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The year is 2020. The Earth hasn’t changed that much from 2007; films are watched on smaller DVDs, cars look slicker
and go faster, the cure for cancer still eludes the scientific population and women hold more positions of power within the
world of commerce. But this is the year that the world as we know it comes to an end.
Codename: Day of Reckoning
is a Science-Fantasy RPG which uses Greywood Publishing's Ud100 Game system. Ud100 is a percentile based dice system with
many new and exciting game features.
Chronology (Sequence of Events)
Jan 2005 – The United States of
America, China, The United Kingdom and the CCCP join together and form the UFoT – The United Federation of Teraforming.
Their goal is to put a man on Mars by 2008 and start the Teraforming program which will make Mars a living, breathing planet
in our solar system.
Oct 2009 – The UFoT celebrate the first successful manned mission to Mars. The seeds are sown
to start the 500 year Teraforming process of the planet. The seven to ten month trip to and from the planet is the only stumbling
block of the program with astronauts complaining of severe boredom and sickness.
Feb 2012 – A routine supply flight
to Mars ends in disaster when 2nd commanding officer Gerrin Youshov develops severe space sickness, brought on by the cramped
conditions of the flight, and slaughters the entire crew. The UFoT start to look at different ways of transporting men and
women to and from Mars. The first experiments include a drug induced comatose-like sleep.
Dec 2012 – All experiments
of the comatose drugs end in failure with several animals dying in their sleep and human patients suffering too many serious
side effects.
Mar 2014 – Professor James McCallum of the university of Oxford, England invents the stasis generator.
The stasis generator is able to flood specially created chambers with ‘anti-time’. All objects saturated with
the anti-time become exempt from the effects of aging. In short, anything within the flooded stasis chamber ceases to exist
in time.
Oct 2014 – Oxford university boasts of the successful testing of animals within the stasis chamber. A female
baboon was sent into stasis for 3 weeks with no ill effects what so ever.
Dec 2014 – Human testing of the stasis
chamber is successful. Professor McCallum volunteers to become the first human being to be sent into stasis. The experiment
period is for three weeks. When the professor emerged from the stasis chamber he looked quite shocked and was quoted to say,
“Are you telling me three weeks is up already? It only feels like I’ve been asleep for a couple of hours”.
Jan
2015 – The UFoT injects major funding into the stasis generator (dubbed the McCallum Experiment). The first official
use of the stasis chamber is to be used on the Mars flights.
July 2017 - Several large stasis chambers are build in different
world-wide locations for the testing and training of astronauts on the Mars Teraforming project. The chambers are able to
hold 10 crew members at a time and limited amounts of equipment (perishable food etc). Three chambers are located in the USA,
3 in various parts of Russia (CCCP), 2 in China and 1 in the UK.
Apr 2019 – The rogue meteor Jeremiah, named after
the astrologer who was first to spot it - Jeremiah Franklin III, is first sighted in our solar system. The meteor is estimated
to be 11km in diameter (approx. 7.5 miles).
Jun 2019 – NASA calculate that Jeremiah is on a collision course with
the Earth. Impact will be sometime in late 2020. The governments of the world meet in secrecy to discuss why the meteor wasn’t
seen sooner and what can be done to avoid the impact. NASA is given the tasks of determining the origins of Jeremiah and plotting
the exact time and location of the impact on Earth.
Aug 2019 - NASA calculate that Jeremiah will impact somewhere in the
Arabian sea on December 25th 2020.
Scientific advisors to the governments of world predict that several salvos of nuclear
missiles launched at different intervals will alter the trajectory of Jeremiah sufficiently to avoid a collision with the
Earth. However, a contingency plan is also put into operation which is codenamed - Day of Reckoning: The UFoT training sites
are to be used to house special squads of trained personnel. The squads (named CoNDoR units) are to be put into stasis for
20 years. When they awake, they are to gather up as many survivors as possible and lead them back to their CoNDoR nest (center
of operations). From the nests, the survivors (along with the trained personnel from the nests and the CoNDoR units) will
start the rebuilding of the planet.
