2160AD

By 2020 the worlds various Governments had, almost, collapsed due to a global economic crisis. Nation after nation, from the richest to the poorest, had fallen to the economic despair that had seen, once strong, currencies descend to a state of financial chaos.
By the close of that year the United Nations, under advice from the World’s financial systems, which had come, since the early 21st century, to see itself more and more as Global rather than national, had merged into a single World Government believed more able to deal with economic pressures that dwarfed anything experienced before.

Nations disappeared as entities, replaced by international states, as economic systems were merged to provide a secure base for a truly global economy. Welcomed by finance and industry, long devoid of any national sympathies, and grudgingly accepted by the populations of Countries across the planet, the New World Order, as it became known, quickly moved to occupy a position of authority, with the blessings of finance and business sectors, and the authority of a, now unified, military.

Those who resisted this new ‘power’ were ruthlessly dealt with, individuals were removed, organisations destroyed and those nations, and there were a few, bombed into submission. It seemed that the NOW of the conspiracy theorists had come to fruition.

For near 140 years this one world government, run from its head quarters in Washington, once the capital city of the now defunct USA, espoused a system based on free market capitalism. Financial, industrial and other corporate conglomerates, no doubt as a reward for backing the dreams of the one worlders, were given almost total freedom which allowed them to create almost pseudo nations in which everyone and everything was owned by the corporation. Nations, as had existed for many millennia, were disestablished, people were no longer American, Russian, Chinese etc, now they were merely Earthers, instead of ‘small being beautiful’, it had become a case of ‘the bigger, the better’.

Oh yes, there had been benefits. Technology released from National and ethical boundaries had produced great advances at the expense of ecology and people. Mars, deemed the nearest and most suitable planet for colonisation, now housed two, strongly economical, colonies. While the asteroid belt of Saturn along with its moons provided much needed minerals to an ever expanding and fiercely aggressive space programme.

However, alongside this expanding ‘utopia’, some had voiced opposition and raised ‘difficult’ questions, some even held ‘ethical’ concerns over this New World Order, or as it preferred ‘The Organisation of International States’.

Following the ‘Food Riots’ of 2156, in what had previously been Europe, that had led to the deaths of four thousand ‘rioters’, the mounting tensions within the old Eastern Block had led to the first real cracks appearing in the strangle-hold of the world government. Inspired by old political ideas, espoused by new ‘leaders’, the old country of Russia, along with allies, had rebelled, declared independence and re-instated a National Government, based on pre 2020 lines. Mlitias, loyal to the corporations and therefore well armed and equipped, had gone over to the rebels in droves, now well trained and armed troops marched alongside the under-equipped rebels or ‘ferals’, as the loyalist dub them. These troops, bearing the arms and equipment of their former employers, now wear the colours of the various political and ideological groups that have unified as ‘The Committee for National Reconstruction’, the CNR. This organisation born from an amalgamation of previously disparate groups such as Anarchists, Communists, Nationalists and others, have managed to find a common cause in opposition to the OIS. Now red flags entwine with black often bearing multi-armed crosses festooned with deaths-heads, individual rebel soldiers wear red, black and purple stars, as well as combinations, on their hats and coloured rags tied around their arms. Slogans by Bakunin scream, proudly, alongside those of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, exhorting their followers to victory or death.