Our downfall is at our own fault. Our unending bloodlust and desire for arbitrary resources has dragged our species down to the ground, devolving us to savagery in the end. I would hurl my blame into the hands of God, but at this point I don't even believe he exists. Hell, even if he did, I call into question whether a deity who would allow the self destruction his sons and daughters would be worth prayer. I keep asking myself why a being so "all loving" would sit idly by as his own children suffered and perished, but can only find answers in sputtered coughs and ash. Immeasurable doesn't describe the level of fatality, and thus I deem it of utmost importance to document these events as a warning of what not to do if the human race is to miraculously prevail.
Our steady climb to the inferno began on December 25th, 2025. In a morbid display of holiday cheer, scientists for the United States military formed a new substance with high potential for weaponization. Officially titled "Biotoxinchloron", the substance was given the nickname "Drop Ems" as it would cause those in contact to drop to the floor in a state of paralysis, as their skin proceeded to quite literally melt off the bone.
The substance was rumored to be a mix of sulfuric acid, tampered cobra venom, lead, and a few other unknown binding ingredients, though the true contents were held confidential to the public. Drop Ems' most valuable asset beyond intimidation was versatility. They could be compacted into shells as gun ammunition, or packed into bombs as a method of mass destruction. The creation of Drop Ems ushered in the beginning of what we like to call, "The Decade of Dread". As expected, this was a span of ten years, from 2025-2035.
Although the US Government swore that they would not utilize Drop Ems unless absolutely necessary, reports near immediately came in of the military sneaking the deadly stuff onto battlefields, giving the country a dominant advantage in conflict. Despite the outcry of civilians across the globe, Drop Ems eventually became common practice in battle, and although they were despised in concept, nobody could deny that they were incredibly effective at bringing rival countries to their knees. By 2028, the countries of China, UK, Japan, and Australia banded together to stop the US's reign of terror. The countries formed a faction called BRAP (Biotoxichloron Removal and Protection), in an effort to even the scales.
The problem with BRAP, was that although their intentions seemed admirable, they were actually quite flawed. Rather than attempting to genuinely remove and protect the substance, they instead decided to attempt to fight fire with fire and simply ensure that the US wasn't the only nation with access to Drop Ems, hoping the threat of retaliation would halt the States' conquering spree. By mid 2028, the US had already taken control of 17 other countries, all within a span of two years, and oftentimes simply out of fear toward the substance's excruciating effects, as described by the seldom found, horrifically mutilated survivors.
The major territories that were captured and moved into the US were Canada, France, Mexico, and Haiti, while the rest were smaller territories taken over only for their natural resources. With reconnaissance from tenured double agents, BRAP eventually found out the Drop Em recipe, and began making their own Drop Em artillery. Hell, they even made a "Drop Em Sprayer" that spewed the substance in its pure liquid form. In terms of warfare supplies, BRAP was, for lack of a better term, stacked, but when they tried to combat the powerful US, they were oblivious to the fact that they were about to start what was considered to be World War 3.
On March 1st, 2030, BRAP launched an unprompted attack on US soils. The BRAP militia attacked San Francisco, and although they were breaking many of the Geneva Conventions' rules of war, they slaughtered thousands. The US army was sent down to California, and they responded by massacring the BRAP militia with a plethora of Drop Em bullets and sprays. It seemed as though BRAP was dealt with after the US defended California, but a mere year later, BRAP used its first Drop Em Bomb on the US. They attacked the city of Boston, and the bomb pulverized the poor community and all of its inhabitants, along with the majority of Massachusetts. Somehow, when the States swung back, they swung back harder.
The US dropped a DEB (Drop Em Bomb) in London, England, and sent storms of troops to raid, destroy, and pillage the rest of the UK. The United States degraded to uncivilized tactics used centuries ago, all for the taste of sweet revenge. On May 22nd, 2030, BRAP proved that they were no better than their adversaries.
On May 22nd they DEB'd 7 states, the most important being, New Texas, New York, California, and Illinois. At this point, what was left of civilization in the afflicted states was in shambles and many other states were in complete chaos, leading them to branch off and create a new country called The Alliance of Liberty. Due to the rebelling states, the "United" ones fell into utter chaos, leading even more to rebel and join the Alliance.
Because of this, what was left of the US became a war country, focusing solely on constructing weapons and conquering resources. Their first DEB attacks were used against The Alliance of Liberty. Caught off guard, The Alliance was dealt with rather quickly, leading many of the rulers of the states within to come crawling back to the US. The US government responded, naturally, by enslaving all deferred civilians and publicly executing their leaders.
