War, Famine and Pestilence
The population of Terra continued to grow throughout
the century. Draconian measures taken by the most
overpopulated nations and the transition to developed
economies across much of the world finally brought the
population exapansion under control. By c2100 the
global population had levelled off at around 10 billion.
Ten billion people, however, is considerably more than
could be confortable supported with pre-nano
technologies. The consequences were predictable: war,
disease, starvation, pollution. Africa, South America and
southern Asia were ravaged by famine and wave upon
wave of epidemics. A human tragedy on an
unprecendented was further worsened by a succession
of low-level localised conflicts.
As well as the string of wars barely larger than tribal
feuds (but no less bloody for their small scale), there
were many larger wars. The continuing proliferation of
fission weapons inevitable lead to some of these
conflicts 'going nuclear' There were limited exchanges
on the Indian sub-continent (two separate exchanges
between India and Pakistan and then India and the
Central Asian Islamic Republic) and in Korea (at the end
of the second US-Korean war), Indochina and southern
Africa.
The largest and longest war of the century was the Nan
Hai War fought between China, Indonesia and others
over the oil reserves of the South China Sea. It may be
argued that this was actually a war between
Soyuz-Mikoyan and China.
The future of Ad Astra
