It is most fortunate for us, a generation of post-Tribulation historians and military experts that we have a lot of resources explaining our coming generations how the Great Tribulation period came about. Most surprising, certainly, considering how much damage was inflicted by all those occult-like displays of power that destroyed the environment several times over, the unprecedented mass-deployment of nuclear and other assorted types of superweaponry, and overall, the death of close to one third of mankind [1] over the entire period, mainly the last three and a half years.
There was a huge upsurge in faith and relief in other beliefs, ironically, throughout this horrific period. The Four Horsemen prophesied in eschatology [2] had virtually come to judge the world, namely through the incineration of one third of worldwide greenery [3] through the orbital bombardments in the Second Circum-Pacific War and the Usean-Anean War, the irradiation and bloodening of the Eusian Ocean, and the spike in global cooling and warming at the same time, numerous times worse than the Seven Pillars of Belka event in 1995 [4].
Obviously, there is nothing in those eschatological texts saying the world would literally explode at the end of that period. In fact, so many countries survived, and yet so many more did not. Yuktobania – at least the old one – was practically annihilated by 2028, followed by half of Anea and southern Verusa not long after. The Kingdom of Nordennavic, though neutral, suffered a refugee crisis and, as expected from such a cold nation with low natural resources [5], was quickly overrun by nuclear winter and refugees fleeing in from its two neighbors. The Osean Federation, although surviving, sustained heavy damage in the fourth and seventh years of the Tribulation, and therefore lost its superpower status. War veterans and survivors from the IUN/NUN and IF contributed much to filling in the blanks of the period of time.
There is much scholarly debate as to whether the entire period should be split into a dispensationalist-like era. The Second Circum-Pacific War and the subsequent chaos in the Verusan continent took away from us approximately two billion lives, while the Usean-Anean War killed 170 million, and with such a terminally high loss of life never before seen since the last century or time immemorial, virtually every conflict in the past pales in contrast. The Osean War [6] allowed man to fight in the heavens but rather unremarkable on the grand scale of things. The legendary prop plane skirmishes of the '40s [7] ramped it up a bit. But things began to change by the climax of the last century; the Belkan War woke up the world to the horrors of the nuclear weapons it so coveted and developed in the dozens of thousands since the early-mid 20th, and though more disarmaments have been made than you can count on one hand, they were still insufficient until over ten years before today. [8] The Usean coup in 1997 opened up the eyes of the world to the dark side of Osean imperialism, but was rather unremarkable and pretty much forgotten for multiple decades. The Continental War showed just how out-of-control levels of large can conflicts quickly spiral into, hence the consistent omission of the demonym "Usean" from the war's name. The Circum-Pacific War was basically conspiracy theorists' wet dreams come to life in the worst way imaginable, and the amount of desire for revenge must've been splendid big for those occul- I mean, Gray Men folks to stir up only for their last gasp over a decade later. The E.E. War of the mid-tens showed what would happen if we helped people the wrong way and refused to own up to our own failings while pointing out and worsening the other one's own. And at last, the Lighthouse and Aurelian Wars – both of which began before the Tribulation – were, respectively, a combination of legitimate fears and jadedness from forgotten past lessons and an intimacy with uncontrolled technology (nowadays much more accepted), and…well, simple greed.
Whether or not the corporate world we're in now would've never manifested if it were not for the Great Tribulation happening is up to people, especially since the volatile geopolitics made it look like things were on a crash course to this much death and destruction that borders as we know it aren't as borderly as back in the '90s. Maybe there could have been another way, maybe this had to happen as part of "teen maturity pains" for us humans to (kinda) get together at last, but that's besides the point.
Meanwhile, at the center of it all is one most ambitious, charming woman. Coming up next is…
-Excerpt from a lecture by Kvasir [9], teacher PIG [10], 2045, Data Swallow 4.0.5/Sphere Broadcast Network: "The Seven Years: A Chronicle of the Old World's Strange, Real Final Days")
Author's Notes, Citations, & Religious/Mythological References
[1] Revelation 9:18
[2] First referenced in GAZE's Last Christmas: Refugees Scattered Across the World issue [ .jp/ace6 Story World News: GAZE January 1, 1999]
[3] Revelation 8:7
[4] Named in Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War. Constantly shown in other installments.
[5] [ .jp/ace6 Story Glossary: Kingdom of Nordennavic]
[6] [Aces at War: A History 2019 Section #01 "The Belkan War", p. 12] [ /ace-zero/ World World News #22]
[7] Alluded to in Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War Assault Records: No. 028
[8] [Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere Search The war]. The "Search" feature is essentially a lore tab for the game. Key excerpt: "As a result of the General Resource Group surpassing the framework of the state and expanding its influence on a global scale, conflicts between states became virtually impossible, although small-scale wars such as terrorism and regional conflicts still broke out repeatedly.
Consequently, the military industry, which had been forced to downsize, became a monopoly market for General Resource, but there was little development of new weapons, especially in terms of recognizable costs, and only improvements to existing models, and no innovative research and development has been carried out." [I propose that there was a lot of upset, to put it mildly, in the 2020s that General Resource was able to take power and enforce a form of corporate peace.]
[9] Ace Combat Infinity Canon Immigrant
[10] Acronym from Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere: "programmed intelligence".
[Extra] Will be busy in a week or two finishing up on Ace Combat 6 and 7 and their timelines, very likely, so in the meantime, enjoy this tease.