Post by loneranger on May 12, 2016 22:23:38 GMT
The 20th Century was a period of great conflict among the human race; in fact, it changed the fate of not only humanity, but of the entire solar system.
It all began on May 12, 1909; while webs of alliances strung across Europe, the United States of America was the first to encounter the Hellspawn (known colloquially as "Spawners"). Coming from deep in the sands of the New Mexico desert, these creatures "with skin alike to tree bark and hot magma spewing from every pore" might have been stopped if they started in a more populated area. Initially these creatures were small, frail, and would later be found to be vulnerable to tank fire. Of course, the Spawners were constantly evolving (which is why they were so dangerous). While the first landers were no more than glorified barbarian trees, they were able to sweep across the United States and Mexico over the course of five years.
The longest outpost was held by President-General Theodore Roosevelt, who managed to hold New York City for nine months using a combination of water cannons and heavy artillery. It had been quickly discovered that Spawners didn't like water and couldn't swim. However many others used this as a reason to migrate - why deal with the Spawners when one could just move away from them? What could have been America's biggest defense ("Generals Atlantic and Pacific") ended up being the world's best defense in keeping the Spawners at bay. Although periodic bombing runs ran through occupied North America, these became more and more sporadic as the planes came back less and less often.
The largest recipient of American refugees was of course Europe, followed closely by Northern Africa. The former was largely white ex-pats, spread across every European country you could think of - families generally tried to go to the country of their closest ancestry, or at the very list stick with their social groups. Many were very poor due to the escape from the Spawners and couldn't speak a lot of the local languages. The cities of Europe were packed with filth and illiterate American children running around. North Africa, meanwhile, was largely populated by ex-slaves who taught what skills they did know (and vice versa) to the North African subjects of colonialism. This certainly made the already full to the brim Europe quite a bit uneasy.
This did have a few benefits, though. As the Spawners reached the Panama Canal in 1919, the latest in a series of incidents threatened to bring Europe to war. However the gigantic influx of Americans included quite a bit of people who did not want a war after just escaping a warzone. The threat of an "American Revolution in Europe" was genuinely too horrifying a proposition to consider the threat of war. And thus somehow nationalism was curbed by the refugee presence.
Of course, not everything was happy go lucky. Multiple European scientists began noticing something very alarming - the water levels of both the Atlantic and even the Mediterranean Sea were sinking. While this process was very slow, this was only in comparison to say emptying a bath tub. For the Atlantic ocean such a drop in water levels was downright horrifying considering what lay on the other side of the Atlantic. Thus a society was formed, whose names have now been long lost to time - a society of scientists both American and European (of all nationalities) came together in Geneva Switzerland to conceive the unimaginable.
There were multiple sub-groups in the society. Some wanted to study the Spawners and discern how they communicated so that we could negotiate a peace treaty, others wanted to devise weapons of unimaginable horror to fight the menace, and others considered something even more drastic. If humanity had no means of stopping the Spawners, then at some point the entire Earth would be filled with their ilk. Where then, would the children of Adam go? Some looked to the stars. And although they were at first laughed at, there came a time when everyone stopped laughing.
By 1925 the Spawners had crossed the Panama Canal, constructing a bridge of some kind of obsidian-like material. Though this project had been attacked multiple times by airplanes and battleships and the like, it was eventually completed and the Spawners began the process of conquering their next continent. This is where the Society was able to test out many of their new superweapons. One group had actually invented a laser gun (let me tell you, it was bloody expensive). But we're not very lucky, as the gun didn't kill Spawners but actually "super-charged" them. For their part, the Spawners took down their second continent much faster than the first one. By 1928 South America had fallen.
With the Hellspawn controlling half the globe, people began to wonder. Some declared it the end of their reign of terror as the Spawners couldn't possibly cross either of the two great seas like they had the Panama Canal. Others began to worry that the Spawners might be truly unstoppable. The weapon making stopped as Europe especially fell into a dark time; the latest in a series of diseases spread through the heavily packed continent, and the lack of a war caused the already very frail economy to collapse. Among many fire-lit households there were murmurs of Socialist revolution.
