While some developing nations are transitioning into Fourth and Fifth Wave societies, much of the world continues to struggle with environmental and political disaster. In some cases, the hyperdeveloped states have taken an interest in regions, but not always to the benefit of the locals. This chapter looks at the parts of Earth in 2100 that are fighting simply to survive.

At the beginning of the 21st century, many people despaired of being able to slow down or stop runaway environmental destruction. As it turned out, the threat of global collapse brought on significant improvements in understanding and treatment of Earth’s ecosystems. While rapid changes in sea levels, temperature, and weather patterns caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage around the world, it also led to focused research on the manipulation and stabilization of the global climate. Mass extinctions across the planet pushed the development of biome surveys and complex ecological-systems analysis, while unexpected earthquakes drove advances in construction materials and seismic modeling. This leap in scientific understanding and technological capability allowed for substantial environmental repair on Earth, and facilitated the terraforming process under way on Mars.

A century of gradual warming has had substantial results across the globe, despite the increased efficiency of Fourth and Fifth Wave industrial technologies and ongoing efforts at mitigation.

Among the areas hit hardest by the warmer climate were the “breadbasket” farm regions in North America, Western Europe, and Central Asia. Persistent drought and migrating insects ruined many harvests in the first half of the century, resulting in famine across Southwest Asia, cutting food exports from the United States by 50%, and destroying the wine industry in southern France. Although crops bioengineered to be more resistant are now in wide use, many agricultural communities were destroyed and farming is now largely automated.

Desert areas have expanded across the globe, with the growth in the Sahara Desert in north Africa and the Great Indian Desert in east India being particularly aggressive. Agricultural land has been swallowed by the desert, and many formerly self-sufficient areas now require regular food imports to survive. Dust storms are also an increasing problem in the border regions, further degrading local food-production abilities. Intensive agricultural use also led to increased erosion and soil salinity, further degrading the ability of many areas to feed themselves.

Not all of the climate-related changes to arable lands were negative, however. Both Canada and the Central Steppes of Russia saw a doubling in the availability of farmland, and Argentina’s agricultural production was boosted by 25%. By 2100, Canada and its successor states became the top international food exporters, and Russia became a leading producer of quality wine.

Sea levels rose an average of three feet in the first 20 years of the 21st century, and rose a total of about five feet since 2000. Many regions saw increased problems with flooding, and a number of low-lying cities became disaster areas. The Netherlands suffered greatly, and Amsterdam was nearly lost three times, but managed to hold off serious damage. Venice, Italy was evacuated temporarily in 2033 and much of the city’s artwork was lost forever. New Orleans, Louisiana, held out longer, but hurricanes and rising oceans brought the city to its knees in the late 2040s. The 2060 earthquake on the New Madrid fault destroyed the remaining levees and shifted the Mississippi, forcing the city to be abandoned. Off-limits for health and safety reasons, New Orleans is now host to about 10,000 squatters. Rangoon, Burma, was also hit hard by storm-related flooding, but managed to rebuild prior to the Pacific War.

Storm-surge flooding from the rising sea level combined with larger Pacific storms led to problems in all Pacific coastal cities as well, from Tokyo to Los Angeles to Sydney. Seawalls and massive pump systems are now commonplace in most Pacific urban areas, patterned after those in place in the Netherlands, often with local improvements. The City of Angels arcology under development in Los Angeles makes use of increased tidal and storm surges as an additional power source.

Providing video, interactive video, and sensory-link material from close up – or even inside – a massive weather event is a profitable service in 2100. Audiences all over the world enjoy what critics call “storm porn,” and pay a surprisingly good rate for rare, dangerous-to-get, or stunningly beautiful footage. People who actively seek out tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning storms and more are known as stormchasers, and big weather events often have multiple chasers competing for the best access and material.

Traditionally, stormchasers tried to get as close to the worst part of the storm as possible without endangering their lives. The advent of rugged cybershells designed to research the atmospheres of the gas-giant planets changed that, as they proved able to withstand Earth’s heavy weather. Storm footage saw a resurgence in the 2140s, as vid and slinks from up close to and inside of tornadoes and lightning storms started to appear on the web. In 2155, every serious stormchaser uses a cybershell – usually teleoperated, but resident AIs are not unknown – sometimes using even multiple units to capture different perspectives.

Seismology is a mature science, and the process underlying earthquakes is well understood. Substantial work has been done in the prediction of earthquakes, much based upon changes in subsonic noise as a measurement of tectonic stress. Known faults in stable countries are watched by a network of earthquake monitoring systems. Monitored locations can expect an initial warning two to four weeks ahead of time, and an alert 24 to 72 hours before the event, including approximate magnitude and epicenter. Current equipment is about 80% accurate, and provides more false positives than false negatives. After the first few urban warnings resulted in gridlock as people tried to escape even minor temblors (resulting in more deaths than the quake would have caused), local authorities became more careful when informing the public.

New buildings in quake-prone regions have magnitude ratings, and those that can function as an earthquake shelter are usually well-marked. Fifth Wave construction techniques are designed to withstand quakes of up to 8.5 to 9.0 on the Richter scale without collapsing. Fourth Wave construction is intended to be good for up to 7.5 to 8.0. Third Wave construction techniques and materials are less reliable, and corrupt inspectors and contractors remains a widespread problem.

Countries in the “Ring of Fire” – the tectonically active zone along the Americas’ coasts, across the Bering Strait, and down the eastern Asian seaboard – are accustomed to large earthquakes, and are prepared for events. Central Asia, which is also commonly subject to quakes, is less ready. Instability and poverty in Central and Southwest Asian nations has precluded any serious efforts at retrofitting structures. Small earthquakes occur frequently in the Ring of Fire zone, and large ones are not uncommon, although they usually hit in less-populated areas.

The eastern half of the United States took its own hit in 2075, when the New Madrid Fault Zone, located along the southern Ohio River and central Mississippi valleys, unleashed a series of 32 small-to-moderate quakes over the course of a week. While none were of a magnitude larger than 6.4, cities from New Orleans to Chicago suffered substantial damage, and commerce and transportation were disrupted throughout the northeast. The cost of the New Madrid Event ended up exceeding the cost of California’s Big One, and led directly to the imposition of tough building codes throughout the Fourth and Fifth Wave world.

The long-awaited “Big One” hit southern California in 2042, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale. New predictive tools provided 24 hours notice, allowing selective evacuations near the epicenter (just offshore in the Santa Monica bay, near Malibu) and sheltering of people in the more-quake-resistant buildings. The earthquake caused remarkably little loss of life, even if it did result in hundreds of billions of dollars worth of property damage in older buildings across the region.

Northern California has been expecting a similar-sized quake since the 1990’s, and seismologists are concerned that the long build-up of pressure will result in a far larger earthquake than anyone is truly prepared for. Current models suggest that the chance of an 8.0 or larger quake happening in the next three years is 50%, and the chance in the next 10 years is close to 100%. The entire San Francisco Bay Area has been in an earthquake-retrofit frenzy, and a dark fatalism is commonplace among the residents.

