Timeline/minus0
[purge]
This is faux namespace "Timeline" used in Timeline
- January 2025: The blob reaches satisfactory global-level groundwater saturation and makes the decision to commence the concentration and replication phase. For the next few weeks there is a gradual rise in violent crime, and occasional reports of strange mutations and weird animal sightings in the wild, but little attention is paid.
- February: First reports of people rising from the dead, XEDRA immediately makes correct assumptions about what’s up as they’ve been experimenting on the blob and recognize its effects. The US government assumes it’s a controllable outbreak and tries to squelch reports to avoid classified information getting out. A very successful counterintelligence campaign makes YouTube reports of zombies and ferals into a high-quality prank that has caught on among the meme community. After all, any time a video comes out, an undoctored version surfaces not long after.
- March: Nations that are already unstable start to see riots, as passive blob infection causes people to become more violent - some outright feral. A few small wars break out. Thanks to word spreading via the internet, people around the world generally realize something is amiss, but the US government and other allied international intelligence agencies continue to work hard on squashing it. At first it’s not hard, because the places it’s happening are places where the tipping point was reached sooner.
- March 30: A soon-to-be famous YouTube video surfaces, of a screaming young mother violently killing what appears to be her own child amidst a riot in Minneapolis. For most survivors, this will be where they remember it becoming clear that things were really seriously wrong.
- April 1: Attempts to keep it under wraps become unsustainable as violent outbursts become common in developed nations. Government changes the spin to “chinese mind control agents”. Upper ranking members of government also experience psychosis leading to some truly weird shit, like Rhode Island declaring secession from the US and war on the government.
- April 10: A national state of emergency in the US is finally declared as the government realizes control is impossible. At this point riots are widespread and police are unable to keep it under control. Military is deployed, blob psychosis means their response is irrationally violent and they do not follow correct protocol. On top of that, those less affected are simply overwhelmed by live rioters and now hordes of undead mixed in.
- April 15 2025: Just as government resources are strained to their absolute break point (globally, not just in the US), the portal storms begin. The blob exercises a shred of effort for the first time since it entered our dimension, and bends reality so that the access energy to create dimensional rifts is far easier. Gates to the netherum open spontaneously, allowing rampaging beasts of indescribable form to add their involvement to the already rampant chaos. Amidst the violence, the blob sends in a collection of its Lieutenants, alien zombies that have been evolving and growing for centuries or millennia. They begin organizing the burgeoning zombie hordes in tactically important locations.
- April 16: In response to portal storms, the government nukes as many lab facilities as it can, pinning the attacks on China. With much of the command chain mentally influenced by the blob, military and police responses to the rioting, zombie hordes, and now extradimensional monsters and alien zombie armies are worse than suboptimal and in most cases actively harmful. Similar responses are seen in other countries. Things spiral out of control quickly now, with each passing day seeing rapidly mounting casualties as the people still in their right minds are largely killed off and turned to zombies.
- April 25: (Canonical date of Cataclysm) A low-ranking US government official manages to get access to the emergency broadcast system, and sends out a final message. “The government has fallen. No help is coming, you’re on your own.”
- April 30: Canonical date of game start.