by James Rosone
A shockwave hit the room. The genuine disbelief that this could have occurred on their watch caused a momentary delay in response by the King’s body guards. What seemed like a minute went by, but less than five seconds later, three men pulled their guns and aimed them at Mohammed. Just as they were about to shoot him, men loyal to Mohammed (who had been secretly planted in order to be in the room at this time) killed the body guards. All of the routine actions of the day had been carefully orchestrated to ensure a maximum number of men loyal to Mohammed’s cause would be present in the room; the Saudi royals never saw it coming as he had been one of them for so long.
One of Mohammed Abbas’ men pulled out his smart phone and began to record a short message from his fearless leader, and proudly displayed the dead body of the King. Soon the group was sending out a broadcast showing their victory to all television channels across that region and signaling for the other attacks to take place. In between declarations of “Allahu Akbar,” it became clear that this day would end with the death of more than one Saudi royal. All across the country, selected members of the Saudi military (who were secret Islamic State members) began to hunt down and kill members of the royal family wherever they could find them.
Mohammed Abbas proudly proclaimed the following day that he had assumed control of Saudi Arabia as the new Caliph. He sat in the King’s chair, sending out a broadcast to the world. Taking a deep breath and smiling, he turned to the camera and boldly declared, “At long last, the land of the Prophet will once again return to Sharia law and be ruled by a true and just Caliph. This nation will no longer be occupied by or made to be a puppet for the West and their influences. All US Forces must leave the Kingdom within three months.”
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May of 2030 was a bloody month of revolution and change across the Middle East and Asia. Despite the West’s best attempts to try to contain and stabilize the regions, many feared that the next World War was looming on the horizon.
President de Blasio and his administration were caught completely flatfooted by the events. There had been no intelligence reporting of something like this happening, and they were left with no real option but to accept the new changes being made in Saudi Arabia. The American President called for calm and dialog between the various factions vying for power, but refused to directly involve America or the military. In compliance with the new Caliph’s request, President de Blasio ordered all US Forces to withdraw from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, relocating the majority of these forces to newly leased land and facilities in Israel.
Many Americans saw this as a capitulation by the President to Islamic extremists now that the Islamic State had announced they were responsible for the regime change in Saudi Arabia. However, even many of the more moderate Muslim Americans supported the President’s move to recognize Mohammed Abbas as the Caliph of Saudi Arabia.
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With the loss of infrastructure and key leaders, it took India a full three weeks to determine how they would respond to the horrific attack on their capital and to position divisions and aircraft accordingly. Without consultation with his allies in the West, the newly sworn-in Prime Minister of India launched an all-out attack against Pakistan in retaliation. Within the first four days of the India-Pakistan war, an Indian armored division had penetrated through the Pakistani defensive line at the border and was driving fast and hard, rolling up the Pakistani defensive positions.
The Pakistanis saw no other alternative to stopping the Indian Army once they had broken through their line of defense than to do the unthinkable and consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. At first, this decision had been ruled out; however, the Pakistani Intelligence Service (who at this point had been thoroughly infiltrated by Al Qaeda) had persuaded the Prime Minister that this must be done or Indian forces could be on the streets of the capital within weeks. The Prime Minister, feeling that it was Al Qaeda militants responsible for the attacks in India and that his own intelligence service had nothing to do with it, felt that India was using these terrorist attacks as an excuse to invade Pakistan. The use of tactical nukes was authorized.
On June 3rd at 1835 hours, the Pakistanis deployed the first of five 30-kiloton tactical nuclear weapons against the Indian Army. Initially stunned, the Indian forces quickly scattered and dispersed to minimize the chance of them being hit again with another tactical nuke. Throughout the decades of conflict up to this point, the Indian Prime Ministers had warned that if Pakistan ever used nuclear weapons against India, they would respond and their response would be unequivocal in nature. It was time for this threat to become a fulfilled promise.
Less than eight hours later, at 0132 in the morning, India launched ten 300 kiloton nuclear missiles and thirty 20 kiloton tactical nuclear weapons at suspected Pakistani nuclear missile locations, four military installations and their six largest and most strategic cities. Mushroom clouds filled the sky.
Deep below the earth’s surface, some Pakistanis were safe in their bunkers. From the comfort of their cots and sleeping bags, they still possessed the power to respond to the attacks. Mobile launchers had been dispersed across the country for some time; they were finally put to use.
Forty-five nuclear missiles were launched at Indian cities within range of those weapons’ capabilities. Being mobile missiles, the largest of the warheads was 200 kilotons—the “city killers” that the Indians feared. The Indians responded with a second launch of thirty more 300 kiloton missiles and 50 smaller 20 kiloton nuclear weapons at their remaining military bases, while the “city killer nukes were heading towards the remaining large cities of Pakistan. By 0257 on the morning of June 4th, a combined 160 nuclear weapons had detonated across Pakistan and India, killing over 800 million people. The carnage was grotesque and extensive.