The human immune system is now well-understood, but disease remains a concern across the world. Classic pathogens such as influenza and cholera kill thousands every year, primarily in the less-developed countries. New variants can erupt at any time, igniting a frantic rush to have disease-resistance genemods updated. The greatest fear, however, remains the purposeful release of human-engineered diseases as weapons.

Despite a century of biotechnology, most humans still come down with the occasional illness. Disease vectors are remarkably robust, and few bioengineered upgrades provide total immunity. Simple genefixing, while eliminating most sources of inherited diseases, does little to reduce susceptibility to contagions. The Alpha upgrade provides basic disease resistance, but only 40 million Alphas exist, primarily in the hyperdeveloped world.

This is not to say that medical science has not improved dramatically. AIDS was conquered early in the 21st century, cancer is readily treatable, and Alzheimer’s is no longer a problem for most people. Immune-system boosters and antibiotics/antivirals exist for all major diseases, and are readily available in Fourth and Fifth Wave societies. Third Wave areas are less fortunate; epidemics still sweep through populations before local medical groups or outside assistance can shut the new strains down. While the competition between bioscience and evolution has shifted clearly to the side of humankind, variants of suppressed germs still emerge in the wild. The 2090 aerosolized-strain Ebola epidemic in Gabon was abundant evidence that natural diseases remain a potent force.

Treatment-resistant diseases can be particularly deadly to populations in transition areas, where a minority of the population has had disease-resistant genetic treatments and households have greater access to advanced anti-pathogen cleaning supplies. While commonplace bacteria or viruses are more effectively attacked, the stronger treatment-resistant variants have a greater opportunity to spread. These new germs hit baseline humans much harder than usual, and even relatively innocuous diseases can be deadly. The continued evolution of new and treatment-resistant strains of natural pathogens will also eventually reduce the relative effectiveness of most genetically engineered defenses against disease.

Even as medical technology slowly asserts dominance over the natural world, the use of artificially created or enhanced diseases remains a nightmare scenario. Detailed knowledge of the genetic functioning of bacteria and viruses makes the process of enhancing germs far simpler than most people would like. Commonplace diseases can be altered in a number of key ways.

Increased Infectivity: Designing a more contagious strain.

Replication Controls: Designing in a limitation on the number of times a given germ can make copies of itself, or copies of copies. This gives the engineer more control over the spread and duration of a given epidemic.

Tailored Lethality: Designing a more (or less) lethal strain. Variations can include the modification of recovery rates, severity of symptoms, or types of symptoms.

Target-Seeking: Designing a strain that only affects a limited population, a virus may be modified so that it will only target hosts with certain clear-cut genetic traits. This can be as broad as being male or female, or as specific as a particular person’s genotype (although the virus would also affect his clone or twin).

Vector Modifications: Some of the most lethal diseases (such as rabies or hemorrhagic fever) spread only by direct contact with bodily fluids, and thus can be readily contained. However, genetic engineering might be used to alter a particular agent so that it can be airborne and therefore spread by coughing or sneezing. This also makes a germ much harder to localize and control, and will sometimes be used in concert with replication controls.

New diseases can emerge, whether due to natural evolution or human design. New naturally occurring pathogens are rare but not unknown. The creation of entirely new diseases requires extensive modification of a base design or combining genetic material from a variety of sources.

In much of the world, the work of repairing the damaged environment has gone from crisis to careful maintenance. The most difficult work is in the rain forests of South America and Africa, where biosphere repair involves quite a bit of ecological experimentation, attempting to get the balance of reintroduced plants, animals, and microorganisms right. The organizations overseeing the environmental work are not generally opposed to using genetically modified species to better fit within a niche, particularly one that has seen significant near-irreversible change from human activity, but have a policy of trying to rebuild as “natural” a state as possible. Doing so takes patience, knowledge, and the right tools.

The attempts to repair a dangerously altered ecosystem, combined with the technology behind the terraforming of Mars, led to a series of important environmental engineering breakthroughs in the 2070s. The tools developed made it possible, over time, to alter soil chemistry, reliably introduce a set of microorganisms, and seed a diverse ecology of plant and insect life. These semiautonomous systems, known as ecoformers, sped up the environmental repair process considerably. A network of ecoformers can clean up one acre of a toxic release in 24 hours; repairing more complex damage (such as climate-change-related effects or the use of ecoweapons) can take five to 10 times as long.

In 2111, Nanodynamics, working with the Environmental Science department of Brasilia National University, announced advanced ecoformer systems they call nanoformers: extremely durable microbots and engineered bacteria that contain a nanotechnological biochemistry, able to slowly consume and transform a landscape. Nanodynamics claims that the design will double the speed of environmental repair, and also act as an “immune system” against subsequent degradation. They were finally brought to market in late 2113. In early 2114, the design code for the nanoformers appeared on the TSA Web.

It is clear that the skills and technologies necessary to modify and rebuild a degraded ecosystem can easily be used to make the environment worse. In 2068, Vietnamese farmers discovered a set of ecoformers relentlessly changing forestland to infertile scrub. Vietnam blamed China, China denied responsibility, and Vietnam eventually had to request assistance from Europe to clean up the ecoformer infestation. The global media dubbed this “ecotage.”

Focused attacks on an opponent’s environment have long been part of the tactics of states and the stateless alike. This practice is most often used to deny an opponent the use of the land for strategic support, from the ancient Roman practice of salting the earth to the use of defoliants in late-20th-century conflicts. With tools available to repair environmental damage, attacks on opponents’ ecosystems have actually increased, although not without public outcry when exposed. Ecoweapons are used primarily against opponents of lower technological capability, who are therefore unable to easily counter the assault.

There are two broad categories of ecoweapons: tactical and strategic. Tactical ecoweapons are usually defoliants intended to eliminate ground cover and infestations intended to drive out populations or kill crops without poisoning the land. Strategic ecoweapons, conversely, are long-term effect weapons intended more to shape policy or damage a population’s morale than to ruthlessly strip an area of life. Strategic ecoweapons are usually part of a multi-year covert operation, with the goal of defeating the opponent without firing a shot.

Green-Blue Associates, based in San Francisco. Founded by former researchers for the Amazon Restoration project, Green-Blue specializes in accurate repair of native ecosystems.

ProtECO, based in Brasilia. Jointly owned by Nanodynamics and the National University of Brasilia, ProtECO claims to be the only environmental defense firm to deploy a nanoformer “immune system” against ecoterror.

Le Monde Vert, based in Marseilles. Suppliers of ecoformer tools for various African environmental cleanups, in 2099 Le Monde Vert hired M. Dyson, widely considered the top SAI coder of antivirus systems, and has built a highly competitive anti-ecoweapon protection system.

Many revolutionary, criminal, and terrorist organizations have access to ecoweapons, usually in the less-developed regions. Depending upon the goals of the attacker, the weapon use can be visible or subtle, with long-term or immediate effects. Environmental terror attacks are more broad-spectrum and deadly than typical military versions. They’re also often harder to stop. Ecoterrorists have lifted techniques from computer-virus creators and use layered defenses against countermeasures: attempting to stop the visible attack unleashes a hidden plague, or the immediate-impact event is actually a long-term assault that reinfects the host area after each cleanup.

