THE LUNACY (1 фев 2036 г. – 1 сент 2038 г.)

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Artemis-Luna C: 2036-2038
The Luna C mission was supposed to be the expected continuation of the Artemis Lunar missions which preceded it, however the events which transpired would result in a historical impact more geo-political than scientific.

Unbeknownst to the general public, the asteroid Apophis was expected to impact with Earth on April 13 2036, despite announced predictions that the asteroid would harmlessly pass the earth by at an altitude of 32,000km. As it turns out, this was the major ulterior motive for the United States' uncharacteristic pivot away from their military and toward their space program with the Lunar Gateway and subsequent Artemis Lunar missions.

The United States and other nuclear powers secretly collaborated together on an agreement to transport a sizable chunk of their nuclear arsenals toward the L.U.N.A. Project (Lunar Underground Nuclear Arsenal) for use in eliminating and/or redirecting Apophis and all potential asteroid threats that may come after.

The site was chosen for many reasons. Firstly, nuclear launches detected on Earth risked triggering automated responses by nations that might misinterpret the launches as the initiation of global nuclear war. Secondly, Earth's gravity-well and thick atmosphere greatly increased the difficulty of launching missiles with sufficient velocity to intercept asteroids. Thirdly, even if all governments mutually agreed on the launch of nuclear weapons to eliminate asteroid threats, seeing the launches take place would undoubtedly worry the public, who were never even told of the potential threats beforehand.

Despite the good intention of the project, unforeseen developments would see the Luna C mission become an international incident with impacts that would alter the development of human civilisation as a whole.

The mission began as the other missions had before it, this time with a larger team consisting of a total of six astronauts. Out of all the six, only two knew the existence of the Nuclear Weapons now transported to the site and buried below the surface. For the rest of the team, and the general public, this mission was simply supposed to be another Lunar mission like the other two preceding it, just with a larger crew and a lengthier 8 month mission-duration.

The Launch and first week of the mission went entirely as planned. The crew touched down safely at the landing pad nearby the robotically assembled habitat and began the organization of equipment as they settled in for their long stay. Had nothing else happened, the mission would probably have continued for its full expected duration without incident. 9 days into the mission, however, the first of many tragedies would occur.

Having been made aware of the Nuclear Arsenal now present on the moon, a rogue terrorist force had formed a plan to seize the nuclear weapons for its own purposes. For Security reasons, the launch mechanisms for the weapons could only be operated by human hands on-site in Shackleton Crater, because any earth-controlled launch mechanisms would be vulnerable to hacking.

The terrorist group's plan was to take several heads of state's hostage, in tandem with an attack on the Lunar base (using modified guided missiles launched from earth). Once all astronauts in the Luna-C lunar base had been killed, a coding backdoor placed by a radicalized insider at NASA would allow them to remotely commandeer the on-site rovers and interact with the launch controls using them.

The missile launch and concerted kidnapping were successful for the organization, but the missile strike on the Luna-C base itself was not. At least not totally. Although the entire Luna-C crew was supposed to be sleeping in the main rest module at the time of the missile's impact, one astronaut, Patrick Bone, was out sleeplessly performing equipment maintenance by the landing pad. The missile hit its target of the main rest module perfectly, and detonated in contact with the structure's roof, splitting open the airtight material and instantly depressurizing the space inside before anyone within could rush to their spacesuits.

Upon seeing the flash of the impact, which caused no sound due to the lack of atmosphere, Bone immediately made his way back to the base to investigate. Mission control was frantically trying to understand what exactly had happened once their video feed cut out, but the higher-ups aware of the nuclear-weapons secretly stored beneath the lunar surface suspected that this was some hostile power's attempt to gain access to the weapons.

Upon reaching the base, Patrick Bone found the bodies of his fellow Astronauts in the burst remains of the rest module. Fortunately for him, the other sections of the base were undamaged by the small blast radius of the missile, and the habitation, storage, control, and communications modules were still pressurized and habitable to him. Without them, he would have run out of oxygen after his suit’s supply was depleted. Well before the return module could be sent out to take him back home.

Upon making his way to the communications room of the base, a visibly shaken Patrick Bone addressed mission control through a video link with the main comms monitor. His initial mindset of fear and panic gave way to despair and then anger as he grew increasingly frustrated by mission control's unwillingness to reveal exactly what they believed had happened.

Patrick Bone was not one of the members of the Luna C crew to have embarked on the mission with foreknowledge of the Nuclear L.U.N.A. project below the surface, but after the panic caused by the missile strike on the Base, mission control found themselves left with no option but to inform Patrick Bone about the real underlying reason for his mission. Especially since now he was the only one up there who could perform the needed task of launching the nuclear strike on Apophis in time. It was currently February and the Asteroid would impact earth on April 13 if the perfectly timed launch did not take place. It was too late to send anyone else or come up with a new plan, so they had no choice but to entrust Patrick with the arsenal.

Bone's specialization at NASA was as an engineering and programming specialist, so although he was far from the worst person for the job it was still not something he was prepared for. While the truth of his mission was being revealed to him by mission control, the live feeds back to earth had been out for hours and the global public had no clue what exactly was going on up there. That was until every major news network was simultaneously wired a video message from an unknown source showing the American, French, Brazilian, Russian, and UN leadership abducted from the Vienna United Nations conference they had been attending. In the video, the bodies of the United Nations security detail as well as the local police and special forces reinforcements who had later been called to the incident were clearly visible in the background. A masked member of the terror group "Chaos-Order" claimed responsibility for an attack on the Luna-C base, proudly announcing that they had control of the nuclear weapons stored on the moon and would use them against any nation who did not meet their demands.

