Emergence Day
From Gears of War
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- "For a time, the humans of Sera knew the illusion of peace... until Emergence Day. At that moment, our people broke free from our subterranean, erupting into the domain of these ground walkers, and wiping out whole cities. We fought and killed the humans on their fine boulevards, in their homes, on their battlefields. And they fought back. In time, their valiant defense was crushed. With billions dead, humans denied their enemy control by destroying their own civilization. They launched devastating attacks on their own territory- sacrificing their own citizens- so that we could not posses it. Such as their loathing and fear of us. Understand what a world must do to survive- what humans must do, and what we must do. But survive we must. Now the humans' long struggle against overwhelming odds approaches the final, desperate stand."
- — The Locust Queen explaining Emergence day[4]
[edit] E-Day
Emergence Day (abbreviated as E-Day) is the day that the Locust Horde emerged from the underground caverns of Sera and launched a full-fledged assault upon the human race, changing the course of Human history forever. In twenty four hours, the Locusts attacked every major city across Sera. The Global Communications Network failed when the first Emergence Holes popped up[5]. The Locust had exterminated one quarter of the human population in a very genocidal fashion; making no discrimination between women, men and children alike. For the beleaguered human nations, only recent through with the 79-years-long Pendulum Wars, the attack was completely unexpected, and factions that had been hell-bent on slaughtering one another only a short time earlier now set aside their differences to combat the new threat, eventually uniting under the banner of the Coalition of Ordered Governments.
Emergency responses alerted civilians to stay indoors and stay calm. Later they reconmended that people should evacuate to Jacinto Plateau. As Emergence Day went on, Locust invaded people's homes and killed civilians in their homes, in businesses, and on the streets. The only government left, the COG, went and tried to stop the Locust from killing. This did not work, the COG planned to scorch all Locust-invaded areas. Under the leadership of COG, the remaining human population fell back to Jacinto Plateau, where the Locust couldn't penetrate the hard granite plateau. After evacuating as many civilians and soldiers as they could, COG resorted to scorching those cities in order to buy themselves time, laying waste to over ninety percent of the planet's surface with everything from orbital satellite-based weapons to chemical weapons. The use of such desperate tactics, plus the consistent use over the years of the Hammer of Dawn and chemical weaponry like nerve gas managed to annihilate the Locust vanguard, But a majority of the Locust attack force survived to retreat to their underground tunnels. It is unknown how many Locust and humans were killed by this cataclysmic bombardment, though given the extent to which COG relied upon it, the figure is potentially in the tens of millions. Only a few million Humans made it to the Jacinto and the 15 years of war has battered the remaining human population. To counter the overwhelming locust attack the COG broadcast a short official message to the people who couldn't reach Jacinto just before they started the bombardment of the planet's surface, killing most of them.
Not all humans experienced the fate of escape or annihilation, however. Any surviving civilians outside of Jacinto were left homeless, malnourished and cut off from the rest of humanity or anything approaching a politically stable state. Dubbed The Stranded, these refugees were apologized to and then abandoned by the COG government, forcing them to find ways to defend themselves ever since.
Meanwhile, the human survivors rallied at Jacinto under the leadership of the COG shortly after Emergence Day, the Fortification Act was passed, directing human society into a state of total war, while leaving Jacinto under a state of permanent martial law.
[edit] Outcome
Emergence Day was a bitter victory for humanity at a great cost, to the point that one might consider it Pyrrhic. The Pendulum Wars had greatly weakened and divided their forces, giving the Locust an advantage in the battle. However, after decades of a persistent state of war, humanity had been collectively battle-hardened. E-Day forced humanity to consolidate their standing forces and cooperate against the mutual threat of extinction. Ultimately, at great cost to human life and infrastructure, the Locust were driven back by orbital weaponry and chemical warfare but were not defeated. Over the next decade, the Locust would rise again and continue their persistent onslaught against humanity, finally breaching Jacinto Plateau at the East Barricade Academy ten years after Emergence Day.
[edit] References
- ↑ Gears of War:Destroyed Beauty
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Gears of War:Aspho Fields
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Gears of War:Sourcebook
- ↑ Gears of War 1 second cutscene
- ↑ Gears of War:Aspho Fields pg 40