Environmental terror attacks are difficult to carry off successfully, but the numbers are slowly increasing as tools and techniques become more widely available. Source code for many of the more-virulent ecoweapons and ecoterror systems can be found in the deeper reaches of the web. China and the United States claim that the worst were actually designed by the TSA’s Bioweapons Directorate, a claim that the TSA routinely denies, noting that the first known ecoformer attack was against a country which became a TSA founder. Ecoterror countermeasures are harder to come by, in part because a number of companies make a business out of environmental cleanup and antiecoweapon protection systems, and thus are protective of their “trade secrets.”

In contrast to those attempting to repair the Earth’s biosphere while still living in it, the Deep Environmentalist movement desires to return the Earth to a pre-Homo-sapiens state. Few in number but memetically influential, the Deep Environmentalists are often portrayed as the only “pure” environmentalists left. There is no single Deep Environmentalist organization; most actions are carried out anonymously by a handful of individuals. The public face of Deep Environmentalism is benign, and people claiming sympathies to the cause are found in groups encouraging more off-world colonization and population controls.

Occasionally, the darker face of Deep Environmentalism is shown. In 2154, a small-but-noticeable drop in birthrates across the globe was traced to a virus bioengineered to attack sperm motility. While routine antivirals were able to clear the infection in most victims, hundreds of thousands of men were effectively sterilized. The American Center for Disease Control believes that the virus was originally spread at an airport in Sydney, Australia. The perpetrators of the attack are still at large.

The movement is particularly opposed to the introduction of modified-genome plants and animals, and is believed responsible for the assassination of environmental managers engaged in their release. Interpol now suspects that some Deep Environmentalists have detailed knowledge of ecoformer engineering, perhaps from professional experience. In 2103, construction of the Three Gorges arcology in China was halted for six months after at least 100 ecoformer systems were found to have been released in the area and reprogrammed to break down materials common to 21st-century manufacturing in an attempt to return the area to a more “pristine” nature.

Although the terraforming of Mars is now thought to be irreversible, the activist group calling itself Red Right Hand continues to agitate for the total cessation of all terraforming activity. In 2152, that agitation turned violent as the group began using “areoformers.” Derived from the terraforming and ecoforming technologies in use, areoformers are designed to make a region of Earth’s environment as Mars-like as possible by breaking down all biomass, altering soil chemistry, and releasing ozone-destroying chemicals. Red Right Hand claims that this demonstrates reversal is possible, and that they will continue to use areoformers on Earth as long as terraformers are active on Mars.

While outbreaks of areoformers are easy to detect and counter in the hyperdeveloped world, less developed areas find stopping them very difficult. Red Right Hand – which, despite its ideology, is probably primarily Earth-based – is known to swiftly seize advances in ecoforming technology, often using pirated designs. A non-functional nanoformer network discovered outside of Mexico City in late 2154 is now believed to have been a failed Red Right Hand attack.

Even if the global climate has stabilized, many regions still face enormous environmental burdens. Most of these are man-made, the result of inefficient and wasteful industrial practices. For the most part, advanced technologies have fewer waste products, although there are significant exceptions. Pollution therefore accumulates most rapidly in those countries least able to afford cleanup and abatement technologies.

Developing regions of the world still face polluted air, although the widespread adoption of fusion power and hydrogen/electric vehicles has greatly reduced that problem. The greater issues for the less-developed areas are water pollution (industrial runoff) and garbage accumulation. Modern filtering and recycling methods, which rely heavily on bioengineering, are expensive to license and difficult to build with Third Wave technology. Nonetheless, most countries have adopted aggressive pollution restrictions, even if the goals remain difficult to achieve.

While biotechnology is much less polluting in general than older industries, it can have its problems, particularly in the early stages of a transition to a Fourth Wave economy. Biohazards can be expensive to safely destroy, and most governments are extremely sensitive to the possibility of a disease outbreak. It’s not unusual for major bioengineering firms from the hyperdeveloped world to create local subsidiaries in transition states that do nothing but handle biowaste at whatever price the market can bear.

Although nanotechnology-based production is rarely encountered in less-developed countries, many such states have adopted restrictions on nanotech production out of an unsubtantiated fear of potential runaway disasters. Not that there haven’t been problems – in 2111, the Masterson & Bajpai Nanoworks facility, on the outskirts of Hyderabad, India, accidentally released partially programmed medical nanomachines into the local sewage system. While no human deaths or injuries were found, it was responsible for a rash of deformities and high death rates in the local frog population. The company paid for the cleanup, and had its corporate charter revoked.

While modern production methods are generally clean, the environmental safety technologies require large initial investments. Corporations from the hyperdeveloped world have been caught moving production facilities to poorly regulated regions in the less-developed world. Although this is highly illegal, avoiding the costs of environmental protection can mean substantial financial savings for a company and profits for its owners.

Since current industrial technology is heavily based on biotechnology, the Genetic Regulatory Agency had initial responsibility for the global law enforcement concerning industrial pollution. In 2103, the Biosphere Management Group spun-off from the GRA to function as an independent pollution-enforcement organization, also headquartered in Königsberg. Well-funded, the Group has investigatory teams to find abuses and abatement units to clean up the worst excesses – at the guilty company’s expense.

Whether natural or man-made, environmental crises pose substantial challenges to governments. The financial costs are enormous, but so are the potential political costs. Disasters often expose corruption, from hidden deals between officials and polluting industries to underenforced building codes. Larger crises bring unwanted international attention.

Environmental disasters on the scale of a large earthquake or massive industrial accident often require outside help to get through. For countries well-integrated into the global system, offers – and acceptance – of outside help are pro forma. Countries that hide themselves from the outside world are in a serious quandary. They are unlikely to have enough resources to confront the disaster, but allowing in outside aid can result in undesirable exchanges of information. Some of these states will attempt to muddle through, denying that the disaster took place if at all possible.

This is a problem if the crisis’ effects cross international borders. In August of 2059, the explosion of a chemical factory in northern Burma led to poisonous smoke crossing into China. The Burmese government at the time, a brutal military dictatorship, denied that the explosion had taken place and refused to accept international assistance to put it out, even when presented with satellite data showing the fire spreading. Finally, in mid-September, China occupied the region in a rapid invasion, which resulted in the deaths of over 100 Burmese troops. Chinese personnel brought the chemical fire under control, and it was completely extinguished within 10 days. The Chinese forces then withdrew, albeit only under considerable international pressure.

As bad as natural disasters are, they pale in comparison to what humankind has proven willing and able to do to itself. Although less common in 2155 than in centuries past, criminal regimes are still a significant problem, using corruption, violence, and terror as tools of governance. Ethnic tensions, religious factions, and warlords hungry for power continue to tear apart fragile countries. The great-power nations pay either too much or too little attention, often using conflicts to pursue larger political or economic goals, or simply bowing out completely, leaving the locals to sort things out for themselves.

