Timeline

A brief timeline of events leading up to and occurring in Pillars of Fire.

Spoiler warning!

2047

 * An unprecedented drought in the Euphrates triggers a massive famine in the Levant area, leading a long period of suffering in the Middle East. Iraq descends into anarchy with its massive crop failures. Israel, through careful cultivation of genetically modified crops, barely manages to scrape through. The Group of 10 (G10) is formed to alleviate the famine in the Levant.

2048

 * General Mahmud Iskandar bin Sayyid, leading the Iraqi Revolutionary Party, seizes control of the Iraqi government, placing it under military control through a "transitional period". Mahmud's declaration of a secular constitution triggers instability in the AHAD, but war is averted with a UN resolution deeming the act legal, but pressuring Iraq to conduct democratic elections within six months. The Iraqi Revolutionary Party predictably wins, capturing over 80% of the vote.

2056

 * United States presidential election, 2056: In a re-aligning election, Progressive Party candidate James McCain Jr. is the first third-party candidate to unseat the Democrat's supremacy over the White House, riding on a wave of popular support on the promise to "Make America Great Again."

2057

 * James McCain Jr. suddenly contracts botulism on a diplomatic tour in Puerto Rico, and passes away six months into his presidency. His Vice-President, David Levi Scurr, is made President amid rumours of assassination.
 * The famine in the Levant continues into its tenth year, and despite massive food imports, the Middle East continues to be unstable. Mahmud, renaming himself Marduk Iskandar and Iraq the Babylonian Empire, having consolidated his rule over the country, declares war on Syria and Israel and begins a "drive to the sea", with masses of tank battalions, assisted by an overwhelming aerial support, rolling through Syria to assault Israel through the Golan Heights, triggering the Famine War.
 * The Famine War grinds to a brutal stalemate in the Golan Heights, and Syrian forces conduct large-scale clandestine raids on Iraqi forces in Occupied Syria. The United Nations Interim Military Observer Group (UNIMOG) is dispatched to enforce an armistice between the two sides, and to escort Iraqi forces from Syria.
 * Popular revolts in Iraq threaten to unseat the Marduk regime, and the Iraqi force is given a three-week deadline by UNIMOG to retreat to national borders. Marduk refuses to repent, and unveils a secret weapon: a wing of fighter-bombers carrying a payload of nearly fifty neptunium bombs. Of these, only thirteen detonate, but the subsequent radioactive fallout irradiates the entire region, leaving barely 150,000 Israelis alive by the end of the year. Marduk is arrested by revolutionaries, but shoots himself before being successfully imprisoned.
 * Prevailing winds carry the nuclear fallout into the Mediterranean Sea, irreversibly poisoning the water. Europe enters a period of immense suffering due to radioactive sickness.
 * John D'Israeli, a fundamentalist preacher, promulgates the Church of a Thousand Gross, declaring the end times as foretold in the Book of Revelation are nigh. Apocalyptic fervor strikes the United States, and it is estimated that the Church has over 100,000 adherents by the end of the year.

2058

 * It is estimated that nearly eleven million people in Europe and the Middle East are dead due to radioactive poisoning. Among these is Pope Clement XV, having contracted it on a peace mission to Crete. As the papal conclave meets to decide on the next pope, a frenzied member of the Swiss Guard, Pietro D'Annunzio, massacres the cardinals and sets the Chapel alight, emerging on the roof and declaring himself to the prophesied "Peter the Roman", the final pope of the Catholic Church, before throwing himself off into the midst of a panicked crowd.
 * An unprecedented heat wave strikes the northern hemisphere, complicating relief efforts.
 * A new virulent strain of cowpox transmits to human beings in Brazil before spreading northwards through Mexico and the Caribbean onto the American Midwest, claiming nearly 3,000 lives before being contained.
 * 2010 JU39 enters the atmosphere over East Asia, breaking up into various smaller meteorites, which impact major cities in China, Korea, Indochina and Singapore. The death toll is in the tens of thousands.
 * An undersea volcanic eruption in the Pacific Ocean triggers a tsunami which strikes Hawaii, killing thousands, including almost the entire population of Kauai.
 * John D'Israeli declares the creation of the Army of God, an armed militia aligning to the principles of the Church of a Thousand Gross, who conduct hate crimes against those who speak out against the ways of the Church. He denounces David Scurr as the Beast of Revelation, citing various verses of Revelation as "evidence" of this.

2059

 * The Church of a Thousand Gross is declared to be a "homeland terrorist organisation" by the United States government. In response, John D'Israeli, calling himself John Patmos, orders the construction of a massive fortress in Patmos, Arkansas. The National Guard is called in but is repelled when John Patmos reveals his possession of a nuclear device, retrieved from the materials a nuclear accident. He threatens to detonate it upon the approach of government troops, and a demilitarised zone is set up around Patmos.
 * David Scurr is shot in the head with a high-powered air rifle. The pellet barely penetrates the skull bone, but the loss of blood leads to his near-incapacitation, although he is predicted to make a full recovery well before the New Year's Day celebrations.
 * The Army of God kidnaps Sylvia Scurr, the First Lady, and threatens to televise the tortures of the Whore of Babylon on her unless the demilitarised zone is dismantled. Operation Peach is put into action immediately by the Department of Homeland Security, with junior officer Joan Carpenter mobilised to investigate inroads to the fortress, now called New Zion.