these FedCons have in common is an electronic panopticon, usually governed by some sort of AI. This is partially due to the Upheavals and certain technologies -mostly biotech, but also weather manipulation tech, nukes, and nano-tech- that has proliferated to almost universal levels without the people having countermeasures, allowing any yahoo with a little know how and the tech to simply cause immense havoc. It should be also known that without weather manipulation tech, the world would be in a far more dire spot than it already is, and all Weather Stabilizer stations are under the sole control of SolForce as per the Treaty of Luna, which established SolForce’s exclusivity to Weather Control tech (and the punishments for the breach of this exclusivity) and the rights of the organization.

Culturally, the FedComs can be varied. Some have one dominant culture while others are more of a mixing pot, and there are those that are in between these two extremes as well.

1.3 The Mega Corporations​

The second group of factions are the Mega Corporations or ‘Meg-Corps’ for short. With the dissolution of power from nation-states before and during the Upheaval, these businesses are -in many cases- the government in numerous locales across the planet. Through overt and subversive force of arms, these corporations have taken over great swathes of the world that aren’t part of the FedCons or groups like SolForce. The situation outside FedCon and SolForce territory is generally either land that no one has claimed yet or belongs to the Meg-Corps.

The Meg-Corps are one of the legacies of what led to the Upheavals, and while some of them aren’t as bad as what birthed them (the Eden Ecological Initiative Corporation being the ‘nicest’ of the bunch), others are completely exploitive and will do anything to get more profit. However, it should be noted that the most common type of corporation can be described as ‘Machiavellian’, as being too exploitive tends to incite things like revolutions and uprisings. As a cartoon tiger once said: “I desire only power and money, unrepresentable workers provide me with neither.”

1.3.1 The Trusts​

Might makes right, that is the core aspect of the world that this is set in… and with the FedCons trying to take power away from the Meg-Corps, alliances between Meg-Corps to ensure that they don’t loose power (and thus profits) formed. There are four major corporate alliances, usually called ‘trusts’: the Eden Ecological Initiative Corporation (a conglomerate of ‘Green’ business), Scientific Academy for Advanced Technologies (SAAT for short, a conglomerate of tech corporations that specialize in numerous fields including cybernetics, biotech, nanotech, nuclear physics, among others), SpaceTech (a conglomerate of space-based industries and corporations), and the Global Energy and Resource Trust (or GERT or ‘Trust’ for short). Other Trusts exist, but aren’t as influential as these four.

1.3.1.1 Eden Ecological Initiative Corporation (EEIC or ‘Eco’)​

(a major Eco city in a crowded archipelago in the South Pacific, population 1 million humans)​

The EEIC is a conglomerate of ‘Green’ business trying to show the viability of ‘Green’ tech as a profitable venture. The brainchild of Ulysses ‘Mr. Green’ Williams and originally headquartered in Berlin, it had shown some success in its original mission. The problem with the mission is that, at the end of the day, it is far cheaper (and thus more profitable) to simply tear the environment up than doing environmentally friendly methods.

That has always been a major problem with being ecologically friendly as it’s far less expensive to simply destroy the environment in order to get the resources you want than extract them in an environmentally friendly way. One of the more problematic problems that EEIC has is the extreme resistance to gene-modified organisms. Despite their use being an outright requirement in this era, the vast majority of the EEIC aren’t willing to pursue GMOs too far and aren’t too fond of uplifts either.

It also doesn’t help that environmentalism has become a byword for eco-terrorism… as the numerous acts of biological and nuclear terrorism perpetrated by the various eco-terrorist organizations like Greenpeace, the World Purity League, and the Eco Pact. These atrocities in the name of environmentalism stained the name and ideology of environmentalism to the modern day and beyond.

The EEIC is ‘governed’ by what amounts to a constitution known only as ‘the Ecological Mandate’. The Ecological Mandate is an immense document that has been amended numerous times over the two centuries that it existed. It outlines rights, basic laws, what the EEIC can and can’t do, establishing judicial and political protocol, among other aspects of governance. This allowed a certain level of control over the vast territory that the various corporations under the EEIC’s banner have procured over the centuries, which helps in ensuring that the EEIC doesn’t have problems with factions within the Trust causing PR problems out the ass.