In the late 20th century, the appearance of governments run only for the enrichment of a small number of individuals prompted the creation of a new political term: kleptocracy, the “rule of the thieves.” In some cases, the thieves were the petty warlords who had struggled for dominance and then became intent on looting the country. In others, the thieves were the criminal networks that had operated in the shadows of the previous regime, now thrust into power as the only group organized enough to maintain control. In most cases, the criminal dominance didn’t last, as either alternative forces challenged the corrupt government’s rule or the leadership fell victim to internal rivalries. The century between 2000 and 2100 saw many such kleptocratic governments spring up and die out; today, Haut-Zaire and Kyrgyzstan are the most visible examples.

Traditional kleptocracies are simply governments dedicated to the ongoing enrichment of the leaders. While the most notorious of these are led by powerful, charismatic figures fond of gold-encrusted homes, the majority are less ostentatious, with regional crime networks pulling strings behind the scenes, giving the appearance of normality in the government. It may be well-known that the political leadership is corrupt, but as long as they don’t get too greedy and the economy is stable, this arrangement can last for years. In the case of these kleptocracies, the goals are to stay rich and not become a target for insurrection. Kyrgyzstan was such a stable kleptocracy for much of the last three decades, although a new generation of leaders seems more intent on self-glorification than policy.

Kleptocratic arrangements work well in otherwise stable environments, but create problems if the government collapses for other reasons, such as a major ideological shift, unrelated scandal, or external pressure. Suddenly, the mafias are exposed, or – worse still – the only ones in a position to maintain order. Historically, this spells the end of the kleptocracy, in one way or another.

In some cases, the governmental collapse eventually leads to chaos, such as with Armenia in 2062. When the president and vice president killed each other over a woman, discontent with the scandal-plagued leadership boiled over into street protests. The local mafia – which had long been content simply to skim money from the official coffers – panicked, and had the military attack the protesters. Some officers refused, and Yerevan was the scene of vicious fighting between army divisions. Eventually, Russia and the E.U. moved in troops to restore order and put in place a democratic government.

In other cases, the fall of the corrupt government has the counterintuitive result of the local crime network, finding itself the only moderately legitimate source of authority, more or less going straight. Keeping the country going becomes of greater concern than making more money. The classic example of this is Russia, which was considered among the most corrupt governments in the world throughout the first several decades of the 21st century. In 2044, when a failed military putsch killed the president and much of the parliament, the vice-president, who was also a powerful figure in the Russian Mafia, had to step in. Over the course of the next five years, the new president found himself drawing on the resources of the crime network to rebuild infrastructure and the staggering economy. The Russian Mafia, which had found itself taking over the civil society, was in turn absorbed by the society.

The other major form of kleptocratic regime has little concern about leadership, and is more interested in pure wealth accumulation, no matter the cost to the populace. Found most often in the weakest and least stable of regions, the simple pattern is the ongoing impoverishment of the already poor. It requires fine political balance; the bandits in charge of the regime must take enough from the people that the opponents aren’t strong enough to fight, but not take so much that they feel they have nothing left to lose. Few leaders have this much political sense, and the vast majority of these nations spawn bloody uprisings or factional warfare. Haut-Zaire and Haiti are current examples of this type of regime, and most observers expect both to fall into chaos at any time.

In a very few cases, a combination of charisma, power, and savvy actually leads to a very long rule; when the leader’s health fails, there is usually an attempt to pass power on to his progeny, inevitably with bad results. The advent of modern biotechnology is changing this pattern, however. The iron fist of Dr. Eric Townsend has ruled the Caribbean island of Grenada since 2079. A trained geneticist, Townsend has spent most of his accumulated wealth on Fourth and Fifth Wave treatments intended to improve his health and extend his life. He has welcomed so-called “black labs” to his island, and even flirted with membership in the TSA, although Grenada currently remains a member of the Caribbean Union.

The most common and arguably the most insidious form of kleptocratic rule is debt slavery. Found throughout the developing world, even in democratic societies, debt slavery is often an embedded part of local culture. Essentially life-long indentured servitude, in debt slavery money is borrowed – often to pay off medical or gambling bills – in exchange for labor. However, the servant is rarely able to make enough money through work to pay back the loan. As the person remains in servitude, any family he may have is enslaved as well, all working toward the repayment of the loan. To someone from the Fifth Wave world, the amounts can seem ridiculously small – $100 or so – yet are still impossible for the slave to pay off.

Despite being paid a small salary, debt slaves are charged for food, housing, clothing, and other support. On rare occasions, a debt slave may be able to save up enough money to buy off the original debt, at least the portion owed by one member of the family. That newly freed person can then get a real job, making enough money in a short time to buy off the debts of his family or even his friends. Debt slavers are aware of this process, and use behavioral conditioning to convince slaves that once they are free, they’ll have no security in their lives. They are taught that they can starve, be thrown out of their homes or worse, because they have no one to look after them. To the dismay of aid workers and activists, this approach quite often works.

Even as advanced forensic technologies and monitoring systems make the life of the individual criminal difficult, the same systems that have empowered business and terror organizations around the world give new life to organized crime. Dense communications, encryption, widespread information flows, and the ability to assemble operational groups quickly are as valuable to criminal organizations, from urban gangs to traditional mafias, as they are to mainstream corporations. Criminal networks vary in their motivations and goals, but most use similar tools.

Gangs are usually urban, and will form and stay together for a variety of reasons: geography (members come from the same neighborhood), ethnicity (usually a minority identity), or memetics (linked by ideology or religion). Mafias are different; they function more like clans, with a distinct family-tribal element. They often start as a local means of social and economic control in opposition to a distant central government. As they rise in power and grow, they become alternative sources of authority. In addition to these groups, since 2059, international law-enforcement agencies have classified some organized crime groups as “criminal adhoc networks.” Based more on goals than on particular personal identities, these networks are based on a form of organization very similar to that of terrorist groups.

Traditionally, many gangs use indelible markers of membership or identity. Tattoos or ritual scarification have long been favorites, but those are now commonplace and fairly easy to remove. Some gangs have moved on to more elaborate (and painful) methods of marking identity, methods that are much more difficult to reverse or hide. A few, such as Le Sang in Marseilles, use the ritual amputation of the little finger on the left hand as a symbol. Some gangs, especially those that named after sharks or other predatory animals, have taken to sharpening their teeth. Very rarely, gangs with access to gene hackers, such as Locos También in Los Angeles, are starting to experiment with genetic surgery to make somatic changes, usually to skin color or texture.

Mafias have been around for centuries, and while they’ve had varying levels of influence over the years, many are powerful in 2155. While the term is primarily associated with the Italian Cosa Nostra, existing global mafias include the triads and tong organizations of mainland Asia, the Japanese yakuza, the Russian and Central Asian maphiya, and many others. Their main source of power is their deep, multigenerational clan structure. Mafias are invariably large, wealthy, and well-connected to local governments or religious hierarchies.

The newest variation of criminal organization has a wider reach than typical urban gangs, and a flatter, less-formal structure than traditional mafias. Relying on the kinds of operative cells and distributed leadership characteristic of terrorist groups, organizations of crime cells – called “criminal ad-hoc networks” by sociologists – have proven to be resilient opponents for global law-enforcement agencies. Rather than emphasizing identity or territorial control, these networks are task-oriented, whether the goal is to smuggle weapons or distribute neural agents of dubious legality. Eliminating a leader or even multiple nodes of the network does little to disrupt activities for very long, as the distributed structure cannot easily be wholly destroyed. Their greatest vulnerability is their inability to scale; if they get too large, these sorts of groups fracture into competing networks, often violently.

