Talk:The Collapse/@comment-1538006-20120729004505

''One example of a possible, more specific, cause of the Collapse. For the Parsec setting, though, there is no 'official' explanation. The precise cause of the Collapse should be something your gaming group defines, if you want to, or ignores if it isn't important. It can be a way to develop a strong theme, or can involve a Secret or Secrets that can be the goal of multiple adventures.''



The Middle East on Earth has been a focal point of the planet's monotheistic religions. For centuries, this was considered irrelevant and the followers of Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammad were able (more or less) to coexist as friends and neighbors. That changed with the advent of industrialization and then with the Zionist movement which created a Jewish state from what was considered Arab territory. From that point forward, tensions began rising, fueled by the world's reliance on oil, a resource found in massive quanitities under the barren sands of Arabia and the rest of the Gulf.

Many presumed that political strife would cause an apocalyptic conflict and eventually they were right, though in surprising form. Rather than a war between states, the Collapse was triggered by an unexpected terrorist attack, funded and equipped by right-wing Jewish fundamentalists of the New Hagenah and executed by Islamic fanatics of the Shia Liberation Front of Arabia (better known as the SLFA). With complicity of officers within the Israeli military, two nuclear warheads were misplaced and delivered to the SLFA. The SLFA, using stolen engineering data from Aramco and other energy surveyors, placed the two devices at critical chokepoints underneath Saudi Arabia and then detonated both, instantly destroying or making unusable almost 50% of the world's oil supply. Cut off from the fuel necessary for maintaining their eonomies, nations immediately took measures to protect the oil and natural gas they could reach while prices skyrocketed.