Pakistan as a nation ceased to exist; however, the Islamic State had just sacrificed their last chess piece for the greater good. The vast majority of the Pakistani people had been killed during the nuclear exchange; what few remained were left to die of radiation poisoning and starvation. India had twenty- eight of their own cities seriously damaged and three were destroyed outright. The nuclear weapons hit across the north and northwestern portions of the country, sparing the lower half of the nation from the destructive power that had just been unleashed. In comparison, the loss of a few military bases seemed trivial. Though the south of India had been spared Pakistani nukes, over one-tenth of India had been devastated by the nuclear attack.
Following the nuclear exchange, Indian forces moved into what was left of Pakistan and absorbed the country into a greater India. It would take years (if not decades) to decontaminate and rebuild the areas that were hit, but India began work immediately and was determined to rebuild and restore what was lost.
Though the war between India and Pakistan was brief, it shook the world to its core with the sheer devastation that had been wrought on that region. The global economies began to feel the immediate effect of the nuclear exchange as well as the massive changes in governments in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. Within a couple of days, the price of a barrel of oil had gone up to just over $400 as speculators swooped in to try and take advantage of the situation; overall investor confidence was severely shaken.
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Throughout the 2020s, the United States and the European Union became bogged down with a severe sovereign debt crisis and were struggling just to provide basic services. The US had to begin a series of tough austerity programs to try and balance the budget; the US had already borrowed over $45 trillion, and there just wasn’t any more money left to borrow. The European Union was in the same shape, with numerous countries having defaulted on their debts in the late 2020s.
The new leader of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Abbas, and the Mullahs of Iran saw this as an opportunity to squeeze the West further by cutting the production of oil. This caused the price of oil to stay over $400 a barrel for an extended period of time. The United States and the European Union began a massive shi
ft in consumption from oil to natural gas, which the United States had an immense reserve of. Converting power plants, semi-trucks, and trains to run on natural gas as an alternative to diesel was going to take a long sustained effort, but the people and their leadership were all in agreement to make that goal a reality.
The economies of the West suffered even further in the wake of the nuclear devastation of India. With the explosions, went not only political stability in the region, loss of infrastructure and slaughter of life, but also the destruction of numerous call centers, manufacturing cities, software development companies, and numerous research and development departments for many major global corporations. India had been an economic and intellectual powerhouse prior to the attacks; the conflict had brought them backwards more than a few decades as they began the process of rebuilding and caring for the tens of millions of injured.
When the affected corporations announced their losses, the economic tragedy of the situation truly began to unfold. The stock markets were already shaky due to the political climate, and instability began a steep decline. The US even closed trading on several days when run-offs were initiated because of immense single-day losses. With the steep oil prices staying steady, consumers dropped off all unnecessary spending; as shipment costs began to increase exponentially, so did the cost of goods and services. Unemployment rose, GDP fell, and the income tax revenue of all major nations fell dramatically.
President de Blasio instructed the Treasury Secretary to do whatever was necessary to restore confidence in the market and to stabilize the American economy. The US began a series of continuous Quantitative Easing (QE) to improve liquidity in the market; the problem was that no governments or private financial institutions were buying the US bonds, forcing the Federal Reserve to buy bonds that the Treasury was issuing.
At first, sovereign debts began to default across the third world nations; those defaults soon spread to Eastern Europe and the European Union. By the winter of 2026, when things didn’t look like they could get any worse, people across Europe and the United States began to lose confidence in the banks and the governments’ ability to keep things under control. Fearing the worst, the public began to pull out their money from the banks.
At first, the bank withdrawals were kept to a minimum, but somewhere a panic set in and within a week there was a full-blown run at banks all across the United States, the likes of which had not been seen since 1929. Within a week, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Bank of the West and CitiBank had to close their doors and stop people from withdrawing their money; they simply did not have the reserves to cover everyone’s accounts, and given the current economic climate, there was little faith in FDIC to return cash to the average bank account holder.
As the banks across the US and Europe began to fail, the global economy began a tailspin that no one could have envisioned. By the spring of 2027, the world had fallen into a global depression; the price of food had skyrocketed and other commodities and precious metals had also become completely unaffordable; gold had risen to over $12,000 an ounce. The costs of transportation, manufacturing and even farming had risen with the cost of fuel and with the devaluation of the US dollar; people simply could not afford the basic necessities of life.
Glaciation, as a result of the massive use of nuclear weapons in Asia, was also starting to take its toll as once fertile farmland was now susceptible to late winter thaws and early freezing, reducing the growing seasons and diminishing the amount of food that could be grown. The loss of crops caused by the environmental issues was just the beginning of the world famine. While once bananas had been shipped from Central America to the United States, the cost of fuel made them too expensive to export. Grain that had been grown in the U.S. was no longer being sent to Asia and China. People across the world had to begin coping with eating only the food that could be sourced locally.
