Prologue

In 2033, after a certain historic US president was unable to resolve the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, Islamic jihadists unleashed a carefully planned two pronged attack on the Great Satan. The first prong consisted of the release of a biological weapon in the United States that had the peculiar ability to render roughly 80% of the male population sterile. It was supposed to be a secret attack and, when the sterility was eventually discovered, would be hailed as Allah’s judgment. Nobody thought about the persistence of the agent, or that wind and travel might carry it all over the world.

At the same time, another group of jihadists revealed that they had been successful in obtaining two hundred and thirty-seven spent nuclear fuel rods. They revealed this by cutting the rods into sections, which were dropped down into oil wells all over the middle east. Quite suddenly, two thirds of the world’s supply of petroleum would only be usable in twenty-five thousand years.

The good news was that, in twenty-five thousand years, Earth would still have lots of oil.

The struggle for control of the remaining oil was quick ... and violent. Nuclear weapons were used. At the same time, the general populace of developed nations fought amongst themselves for control of precious resources. Idiots attacked refineries, thinking they could get control of them, but fires destroyed not only the refineries, but most of the cities they were in. The oil that was available couldn’t be refined into fuel. Trucks and trains no longer moved. Food was no longer shipped thousands of miles. People in cities went through available supplies within a month. There was a general breakdown of the social order. Natural selection was no longer a theory for old men to sit around and argue about. Though Charles Darwin had been dead for a hundred and forty-five years, the furor over his theories versus creationism was rapidly resolved. Only the fittest survived.

The primary problem, concerning resources, was an excess of population. That problem was resolved both by the unfit not surviving, and because the biological attack, as well as drifting clouds of radiation made it very difficult for both man and animal to reproduce. Within five years nobody cared any more what was going on in Russia, or France. They were just trying to survive.

Farming made a comeback. Those with skills in animal husbandry became pillars in the pitiful communities that were left. A blacksmith could write his own ticket, as they used to say. Interestingly enough, there evolved a new strength of character in the survivors. Raiders and warlords, who had taken charge initially, based on guns and strength, were soon identified by those who actually produced goods and services as being unproductive. And if you didn’t produce ... you were not tolerated. When the food you receive as “taxes” is poisoned ... guns don’t do you much good. And when the women you commandeer for your pleasure know how to slit your throat in your sleep...

Not that there weren’t still guns and bullets. Those abounded. But now it was the common man who was armed with them. If you tried to take what wasn’t yours, you were put down. It went both ways. If you killed someone who didn’t actually try to hurt you, your fate was the same. It was a harsh kind of existence, in some ways, but everyone knew exactly what to expect. In many ways the world in what had once been called the United States of America, went back to what it had been like in the early eighteen hundreds.

And so humanity, which had not quite snuffed itself out, crawled a little farther along the evolutionary trail.

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