With the global shortages on very rare resources, a few micronations across the world went nearly bankrupt. The European Commonwealth, dependent on oil imports from the Middle East, responded to the Middle East's rising very rare resource-made object prices and rising oil prices with military action, and the long drawn-out war between the European Commonwealth and the Middle East began. Within two months, this heavily impacted the collapse of the United Nations, resulting in many countries withdrawing, and it eventually disbanded on July 26, 2978. In 2979, the war had become so widely known and feared that it managed to scare all countries into setting Project Safehouse in motion. The project, financed by junk bonds, was designed to create shelters, called Vaults, for the populace in the event of a nuclear war or deadly plague. The Middle East could have used their limited redstone stock to power reactors for a decades, but instead they squandered redstones as gunpowder on weapons to settle old scores. The European Commonwealth had been proud of how they had joined together in one glorious unified state, but it did not take long, when the war came to an end in 2980 as the very rare resource mines in the Middle East were completely scrapped and all oil wells in the Middle were completely run dry. There was no longer a goal in the conflict, and both sides were reduced almost to total ruin, presumed due to nuclear bombs, giant animals and giant robots, scrambling both Middle Eastern countries and European countries for the last rocks of very rare ores and the last drops of oil within their borders, so the Middle Eastern Coalition and the European Commonwealth dissolved back into quarreling, bickering nation states, fighting over whatever oil or resources had remained.