|World War III|
Near annihilation of the human species
The world of 2033 lies in ruins as a result of World War III (a.k.a. the Great War of 2013, the Catastrophe, the Conflagration, the Attack, or simply Armageddon). The great war is an integral part of the Metro canon.
Very little is known about the war itself, including why and exactly how it was fought, though the Enter The Metro game info animation revealed that a total of 20,000 warheads were used and that the war began with a limited exchange between two Middle Eastern countries - appearing to be Iran or Iraq, and Lebanon or Israel (likely Iran and Israel due to their nuclear programs). After the initial exchange, other nuclear-armed nations began their response; The end result was a massive global exchange of nuclear weaponry over a brief span of time.
While modern countries that are known to have nuclear weapons include France, Britain, China, North Korea, Israel, India, and Pakistan, it is implied in Metro 2034 that the United States was a definitive enemy of Russia during the Great War. In Metro 2035, a key spokesperson from Polis reveals that 140,000,000 Russians died during the war - which would mean that only 6 or 7 million endured, but it is uncertain how many of them survived the 20 years of post-apocalyptic conditions that followed.
What is certain, from Stepan's account of the war along with flashbacks and dialogue in Last Light, and the live action shorts, nuclear weapons landed on Russian soil shortly before they responded. Several missiles were launched from launch sites across Russia only seconds before a nuclear bomb detonated over Moscow. After the exchange, Russian nuclear submarines likely enacted the Dead Hand contingency, and either launched their payload in retaliation or stood down. Regardless, the entire world was completely devastated.
In the days following the nuclear exchange, the planet was transformed into a toxic dust bowl. Massive amounts of irradiated material began circulating around the globe, spreading throughout the atmosphere and blocking out the sun; the result was nuclear winter. The inability of plant life to maintain photosynthesis, coupled with severe radiation lead to the destabilization of the food chain, and the extinction or mutation of all plant and animal life. These changes in the Earth's biosphere lead to the surface air being unsuitable for human life. 20 years after the war, many areas (especially in cities) are still irradiated, some so severely that only a few minutes' exposure is lethal. It is speculated that several billion people survived the initial exchange, but given the surface conditions, most died shortly after due to radiation exposure or starvation, or may even have become Dark Ones.
Remnants of HumanityEdit
The fate of the rest of the planet is unknown after the exchange. While the southern hemisphere of the globe was largely untouched by warheads, the infrastructure of every major nation was devastated, making the damage impossible to repair and leading to the collapse of all global superpowers. It is assumed that, where possible, civilian populations did the same as the Russians and hid underground.
In Metro 2035, Artyom hears radio broadcasts from the following places:
- Saint Petersburg, Russia
- Vladivostok, Russia
- Kazan, Russia
- Ufa, Russia
- Mirny (either a Russian outpost in Antarctica or a town in Russia)
- Sverdlovsk, Russia
- Berlin, Germany
- Paris, France
- An unnamed English-speaking location
He also meets a group of survivors claiming to be from Murom in Russia, though the Rangers of the Order believe they are NATO spies.
The novel Piter reveals that inhabitants of St. Petersburg survived the nuclear war by hiding underground in the metro tunnels of their own city. On battlefields across the globe, groups of soldiers survived by hiding in their tanks. Many of these groups banded together into camps and tried to acquire radio contact with the remains of civilisation. In Towards the Light, it is revealed that some areas of the earth were not directly hit by any of the bombs, thus they have remained habitable for humans - free from severe radiation and mutants. It can be assumed that the major leaders of participating countries at the time of the exchange enacted their respective Continuity of Government plans, and are still alive and in power - although, given the state of the planet, this matters little.
The story of The Roots of Heaven shows how once powerful organisations like the Roman Catholic Church turned into weak remnants, shadows of their former selves, but still, continue to vie for influence over the faiths of Rome's few survivors. Murancha and Heritage of the Ancestors tell us of the fates of survivors in other parts of the Russian Federation, whereas The Promised District and Whispers of the Fallen reveal that some numbers of people have also endured the nuclear holocaust in other parts of Eastern Europe - namely Poland and Ukraine.
Even more Polish locations are revealed to be inhabited by communities of survivors in The Abyss, The Tower and other books. Some of the major cities that are known to have at least some human remnants are: Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Gdynia, Szczecin, Częstochowa, and Łódź. Echo of an Extinguished World shows us that very small numbers of people have survived in the Dunmore caves of Ireland and within the Stockholm metro of Sweden.
On the 24th of May, 2012, a live action movie was posted to YouTube in the promotion of Metro: Last Light. The film gave a snapshot of the moments before the bombs fell.
- Comments made by the currency exchange booth survivor suggests that the war (or at least the first attack on Moscow) took place in early July 2013 - being sometime around July 5.
- In the Metro 2033 novel, it states that a biological weapon was launched at the Kremlin and was undetected by the Russian missile defence system, this explains why D6 was unoccupied as the occupants of the Kremlin were mostly killed in the biological attack and were not evacuated to D6 in time. The bioweapon strike on the Kremlin is also mentioned in one of Artyom's journal notes in the Red Square mission of Metro: Last Light, which explains that the Kremlin was not nuked, but was instead hit by something "experimental" that "ate everything organic within a radius of a few miles".
- The intro from the promotional website shows that Siberia, the Mid-Western United States, and much of the Southern hemisphere was spared from the exchange, meaning that parts of the world could very well be better off than the rest due to not having been affected by the nuclear winter and heightened global radiation levels quite as heavily; maybe still functioning to a certain extent. Furthermore, a comment made by a Ranger in D6 speculates that the Russian Government was moved to Siberia, most likely at the government bunkers under the Mount Yamantau, meaning that the destruction might not be as widespread as believed.
- In Metro 2034, it states that America developed an "anti-rocket system" meaning that some areas of America may have survived a nuclear strike.
- Due to Moscow's own missile defence system, some areas of Moscow are speculated to not have been destroyed by the nuclear strikes, though this likely amounts only to the outskirts of the city. In Metro 2035 it is confirmed that most of Moscow have survived the war almost intact, thanks to precisely this defence system which targeted the nuclear weaponry in the sky before it could hit the city, causing a shower of radioactive but nonexplosive shrapnel to fall on Russia's capital.
- A short conventional war may have followed the initial nuclear strikes due to the fact that the currency exchange booth survivor says that she witnessed tanks passing her by and other bombings occurred over the days she was trapped, which could be an indication of airstrikes or possibly chemical weapons being deployed.
- However, given that Flight 76715 was taken down by an electromagnetic pulse, it is likely that most conventional land forces were crippled without any communication and equipment.
- In real life, a nuclear holocaust is usually associated with the hypothetical WWIII.
- Especially after the book Metro 2035, which explains several aspects of the Russian Government's conduct during the war and after, who the writer seems to criticise, many fans have speculated that World War III may have actually been caused or at least heavily influenced by the increased tensions and international isolation of Russia following the Crimean Crisis.