![[the-blackout.png]] *Added to the Codex on* ***August 29th, 2023*** --- ### Quotes “After the Blackout, having no spy satellites got both superpowers scrambling to get hardware back in the sky.”[^1] - Rao “Everyone thinks about the Blackout killing their internet, but the military implications were the real kicker.”[^1] - Rao “Burying the truth about the Blackout has done the world a grave injury.”[^2] - Dr. Voros “Steadfast Refuge was a secret U.S. program intent on harnessing environmental power to further American interests around the globe. The result was the Blackout.”[^3] - Oz “For when the Blackout struck and brought darkness upon the earth, the fantasy was over.”[^3] - Oz <br> ### Description The jointly operated American-Canadian facility in [[Codex/Battlefields/Exposure|Canada's Black Ridge]] mountains was part of a top-secret initiative designed to stabilize the weather in North America. Despite being in direct conflict with the ENMOD Convention, the facility came online in 2038 until structural damage, following an attack, prompted its closure in 2042. By design, the science worked by first generating an energy field that stretched from the facility’s ringed structure into Earth’s lower ionosphere. An orbiting satellite – called Shearwater-1 – then deployed a package of particles that interacted with the field and became energized. Only once the particles traveled back into the troposphere could they tame weather patterns over a vast region. Sadly, the theory was never proven as the first full-scale test ended in catastrophic failure. On March 12, 2040 a deployment malfunction took Shearwater-1 off course where it collided with a U.S. Communications Satellite and subsequently crashed in [[Hourglass|Doha, Qatar]]. The resulting space debris tore through many other orbiting bodies and destroyed 50-70% of Earth’s satellite network, instantly doing cataclysmic damage. Russian propaganda accused America of trying to build a satellite weapon similar to a "country shredder", and even amidst a collapse of communications and a cascade of deaths, the war between both superpowers reached a fever pitch – and continues to this day. [^1]: Featured in Journey of the No-Pats entry five [[Pineapple Express|"Pineapple Express."]] [^2]: This is one of Dr. Voros' loading screen quotes. [^3]: Featured in Oz's [[Battle of Richtersveld Speech|Battle of Richtersveld Speech.]]