Naturally it was France who kicked this off. France of "let them eat cake" fame apparently learned nothing in the intervening century and some change after the French revolution. Paris burned to the ground overnight as the "Red Band Army" quickly lost discipline in the fervor of the riots. Soon Germany and the Balkans were involved as while, and things were very tense in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy. While all of this was going on, the Society tested their first operational rocket out of Switzerland. They soon determined two things: 1. that an equatorial launching spot would be beneficial to their space-based endeavours and 2. that Europe was quickly turning into the type of powder keg that could one day explode and destroy all that they had worked for.
So the Society closed up shop in Europe and headed for Zaire, along with a small army of followers who helped them forge a path in the dark heart of Africa to somewhere less threatening to the continuance of science. At the same time the Observer group scouted the American coastlines with u-boats and the Weapons group migrated to Australia where they could test out an idea for a "nuclear weapon". It was the observers who fucked it all up.
You see, while the Spawners had started as nothing the intellectual equal of the locust, they had evolved since then. Many had expressed fears of a sentient Spawner since the early days of the Panama Bridge (now called the Mouth of Hell by those seamen stupid enough to try and sail through the canal). But it wasn't until 1934 that these fears were realized when an observer submarine was captured by the Spawners and dragged back to land. All inside were killed, except one. This one man was then forced to direct the Spawners back to Europe. The man was too terrified by what the Catholic Church had called the "literal incarnation of Satan's demons" to even atttempt any funny business. So by 1934 a Spawner submarine landed in a dock in France.
This is where it was discovered that tanks (recently developed for potential use in the ever-ongoing European revolution) were actually useful - against "Type 1" Spawners (the ones who first came out of the mouth of the sand in the New Mexico desert). Since then there were at least three more types; Type 2s - a stronger, faster version of the Type 1, Type 3s - also referred to as "Tanks", and Type 4s - referred to as golems. The small Type 4s were easy work one on one - some could even be taken down by enough gunfire. However they typically came in swarms and usually operated some of the more advanced Spawner weaponry which now seemed to include some type of anti-aircraft weaponry which resembled a flaming catapult. Fearing for their lives, the people of European socialist and otherwise turned their full force onto the French coastline. The Type 1s and 4s were eliminated, the Type 2s went down after much bloodshed, but the Type 3s were virtually unstoppable. It was while this was being focused on that a fifth Type surfaced.
Tall and slender, these Spawners resembled evil wizards in all their horrific glory. One appeared in Stonehenge, the other at a choice location on the Chinese coast. Both opened the maw of the Earth and unlocked a horde not dissimilar to the one that poured forth from the American continent. This was the beginning of the end. With not really anywhere to run, the combined people of Europe fought to the last dying breath to maintain their foothold on the continent. But the Spawners prevailed one corpse at a time. Indeed, through brief study it was discovered that Type 2s were created when Type 5s got a hold on human corpses, morphing them into Spawners through a process that seemed to be worse than death itself. The pope insisted that such a conversion would lead to being damned to hell forever, and he encouraged people to kill themselves before being taken by the Spawner menace.
The Pope ended up becoming much like Theodore Roosevelt, in that he lead the largest army of dedicated followers and soldiers as they strategically retreated throughout Europe until they were backed in the Aegean Sea. Here it became a bit easier to string out the battles, as the Pope lead his Holy Army from island to island, forcing the Spawners to fight for each and every one of them. Meanwhile the Society in Africa launched their first satellite using it to keep careful watch on the planet Earth far from the might of the Spawners. On the other side of the globe, Generals Mao and Yamamoto made a deal with the Society in Australia and allowed the first nuclear weapon in history to be unleashed on Chinese soil.
Once again, all it really did was make things worse. Type 3s reacted so strongly to the radiation that they became city sized monsters classified as Type 6s, although the nukes did manage to knock out Type 2 conversion centers (called Hives) which dotted the Eurasian continent. Though the nuke ended up being completely useless in battle, it did inspire the Society in Africa and convinced them to reconnect with their more war-minded brethren. While space-based applications of the nuke were researched by the Society, they also looked into sustainability in space. As the Spawners began spreading farther and farther across the globe, the sea continued to shrink and millions of fish were dying. It seemed that while the Spawners could arrive and destroy everything in a matter of weeks, it also appeared that the Earth would soon be uninhabitable for the human race.