The biggest difference between the EEIC and other trusts is that they don’t have a mercenary group on their payroll. The most military gear they have is basically enough only for defensive purposes. A Self Defense Force writ large as it were. While this kept costs low, it also has limited the ability for the EEIC to expand, a problem that has also extended to it’s space-based holdings.

1.3.1.2 The Global Energy and Resources Trust (GERT or simply ‘Trust’)​

(a major GERT city, in an archipelago in the Pacific)​

The Global Energy and Resource Trust is the culmination of one woman’s -one Skylar Banes, who is currently the Chairwoman of the Board of Directors, the CEO, and company president- desires and dreams, built upon sweat and blood that started in NWE 225. Starting from a simple exploration and prospecting firm, Madam Barnes created one of the largest Trusts that humanity has ever seen. Outside the FedCons, GERT owns about a third of Earth’s energy and resource output. Many other corporations (and several minor FedCons) have some level of reliance on GERT to ensure that they can continue functioning.

Despite their cornering of the world’s resource and energy markets, GERT is far more pragmatic than one would assume, despite the occasional ‘bad egg’ like Thor Strindberg -who was responsible for the Site 13 Debacle and the Break the World Crisis before his execution in NWE 250. Skylar Banes puts pragmatism, rule abiding, and competence above all else. While this isn’t shared with her colleges within the trust, this has garnered a lot of goodwill and positive PR for the Trust… and the unquestioned grumblings of Banes’s underlings.

To defend its immense holdings, GERT had acquired the mercenary nation of the White Sharks in a hostile takeover in NWE 252 after the Break the World Crisis demolished GERT’s security and military forces. The White Sharks are notorious for being brutal combatants and basically follows the ‘David Drake’ style of Rules of Engagement (or, to be more specific, ‘every tool at your disposal to end the conflict if you can get away with it’ and ‘the moment your opponent uses protected locations and vehicles, treat all other protected locations and vehicles as targets’ rules of engagement, although for the latter it is used by all militaries across Sol). Most independent groups tend to simply surrender than fight, allowing GERT to create a massive empire for itself across the planet and on numerous planets, moons, planetoids, and asteroids.

As a whole, the leadership of GERT is pragmatic when it comes to uplifts and gene-modified organisms, allowing uplifts to work and live in higher-security areas so any problems with anti-Uplift groups are minimized and make extensive use of GMO plants and animals to maximize production and minimize environmental impact and disease.

1.3.1.3 Scientific Academy for Advanced Technologies (SAAT)​

(a major SAAT city, please note the numerous emergency services buildings)​

SAAT is the biggest technology conglomerate in human history. Out of all the groups within Sol, only SolForce is more advanced (and SolForce maintains the immense climate control network that keeps everyone from dying from the worst that climate change has to offer).

Born out of the group known as ‘The Old Crew’ (or TOC for short), SAAT became a major juggernaut in terms of scientific exploration. Growing out of a conglomerate of laboratories and advanced prospecting and resource extraction corporations, it became a juggernaut in terms of scientific and metamaterial output. It is also the group with the most advanced GMOs in Sol. SAAT is also infamous/famous (depending on how you look at it) for the development of the various uplifts that exist.

The treatment of uplifts, however, is a different story.

Uplifts are treated like second class citizens within SAAT borders… and got away with this for the longest time due to the fact that SAAT is the center of technological development and produces a significant portion of the GMOs and metamaterials needed for modern existence. However, as of NWE 320, SAAT’s grip on metamaterial and GMO production has been waning which allowed SolForce to effectively wage a ‘lukewarm’ war against SAAT for this and other atrocities. It also didn’t help that a massive ‘underground railroad’ network made up of less amoral citizens and workers and various uplift advocacy groups across the planet to ship as many uplifts as they can to FedCons like the Oceania Cooperative Union and the Union of North American States or MegCorps like GERT.