As transportation systems began to break down, nations had to turn inward to provide for themselves. As a last dig at Saudi Arabia and Iran, the U.S. ensured that any food or commercial exports that could have been sold to them were quickly diverted to other markets, causing Saudi Arabia and Iran to suffer immense food shortages. They may have made enormous profits from keeping oil above $400 a barrel, but they were paying the price now as the US and the EU refused to sell them any food products.
As the crisis continued to go unchecked, hundreds of millions of people began to starve to death. The global population began to shrink; entire nations were simply famished, lacking the basic necessities to provide for their people. This caused immense amounts of civil unrest all across the world, but was particularly felt in the “previously developing world,” as they had fewer resources from which to draw. Rather than migrating to areas in the country that could support them, most people continued to stay in areas that could not sustain the population without outside help.
As the only group to really profit from all of this chaos, radical Islam began to spread across the rest of the Middle East, and then the philosophy became much more popular in Europe and Africa as well. Young people were disenfranchised by their governments and started to feel a sense of hopelessness. Mohammed Abbas of Saudi Arabia was using this restlessness to his full advantage. On many of the remaining functional television stations, Mohammed appeared on a continual loop preaching his message. “Let us overthrow these non-believing governments! These nations must turn to Islam, the one true religion, and ask for Allah’s divine help and guidance through these tough times. Only through turning to Islam will the world begin to right itself and prosper once again.”
Had he been preaching a message of peace and not of violent overthrow of governments, Mohammed’s plea to turn to Islam might have worked on many more people. As it was, most European and Western powers (as well as China) saw his message as nothing more than a direct threat to their own power and their nation’s way of life. Slowly and steadily, the world powers were heading on a collision course due to religious differences and conflicts over how to manage what resources of the world remained.
During the height of the crisis, Mohammed’s message of radical Islam led to the overthrow of the King of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. Throughout this turmoil Saudi Arabia fomented hatred and infighting against Shia Islam and began to unite these countries under a new country and banner, the Islamic Republic (IR). After the formation of the IR, several other countries (Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Indonesia) were quick to align themselves with this new coalition of nations. The unification of these countries would allow them to pool their collective resources to survive the Global Depression and emerge a much stronger country.
The de Blasio administration was caught completely off guard by this turn of events, and to the dismay of America’s remaining allies in the Middle East (Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Turkey) he ordered the withdrawal and repositioning of the US 5th Fleet to Eilat, Israel. With the economic conditions in the US on the brink of disaster, the administration did not feel America should continue to protect the Middle East (or the rest of the world) and began a series of military withdrawals, leaving a power vacuum in a number of global hotspots.
Although not every country was ready to submit to the leadership of radical Islam, the entire world was feeling the pinch of the Global Depression. By spring of 2027, tensions between nations over livestock and agriculture were commonplace. On the border of Russia, the provinces of the South Caucuses were growing more and more disconnected with Moscow; the citizens of that region were practically being forced into slave labor to grow food for the greater Russian Federation while being allowed to keep very little for their own use. With every bead of sweat that ran down their foreheads while tilling heavy soil on an empty stomach, the farmers were growing a hatred for Moscow. This anger burned, becoming the only fuel that would awaken them in the mornings. Alliances were shifting.
During that spring, a Russian convoy of vehicles that was transporting food was ambushed near
the border of Kazakhstan; the drivers and other support staff were mangled and left to die on the side of the road. At first this was treated like an isolated incident. Hunger had certainly caused an increase in violence across the globe. However, over the next couple of months it became clear that this attack was not the act of a rogue group of thieves. Insurgent forces from Kazakhstan and the South Caucuses began to regularly interdict food supplies on their way to Southern Russia and reroute them to their own nation and people. Perhaps they were a little careless in drawing attention to themselves; however, when the same groups began to siphon off larger and larger portions of Caspian Sea oil for their own use, Moscow began to get more heavily involved.
After this supreme miscalculation of the risk, the insurgent rebels would not have such an easy time. The Russian government produced a military show of force that would cause James Bond to tremble. The political dissidents that were caught were tortured and publicly humiliated, using primetime news coverage to increase the “shock and awe” factor; an example had to be made. Russia (like the rest of the world) was struggling to feed its people, so having a couple of provinces revolting and not producing food was something they simply could not tolerate.
Unfortunately for the Russians, the strong response was the wrong play on their part. Their actions spurned even more anger, and pretty soon the situation began to spiral out of control until the entire southern half of Russia was in a full blown revolt against the government. Within a month, no trucks could transport food from the South Caucuses or near Kazakhstan to Russia without being robbed. As food supplies were further disrupted and the one resource that was producing income for the government--oil--continued to be interrupted, the government crackdown became even more severe and urgent.