And thus in 1945 the first man stepped foot on the moon, and then the second, and the third, and so on. It had been extremely ambitious, and likely impossible in any other circumstance, but the Society had managed to create a small colony on the moon numbering about thirty men and women. On the planet below, the Eurasian continent was almost entirely consumed and the Spawner menace turned their eyes to Africa. Realizing that the end is near, the scientists began working harder than ever to build their magnum opus - the dying breath of Terra would be the first breath of a New Humanity.
Suffice it to say that the Society and their followers were "weird". Many were a cross-section of European, American, and African cultures whom ascribed to the "New Humanity" ideal which taught the great value of science and cooperation (ala socialism), while also highly polygamous both to release stress from the DEMON INVASION OF EARTH and also the 'boost human numbers' or some such excuse (really it's possible the group was just reverting to pre-modern social norms as various luxuries were stripped away).
By 1949 the Spawners were on the doorstep of the Society base in Zaire. Although this was not the last human outpost on Earth, it was the last outpost that was focused on the "New World". Terra 1 launched just prior to the Spawner with 4,200 people tightly packed together in cryo-sleep, along with a plethora of useful materials. It was followed closely behind by Luna 1, which had been fashioned by the space colonists out of their very own materials and material from the moon. Earth was left to quietly die under the bootheel of the Spawners menace.
Terra 1 approached Mars around 1951, released two giant mirrors during it's descent. These mirrors soon moved into an orbit with the poles of Mars, with the hopes of creating a runaway greenhouse effect that might stabilize the planet. Meanwhile Terra 1 touched down and quickly began burrowing down into the Martian dirt. An experimental "weapon" was then used, directing an absurd amount of heat energy towards the core in the hopes of magnetising the iron in the Outer Core. This "weapon" was made as a cross between the Society's first laser weapon and reverse-engineered Spawner "firestaffs" which had been their primary weapon for most of the Survival War (as the 1909-1949 period was called).
Luna 1 arrived soon after in 1952 with the non-frozen people; their job was to pave the way for the "First City", a domed metropolis designed to house the first 1,000 colonists released from cryo-sleep. By 1972 there were various satilletes orbiting Mars, the planet was changing colors, and the First City was bustling with the newly released First Colonists. To them it had been mere moments since the Spawners had been on their doorstep. Now they were separated by space itself. This truly was the end of the threat that the Spawners posed. Soon, they became simply one more chapter in the history of humanity. Various scouting missions swung by Earth as it slowly blackened until it looked like some kind of sci-fi hellhole. The Demons inherited the Earth, but humanity survived in the Red Sands of Mars (which was soon renamed Athena).
Come 2016, there were various domed cities across the planet, inhabited by various "tribes" descended from major colonist families. It was even safe to walk about outside the domes now, although a simple oxygen mask had to be worn much like was used to climb the highest mountains on Earth. While many enjoyed what was considered to be a Golden Age in the development of humanity, some still kept their eyes plastered jealously to the former cradle of planet Earth. Thus one group called the "Cult of Ares" began constructing the first genuine war spaceship. While many spaceships had been constructed since Terra 1 and Luna 1 first graced the Martian soil, none had been dedicated so thoroughly to destruction as the Ares 1. Even if we could never have Earth back again, the Ares and it's crew would ensure that the Spawners couldn't have Earth either.
It was during their maiden voyage to Earth that First Contact was made. You see, while we had kept our eyes focused inward, a few alien scout ships had been slowly encroaching our solar system. Their appearance could be described as small grey humanoids with large black eyes, capapable of telepathy and posessing advanced plasma-based technology. Quick reports suggested that they would make short work of the Domes on Athena, and also that the Ares 1 wouldn't survive a confrontation with the three Grey scout ships. So, the Captain made his fateful decision - attack the Greys and draw them to Earth.
It was a foolish, suicidal plan. But nonetheless, their daring worked. Using a method that was called "Kamikazee" on the now dead Earth, the Ares sacrificed itself to damage the Grey ships enough to force them to crashland on Earth - leading them right into the Spawners where it was hoped that they would be finished off. Of course, there were a few survivors of the Ares; survivors of a suicide mission. One had even been planted on the Ares with a specific mission to recover a lost Society artifact on Earth that could prove to be useful in the final terraforming push on Athena.
Thus enters Sgt. Barnes, Athena police officer masquerading as a member of the Cult of Ares now stuck in a literal hell-hole with multiple objectives. Eliminate the Greys, recon the Spawners, find the Terra 2, and escape the planet Earth.