One NASA professor (James. J Turnbull) disagrees with what the government is trying
to do. It is his belief that Jeremiah has been sent by God to purge the world of all its impurities. Turnbull’s opinions
are overhead by several NASA officials, who report his ranting to the US government. Turnbull is considered too much of a
threat to national security and is moved to a high security mental institution ‘for his own good’.
Nov 2019
– Turnbull escapes from hospital. Despite a high level security operation to track him down, he manages to avoid recapture.
Dec 2019 - Turnbull makes good his escape and travels to Iran. From his new adopted homeland he creates a secret organization
who’s sole purpose is to defile the plans to alter Jeremiah’s course and make sure God’s will is done. The
organization is named The hand of God.
Jan 2020 – After months of preparation, the first salvo of missiles is ready
to launch in an attempt to alter Jeremiah’s course. The timing of the missile launch is critical. NASA have calculated
that the best place to alter the trajectory of the meteor is when it passes Mars. Three salvos of warheads are launched at
4 day intervals. If all calculations are correct, the blasts will make Jeremiah pass closer to the planet Mars. Mars’s
gravity will then alter the flight path of the meteor by several thousand miles allowing it to harmlessly bypass the Earth.
The detonation date for the first salvo of missiles is on July 22 2020.
Jun 2020 – NASA report that all three salvos
of missiles have prematurely detonated one month ahead of time. The Hand of God appear on Iranian television to announce their
intervention of the project.
July 2020 – World leaders appear on television and declare the impending arrival of
Jeremiah. In a final attempt to save the planet, the leaders tell huge press conferences that more nukes are to be fired directly
at the meteor.
Oct 2020 - The contingency plan is put into operation: CoNDoR Teams are put into stasis within specially
created Survey Camps across the world. 1 million civilians and military personel are situated in large underground 'cities'
known as CoNDoR Nests.
Nov 2020 – The nuclear missiles are launched at Jeremiah. The composition and sheer size of
the meteor mean that the nukes have little effect. The metaphorical equivalent is similar to trying to destroy an automobile
by throwing stones at it; a couple of dents here and there, but no significant damage.
Dec 2020 – Jeremiah impacts
in the Arabian Sea 500 miles off the coast of Yemen.
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| Jerimiah2020 Impact Map |
On Christmas day 2020 at 01.45 local time, Jeremiah-2512 smashed through the Earth’s
atmosphere traveling at 80 kilometers per second (approximately 50 miles per second). The searing heat of the meteor flash
bowled millions of tones of Arabian sea water allowing it to impact against the ocean floor. The area lit up as if it were
daylight as Jeremiah delivered 100 million megatons of devastation to the earth.
As well as the explosion, the impact caused several catastrophic events which are explained
individually below (please refer to IMPACT MAP):
When a rapid moving object, such as a meteor, collides with the
Earth’s surface, approximately one half of its kinetic energy is immediately converted in to heat (H.J. MELOSH 1989).
For an object the size and speed of Jeremiah, the fireball spread out for over 1500 km and rose to temperatures in excess
of 3000 degrees. Any man, animal or plant life caught in the path of the fireball vaporized instantly!
Jeremiah-2512 took less than a second
to pass through the Earth’s atmosphere and impact on the ocean floor of the Arabian Sea. As the meteor passed through
the atmosphere it left behind it a huge hole (a vacuum) which air could not move fast enough to fill in. The explosion caused
by the impact sent millions and millions of tones of rock vapor up in to the air which was caught in the sucking motion of
the vacuum filling with air. The rock vapor eventually condensed in the atmosphere and rained back down to earth as ejecta
– huge chunks of super heated rock. The ejecta rained down on the entire planet although the further from the impact
site the smaller the ejecta. Worst hit by the ejecta was in zone 1 (please refer to Impact Map). The ejecta that fell here
were up to 5 meters (16 feet) across and were, in effect, small meteors. These millions of free falling fireballs destroyed
towns and cities without prejudice, set alight to every combustible material (including human beings) and laid waste to millions
of square miles of land.
Approximate ejecta size per zone: Zone 1 – up to 5 meters across (approx. 16 feet); Zone 2 –
up to 2 meters across (approx. 7 feet); Zone 3 – up to 0.5 meters across (approx. 2 feet); Rest of the world –
red hot ash and dust which ignited combustible materials such as trees, clothes and paper.