Blind with rage and fueled by revenge, on January 4th, 2035, the United States made another destructive innovation, but not one many would suspect. They attempted, and succeeded, to create a new disease built to ravage any countries that stood before them. The disease was called Excro, and was tested on those enslaved by the US. To the delight of the military, the disease had an incredibly high mortality rate, and resulted in a gruelingly slow, painful death, all the while leaving the enemy incapacitated.
The disease had different effects on different people, though all were deadly. Some exposed to the disease would drown in their own vomit within minutes, while others' blood would boil within their veins, and their organs would for the most part melt. The best thing about this biological weapon, however, was that it was extremely transmissible, as it was found to be airborne. For more study on the diverse effects, the government started taking random slaves or innocent civilians into testing facilities, in which they had cruel experiments exacted upon them.
One such experiment had a subject pinned down to a table by nails, before having their arms ripped out of their sockets, and their freshly severed stumps injected with Excro, of course without any semblance of an anesthetic beyond a cloth to bite down on.
There were many more tests conducted, and the United States' unquenchable thirst for blood led to the majority of the US' remaining citizens being tested upon if not killed outright, providing incentive for civilians to join the war effort, and solidifying the territory as a military site and nothing more.
Some sadomasochist over in the military came up with the genius idea of combining Drop Ems with Excro to create some sort of biological bomb. The US government was euphoric upon hearing the idea and decided to give it a shot. At first, they were dismayed as the two would not mix. However, with some tinkering by some of their leading scientists, the homegrown disease and Drop Ems were able to mix correctly. The first test subject for the bioweapon was the person who submitted the idea in the first place, and the weapon worked just as planned, if not better. This destructive combination became the most catastrophic weapon humanity would encounter, and led to what we call, "The Age of Apocalypse".
The US, enraged by BRAP's attacks in the years prior, launched its first Drop Em and Excro bomb (DEEB) in Hong Kong on August 14th, 2036. Within hours, a scattered hailstorm of bombs rained, obliterating nearly all of China. Those unfortunate enough to have survived the explosions were infected by Excro, which without a known cure would lead to their certain demise; or so it was thought.
After word spread of China's decimated land, the UK sent investigators in the most protective armor available to inspect the damage. To their shock, amid the catacombs of rubble and ghosts of households wandered unknown individuals with tarred black skin and clusters of leaking abscesses displayed as red dots. It was reported that these boils would progressively inflate and pop, spreading Excro particles and emitting a stench far greater than even the pervasive rotting of corpses, described only as "inhuman." When provoked, the strange people went berserk and attacked investigators, bludgeoning them to a pulp by wildly swinging their limbs, seemingly physically unbothered by the disfigurement of their arms, elbows, and hands in the barrage, but crying out in what can only be assumed to be agony with each crack. Their victims were eventually cannibalized, with some of the ravenous denizens even being said to have shed tears, which would only present themselves momentarily before evaporating into steam. Only a handful of the hundred investigators made it back to tell Scottish officials what had occurred. Within days, a fleet of UK soldiers were sent in to combat the strange inhabitants, and also search for any potential survivors.
After hours of searching upon arriving, the soldiers managed to find a small group of survivors, all of whom had buried themselves underground within shoddily made bunkers during the explosion. Shocked at the sight of other humans, the survivors were haphazardly brought up into the polluted Chinese air, and within seconds, all of them began coughing and hacking profusely before collapsing to the ground. Once they inevitably died of suffocation, the survivors, all in unison, stood up, leaving the soldiers to watch in horror as their skin cracked and broke away to form garish boils. As the former survivors' blood vessels popped within their eyes and their skin grew sapped of all color, the soldiers fled and ran for their lives, never again to return to the forsaken land formerly known as China.
In an effort get rid of the infected, the UK dropped a nuclear bomb on China, but the infected seemed to bask in the radiation, and ran towards the explosion like moths to a flame. Those who weren't immediately vaporized appeared to quite literally dance with glee, leaving officials at a loss for how to proceed.
The soldiers who returned to the UK were thought to be safe and were allowed into the public after a few weeks of quarantine. Unbeknownst to UK officials at at the time, however, even coming into contact with those infected would lead to eventual death, and transformation. Thus, within a few days after being released, the soldiers morphed into the strange creatures they had confronted mere weeks before, and spread their plague to the rest of the country.
Words could not describe the severity level of this pandemic, and the center of it was in England, so the UK had no other choice but to drop a DEB on the area, so they could at least melt the disfigured monsters that killed millions, even if that meant murdering the infrequent clusters of survivors. However, the attempts at ending the disease with Drop Ems was futile, and those infected only appeared to become more feral upon interacting with the substance. Soon, even the British government and royalty encountered cases of infection, leading to anarchy and absolute chaos. The process in which people transformed into those disease-ridden monsters came to be known as Excromation.
