The future is a mystical place that every person thinks about at some point in their life.
Books and movies have tried to take us there, but it always seems so unrealistic.
Well, one Reddit user and avid gamer has seen the future and it’s a “hellish nightmare.”
Redditor Lycerius has played the same game of Civilization II for the past 10 years. The turn-based strategy game is exactly as its title describes. It allows players to control ancient peoples like the Mongols and watch them fight off enemies and struggle to survive in a cruel, unforgiving world.
There are two goals to the game: To develop a civilization advanced enough to build a spaceship and fly away or to be the last race standing.
Lycerius chose the latter and has managed to keep the Celtic civilization alive through the year 3991.
“There are three remaining super nations in the year 3991 A.D, each competing for the scant resources left on the planet after dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands,” Lycerius wrote on Reddit. “As a result, big cities are a thing of the distant past. Roughly 90% of the world’s population (at its peak 2000 years ago) has died either from nuclear annihilation or famine caused by the global warming that has left absolutely zero arable land to farm.”
And the state of the world in general? Well, it’s pretty much destroyed, Lycerius added.
“The ice caps have melted over 20 times (somehow) due primarily to the many nuclear wars,” Lycerius said. “As a result, every inch of land in the world that isn’t a mountain is inundated swamp land, useless to farming. Most of which is irradiated anyway.”
Lycerius posted the story, and some images from the game, on Reddit where it reached the front page. It also collected more than 2,600 comments praising the redditor’s determination.
Lycerius is unsure how much longer he plans on playing the game, considering the last remaining nations—Celts, Vikings, and Americans—are in perpetual war with one another. But Lycerius is excited to see what happens.
“The three remaining nations have been locked in an eternal death struggle for almost 2000 years. Peace seems to be impossible. Every time a cease fire is signed, the Vikings will surprise attack me or the Americans the very next turn, often with nuclear weapons,” Lycerius wrote.
“My goal for the next few years is to try and end the war and thus use the engineers to clear swamps and fallout so that farming may resume. I want to rebuild the world. But I’m not sure how.”
Photo by InnoventionAustralia
