the_world_further_old [Contagion]

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======The World Further======

===== The Beginning of the End =====

>//"The first thing you should know is that the world no longer exists. Not as you'd have once known it, at least, if you've 30-odd years of memories in you with enough to spare from the before times. If you're younger, though, perhaps you've heard stories. No record agrees entirely with another as to the beginning of the end, but most could agree by the time the contagion was first recorded, tearing its way through Eirsacean territory like it had a vengeance, that the end had most definitely begun. //
> 
>//"It started at first with the claims of Seeing. What was Seen and Heard by the devoutly and committedly religious was most easily condemned by the laughter of empiricists before it started to manifest, slowly but surely, as tangible reality. The first confirmed Sight was the tidal wreckage on the southern coast of Luat na-Bonswi, by a quiet prophet of an even quieter sect who disclosed their vision by anonymous means to the largest news stations possible. What went dismissed at first as religious hysteria was in the news at thricefold the volume the very next week, and once one mysterious prophet was out there, it could be anybody.//
> 
>//"Some records -- at least, that can be remembered; no copies anywhere seem to persist of these --  of the time made a compelling case that the second sign of the beginning was the rise, in mass waves, of the "False Prophet". They were everywhere. The third sign, then, must have been the overcrowding of airwaves. Once the evacuations began, sporadic and disjointed, it was one news item after another. The first signs of panic came when evacuees fled the southern coastal ports in Luat na-Bonswi, and the second Eirsacean communities within Din Talin and Jotama began to collect themselves in a pattern that, with the benefit of hindsight, was an unusually coordinated mass-migration. Very uncharacteristic, people called it, must be a sign of something, although the Eirsaceans themselves who came on-air seemed unable to explain it. It was the beginning of the end of many things.//
>
>//"Once they had begun, signs came like falling dominoes. The next sign of the end that all records can seem to agree on was the change in weather patterns. Most irregular, all could agree, such a drastic change to climate such as the one beginning in Hailstone Summer (of 2090, that is), with the highest recorded percentage of days of icy precipitation in any summer in all of recorded history... it was speculated, of course, that this was a direct result of changes to the composition of the innermost layer of the atmosphere, but this went unsubstantiated, because the data collected up til the last Taline-wide environmental survey in 2088 suggested far too shallow an upward curve, and although factories were hard at work for the next two years and well after that, no doubt about it if you simply went out into your backyard, there was simply no data to back up the presumption. What was it, then, another act of the gods? Disagreement was abound in the public forum. Indeed it continues to this day. //
>//"An aside -- in the first cycle of editing, after which I saw fit to add this little addendum, my editor suggested that my mention of one being able to 'simply' go out into one's backyard to observe the smog in the sky was 'out of touch with the current reality.' You will see, of course, that I have elected to keep that phrase in. I am not blind -- I see, as do any of you, my readers, reality for what it is. I am not a stranger to the fact of the loss of thousands of unfortunate and deeply missed persons across Din Talin, and a number now reaching the millions at a global level, from natural disaster in the past 12 years.//
> 
> //"But I am also no pessimist, and so what I wish to say is this. The premise of this work is a critical one -- yes, critical! -- of the viewpoint steadily gaining traction, due to what I may flippantly call fearmongering, that the aforementioned collection of 'Signs' indicates that the end of the world is nigh. Panic across borders, and indeed in the departments of governments themselves, including the Taline government, have caused instances of widespread paranoia, but I remain firmly a believer in tangible evidence. I do not foresee that this will continue. I do not foresee that the dominoes will continue to fall. I foresee that this is but a mere dip, as dips come and go, in the history of humankind -- that elongated sine-shaped curve that maps out the inevitable highs and lows of our species."//
>
> //"I believe that things will improve from here. I speak from the bottom of a valley; it cannot get much lower than this. And once it is all over, and we find ourselves climbing steadily out of this valley toward the next peak of progress, we can look back and ask ourselves, why did we panic? Why did we"//
//-- The closing excerpt of Frances Korrapati's "A Doom-Critical Empiricist's Perspective on the Social Phenomenon of 'The Beginning of the End'" paper, left unfinished before her sudden death in the eastern Taline Earthquake of 2100, in which more than 70,000 deaths were recorded.//
=====List of Nations=====
[[Eirsace]]

[[din_talin|Din Talin]]

[[Jotama]]

[[Luat na-Bonswi]]

[[Anastius & Horasa]]