"David!" A coworker tore him from the monotony. "I'll take over for your break."
A tall man, wrapped in leather, equipped with a dust-filter mask and rendered barely human by small, round glass lenses. An ungainly figure, so tightly packed into tanned hides that he resembled a mutant.
Questioningly, the man raised a hand, as if asking whether he had been understood. David nodded, confirming that he was grateful for the relief.
"Thanks, Werner," he tossed back briefly.
He moved through the scorching heat of the manufactory. Furnaces radiated at him from all sides. Burnt wood reduced to ash.
Finally, a break. He could hardly wait to open the folio and sink into the past.
With effort, he pulled off his stiff leather gloves and set them aside. For a moment, he stared at his bright red, trembling hands. His knuckles were scraped raw; ash and soot clung to his pores, coating his skin like a layer of dust on an old book. He had no time to lose—this was already his second break. He had no more than thirty minutes. Though he wouldn't have minded stretching it a little.
Trembling, but determined, he opened his leather bag and rummaged inside. His hands slid over its contents, searching. With his fingertips he felt his pass and moved deeper into the black void. What was that? Is that—? No. Just a ration bar, carefully wrapped in paper. His lunch. Which he had forgotten about, completely absorbed in a book.
But where was it?
Then his fingers touched the smooth cover of the book. A small notebook—probably a historian's, or at least he believed so.
Now he held it in his hands. It had no title. A nameless echo of the past, nailed to physical reality.
Carefully, he opened the book and read across the yellowed, warped pages:
The Nuclear Fire
It should really be called History—yet the author of this incomplete chronicle lacks both certainty and a complete understanding of the circumstances.
Much information has been lost forever in the fog of war. I hope that, despite these conditions, the reader will still be able to grasp the outlines of history.
If anyone ever reads this at all… if people still know what books and writing are by then.
The truth of the events described here must therefore be treated with caution. Everything that follows comes solely from my memory, from fragmentary newspaper articles, and from information circulating as rumor. Errors and inaccuracies are unavoidable.
The Road to the Apocalypse
In the year 2022, Russia began the second stage of its plan to conquer Ukraine. The attack failed due to the fierce resistance of the Ukrainian army. After one year, the war turned into a stalemate with no significant territorial gains. Drones lashed through the skies like swarms in search of prey, artillery shells tore through silence and annihilated entire cities, and human wave assaults became routine.
In the face of this barbarity, Europe and North America decided to support the heroism of the defenders. Western powers delivered weapons, ammunition, and humanitarian aid. A democracy against an autocracy.
As expected from an authoritarian system, the Russian state threatened the use of tactical nuclear strikes. Victory through deterrence became the new doctrine. Victory through mass, the new slogan. No one believed they would truly go that far. But panic took hold—and sadly, it was no bluff.
One day, a small tactical thermonuclear weapon was deployed.
With this show of force, Russia also intensified the hybrid war it had been waging against Europe and North America for years. Disinformation, support for pro-Russian parties, and even large-scale cyberattacks on critical infrastructure were part of their repertoire. Panic solidified, crept into every corner, poisoned the mind, and crushed the heart. Public pressure amplified demands for ABC-protected shelters.
In response to the escalating situation, the European Union decided to form a joint armed force and invest tens of billions into civil defense. Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. Decades of peacetime neglect were reversed on a massive scale. Military and civil defense were heavily expanded. Manufacturing contracts were issued, war matériel procured, and new divisions raised.
Even neutral Austria rearmed extensively. Its militia army was expanded, and the standing army increased to 80,000 soldiers. In addition, funding was granted for the construction of bunkers across the country. Most notably, the Vienna subway system was to be fully relocated underground and converted into an air-raid shelter for population and industry alike.
What followed was a bureaucratic tug-of-war between multiple factions—a paper war fought with paragraphs and regulations. Fortunately, the plan prevailed. Within ten years, the conversion was to be completed. Stations were expanded with shelters, power generators, hermetic gates, and storage facilities, prepared for the worst. Silos were filled with food, medicine, and military supplies.
Thus, in record time, Central Europe's largest bunker complex came into existence—armed to the teeth, with enough supplies for three years.
Author's Note
Just barely in time.
The bunker plan had envisioned the construction of further facilities. Unfortunately, these never progressed beyond the planning phase. By the outbreak of the Third World War, only the expansion of stations and the tunnel network had been completed—far too little.
The available shelter was merely functional: bleak concrete, far from the humane environment its designers had envisioned. Most of the outermost stations were never finished. However, several new work tunnels, depots, and hydroelectric plants were constructed.
The fortunate few survivors sealed the hermetic gates and left all those beyond them to their fate.
The city of Vienna, with its two million inhabitants, had refuge for no more than 70,000 people. Initial estimates suggest that between 50,000 and 60,000 residents reached their final sanctuary.
Tensions continued to rise.
In 2032, the situation escalated once more: crop failures, droughts, epidemics—and finally a massive electromagnetic pulse, an extreme solar plasma ejection that destroyed large parts of the electronic infrastructure. Northern lights were visible as far as the equator. The sun-facing side of the Earth lost nearly all electronic devices. Satellites failed. Power grids collapsed. The stock market imploded. Communication became largely impossible.
The global community reacted primitively and vainly, retreating into an illusion of nationalism, cultural superiority, and great-power fantasies.
These harbingers announced the end.
The end of humanity. The end of the future.
*David reflected on the fragments of information he had just absorbed. So this was how it had begun—at least, according to someone. Could a single person really remember all of this? After all, it had been fifteen years. Or perhaps he was not the only chronicler of this work.*
"David?"
A voice tore him from his world, like icy water dumped suddenly over his head. He was back—back in the bleak, gray world of Vienna's underground.