Much of SAAT’s technological prowess is the fact that they rarely put ethics into their research. Outright human experimentation using ‘unnoticeables’ or ‘undesirables’ across the world is sickenly common. This lack of ethics rarely shows up in their branch offices in various FedCons or MegCorps, however, and due to the lack of a powerful supranational entity to enforce these laws (although as of the present day in NWE 340, SolForce is becoming that to pretty much everyone) no one can really touch them.

SAAT has its own private military in the form of the Black Octopi. Originally a major undersea prospecting and exploration corporation, the Black Octopi transformed into a mercenary group in the second century. The Black Octopi showed itself as a major military force during the Break the World Crisis as it fought the first incarnation of the Orbital Watch terrorist organization/rogue state.

 

Another prototype for you guys, this time SpaceTech and SolForce:

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1.3.1.4 SpaceTech

(An older SpaceTech Stiletto class Corvette fighting a ship from one of SpaceTech’s many rivals)​

SpaceTech (and yes, that is how it is spelled) is a major space industry trust that is a rising star in today’s world. AstroTech Industries (headed by Michael Garibaldi), Star Transport Limited (headed by Richard Williams), and the Space Prospector Group (headed by Ismail Edgar) make up the core of the SpaceTech Trust’s core corporations and all of it began during the Space Boom that started in NWE 210s when the first viable permanent space stations became operational. Numerous corporations either created new space divisions from scratch or got enough investment to start entirely new companies in the high-risk, high-reward environment that is space exploration, prospecting, and colonization.

In this ruthless environment, it wasn’t uncommon for skirmishes and outright conflict to erupt… and it has quite often when one can lose and gain everything. This is especially true with various resources that are either rare or nonexistent on Earth. Exotic elements like Starcorium and Starmetal are in immense abondance in space alongside more conventional ones like uranium, helium 3, the rare earth metals family, among others. This is much of the impetus for space colonization and exploitation.

SpaceTech’s nucleus would gain much power during this period, which created the aerospace behemoth today.

This didn’t stop the creation of numerous enemies however. Minor Trusts like the Kassaki Syndicate and OSEC vie for power across the outer planets of the solar system alongside SolForce and FedCons like the Oceania Cooperative Union and the Union of North American States. This is why SpaceTech is tied with SolForce with the largest space force in Sol, with almost thousand warships and two thousand assorted freighters, star liners, and assorted logistical vessels to it’s credit.

SpaceTech is notable that it sells modified versions of their spaceships in market, causing much of the spacelanes to be filled with SpaceTech gear as few MegCorps and FedCons can afford to not only build their colonies on moons and other planets WHILE creating their own spaceship construction infrastructure.

In addition, it had to fight it’s way to become what it is today, as the Jovian and Cronosian Skirmishes, in 235 and 244 respectively, showed. With corporate espionage and outright wars becoming more and more common as time went on SpaceTech’s military has become one of the few crack militaries in Sol.
1.4 SolForce

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(Top: SolForce’s Flag Bottom: SolForce’s Battle Standard)​

SolForce is the supranational organization that is the successor to the UN, indeed several of its organizations (World Health Organization (WHO), Universal Postal Union (UPU), International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), International Maritime Organization (IMO), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)) are part of the nucleus that created SolForce in the first place. Unlike its predecessor (which could only do as much as the Security Council would allow it), it is almost entirely self-sufficient and effectively a nation unto itself. As such, it is looked upon with suspicion by the majority of the FedCons and MegCorps.

Despite this, SolForce is a major force within the Sol system, trying to ensure that the few international laws that remain are enforced. It is also known to enforce these laws with lethal force as necessary. This includes SolForce’s monopoly on terraforming tech.

Other international laws that are enforced includes the universal restrictions on bioweapon technology (all overseen by SolForce AI and ‘twined’ inspectors), the universal restrictions on nanotech (also overseen by SolForce AI and ‘twined’ inspectors), enforcing SolForce’s monopoly on antimatter, SolForce’s monopoly on psionics in its entirety, and the complete ban of gene-line bioweapons outside of devising countermeasures (overseen by SolForce AI and ‘twined’ inspectors, enforced by SolForce itself via agents called ‘Silencers’).

