It was on the eve of a new era in Terran global unification.  Barely more than two decades earlier colonization of the moon had begun.  Five years after that, the Martian Science Foundation was founded, housed entirely on the barren landscapes of the great red planet.  A cooperative effort of all of the major Earth governments, the MSF was a great step forward in the peace efforts led by the United Nations.  For the next ten years, everything went as planned, and better.  A small research facility was built on Mercury, helping in the effort to save what little was left of Earth’s natural resources.  It was soon expanded after a breakthrough in nuclear physics took the planetary alliance closer to its goal.

Not everyone on Earth agreed with the global unification.  It did not take long for small groups to gather together, forming the so called “Terran Purity Coalition,” dedicated to solving the problems on Terran soil, not relying on the lifeless spheres of rock that also basked in Sol’s light.  Starting with simple protests and threats, they were a mere annoyance for years.  That is, until they broke into a facility in the former southwest United States (now the North American Democratic Republic), which housed decommissioned nuclear warheads.  They smuggled one of these warheads onto a supply convoy headed for the Mercury Power Facility.  The resulting explosion split the small planet in many pieces; the largest of which, containing the remnants of the facility, had a quickly decaying orbit.  Estimates put its impact with Sol within three years, likely sooner.  The resident radiation left over from the warhead and the explosion of the nuclear facility has left a great dead zone following the planet’s original orbit.  Rescue efforts were tried, but the radiation was too strong.  The sun eventually reacted to the radiation ring.  Solar flares increased to dangerous levels.

In an effort to keep the populace under control, the UN formed a planetary police force.  Dubbed the Earth Defense Force, it includes troops from every major nation, including the NADR, the British Isles Conglomerate, and the Neo-Soviet Alliance, as well as forces recruited from the third world nations for use as guerilla troops.

Always seeking an opportunity for financial or social gains, the richest people of the world also united.  Thus was born the Association for Terran Survival.  They pooled their riches and started work on vast underground bunkers.  Hiring cheap labor, but sparing no expense in the design processes, they promised everyone that joined the ATS and paid their monthly dues would be promised a spot in the bunkers to weather out the nuclear winter that was sure to follow.  The first of the bunkers was completed in the Montana Territory in less than a year, employing nearly one million people from the North American continent.  The next one to be completed was finished within a month of the first.  The second bunker was built entirely underwater, under the vast breadths of the Gulf of Mexico.  In the following six months, bunkers were completed in the Siberian Frontier, buried under the immense dunes of the Sahara, and deep underneath the Antarctic ice cap.  More were designed to be built, but the TPC continued their terrorist activities, utterly destroying the Amazon bunker, as well as much of the forest, leaving another area irradiated and uninhabitable.

Barely two months later, the UN Scientific Committee urged everyone to seek refuge.  The Mercury Science Facility had not been destroyed as fully as they had guessed.  The Main reactor had somehow survived the explosion that had destroyed the planet.  The UNSC estimated that the reactor would explode in less than a week, and the Earth would pass directly through the expanding cosmic cloud of radioactive debris shortly after.  The EDF immediately put the entire planet under martial law.  The millions of people that had joined the ATS fled to the bunkers, sealing the giant doors behind them, locking out billions that could not afford the dues.  The UN officials had their own bunkers, built many years before in anticipation of this very kind of disaster.  Hordes of civilians poured into the many sets of caves that had existed on the planet long before the human race, hoping they would provide enough protection to survive.  Waiting until many of the civilians had fled from the main cities, the EDF quickly re-organized the placement of troops, keeping the ranking officers near bunkers that had arisen during the so-called Cold War of the late 20th Century.  At the last possible moment, they fled to the bunkers, leaving the rest of the huge army to fend for themselves on what would shortly become a barren wasteland.

In the years that followed, the now second planet from the star Sol transformed into a ball of ice, pushed slightly out of its orbit and axis it had held for eons previous.  The billions that had not had a chance to find shelter, or had merely accepted their fates, perished in short order, as food became scarce, and power was nearly nonexistent.  The hundreds of thousands that had inhabited the great caves of the world were well protected from the deathly cold climate outside, and survived for much longer, but food for them soon ran out.  Organizing into primitive societies, they formed hunting and scavenging parties.  Using human innovation and the remains of the cities that had once covered the surface of the planet, they constructed vast settlements inside the caves that had saved their lives.  Realizing that the human frame could not possibly survive the bitter climate, they used bit and pieces of whatever they could find to supplement their fragile bodies.  Vast search parties scoured the continents, raiding and looting the cities for anything they could find.  Eking out a hard life on the surface, they slowly evolved over many generations, with the help of the radiation that had permeated everything, and were able to repopulate the cities that had survived the hundreds of years of the harsh climate.  Thus were born Homo robotica, the Cyborgs.