Will he survive?
It all began on May 12, 1909; while webs of alliances strung across Europe, the United States of America was the first to encounter the Hellspawn (known colloquially as "Spawners"). Coming from deep in the sands of the New Mexico desert, these creatures "with skin alike to tree bark and hot magma spewing from every pore" might have been stopped if they started in a more populated area. Initially these creatures were small, frail, and would later be found to be vulnerable to tank fire. Of course, the Spawners were constantly evolving (which is why they were so dangerous). While the first landers were no more than glorified barbarian trees, they were able to sweep across the United States and Mexico over the course of five years.
The longest outpost was held by President-General Theodore Roosevelt, who managed to hold New York City for nine months using a combination of water cannons and heavy artillery. It had been quickly discovered that Spawners didn't like water and couldn't swim. However many others used this as a reason to migrate - why deal with the Spawners when one could just move away from them? What could have been America's biggest defense ("Generals Atlantic and Pacific") ended up being the world's best defense in keeping the Spawners at bay. Although periodic bombing runs ran through occupied North America, these became more and more sporadic as the planes came back less and less often.
The largest recipient of American refugees was of course Europe, followed closely by Northern Africa. The former was largely white ex-pats, spread across every European country you could think of - families generally tried to go to the country of their closest ancestry, or at the very list stick with their social groups. Many were very poor due to the escape from the Spawners and couldn't speak a lot of the local languages. The cities of Europe were packed with filth and illiterate American children running around. North Africa, meanwhile, was largely populated by ex-slaves who taught what skills they did know (and vice versa) to the North African subjects of colonialism. This certainly made the already full to the brim Europe quite a bit uneasy.
This did have a few benefits, though. As the Spawners reached the Panama Canal in 1919, the latest in a series of incidents threatened to bring Europe to war. However the gigantic influx of Americans included quite a bit of people who did not want a war after just escaping a warzone. The threat of an "American Revolution in Europe" was genuinely too horrifying a proposition to consider the threat of war. And thus somehow nationalism was curbed by the refugee presence.
Of course, not everything was happy go lucky. Multiple European scientists began noticing something very alarming - the water levels of both the Atlantic and even the Mediterranean Sea were sinking. While this process was very slow, this was only in comparison to say emptying a bath tub. For the Atlantic ocean such a drop in water levels was downright horrifying considering what lay on the other side of the Atlantic. Thus a society was formed, whose names have now been long lost to time - a society of scientists both American and European (of all nationalities) came together in Geneva Switzerland to conceive the unimaginable.
There were multiple sub-groups in the society. Some wanted to study the Spawners and discern how they communicated so that we could negotiate a peace treaty, others wanted to devise weapons of unimaginable horror to fight the menace, and others considered something even more drastic. If humanity had no means of stopping the Spawners, then at some point the entire Earth would be filled with their ilk. Where then, would the children of Adam go? Some looked to the stars. And although they were at first laughed at, there came a time when everyone stopped laughing.
By 1925 the Spawners had crossed the Panama Canal, constructing a bridge of some kind of obsidian-like material. Though this project had been attacked multiple times by airplanes and battleships and the like, it was eventually completed and the Spawners began the process of conquering their next continent. This is where the Society was able to test out many of their new superweapons. One group had actually invented a laser gun (let me tell you, it was bloody expensive). But we're not very lucky, as the gun didn't kill Spawners but actually "super-charged" them. For their part, the Spawners took down their second continent much faster than the first one. By 1928 South America had fallen.
With the Hellspawn controlling half the globe, people began to wonder. Some declared it the end of their reign of terror as the Spawners couldn't possibly cross either of the two great seas like they had the Panama Canal. Others began to worry that the Spawners might be truly unstoppable. The weapon making stopped as Europe especially fell into a dark time; the latest in a series of diseases spread through the heavily packed continent, and the lack of a war caused the already very frail economy to collapse. Among many fire-lit households there were murmurs of Socialist revolution.
Naturally it was France who kicked this off. France of "let them eat cake" fame apparently learned nothing in the intervening century and some change after the French revolution. Paris burned to the ground overnight as the "Red Band Army" quickly lost discipline in the fervor of the riots. Soon Germany and the Balkans were involved as while, and things were very tense in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy. While all of this was going on, the Society tested their first operational rocket out of Switzerland. They soon determined two things: 1. that an equatorial launching spot would be beneficial to their space-based endeavours and 2. that Europe was quickly turning into the type of powder keg that could one day explode and destroy all that they had worked for.