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(an early permanent orbital stations, in this case a permanent orbital research laboratory designed to carry out various ‘low’-risk research, in this case in the biotech, agriculture, electronics, and heavy industry fields)​

SolForce started out as simply as the space equivalent of the ICAO in 210 as orbital launches became more and more frequent, leading to the first permanent orbital stations only 5 years later. This, predictably, caused orbital traffic to be effectively impossible without one organization ensuring everyone else has the same training, standards, and equipment. This puts SolForce into an interesting position to effectively control space and orbital traffic. This iron grip on orbital traffic, an iron grip that hasn’t abided with the creation of the space control AI almost a century later.

SolForce quickly gathered the remnants of the UN and integrated them into the organization, allowing for a major shot in the arm in terms of political power. This allowed SolForce to start creating its own space force in the 230s which became powerful enough to dictate terms in what would shape into the Treaty of Luna in 292 after the OSEC-Kassaki/SolForce War, allowing it to dictate terms alongside certain aspects of ‘enlightened self interest’ from the vast majority of humanity.

(Top and Bottom: The Novikov Crater Outpost, a typical SolForce ‘quick and dirty’ lunar outpost of about thirty thousand; please note that this setup is only viable via modern hybrid Anti-Kinetic/Radiation Fields)​

SolForce slowly grew from what would be effectively a laughing stock to a powerful faction in it’s own right. By 250, SolForce had some of the most lucrative areas of the moon under its control, led by Luna Headquarters in the southern hemisphere, which has allowed for much of SolForce’s growth in the years that followed. SolForce would expand its reach to across the solar system, setting up settlements and bases to expand on its power and enforcing international law.

 

For those who are going to ask "does Mecca and Medina still exist in the setting's modern day?", the short answer is no... but not because they got razed to the ground or nuked but because they were swallowed by the desert, quite literally. For those who assume that any Islamic group wouldn't abandon Mecca and Medina, well...

No one is going to keep the place when it gets literally too hot for humans to live (as in, regularly over 140 degrees Fahrenheit -or 60 degrees Celsius if you prefer metric- for the area around Mecca alone... and that is well within the danger zone for the human body as hyperthermia will set in rather quickly) and basically berried by sand via the horrific dust storms and intense desertification. The House of Saud constructed biodomes for these cities, but it proved fruitless as even the best that money could buy couldn't keep up with the demands (and this practically bankrupted the country mind you). No one came back for the cities after the House of Saud fell in the late 21st, and by the time things stabilized, both cities had been consumed by the desert, never to be seen again.

Remember, the climate control tech currently operating only stops the situation from getting worse, not reverse centuries of atmospheric pollution. A lot of resources in SolForce's RnD are being thrown at finding a way to reverse this, but even with helium-3 fusion this is basically impossible as every solution so far requires anti-matter levels of energy potential at best to change the climate back on a global scale.

 

I've been working on how to introduce everyone into combat, and I had the idea that the average blue-water navy of the various factions having a minimum of 6 to 8 hundred combat vessels (about half of which are submarines) each to cover their various assets and undersea colonies. In addition, line infantry squads with transports number somewhere between 10-man squads and two-man transports to 15 man squads and 3-man transports.

Attrition is god in this world, as platoons of 60 to 90 men regularly die in skirmishes, with entire companies (which usually consist of 4 or 5 of these platoons, which means somewhere between 240 to 450 troops for line infantry companies) being either being rendered combat ineffective or annihilated within days during a war. These large unit sizes are able to be fielded thanks to 'replicator' tech -an incredibly powerful 3D printer/nano-fabber hybrid that can produce practically everything that it can fit through the exit (be ammunition, armaments, parts for vehicles, entire smaller vehicles, armor plate, or portions of ship for most models, with the rare naval drydock sized fabricator that eats energy like a pig, hence why most most shipyards tend to be basically a fabber plant with a more traditional shipyard attached) and has the feedstock for- decreasing the costs of equipment with the fact of gene and cyber augs eliminate the problem of having entire portions of the population incapable of being part of the military (and the fact that there is actually not much work outside the military helps as well).

