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Above the South China Sea at 12.13 GMT on Monday 24th August, 2071, an American Boeing SWS-18 stealth satellite made an unauthorised manoeuvre by leaving its low earth orbit position. In its bay was housed a 22 metre Raytheon Ultra Radiation missile with a warhead designed to entomb deeply buried Command and Control sites. Its intense radiation could burn through steel and concrete, incapacitating people within seconds and killing them within minutes. All life would be extinguished within a thirty kilometre radius of impact, leaving the area a radiation hotspot for several hundred years.

Over the next few frantic hours, US Space Command attempted to rein in their rogue satellite; the latest in their arsenal of strategic weapons systems. After two north-south orbits, the satellite decelerated and took a holding position over London, leased by England as an independent city state since the Community Troubles of the 2030s. Before the satellite could be destroyed with ASAT weapons, it fired its missile. Seven million perished. London was sealed off. Subsequent enquiries attempted to explain the tragedy as a series of software errors compounded by interference from the constellations of communication satellites which clustered over the city. Their findings were never satisfactory, but by the end of the twenty-first century the world was facing far greater problems and Monday 24th August, 2071 was left to historians to explain.