The initial tsunami caused by the impact was over 1km high (approx. 0.6 miles)
and traveled away from the impact site at over 1000km per hour (approximately 600 miles per hour). At the nearest landfall
(Yemen, Oman, Pakistan and India) the wave traveled over 750 miles inland before breaking. Madagascar, over 2500 miles away
from the impact, was completely engulfed by the tsunami, and still it continued on its journey of death and destruction. Even
Australia had the aquatic monster travel several miles inland before breaking.
The slowest moving, but most destructive force of the impact was
the shock wave (or air blast). Emanating out from the impact site at just over the speed of sound, the shock wave was powerful
enough to go around the entire plane twice! 80% of buildings in zone 1 and 2 were either knocked to the ground or severely
damaged. In zone 3, Cars were flipped on their sides and people knocked 20 feet across the ground breaking every bone in their
body. Even as far away as the west coast of the United States, the air blast knocked people to the ground on its first pass.
As explained above in the section on ejecta, millions and millions of tones of
rock was sucked up in to the atmosphere. A large portion of this pollution rained back down to earth as ejecta. What remained
in the atmosphere was a suffocating blanket, thick enough to block out the sun’s heat and light for almost 4 months
(some 6 months shorter than the science advice given to the project). During
those 4 months the earth’s average temperature dropped by 16 degrees. Most of the planet was subjected to severe snow
storms, the worst hit being places being further from the equator.
When Jeremiah struck the earth it measured a massive 11.1 on the
Richter scale. Seismic shock waves traveled away from the impact at 5km per second and caused major earthquakes and volcanic
eruptions on just about every fault line across the globe. Two of the worst earthquakes were:
1-
the San Andreas
fault suffered the worst quake in recorded history (9.1 on the Richter scale) which caused
hundreds of millions of square kilometers of land to crash in to the sea from San Francisco all the way down to Los
Angeles (see New USA map). The land fall itself caused a huge tsunami which sped its way across the Pacific and wiped out
what was left of Japan.
2-
China also suffered
the worst earthquake in their history (8.9 on the Richter scale) which completely destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes
across the country including the CoNDoR Nest along with one of the three Survey Camps situated there.
Within 10 hours
of Jeremiah-2512 impacting the Earth, 60% of its human population had been killed! As the aftereffects of the impact began
to take hold; earthquakes, volcanoes etc. more and more of the population of the world died. By the time the impact winter
was in full force, just 14% of the world’s human population was left alive!
SURVEY CAMP
The contingency plan, codename: Day of Reckoning was to safely house upto 1 million people in special
underground cities called NESTS. The 3 NESTS located in the USA were adapted nuclear bunkers dug into the limestone hills
of Missouri. Other countires spent the last months before the meteor's arrival constructing their NESTS.
Attached to each NEST is a network of military Survey Camps. These camps house specially trained CoNDoR
teams that have been put into Cryogenic Stasis to survive the impact winter. Their goal is to be awakend 5 years after the
impact, gather up survivers and lead the to the NESTS.
The survey camps house upto 40 military and 5 science personnel. The camps are also built deep underground
with a large, central hydraulic lift to bring staff and equipment to the surface. The camps are to serve as a base of
operations for the individual CoNDoR teams. Lower levels consist of barracks, shower rooms and recreation areas.
All
power to the Survey Camps is supplied by a small, yet very powerful, Nuclear Fusion Reactor (NFR). This somewhat
experimental power source has been a secret project for the UFoT for many years. Fusion energy was chosen as the power supply
because it can be sustained for a very long time. After all, fusion is the energy source that allows a star to burn for hundreds
of millions of years. The UFoT science team determined that the fusion of iron and nickel nuclei not only produced the most
energy but was almost 100% stable.
The
NFR is not ‘power over-kill’ by any means in the S-Camp. In fact, almost 70% of the nuclear energy created by
the NFR is absorbed by the power-hungry Chambers of Temporal Stasis (or CoTS for short). The remaining 30% of energy is used
to create electricity which powers everything from the self-cleansing water filtration system to the air conditioning units.
The
NFR will create energy in the form of electricity for over 100 years (parts, encasing and maintenance permitting of course).
| WORK IN PROGRESS |
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| Survey Camp Entrance Level |
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