So the Society closed up shop in Europe and headed for Zaire, along with a small army of followers who helped them forge a path in the dark heart of Africa to somewhere less threatening to the continuance of science. At the same time the Observer group scouted the American coastlines with u-boats and the Weapons group migrated to Australia where they could test out an idea for a "nuclear weapon". It was the observers who fucked it all up.
You see, while the Spawners had started as nothing the intellectual equal of the locust, they had evolved since then. Many had expressed fears of a sentient Spawner since the early days of the Panama Bridge (now called the Mouth of Hell by those seamen stupid enough to try and sail through the canal). But it wasn't until 1934 that these fears were realized when an observer submarine was captured by the Spawners and dragged back to land. All inside were killed, except one. This one man was then forced to direct the Spawners back to Europe. The man was too terrified by what the Catholic Church had called the "literal incarnation of Satan's demons" to even atttempt any funny business. So by 1934 a Spawner submarine landed in a dock in France.
This is where it was discovered that tanks (recently developed for potential use in the ever-ongoing European revolution) were actually useful - against "Type 1" Spawners (the ones who first came out of the mouth of the sand in the New Mexico desert). Since then there were at least three more types; Type 2s - a stronger, faster version of the Type 1, Type 3s - also referred to as "Tanks", and Type 4s - referred to as golems. The small Type 4s were easy work one on one - some could even be taken down by enough gunfire. However they typically came in swarms and usually operated some of the more advanced Spawner weaponry which now seemed to include some type of anti-aircraft weaponry which resembled a flaming catapult. Fearing for their lives, the people of European socialist and otherwise turned their full force onto the French coastline. The Type 1s and 4s were eliminated, the Type 2s went down after much bloodshed, but the Type 3s were virtually unstoppable. It was while this was being focused on that a fifth Type surfaced.
Tall and slender, these Spawners resembled evil wizards in all their horrific glory. One appeared in Stonehenge, the other at a choice location on the Chinese coast. Both opened the maw of the Earth and unlocked a horde not dissimilar to the one that poured forth from the American continent. This was the beginning of the end. With not really anywhere to run, the combined people of Europe fought to the last dying breath to maintain their foothold on the continent. But the Spawners prevailed one corpse at a time. Indeed, through brief study it was discovered that Type 2s were created when Type 5s got a hold on human corpses, morphing them into Spawners through a process that seemed to be worse than death itself. The pope insisted that such a conversion would lead to being damned to hell forever, and he encouraged people to kill themselves before being taken by the Spawner menace.
The Pope ended up becoming much like Theodore Roosevelt, in that he lead the largest army of dedicated followers and soldiers as they strategically retreated throughout Europe until they were backed in the Aegean Sea. Here it became a bit easier to string out the battles, as the Pope lead his Holy Army from island to island, forcing the Spawners to fight for each and every one of them. Meanwhile the Society in Africa launched their first satellite using it to keep careful watch on the planet Earth far from the might of the Spawners. On the other side of the globe, Generals Mao and Yamamoto made a deal with the Society in Australia and allowed the first nuclear weapon in history to be unleashed on Chinese soil.
Once again, all it really did was make things worse. Type 3s reacted so strongly to the radiation that they became city sized monsters classified as Type 6s, although the nukes did manage to knock out Type 2 conversion centers (called Hives) which dotted the Eurasian continent. Though the nuke ended up being completely useless in battle, it did inspire the Society in Africa and convinced them to reconnect with their more war-minded brethren. While space-based applications of the nuke were researched by the Society, they also looked into sustainability in space. As the Spawners began spreading farther and farther across the globe, the sea continued to shrink and millions of fish were dying. It seemed that while the Spawners could arrive and destroy everything in a matter of weeks, it also appeared that the Earth would soon be uninhabitable for the human race.
And thus in 1945 the first man stepped foot on the moon, and then the second, and the third, and so on. It had been extremely ambitious, and likely impossible in any other circumstance, but the Society had managed to create a small colony on the moon numbering about thirty men and women. On the planet below, the Eurasian continent was almost entirely consumed and the Spawner menace turned their eyes to Africa. Realizing that the end is near, the scientists began working harder than ever to build their magnum opus - the dying breath of Terra would be the first breath of a New Humanity.