... and why drones aren't used? Because they require AGIs to be able to be on the battlefield thanks to drone spoofing techniques developed during the Upheavals and refined in the New World Era, and AGIs require Quantum Processors (or 'Q-Procs' for short) to function which has a tight production bottleneck compared to simply having augmented soldiers with more traditional computer circuits and processors...

 

Some of the weapons that I've thought up while writing the current portion of the introduction, sure they're SolForce armaments but the principles behind them are rather common:

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My newest pulse laser rifle thanks to Pimp My Gun. The battery essentially gets put into the handgrip ala the Wattz 3000 mod laser rifle:


Incredibly potent and the muzzle break is to keep the focusing array from getting damaged. It also uses thermal clips to help keep the heat down. It's capabilities is comparable to the next weapon, but at the cost of more weight and longer barrel.

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The above is a 'Burst Rifle', which is pretty powerful. It utilizes Electro-Thermal Chemical Triple coaxial Plasma Igniter technology and can fire a 5.565mm (this is the dimensions of the actual bullet) round at (to us) extremely high speed (2km/s for normal, 3km/s minimum for hypervelocity) Given that the usual cores of these weapons tend to be iridium or some other high-density metal, they can impart immense amounts of kinetic energy. This is mostly due to metallurgy advancing leaps and bounds thanks to what amounts to 3D printer style replicators and nano-tech fabrication as well as the proliferation of armored exoskeletons, powered armor, cybernetics, and gene-tech. When you can augment a person with gene-tech to make them act like SPARTANs on permanent 'SPARTAN Time' or make cybernetic bodies straight out of Ghost in the Shell meta-verse with ease, you'll need something that can actually hit them.

Also, explosives are far more potent than ours, as competently designed exoskeletons and powered armor can dampen the effects of explosives. Effectively, an 'Anno Domini' grenade would only cause slight disorientation for a man clad in an armored exoskeleton or be simply laughed off by a mostly-/full-conversion cyborg or someone clad in powered armor. On the other hand, a 'New World Era' grenade would turn normal humans into paste within 50 meters and into chunky salsa outside of that up to 100 meters.

 

Now, another 'assumption' that is considered truth is that human beings are still viable in military matters. Between the fact that AGIs require quantum computing and at least a month in AI Crèches to be even viable as a whole (alongside the large tail that each AGI requires to ensure maximum effectiveness all units) with the fact that cybernetic and genetic 'boosting' is an extremely common technology (the closest that popular fiction has to this sort of thing is what the Systems Alliance in Mass Effect utilizes for its own military, as many of it's soldiers are 'boosted' genetically to enhance effectiveness) and this allows the various factions to effectively have everyone able to do military service (a report that the US military did earlier this decade indicated that ~10% of the US population are non-viable for even 'bottom of the barrel' conscription due to how much has changed in terms of equipment, tactics, and doctrine).

 

Now, thanks to the SB Mod The Dark Gods, I've found World Anvil and have made a prototype of a major problem that everyone can face: A Death Zone.

What these areas are is stated on the tin, they are literally zones of death. Usually they're synthetic plagues specifically designed to latch into the biosphere of an area and kill anything that it is coded to kill in horrific and disturbing ways, but occasionally you'll see an area where it has enough ambient radiation that unless you're using heavy power armor or what is essentially a mini-mecha, you are going to be glowing so hot that the Geiger counter won't be able to tell how irradiated you are outside of 'off the scale' (basically the last area in the game Metro: Exodus).

The largest of these is the Rome Metropolitan Death Zone, created by the most horrific bio-terrorism attack (by eco-terrorists) in the history of mankind. At the time that this act of horror was unleashed, the Rome Metropolitan Area had a population of 12 million. The synthetic plague killed 9 million and the survivors were barely able to live out the rest of their shortened lives.

SolForce has created a cordon of the Zone consisting of two armies and a sophisticated network of sensors and automated turrets with explicit orders to shoot first, ask questions never. This is mostly due to the fact that if the synthetic plague that has latched onto the biosphere within this zone was to become 'wild'... well... let's just say the best case scenario is at least another Rome Metropolitan Death Zone would be created. You don't want to know the worst case scenario, and if you want to know then prepare for me (and SolForce) to throw redacteds at you...