Locos También, Los Angeles, United States. While prone to internecine fighting, Locos También dominates the local underworld through sheer numbers and force. For an urban gang, it is organized and powerful; an attempt by the Maple Syndicate to move into the region in 2109 was met by an intense guerrilla-style reaction, eventually causing the larger criminal organization to withdraw. The FBI believes that Locos has over 10,000 members, all concentrated in southern California.

Kali’s Sword, Bombay, India. Despite its somewhat fearsome name, Kali’s Sword is one of the least violent mafias of its size. Operating out of Bombay, but with cells across India, the PRA, and U.S., Kali’s Sword deals exclusively in pirated intellectual property, from entertainment to classified military designs. In the TSA, Kali’s Sword has become a popular brand name, and the WTO claims that the criminal network is largely supported by the nanosocialists.

al Mohajir, Algiers, Algeria. Functioning mainly as a conduit between Africa and Europe, al Mohajir is a distributed-network criminal group. Interpol estimates that al Mohajir has approximately 500 cells of three to 10 people each, although parts of the network are intentionally ignorant of each other’s activities. They specialize in shipping small arms from Africa to Europe and the Islamic Caliphate, low-level technology smuggling, and moving stolen vehicles from Europe to failed states in central Africa.

Wherever there is power, there are factions. – Anonymous

Factionalism is inherent to power politics – all political structures evolve alternative power centers struggling for authority. Stable societies are usually able to mature this process into political parties, although the parties themselves will typically have factions. Danger arises when factional disputes cease being seen as purely political or memetic and become violent.

Ethnicity is a core part of individual identity, and many of the world’s political organizations remain founded on ethnic affiliation. Ethnic rivalry, often leading to violence, remains common in nations across Africa, Central Asia, and Southern Europe. These disputes often result from political borders not matching cultural borders, sometimes from forced migration of refugees. These conflicts are by far the most difficult to resolve, since one’s ethnic identity does not arise by choice and rarely changes. The dominant ethnic tensions of 2155 – Hutu versus Tutsi, Tajik versus Pushtun, Magyar versus Rom, etc. – are little changed from those from one or two centuries past. In regions where ethnic struggles dominate, political affiliations usually mirror tribal or clan structures. When one faction achieves political dominance, it is rarely kind to opposing ethnic groups. This perpetuates the struggle, making tribal warfare extraordinarily difficult to resolve.

One of the most intractable ethnic disputes concerns the Kurdish population of Southwest Asia. With a population that covers land claimed by Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the Kurds have a long history of both oppression by majority populations and violent opposition to compromise. Various attempts to solve the “Kurdish problem” have failed, and the current hands-off policies have resulted in the emergence of local clan warlords staking out control of different parts of “Kurdistan.” Kurdish soldiers, experienced in both interclan conflicts and irregular warfare against Turkey, the Islamic Caliphate, and Iran, are widely sought by international terror and rebel movements.

Religious struggles are nearly as intractable as tribal conflict. While often overlapping ethnic disputes, they can be wholly separate, as Catholic-Protestant and Sunni-Shi’ite struggles demonstrate. Religious wars can be difficult to resolve due to opposing faiths having wholly divergent historical myths, usually involving oppression and divine promises. The result is often an endless cycle of vengeance.

The rise of the Islamic Caliphate coincided with the decline of fundamentalist Islam, and current confessional disputes are primarily centered on doctrinal disputes within a given religion. The 2038 split of Catholicism may have been nonviolent in the Fifth Wave nations, but Catholic churches in parts of the developing world were attacked by opposing factions. Religious conflicts in the hyperdeveloped states revolve more around questions of sentience and human identity, although this, too, often leads to violence, usually against those with divergent views within the given faith.

This is not to say that religion no longer provokes larger political conflicts. The tension between Islam and the non-Muslim world has not disappeared, even if radical Islam is much less commonplace. Struggles between Muslim, Christian, and traditional religions are common in North and Central Africa. This is readily visible in the border region between Sudan and South Sudan. The non-Muslim, non-Arabic southern portion of the country split off in the 2010s, but conversion efforts from the north continued. At present, the shaky democratic government of South Sudan faces a population in its northernmost section that is split between a handful of armed groups, both Muslim and Christian, engaged in a low-intensity war.

While ethnic and religious splits are easy to identify, there are cases of a nation being torn apart by regional warlords who differ only in name. In these cases, the only affiliation is a desire for power. Some of these warlords may use ethnicity or religion as a mask to gain international support, but their primary focus is the predatory consumption of the money and resources of the home country. Warlords of this type can be found anywhere there is a power vacuum, and should not be considered a purely developing-world phenomenon.

The most painful example of this sort of chaos is the current situation in Kongo. The central government rules in name only; its military forces are sufficient only to protect the city of Kinshasa, now filled with refugees. The rest of the country, the core of the old Democratic Republic of the Congo, is ruled by a dozen different warlords of varying power and allegiance. Three – Robert Mulumba, Charles Hugo, and Antoine Mulembe – control armies large enough to potentially dominate the state. Shifting alliances, both among the three leading warlords and with a handful of secondary armies, keep any one of them from mounting an offensive sufficient to wrest control of the nation. The key warlords have some measure of international backing; the presence of moderately advanced weaponry and technologies such as puppet implants point to the support of external forces.

Power flows from the barrel of a gun. – Mao Sometimes it is necessary to act decisively to remove the government that oppresses you, whether that government is your own or a threatening neighbor. Even in 2155, it is sometimes necessary to fight a war. Few states look forward to this, while all states prepare for it. Given the destructive capability of both conventional and unconventional weapons, the rarity of full-scale war is fortunate. Conflicts on a smaller scale – uprisings, revolutions, and coups – tend to be much more common.

Civilian communities are rarely as well-armed as the state militaries, especially on Earth. This does not stop the masses from occasionally rising up to throw off the yoke of dictatorship, however. Given sufficient provocation, the masses will march; street violence, vandalism against commercial and government targets, and the relentless power of the mob can threaten even the best-armed state. Dictators fear that the military may side with the people, a concern that is steadily declining as increasing numbers of authoritarian regimes move to the use of perfectly loyal cybershell and bioroid soldiers. Above all else, though, protests are memetic events, designed to change minds at home and abroad.

The most common sort of “uprising,” mass protests are commonplace, especially in places where the police or military tend not to use violence randomly. Mass protests are memetic warfare, trying to produce change by giving the appearance of broad public support for or against a given policy. Protests are usually filled with individuals armed with weblinked cameras, upslinks, and other tools of memetic engineering, trying to create a groundswell of support for the cause.

In and of themselves, mass protests are not terribly effective, as they are widely considered to be media events. The activist journal MemeWar estimates that about half of mass protests worldwide are orchestrated, with small numbers of hired protestors and march leaders guiding the crowds. As part of a larger constellation of activism, however, they can be very effective, as they provide compelling visuals to go along with political demands. Mass protests are frequently linked to general strikes, at least in areas where a significant portion of the population is employed.