The US, seeing what that one bomb did to an entire nation, became mad with power. In their eyes, you were either with them or against them, and in both circumstances your country would likely still be destroyed. The next target of the US' wrath was Japan. Japan, luckily, was prepared for such an event and provided underground shelters for their civilians to protect them from the blasts. Unfortunately, when the inevitable came and the bombs dropped, the leaders of Japan weren't able to get to shelter in time, and they all perished.
Foolishly, and with few leaders to guide them, many Japanese citizens walked out into their fallen country mere days after the bombs had dropped, leading to their untimely demise. In the weeks that followed, and without foreign intervention, the majority of the people still underground were found by what we call the Excromorphs and were said to have been savagely tenderized until the majority of their bones were shattered to near dust, and then eaten, sometimes alive and kicking. The only remains found for many of the victims were their deformed skeletons, of which had been gnawed on and only had mere strings of flesh or the occasional scratched eyeball still attached. By this point, as the only country with contained and weaponized Excro, the US had just about every nation either conquered in fear or as a demolished wreck.
The States next set their eyes on Australia, which wasn't so easy to be taken down. The Australian government already had begun construction of a safe, underground area where almost all citizens of the major cities could fit and reside. The bunkers were started back up when Drop Ems were first created just in case something like this was to occur. When the bombs were finally dropped, almost everyone residing in or around any metropolitan area was safe and sound in their own little underground community, but there was one problem. The underground society wasn't completely finished yet, and thus to preserve space and rations, many innocent people were banished out into the unforgiving, polluted terrain of Australia.
Another catastrophic problem was that not all of the food had yet been imported, so the survivors still only had about a month before food ran out, leading to the choice of either starvation or cannibalization. The Australian public chose the latter. Those who were weak, sick, or obese were eaten first, the higher class citizens getting first pickings. Eventually the cannibalization chain went down the line until only about a fourth of the population remained. Brothers were eating their sisters, parents were eating their children, it appeared to be absolute mayhem. In the end, many decided death was a more favorable option, and purged themselves of all their wrongdoings by venturing out into the polluted wasteland they once called home.
Finally, America had done it, they had successfully eliminated all opposing countries and were alone in the world to prosper. Amid the brash celebrations decorating the streets of remaining states, petrifying intel turned the innumerable cries of celebration into guttural cries of anguish. Throughout the years, Australia had numerous spies in the US, many of whom were eventually made into high ranking members of government. By the end of the war, however, they had found just about every spy there was, making a message out of them by conducting inhumane experiments on them or performing degrading, medieval torture methods such as the "Brazen Bull" or "Saw Torture" upon them.
However, of all the spies found, the US could not manage to discover the most dangerous spy Australia had, and he had already taken residence in a profoundly powerful sector of the government. Once word broke out about Australia's citizens being completely killed off and their country obliterated, the spy went insane. He made his way into the DEB/DEEB controlling area and with his knowledge of the launch codes, set the remaining explosives the US had in their possession to launch into or around all controlled territories. The spy was shot dead near instantaneously, but by then bombs were already deployed, and just like that, the US' fate was sealed.
The problem above all for the United States was that they never had to worry about being the target of their own weaponry as they were always in control, and thus, foolishly had only a few shelters for the US citizens and themselves. With the majority of survival slots already filled, the American public and rulers alike watched in horror as the countdown to doomsday ticked.
Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two... one....
A thunderous boom was heard in the distance, and a cloud of soot and dust loomed on the horizon. Within seconds, the White House was engulfed in flames and all inside were smothered in dust and ridden with disease. The world had fallen to pieces.
The date is... I think June 2nd.... no wait... June 13th, 2056. There are believed to be around 100 people still alive on the Earth, and the only thing we know is suffering. For some God forsaken reason, we were all born immune to the disease, at least when encountered airborne, but not when consumed, leaving us perpetually dangling on the brink of starvation as most food and wildlife are contaminated with Excro. There are more cases of Excromation every day, and it's gotten to the point that even the Excromorphs themselves would rather starve than eat our frail, broken bodies. It grows more difficult to breathe every day, as smoke and rubble slowly smother and suffocate us. I know I am nearing death's door, I can feel it in my bones, so take this document as my final words, perhaps the final sputterings of humanity.
If the human race unfathomably survives this nightmare, I can't say that we deserve it. Our unending desire for resources has been matched only by our insatiable bloodlust. I've bared witness to crimes against the body, crimes against the heart, and crimes against the soul. These wars have proven fruitless, our animosity misplaced upon others rather than on the issues that riddled our own nations internally; whether this ignorance was founded in insecurity or bliss remains to be seen. Consciousness is a curse. The gift for which we've been condemned has drawn us to the inferno, and this hex ensures that even with intervention, history is doomed to repeat, should we not recognize that when the world is inevitably brought to ashes, there's no use in parsing the grey from the silver.
Written by Incorrect3
Content is available under CC BY-SA