 

An outlawed weapon in this new age -thanks to the Treaty of Luna- is mimetic or 'meme' weapons. These weapons are designed to basically cause disaster wherever it goes. This is thanks to the fact that they can lie in wait for decades, even centuries before activating and then causing untold havoc. That is why all factions that have an ounce of self-preservation has entire departments specifically hardened and designed against this new weapon to find, track, and eliminate mimetic weapon users, with quite a few nations going for 'killing ten innocence and a guilty is better off than allowing the guilty to walk' approach (which, in all honesty, is sadly not unwarranted, given the mechanics of mimetic weaponry).

If SolForce finds out someone has been using this sort of weapon, well, let's just say that the mimetic weapons creator and his/her family will get killed by Black Section Black-Ops operatives alongside a Silencer, but it might end up having an entire state/island be nuked until it glows and nuked some more just to be sure with the internet literally locked down and thoroughly scanned by every faction to find any and all sleeper mimetics... which could mean the internet and every database might be offline for months if not years as they are carefully and thoroughly checked for mimetic weapons.

Mimetic weaponry started showing up in the second decade of the 21st -and last- century of Anno Domini, with Brexit and the US 2016 elections being the most prominent with events like the March 2019 New Zealand terrorist attacks having even very crude versions of mimetic weaponry being used to cause more havoc. This, eventually, led to the end of privacy and the free flow of information in it's entirety by the end of the first half of the century. With the proliferation of this type of weapon, anyone that didn't get with the 'end of privacy and unilateral free flow of information' program died very messy deaths.

 

Now, thanks to the SB Mod The Dark Gods, I've found World Anvil and have made a prototype of a major problem that everyone can face: A Death Zone.

What these areas are is stated on the tin, they are literally zones of death. Usually they're synthetic plagues specifically designed to latch into the biosphere of an area and kill anything that it is coded to kill in horrific and disturbing ways, but occasionally you'll see an area where it has enough ambient radiation that unless you're using heavy power armor or what is essentially a mini-mecha, you are going to be glowing so hot that the Geiger counter won't be able to tell how irradiated you are outside of 'off the scale' (basically the last area in the game Metro: Exodus).

The largest of these is the Rome Metropolitan Death Zone, created by the most horrific bio-terrorism attack (by eco-terrorists) in the history of mankind. At the time that this act of horror was unleashed, the Rome Metropolitan Area had a population of 12 million. The synthetic plague killed 9 million and the survivors were barely able to live out the rest of their shortened lives.

SolForce has created a cordon of the Zone consisting of two armies and a sophisticated network of sensors and automated turrets with explicit orders to shoot first, ask questions never. This is mostly due to the fact that if the synthetic plague that has latched onto the biosphere within this zone was to become 'wild'... well... let's just say the best case scenario is at least another Rome Metropolitan Death Zone would be created. You don't want to know the worst case scenario, and if you want to know then prepare for me (and SolForce) to throw redacteds at you...

 

Another thing that should be mentioned here is that due to a combination of factors (including the various gene-mods that most of humanity have as standard increasing the caloric intake immensely), vastly improved versions of 'traditional farming' are utilized as the primary source of food instead of 'vat-grown meat' and 'urban farming'. This is partially due to simple efficiency.

Urban farming was quickly discovered during the second half of the 21st century as inefficient compared to 'modernized' traditional farming, especially in the grand scales needed to keep the billions of humans (and millions of various uplifts) fed. Vat-grown meat -once heralded as a new beginning to food production- turned out to be only useful for chicken as any other meat produced would taste off -a sort of 'taste uncanny valley' effect- enough to be useless as a foodstuff... and not to mention that in order to produce industrial quantities of meat through the vat-grow process meant that the required proteins, bio-catalysts, and water are immense. To put things into perspective: for one ton of vat-chicken you'll need two tons of proteins, ten tons of bio-catalysts, and twenty tons of water. To produce the needed vat-chicken for a week, you'll have to multiply that by a factor of fourteen as you'll need two tons of vat-chicken per day to help feed a good-sized town. That doesn't include the physical (which runs in the tens of thousands of square meters) and carbon (it turns out, industrializing vat-grown meat on a grand scale isn't as carbon free as it was touted to have) footprints!