Occasionally, protests can effect significant change. In a scene eerily reminiscent of the 1989 fall of Ceausescu, the authoritarian Romanian government was overthrown in 2053 when nearly three million people marched silently through the capitol city of Bucharest. Fearing a fate similar to the 20th-century dictator’s, the Council of Directors fled the nation for Byelorussia.

Leading a mass protest requires a combination of performance abilities, a way to make a connection with the masses, and at least passing knowledge of the issue being protested.

Sometimes protests turn violent; sometimes the suppression of protests does. Violence as part of political activism can be a subtle tool. While rock-throwing, arson, and the like can be random, it is often well-planned; when properly controlled, it is noticeable without being sufficient to bring massive retaliation from the government. This is another manifestation of the memetic engineering of political protest. Video or slinky recordings of government soldiers employing deadly (or seemingly deadly) force against rock-throwing protestors is often very useful for lining up international support. That support can fade quickly if protestor violence turns against civilians, or can be effectively tagged as “terrorism.”

Protests can be considered asymmetric memetic warfare. Governments control, or at least heavily influence, the official media of the state. It can be difficult for a dissent movement, even one with broad domestic support, to have its voice heard over official newsfeeds. As a result, the web and global-media outlets are the protester’s best friends. Every piece of information (or propaganda) that goes out unfiltered by “official” sources is a victory for the activist. The more a given state is tied in to the global web, the more difficult it is for the government to control information. In a sufficiently advanced network, each virtual interface is another potential global witness. There is strong global bias toward open societies, and states that intentionally cut off the populace from the web are presumed guilty, often of offenses far greater than those they’ve actually committed.

If uprisings and protests are considered memetic conflicts, coups and civil wars are more traditional. Military force has a long history as an effective tool of regime change, whether for reasons of factionalism, ideological dispute, or simple power struggles. Coups – an illegal change in national leadership, usually involving military force – were used quite often throughout the 21st century as a way of effecting political change. Civil wars, by definition far more violent and longer lasting, were fortunately much less common.

World politics seem to go through periods of spasms – the international community can go for years with relative stability, even in the weakest of developing countries, then encounter a decade of relentless unrest and violence. Coups can happen in both the developing and developed worlds, although the latter will more often use legalistic or judiciary maneuvering to have a faction installed into power over the popular will. In the highly interconnected world of 2100, it is difficult to carry off a coup or sustain a civil war without the knowledge and partial acquiescence of the great powers, who may support or suppress the political action for their own reasons.

The classic coup is the “decapitation” of the government by the domestic military forces. A coup plot is more likely to work when soldiers are disciplined to take orders from their commanders, but not to see their authority as subsidiary to civilian rule. Although the stereotype is of generals taking over, lower-ranking officers such as majors and colonels are far more commonly the leaders of coups. In the 21st century, coups were generally triggered either by a sense of indignation over official corruption, or a fear that the political leadership was biased toward the wrong side of an ideological conflict (usually nanosocialism).

Since the 2070s the intelligence services of the great-power nations have taken more active roles in advising and steering political factions in less-developed countries. But the great powers are not the only actors here; many nations, both developing and developed, maintain aggressive programs of covert operations against their rivals. This was vividly seen in August of 2035, when India and Pakistan simultaneously found themselves facing unexpected coup attempts, each resulting from manipulation by the other’s intelligence bureau.

In the early 21st century, the United States, Europe, and China tried to ignore civil wars, avoiding being drawn into the internal politics of chaotic regions. The hegemonic powers gradually moved to a more interventionist posture toward the middle of the century, an example being American involvement in the Andes War of the mid-2060s. This carries with it its own set of difficulties, especially when warring sides consider the peacekeeping forces to be greater enemies than their domestic opponents.

Civil wars are not always entirely homegrown. Historically great powers have often used civil wars as a means of driving out unwanted governments, supplying the rebels with aid, arms, and intelligence. In other cases, such as with China’s role in the simmering Malaysian civil war of the 2060s, the great power provides covert support to both sides, in order to cultivate friendships with the eventual winner and keep a potential regional rival distracted.

Civil wars where different great powers support opposing factions have been used by the hyperdeveloped nations as opportunities to test new military technologies. The United States, which supports the anti-nanosocialist insurrection in Honduras, has been very careful to document how various pieces of experimental armor and weaponry work against TSA designs, especially those based on stolen designs of modern European and Chinese systems. The TSA has been paying equal attention, taking special note of which of the American weapons and armor do best against the Chinese designs.

1. Kivu: One of the successor states in the collapse of Congo, Kivu has been invaded across every border, and is often a battleground between rival factions in neighboring states. The government has appealed to the world community for help, without response.

2. Haut-Zaire: After the 2045 collapse of Congo, the provinces of Equauteur and Orientale became the new state of Haut-Zaire, and proceeded to use its military to consolidate the region’s diamond and gold mines, many of which are located in neighboring states. The current regime is particularly corrupt, and has used terror and ecological warfare against its own citizens in order to put down uprisings.

3. Uzbekistan: The Uzbek government is under pressure from both Islamic fundamentalists (backed by the Caliphate) and pro-democracy insurgents (backed by the E.U.). Anti-Zarubayev rebels fled over the border from Kazakstan after a failed coup in 2099, and Kazakstan has sent in both troops and weapons, ostensibly in support of the Uzbek regime.

4. Honduras: Part of the Transpacific Socialist Alliance, Honduras is focused on a major guerrilla insurgency operating largely in the north. The nanosocialist government is heavily supported by neighboring Guatemala, while the United States is funding and supplying the rebels.

5. Philippines: Although technologically advanced and part of the prosperous Pacific Rim Alliance, the Philippines suffer from an increasingly effective nanosocialist revolt in the heavily Muslim southern islands. Covertly supported by Indonesia, the Islamic Socialist Party has won a number of surprising victories against the government forces, and are poised to declare independence on Mindanao.

Aside from the Pacific War, full-scale intercountry warfare has been rare in the 21st century. The nature of modern weaponry is such that even small conflicts can get out of hand very easily. Most of the wars that did happen during the last century were between nations that were formerly part of the same country, making them extended civil wars in most respects. Great-power interventions tend to be brief affairs; Fifth Wave nations have so much more capability – satellites, intelligence, cybershells, etc. – that less-developed nations have little chance of success. That said, defeating an army and subduing a country are two different things, and history is filled with examples of powerful nations that managed to do the first but not the second.

Boundary skirmishes, such as those found throughout Central and West Africa, are the most common type of war between two nations. Given their frequency, they rarely receive significant attention from the global press. Some conflicts, such as attacks on Kivu from forces in Burundi and Haut-Zaire, or the occasional firefights over the border between Indian Kashmir and Pakistani Kashmir, have gone on for so many years that they are widely ignored unless something major results.

It was widely expected that the decline of the petroleum economy would put an end to the wars that flared up over energy and resources, such as the Antarctic War of 2048-2049. Certainly advanced material and fabrication technologies, as well as bio-agricultural techniques that let crops grow nearly anywhere, have greatly reduced the developed world’s dependence upon imported raw materials. Resources remain a strategic consideration, however. Fusion energy is based on Helium-3 resources controlled by a small number of spacefaring powers, minifacs still require raw inputs, and while declining populations and recovering climates have reduced conflicts over water somewhat, it is still an issue. Moreover, the continued growth of national economies is contingent upon the expansion of markets. Increasingly, the Fifth Wave world is looking upon consumers as a vital strategic resource.