Suffice it to say that the Society and their followers were "weird". Many were a cross-section of European, American, and African cultures whom ascribed to the "New Humanity" ideal which taught the great value of science and cooperation (ala socialism), while also highly polygamous both to release stress from the DEMON INVASION OF EARTH and also the 'boost human numbers' or some such excuse (really it's possible the group was just reverting to pre-modern social norms as various luxuries were stripped away).
By 1949 the Spawners were on the doorstep of the Society base in Zaire. Although this was not the last human outpost on Earth, it was the last outpost that was focused on the "New World". Terra 1 launched just prior to the Spawner with 4,200 people tightly packed together in cryo-sleep, along with a plethora of useful materials. It was followed closely behind by Luna 1, which had been fashioned by the space colonists out of their very own materials and material from the moon. Earth was left to quietly die under the bootheel of the Spawners menace.
Terra 1 approached Mars around 1951, released two giant mirrors during it's descent. These mirrors soon moved into an orbit with the poles of Mars, with the hopes of creating a runaway greenhouse effect that might stabilize the planet. Meanwhile Terra 1 touched down and quickly began burrowing down into the Martian dirt. An experimental "weapon" was then used, directing an absurd amount of heat energy towards the core in the hopes of magnetising the iron in the Outer Core. This "weapon" was made as a cross between the Society's first laser weapon and reverse-engineered Spawner "firestaffs" which had been their primary weapon for most of the Survival War (as the 1909-1949 period was called).
Luna 1 arrived soon after in 1952 with the non-frozen people; their job was to pave the way for the "First City", a domed metropolis designed to house the first 1,000 colonists released from cryo-sleep. By 1972 there were various satilletes orbiting Mars, the planet was changing colors, and the First City was bustling with the newly released First Colonists. To them it had been mere moments since the Spawners had been on their doorstep. Now they were separated by space itself. This truly was the end of the threat that the Spawners posed. Soon, they became simply one more chapter in the history of humanity. Various scouting missions swung by Earth as it slowly blackened until it looked like some kind of sci-fi hellhole. The Demons inherited the Earth, but humanity survived in the Red Sands of Mars (which was soon renamed Athena).
Come 2016, there were various domed cities across the planet, inhabited by various "tribes" descended from major colonist families. It was even safe to walk about outside the domes now, although a simple oxygen mask had to be worn much like was used to climb the highest mountains on Earth. While many enjoyed what was considered to be a Golden Age in the development of humanity, some still kept their eyes plastered jealously to the former cradle of planet Earth. Thus one group called the "Cult of Ares" began constructing the first genuine war spaceship. While many spaceships had been constructed since Terra 1 and Luna 1 first graced the Martian soil, none had been dedicated so thoroughly to destruction as the Ares 1. Even if we could never have Earth back again, the Ares and it's crew would ensure that the Spawners couldn't have Earth either.
It was during their maiden voyage to Earth that First Contact was made. You see, while we had kept our eyes focused inward, a few alien scout ships had been slowly encroaching our solar system. Their appearance could be described as small grey humanoids with large black eyes, capapable of telepathy and posessing advanced plasma-based technology. Quick reports suggested that they would make short work of the Domes on Athena, and also that the Ares 1 wouldn't survive a confrontation with the three Grey scout ships. So, the Captain made his fateful decision - attack the Greys and draw them to Earth.
It was a foolish, suicidal plan. But nonetheless, their daring worked. Using a method that was called "Kamikazee" on the now dead Earth, the Ares sacrificed itself to damage the Grey ships enough to force them to crashland on Earth - leading them right into the Spawners where it was hoped that they would be finished off. Of course, there were a few survivors of the Ares; survivors of a suicide mission. One had even been planted on the Ares with a specific mission to recover a lost Society artifact on Earth that could prove to be useful in the final terraforming push on Athena.
Thus enters Sgt. Barnes, Athena police officer masquerading as a member of the Cult of Ares now stuck in a literal hell-hole with multiple objectives. Eliminate the Greys, recon the Spawners, find the Terra 2, and escape the planet Earth.
Will he survive?