This ties into another thing about the setting, practically all the factions have 'equalized' the population and economies of their constituents when possible. The centralization of population and economic power in a handful of mega-cities cause untold problems. One such problem is militarily as even going near a mega-city is an invitation for war crimes a plenty. Another such problem is the Ruralist Revolts that plagued much of the world during the second half of the 21st century and the New World Era's first century thanks to the large Rural/Urban divide. These revolts included outright terrorism, forced starvation, and some cases outright insurrection. This forced a policy of economic and population equalization, forcing the breakup of the mega-cities and creating a system of smaller cities and large towns to maximize efficiency while keeping areas economically viable...

 

Another thing that has come up is India and Pakistan, and well, let's just say their story didn't end happily and had long-term repercussions in the setting.

During the Upheavals, India and Pakistan fought each other over Kashmir (again) and it quickly spiraled out of control, ending in the final phase of the conflict going nuclear. Pakistan lost a confirmed six (with many more unconfrimed due to Pakistan's nuclear policy) nuclear warheads of strategic yield during the 24 hour nuclear bombardment, three of them went into Europe and detonated (one in Sarajevo, one in Hamburg, and one in Paris) with the other half being intercepted in Sri Lanka (whose government collapsed some time beforehand) by a joint Japanese/US/SK black ops team before they went to their targets (Tokyo, Seoul, and New York City). While no one claimed responsibility, it forced even the most liberal nations to veer very hard towards being authoritarian in some way or fashion.

This, in conjunction with the ability to produce horrific synthetic plagues (leading to the nationalization of biotech by the FedCons and SolForce by NWE 0050) being lowered to the individual/small group level, has created a world where there is only electronic panopticons in the factions that survive...

 

Now, another thing that has come up is vaccinations and a black/white ops group within SolForce.

Now a common law of all factions in the setting is that Vaccinations are MANDATORY unless you've got a VERIFIABLE -as in 'by verified medical professionals' verified- MEDICAL CONDITION that would cause horrible reactions to said vaccination. This is partially due to synth-plagues using various diseases as a baseline to ensure quick and easy deployment, and anti-Vaxx being such a problem that entire towns got wiped out due to too many holes in the town's herd immunity, as the holes allowed the plague to bypass older vaccines via mutation.

Now, this law is strictly enforced by all factions, be meg-corp, FedCon, SolForce, and even terrorist organizations... and trying to break this law is dire for the parents. If the parents refuse to vaccinate, then they'll get forcibly implanted with birth control implants and have their children taken away at the minimum. Given that having holes in a town's/city's/island's herd immunity is a certain death sentence in setting, this is sadly necessary.
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Then there is SolForce's Special Actions Division (aka 'SAD'). SAD is a powerful division within SolForce's 'Black Section' (aka all the external intelligence services put under one roof) that is responsible for enforcing several international laws enforced by the Treaty of Luna. They number in a dozen or so divisions in terms of operative strength. There are various levels of operators and only a division of the best operatives have the ability to turn entire islands and US State sized areas into ash at their discretion. Each operative is a post-human warrior that can swap bodies as necessary and are overseen by a techno-organic AI that is implanted through a process called 'Twining'. This AI is constantly looking over the shoulder of the operative every moment of their life. By being (functionally) immortal, they have a enormous wealth of knowledge, experience, and training to carry out their duties.

In addition, SAD agents are constantly watched by Internal Affairs, which is similar to pre-Travis's ONI Internal Affairs division (aka 'scary motherfuckers that scare even the worst of ONI operatives') which are helped by the AI.

If a SAD operative tries to defect, tries to go rogue, among other things, then the AI can (and will if necessary) activate a kill switch that turns the cybernetics into white hot slag, killing the operative and AI and leaving nothing salvageable behind.

 

While this might be political to some, the FM9 handbook/report is an interesting read on information/memetic warfare... and from what I've read it is very interesting, very surprising, and very worrying...