The terrorists were, at the time, unaware that one astronaut had survived. It wasn't until Patrick discovered the now compromised RC Rovers on their way towards the command module and deactivated them manually that the Terrorists realized their jig was up. Military reinforcements arrived at the UN conference and eventually every last person who participated in the attack was either killed or apprehended. The members of Chaos-Order put up less of a fight than the EU's military had anticipated, perhaps due to the terrorists realizing that with Patrick Alive and able to stop the rovers easily, their plans had come completely undone.

As knowledge of the secret Lunar-Underground-Nuclear-Arsenal project became public, all governments who had concealed information about the project (and the doomsday asteroid it had been organized to prevent) came under heavy scrutiny from their constituents. All nations who had collaborated on the project experienced varying levels of public disturbance, escalating from protests to riots to violence and in some cases even civil conflict. It was over a week before the live feeds of the Luna-C base were restored and Patrick Bone could address the public about what had actually happened. .

Although Patrick's first reappearance came with an aura of determined professionalism, the astronaut’s mental health was clearly not in perfect stead and would continue to deteriorate as the weeks and months ticked onward. When April came around Patrick did his duty by launching 2 warheads on the previously calculated trajectory which would break up the asteroid and redirect its rubble away from Earth. Despite everything going to plan, viewers could still sense something was deeply wrong with Patrick. Though he seemed to stop short of ever shedding a tear in front of the camera, something subtle in his video logs shone through to the viewers back on earth. While Bone may have publicly maintained that he now sided with the government's decision to lie to the world about the potential threats of the asteroid and the risky nuclear project, his heart wasn't in it.

As Patrick labored away alone, just meters away from where his friends and co-workers' corpses lay buried below shallow mounds of lunar regolith, something in his mind clearly snapped. After the Apophis redirection strike proved successful, NASA and the U.S. Government requested that Patrick return home immediately now that the earth was safe from Apophis (and the mission’s secondary goal of testing the survivability of a full crew of six could no longer be performed). They did not wish to say out loud that they were worried about Patrick’s capability to perform his role competently due to his recent trauma, but in truth that was perhaps the main reason they actually wanted to send him home and send in a new replacement crew of six new Astronauts.

Then came the twist that totally turned this brief tragedy into an earth-changing international incident:

Patrick Refused.

Mission control was dumbfounded for a while. They reiterated that it was a direct order from Mission control for Patrick to board the automated return shuttle as soon as possible. And Patrick continued to emotionlessly and calmly refuse.

As this back and forth went on and on, it gradually dawned on mission control that there was effectively nothing they could really do to force Patrick home. A set of missile defense turrets had been installed on the next food/equipment shipment after the incident, so no-one on earth could just kill him as Chaos-Order had done with his friends. And with Patrick only having one mouth to feed instead of the original six members of the mission, he could stretch his food supplies out to last multiple years. Most importantly of all, the fact that he now had access to his own personal arsenal of Nuclear weapons was a degree of leverage that nobody wanted to mess with.

Patrick Bone was now the single most powerful and untouchable person in all of human history. And along with absolute power comes the potential to be corrupted absolutely, especially if your mind is already half-broken by recent and intense trauma.

To summarize a long back and forth which would last from 2029 until the end of 2031, no matter what Earth's governments and space-agencies tried, they could not dislodge Patrick Bone from his position of power over earth. As the power went more and more to his damaged head, Patrick would make demands of the world’s governments backed up by the potential threat of his ability to target anywhere on earth. Patrick began to see himself as some kind of vigilante, and it has to be said that he did some actual good with his position. He toppled tyrannical regimes, assassinated corrupt leaders, and forced through national and international legislation which benefited the freedom and rights of people around the globe. Much to the dismay of world leaders, he developed a surprisingly high approval rating among the people of earth. Patrick Bone deciding to play god was definitely a horrifying concept to many, but a large swathe of earth's population would come to respect and cheer on Bone's actions in trying to make the world a fairer and freer place. He was making as much use as he could out of the unchecked power he had accidentally stumbled into.

As his mind finally seemed to be slipping away from him, and his food supply was down to its final few months, Patrick Bone put an end to the period historians would later call "The Lunacy" in 2031. He knew he couldn't do this forever, so Patrick Decided to go out with a Bang. Patrick steeled his nerves and put out a dramatic video message to the people of Earth seeming to have lost his wits entirely. Ranting about how he had decided that humanity was irredeemable, he launched his entire arsenal of several dozen nuclear weapons towards earth’s most populous capital cities. Without any other options remaining, Earth's nuclear powers launched an overwhelming counter strike of their own atomic arsenal towards Luna-C in Shackleton crater. No holds could be barred, as anything other than a total annihilation of Luna C by the full might of earth's entire nuclear arsenal could ensure that the base's missile defense system would become too overwhelmed to stop them all.

Once Patrick's arsenal had approached earth's atmosphere, they redirected themselves up and away from the earth once more, pre-programmed to detonate at a safe distance from earth as a kind of safe nuclear light show for the people below. Finally realizing they had been tricked, earth's nuclear powers tried to abort the missiles they had fired toward Bone, but they were too late to stop them.


Patrick Bone was last seen chuckling to himself on his global livestream, seemingly satisfied with the results of his plan to trick the world into denuclearisation.

In the aftermath of the "Years of Lunacy", the established power dynamic of earth's major powers was completely disrupted. While it seemed at first like a new Nuclear arms race was set to commence to rebuild the nuclear deterrents that once kept power "balanced", it was France's decision to yield it's first new nuclear weapon to the control of the United Nations which started a domino effect that would result in the Treaty of Albuquerque. For more information, read "The Treaty of Albuquerque."

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