To End all Wars

“No matter the age, no matter the circumstances, the ambitions of man remain the same.”

Much like a certain deterministic pest, it is as it goes, a phrase which persists in every age, through every era.

From the beginning of time that presided with hunters hunting the hunted, to lowly counts plotting the demise of the powers that reside in the highest echelons, and the total struggles of superpowers competing in bloody brawls to see through their costly resolutions. From peaceful accomplishments to abhorrent victories that makes one question if it was worth it. To peculiar individuals manipulating the universal laws of decadent systems to achieve their manifest destiny of state and man.

Thus, it goes without saying that the deeds of man take many forms, much like a shape-shifting mutant; a rather grotesque figure that spares no one, not even its master that ever so vigorously worked laboriously to summon its incursion. By this nature, one could say it is a magnificent –by his standards, of course – spell cast none other by the Devil himself.

Or would it be too much to suffice that it is the Devil becoming the actor – the ambition – himself?

It was by 2599 of the Common Era that interstellar travel became not a hapless product of science-fiction dreams, but a platform for science non-fiction. Thanks to the fruitful efforts of generations of scientific legions comprising many talented individuals, it became possible to not only traverse the Solar System, but in more than a theoretical sense, the Galaxy as a whole and beyond.

For the cradle that housed humanity and her specimen, this could not have come at a more welcoming time. For Terra, much of her lucrative resources and environment that were befitting of the habitat were no more – humanity’s population was a far cry of the distant past. Her population, some later historians could speculatively argue, was no bigger than Eurasia at the time of the historical Black Death.

By the 2520s, the energy crisis that earlier generations anticipated and attempted to forestall had indeed come to a rather inevitable fruition. As one might expect, this would be no happy story with a satisfying ending. It had, however, concluded as fast as it had come to be. During the duration of this crisis spawned the foretold consequences of wars and revolutions that seemed as though it was something ripped straight out of a modern first person shooter or such nonsense. After all, it is no laughing matter that life imitates art.

At first, many of these whims and fancies were localized junctures that in time would culminate in a deathly world war with the justifications for industrial assets irrationally tossed aside in fervent inclination of brinkmanship and absolute destruction of each other’s ideologies. As enormous in scale as the world war was, however, the events and engagements that transpired during the crude barbaric genocides were rather uninteresting in nature, with no single pitched battle bearing any real particular significance. Whether this is factual in nature, or a product of deep shame by contemporary peers who chose to omit a genuine yet absolutely repulsive piece of history is an eternal back and forth discourse for future historians.

In most academic communities, it is believed that the war began by 2537, and ended officially by 2544. In an age of nuclear missiles and other weapons of mass destruction, there are seldom records of any such agents ever being utilized, at least not prior to 2543. In that year, by some way or another, all world powers in possession of these doomsday devices were more than eager, perhaps maniacal, to exercise their interpretation of absolute brinkmanship, and indeed an exchange of mutual destruction was observed thereafter.

The aftermath, as one might expect, was ghastly. In just a few hours worth of exchanges, an unfathomable amount of nuclear payloads smited all without a shed of remorse, be in the home, the factory, or in the trenches. Several months after the exchanges ended, the surviving snakes of government slithered their way to New Zealand – remarkably, one of the few neutral countries that stood on the sidelines of this world-wide holocaust. Here, they proceeded to negotiate an end to this disturbing episode of human history.

It is there that these vile rats in sheep’s clothes resided at a modest hotel in the city of Dunedin, and laid out the foundations of the embryonic political treatise. It was there that these critters calling themselves “humans” engineered the climax of a conflict with no resolution or goal to speak of. It was there that these daft imbeciles did the only thing objectively good in their entire lives, that is, righting what was once wrong – hence, a public admittance that their actions were nothing explicitly rational. But more importantly, admittance that they were incompetent leaders.

The Dunedin peace conference had begun in the middle of 2544, and lasted for only a couple months’ time. Named after a nearby suburb, it would culminate as the Treaty of Balaclava. Aside from being a formal ratification of the conclusion of the Great War, it had a number of otherwise minor clauses. These additional stipulations ranged from monetary reparations to insuring that attending signatories should strive to avoid such a powder keg ever again. In the simplest sense – to keep this war as the war to end all wars.

Although the Treaty of Balaclava – and with it, the end of war – was a welcoming conclusion, the aftermath was particularly unfortunate for post-war life. It was by no means a problem solver, but could be seen as a stepping stone for the future. Rebuilding from the ashes of dread was no easy fact, and indeed, the Great War had made life particularly grim. Now, the people of Terra were merely back to square one.

Or would it be more fitting to say square zero? After all, a debatable estimate of over sixty percent of the world population perished in a few hours’ time, and an equal or greater amount of ecosystems and wildlife were obliterated by the hands of mankind’s ultimate instruments of war. It was, needless to say, a most bleak future if there ever was one, comparable to the Eurasian black death during the early first millennium on a titanic scale. The immediate years following Balaclava were truly awful as agriculture suffered worldwide, most notably outside of the Australian continent.

Despite the overall inhumane living conditions, life would slowly return to normal. For many, returning to an adequate way of living prior to nuclear brinkmanship was a forgone fantasy. However, just living was enough to conform and establish a new norm for “adequate living conditions”, at least, for future generations.