Conflicts between developing nations are often thought of as mirrors of great-power rivalries, especially when there are great-power allies on opposing sides of a battle. Ironically, in situations where rival Fifth Wave states face each other over a developing-world battlefield, their most likely next move is to push their erstwhile allies to the bargaining table. Proxy wars, where one state was supported by a great power in its struggle against a different great-power-supported nation, occurred sporadically throughout the century, but the Pacific War – and the realization that war between the great powers was not unthinkable – has made a number of great powers reconsider the practice.

The only large-scale conflict between great-power nations in the 21st century was the Pacific War of 2099-2100. Its rapid onset, violent escalation, and near-global effect scared everyone. In the years that followed, explicit comparisons have been made to the conflicts leading up to World War One. A minor result has been the re-negotiation of several treaties between great-power states and regional nations, removing language that would promise an active defense of that nation if an outside force attacked (a scenario widely considered to blame for the onset of the first World War).

Although another showdown between the TSA and China is the most likely future great-power war, other combinations suggest themselves. There is little love lost between the TSA and the PRA, and border conflicts could quickly heat up. While China and the United States cooperate in the fight against nanosocialism and data piracy, they are rivals in nearly every other arena – a conflict over resources, especially off-world, could escalate to direct combat at home. The Islamic Caliphate, although generally inward-looking over the decades since its formation, considers the TSA and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. and E.U. to be ideological opponents. Although the United States and Europe are generally friendly, the issue of bioroid slavery has become an increasingly volatile topic. Several European senators have threatened “swift retaliation” should the U.S. enter E.U. territory (on Earth or in space) trying to recapture fugitive bioroids.

When the great powers move militarily, these are the units that usually get sent in first. Often specialists in covert and guerrilla operations, they move fast, hit hard, and get out. These groups are most likely to be deployed in “limited war” or “operations other than war” scenarios.

China: 3rd Special Warfare, 12th Special Warfare. Post-Pacific-War power struggles in China’s top leadership led to a major reshuffling of special-operations organization. The 3rd Special Warfare battalion, which specializes in air and waterborne assaults and reconnaissance, remained under the control of the People’s Liberation Army. The 12th, which focuses on infiltration behind enemy lines and command-control-communication-intelligence disruption, became part of the Ministry of Intelligence. Both groups rely primarily on bioroid units, although the 3rd tends to have more heavy combat cybershells than does the 12th. As of January, 2100, neither battalion is known to be currently undertaking operations.

E.U.: Combined Operations Force – Rangers. The degree of military integration between E.U. members remains a slightly controversial subject in Europe. Germany, France, and the U.K. retain highly effective independent militaries. When unity is needed, the Combined Operations Force serves as a coordinating structure for the various E.U. militaries. The COF – Rangers group comprises units from the British Special Air Service, French Groupe de Combat en Milieu Clos, German Kommando Spezialkraefte, and other E.U. special forces. European soldiers are primarily human/parahuman, with a large variety of cybershell units. As of January, 2100, COF – Ranger units are known to be operating in Uzbekistan.

Islamic Caliphate: Ghazi. Recruited from Caliphate national armies, Ghazi forces are well-trained, although equipment is somewhat less advanced than in other great-power intervention and special-operations groups. Ghazi units are particularly strong in counter-terrorism. As of January, 2155, the Ghazi is known to be operating in Uzbekistan and along the Caliphate’s border with Iran.

PRA: Special Air Service TAG/OAT. Although all Pacific Rim Alliance members contribute to the collective defense, PRA special operations and intervention forces are largely based on Australian units. The Special Air Service Tactical Action Group/Offshore Assault Team squadrons specialize in infiltration and counterterrorism operations, and rely heavily on cutting-edge technology to make up for smaller numbers. Although the PRA does not reveal any information about SAS TAG/OAT, units are believed to be operating in an advisory capacity in the Philippines.

SAC: First Reconnaissance Brigade. First Recon is seeing a wave of popularity in the South African Coalition after both a series of successful interventions in Central Africa and a pseudodocumentary InVid called Recce, which chronicled the lives and battles of a First Recon squad. In 2107, the SAC Ministry of Defense became the first to require upgraded or parahuman genomes for all new special-operations recruits; over the subsequent years, non-upgraded personnel were gently moved to other divisions. First Recon is not currently deployed, although there is much debate as to whether to send them into the war in Kivu.

TSA: Kesatuan Gurita (Indonesia), Fuerza de Operaciones Especiales (Peru). There is no substantive TSA-wide intervention force, although the two most-powerful Alliance members, Indonesia and Peru, use their own special-operations and intervention military divisions for Alliance-wide actions. Both are presently in use, despite the ongoing process of rebuilding after the Pacific War. Indonesia is believed to have deployed a limited number of KG units in support of the rebels in the Philippines, and Peru is known to have sent FOE soldiers to support the Honduran government.

U.S.: Unified Combat Applications Group. In the post-conflict analysis following theAndes War, the United States decided that it had too great a variety of special-operations forces, and that territorial disputes, struggles over funding, and a lack of compatibility between technical resources was the inevitable result. Critics claimed that the subsequent reorganization made matters worse, but by the 2090s the Unified Combat Applications Group was considered one of the best special-operations organizations on Earth. Over the last few decades UCAG has largely focused on spaceborne operations, but the civil war in Honduras, and the U.S. government’s decision to support the anti-TSA rebels there, has increased UCAG’s budget for Earthside operations. Aside from Honduras, there are no other known UCAG deployments on Earth as of January 2155.

Terrorism remains a useful, if horrific, form of asymmetric warfare. A small group, or even a single person, can do tremendous damage given the right equipment, particularly if they are willing to die in the process. While an elaborate infrastructure of training camps and weapon factories may facilitate a widespread terror campaign, the reality is that a motivated individual requires very little support to be able to inflict devastating punishment upon a target. Terror attacks remain a regular part of the international scene in 2155.

By and large, few terror incidents have explicit motives. The power of terrorism is the fear that it generates and the ignorance of when and where it will occur next. Yet as a method of forcing an opponent to give up territory or abandon a position, terrorism is woefully inadequate. Terrorism, even repeated attacks, can rarely bring about political change or do much to weaken the resolve of the target. In most cases, terrorism is used simply to punish and distract an opponent. In this particular task, it is very effective.

Terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological, or nanotech weapons) remains a widespread fear, but most terrorists still rely on more traditional means. Conventional bombs, whether on a suicidal operative, a bomb-jacked remote carrier, or planted in an innocuous location in public, remain the terrorist weapon of choice. People in the Fourth and Fifth Wave world are even more fearful about bombings than in the past, as large explosions are one of the few ways that a person can be injured beyond all recovery. Shootings still occur as well, but it has become far more difficult to smuggle a firearm into a civilian area than in decades past.

