In my Sci-Fi world, I wanted to be at a point in history where there was a stark line between the upper and super classes, and the poor classes of the world. I also didn't want the numbers of the human population to be much more than it is today, going contrary to all current projections.
My solution? The Blight.
My solution? The Blight.
The advent and implementation of Vigicore, commonly known as “sludge” and in its dehydrated form “turds,” was a culmination of two major factors. The first of which was global climate change. The development of extreme weather shifts compiled over the years to make the great plains of the U.S. a harsher, more desert-like climate. Boiling hot summers and blisteringly cold winters left much of the farm lands of the mid-west all but unusable.
Which led to the second of the two factors, the genetic modification of the world food crops. Greed was the worst contributor to this half of the equation. Although the development of more resilient plants, both from pests and the weather, allowed these threatened farmlands to continue to thrive over the years, it was this very advancement that was targeted by opposing political entities.
By the time of insertion, October 2024, over 95% of U.S. crops and 67% of world crops were generated by the top three seed manufacturers. These modified seeds produced tough, yet full and flavorful crops in even the harshest of conditions. Needing phenomenally low amounts of water and thriving in the new heat levels, the farms were beholden to the producing companies. For not only were the seeds plentiful and productive, they were also severely limited. The life cycles of the plants from these seeds were capped at one season without the ability for the germinating plants to produce additional seeds. By this model, the three major companies were guaranteed a return consumer base.
The Blight came from Asia. It was tracked back to 12 different countries and hundreds of separate food distributors that supplied the airlines with their on flight meals. The bacteria which caused the Blight was ingested by passengers, gestated within their GI tract, and then spread by unhygienic bathroom practices. It took over 6 months before the first of the effects were detected, and years before it was traced back to its regional origins.
The basic purpose of the Blight was for the engineered bacteria to join the local cultures of a given plant and then begin secreting a designed enzyme that targeted the genetic markers which limit the lifespan of said plant and trigger that marker early. In the wild, this attack might shorten the lifespan of a normal non-engineered plant by several months, perhaps a year. But for the GM plants, the effect was a premature death before maturation. It is assumed the Blight backfired on its creators, because although the original strain had been narrowed to effect the markers of just the top three producers, the bacteria had evolved within a year and rapidly killed off all plants using this limiting technique.
Once the initial stages of the Blight had been confirmed, the governments of the world began an immediate campaign to find a cheap alternative to the loss of fruits, vegetables, grains, and eventually the livestock that also fed off of them. Several companies came forward with scalable plans to grow a complete nutrient and protein substance, but it was ultimately Dolsen International which produced the first viable food substitute, Vigicore.
It was during this time that many countries declared martial law and subsequently outlawed many of the firearms popular during the early quarter of the century. Since then, the price of heirloom seeds has exceeded the price of gold and only those of the superclass can afford a regular diet of fruits, vegetables, grains, and meats.
Sure, it's a little bleak, but it's a great "what if" that is suddenly very plausible.
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