Scorched Earth

The illusion of democracy, once the foundation of society, crumbled under the weight of corruption and deceit, leading to an inevitable and catastrophic unraveling. As the truth became a distant memory and the people's trust in their leaders eroded, discontent simmered beneath the surface. It wasn’t long before the cracks in the façade became fissures, and the tensions that had been bubbling for years exploded into full-blown civil wars across the Western world.

These wars were not the battles of old, fought over borders or ideologies. They were wars born of betrayal, fueled by the rage of a populace that had finally realized they had been nothing more than pawns in a twisted game. Communities that had once been vibrant and thriving became battlegrounds where brother turned against brother, neighbor against neighbor. The tech overlords, seeing the chaos they had sown, decided that if they couldn’t control the world, they would destroy it.

In their desperation to maintain power, they adopted a scorched earth policy, a strategy so ruthless that it left nothing but ashes in its wake. Entire cities were reduced to rubble, their streets choked with the remnants of what had once been civilization. The air, thick with smoke and the stench of death, hung over the land like a suffocating shroud. Power plants were sabotaged, water supplies poisoned, and communications severed, leaving those who survived the initial onslaught isolated and desperate.

Once-flourishing communities were left in ruins, nearly uninhabitable, with the dead lying in the streets, victims of both war and the calculated cruelty of the powerful. The land itself seemed to rebel against the destruction, becoming barren and desolate, as if it, too, had given up hope. 

The Western world, once a beacon of progress and prosperity, had been brought to its knees, not by external enemies, but by the very forces that had once claimed to protect it. The civil wars had left countries in shambles, their governments shattered, their people scattered, and their future uncertain. The powers that be, in their insatiable hunger for control, had sown the seeds of their own destruction, leaving behind a world that could never be rebuilt.