Although conventional weapons are most commonly employed, weapons of mass destruction have been used in terror incidents. Recent events have seen an attempted nuclear weapon attack on Mars, the release of viral dystrophy in Taipei, and, most recently, the attempted release of nanotech weapons by the resurgent Aum Shinrikyo death cult in Japan. There is good reason for fear.

Terrorist organizations are still structured in 2155 as they were two centuries earlier. Distributed sets of small, independent cells train for particular activities, not knowing if they are going to be part of a larger campaign, the entirety of the attack, or even a sacrificial distraction. A small set of individuals link the cells, but no one person has direct contact with more than a portion of the network. Even these commanding operatives rarely know many of the others at their own level. An even smaller number of leaders give orders to the commanding operatives, but again, no one has contact with all parts of the network. The goal is to avoid decapitation and disruption. A flattened, distributed network like this is very difficult to destroy. Its main drawback is the challenge it presents to communication. Encryption is helpful, but more often messages are encoded “in plain sight” by being part of public web or slinky transmissions. These public triggers are often used to activate so-called “sleeper cells,” which train for an action and then lie dormant for years, waiting for the signal to attack. These are very difficult to defend against, as the members of the cell will be completely law-abiding, normal citizens up until the moment they strike. Once a cell receives its trigger, no upstream communication is required.

Aum Shinrikyo: The Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan re-emerged in 2099 after nearly a century of silence. There are currently few clues as to the whereabouts or motives of the movement; all that is known is that a small group of young women attempted to release a sophisticated nanoweapon in the Tokyo shopping district in August. Although the women killed themselves upon being captured, material they carried with them identified them as members of the group. The Japanese government managed to suppress news of the attempted nanoweapon attack until very recently. Officials refuse to provide any estimate of how many people might have been killed had the attack been carried off successfully.

Blue Duncanites: In early November of 2099, a TSA diplomat was assassinated in Singapore. Later in the month, the home of an Indian nanosocialist author caught fire, killing the writer and her family. In December, a car exploded on a Manila street, killing the driver and his passenger. A statement was issued later in the day by a group calling itself “Blue Duncanites,” claiming that the men killed were TSA spies, taking responsibility for the earlier attacks, and declaring war on all “information statists and their sympathizers.”

I Ho Ch’uan: This Chinese movement seeks the overthrow of the current government, claiming that it has lost the “mandate of heaven” with its failure to destroy the TSA in the Pacific War and allowing the Chinese colony on Mars any independence at all. In the several years that the group has been publicly visible, China has variously claimed that they were puppets of the TSA, of the United States, and of Japan. I Ho Ch’uan has primarily used explosives in its attacks on Chinese government officials, aside from its initial attack, which used the bioweapon viral dystrophy.

Kulturkampf: A radical splinter group left over from the Majority Cultures Movement, Kulturkampf is believed to comprise a small number of ex-E.U. citizens who believe that modern culture is inherently evil. It has claimed responsibility for a series of embassy bombings in the developing world, all targeting European Union or E.U.-member-state consulates.

Red Right Hand: An Earth-based activist group calling for the total cessation of all terraforming activity on Mars, Red Right Hand is known best for its use of environmental terror weapons. Starting in 2152, Red Right Hand began using “areoformers” to turn local areas of Earth into rough approximations of the pre-terraform Martian surface. Little is known about the group, other than its clear expertise with advanced environmental technology. They are believed to be an Earth-based offshoot of the Negative Growth terror network on Mars.

Nations suffering from terrorist attacks often use quick, devastating retaliation against the source of the assault. Most of the time, if their intelligence is correct, they manage to suppress or even eliminate that particular terrorist group. Stopping terror attacks before they happen is more difficult, however, relying on a combination of detailed intelligence and ubiquitous vigilance. No nation on Earth has managed to build a 100% effective defense against terror.

Nearly every Fourth and Fifth Wave society uses public monitoring to some degree. Fears of totalitarianism have largely gone unrealized, although most states have sporadic incidents of monitoring system misuse. Few technical security operations in 2155 pay attention to individuals per se. Most engage in pattern analysis, watching overall flows of people in public, of data across the web, of point-to-point communications, and the like, to look for anomalous patterns. It has long been recognized that masses going about their normal, day-to-day activities produce fairly consistent signals. Crowds moving through a shopping district do so in a regular way; telecommunication networks show reliable maps of regional connections for given lengths of time. Any one individual shopper or connection may vary, but even those variances fall into regular patterns. Security pattern analysis looks for the signals that fall well outside of the norm, and attempts to match them against other pieces of evidence for unusual or potentially threatening activity.

This type of monitoring first showed up at the end of the last century, as a means of preventing vehicle theft by watching for people walking through parking garages at a pace that varied from the norm. Over the last 100 years, it has been extended and deepened to be able to match far more complex sets of patterns. While it is still widely used to watch for criminal activity in public spaces, it has been generally adopted by agencies trying to stop terrorists before they strike. The smartest and most sophisticated SAIs in existence are owned (or employed) by intelligence services in order to carry out this particular task.

The military options available to the poorer and less-stable regions are limited. Sophisticated equipment, even from the black market, is too costly for government or irregular armies. When high-technology materiel does appear on the battlefield, it is almost always due to a more powerful ally. Opposing sides still seek an advantage, however; unconventional weapons, particularly bioweapons, can play a larger role in combat in these areas than anywhere else on Earth.

At best, soldiers involved in combat in politically chaotic regions will be outfitted as Third Wave soldiers. More often, they will be equipped with whatever generation weapons and gear is available. If maintained moderately well, guns can last for decades; a significant number of the rifles discarded by the advanced industrial states in the early part of the 21st century made their way into the arsenals of the developing world. Traditional dumb ammunition is cheap and easy to make, and remains a very effective tool for killing.

As the antiques are retired, weapons from the subsequent generation of arms – the first attempts at “smart” weapons – are becoming more common, especially in nations with rudimentary but functional information and communication technologies. Cheap battlefield computers, night-vision equipment, and laser-targeting systems give significant advantages over older combat technology. While none of the equipment is up to the standards of a Fifth Wave army, some of it is comparable. The so-called “Basic Combat Rifle,” a rugged, cheap to produce, simple light automatic rifle, is found throughout the developing world.

Cybershells are very rare, although older, obsolete models are slowly finding their way into the developing world’s armies. The problem isn’t simply availability; combat shells require trained personnel to operate and maintain, and replacement parts can be hard to obtain. The most common use of cybershell troops is as “palace guard” units, dedicated to the protection of the national leadership. The MCS-64 cybershell is usually preferred for this duty, because of its intimidating shape and size.

Bioroid soldiers are also uncommon due to their expense, although as more Fifth Wave nations replace bioroid soldiers with advanced SAI cybershell troops, older – but still viable – bioroid units are starting to show up in palace guards and elite units around the developing world. There are also scattered incidents of rogue governments, such as the warlords running the Kongo, using cheap puppet implants to control captured opponents, using them as front-line soldiers against their former comrades. Considered a war crime, there has yet to be a prosecution of anyone involved in such atrocities. Nonetheless, it’s easiest and least costly simply to put a combat rifle in the hands of a 12-year-old.