And chaos reigned … The revelation of humanity’s near disaster with thermonuclear annihilation was greeted with disbelief and relief, then fear and universal outrage. How could the world’s leaders have allowed their egos to push humanity over the edge? How could they have been so arrogant? How could they have been so blind?

Outrage would quickly lead to violence. For two days and nights, anarchy ruled much of the globe. Halls of government were destroyed, military installations ransacked, and the embassies of the United States, Russia, and China overrun, as billions of people across the planet marched upon their capitals, demanding change.

Rather than attempt to quell the violence with more violence, President Chaney chose to channel it, directing the American public’s vengeance toward more than one hundred subterranean bunkers, built with taxpayer money, which had been designed to house the political elite during the nuclear holocaust. The destruction of these top-secret facilities seemed to quell the public’s anger, serving notice that everyone—the haves and have-nots—were now on equal, though somewhat unsteady footing.

Chaney then urged the United Nations Secretary-General to introduce a resolution based on recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences, the Carnegie Commission, and Admiral Stansfield Turner, to eliminate all nuclear and biological weapons of destruction. Any country refusing to comply would face a UN invasion force, its leaders targeted for execution.

Urged on by the masses, all member nations, with the exception of Iraq and North Korea, quickly agreed to comply.

On December 17, Saddam Hussein was dragged onto the streets of Baghdad and beaten to death. Kim Jong Il committed suicide two hours later.

Russian President Viktor Grozny signed the treaty, then publicly blamed the Communist Party for Russia’s subversive military buildup over the last two decades. After more than two hundred public executions, he assured his people that government reform would be swift.

With no one to challenge him, he remained in office, stronger than ever.

On the morning of December 17, the media finally learned about the mysterious electromagnetic array and how it had prevented nuclear annihilation. A religious fervor took hold of the masses. Drawn together by fear, they huddled and prayed, flocking to churches and synagogues, waiting for the Messiah and the Second Coming of Christ. What they found instead were more signs of the apocalypse.

On the afternoon of the eighteenth, Korean War veteran Jim McWade returned home from church with his four sons and three twelve-packs of beer. Standing upright within the limestone sinkhole behind his trailer was an immense winged creature. Within hours, half the township of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia had descended upon the pond to view the inanimate beast, whose shiny black surface emitted a powerful invisible force field that prevented anyone from touching it.