The rest of the world.

[Jintor]

I forget whether this was mentioned, but did Antarctica break up and melt? Did the Combine destory cities and countries entirely? Is the whole damned earth a wasteland?

What happened, in short, to the rest of the world?

 

[UltimaApocalypse]

Everything outside the cities is wasteland. From what the Combine have been doing, (draining the oceans, polluting the air) I'm sure Antartica has broken off and malted.

 

[Talyn]

Malted, huh? I didn't know the Combine dipped it in a sweet chocolate-type mixture. *grins* Just kidding, of course.

Well, Antarctica can't melt, per se, because there's a lot of solid land under that ice, but I'm sure the water was siphoned off so that the Combine could gain access to the mineral and fossil-fuel resources within the Antarctic landmass.

The way I figure it, the Combine hit hardest the places most capable of fighting back - so Western Europe, Russia, China and the United States, with their large professional armies and nuclear arsenals, were probably more or less reduced to ash during the Seven Hours War (you see the U.N. building in New York being destroyed by the Combine in Eli's lab), where the nations in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South America were merely subjugated.

So, I figured that North America is a Fallout-type wasteland, with the irradiated ruins of cities cluttering the landscape and what little life remains entirely composed of Xenofauna and/or mutations, with the Combine exerting nominal control over the region through the Citadels they had teleported into the former urban centers at the beginning of the war... cities that have almost certainly been abandoned by all unmodified human beings in the intervening years.

 

[losermeetsworld]

I see the world as a giant wasteland from the Seven Hours war, save for the human populated cities (few and far between) and the rest of the world is ruins, wasteland, and lots of Ravenholm-esque towns. There would also be tons of mines, quarries, ect...


And Antarctica hasn't melted. You can see lots of times in-game that the sea levels have dropped, so if Antarctica melted, they'd be a lot higher. Also seing as how the weather is relativly normal, I'd say it's still intact.

 

[Jintor]

Maybe they just sucked it up whole 0_o

I wonder what happened to Australia...? Or miscellaneous islands somewhere in the Caribbeean?

 

[Asknoone]

Since the portal storms affected the entire planet, its safe to assume they were simply ravaged by Xen wildlife, much like the rest of Earth. There is a few other Combine cities harbouring whats left of the human race, but apart from that...the rest of the planet is simply a breeding ground for aliens.

 

[Laivasse]

I don't see why anything would have happened to Antarctica. That would create more of a Waterworld scenario.

I reckon the rest of the world is just infested with Xen stuff where there isn't a Combine outpost. There were probably a lot human strongholds against the Xen aliens in the US etc, but the Combine would have levelled these good and proper. Maybe there's some significance in the fact that Eastern Europe (if we assume that's where C17 is), once obscure in terms of world affairs, is now the center of Combine control. Why not have your HQ in Washington, or London, some big ex-metropolis? maybe because they don't exist/not habitable any more...

 

[ríomhaire]

I wonder what Xen is like.

 

[Sulkdodds]

'Greed with Laivasse. Although to be honest, if they could drain the sea levels then they could probably melt antarctica very slowly and drain while doing it, to compensate. I just don't see why they'd bother though.

As for Australia, no offence but I don't think it would seem all that important to an alien invader (although it is a Western nation to all intents and purposes and it does help out in most wars - so maybe not) and I would imagine it in the same situation as City-17 and the surrounding area - although perhaps, as I think they've probably done with all the little Caribbean islands, they've relocated everybody off to the continent and poisoned the land/sunk the island/filled it with headcrabs/whatever.

 

[ríomhaire]

In HL3 we'll discover that Ireland is perfectly fine and the only thing that's changed is they have headcrab fighting competitions in the pubs.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

In HL3 we'll discover that Ireland is perfectly fine and the only thing that's changed is they have headcrab fighting competitions in the pubs.

Lucky bastards. :|

 

[UltimaApocalypse]

In HL3 we'll discover that Ireland is perfectly fine and the only thing that's changed is they have headcrab fighting competitions in the pubs.

The Irish don't choose to fight, they just be....Irish. So the Combine didn't mess with them

 

[Talyn]

Actually, I imagine that developed but demilitarised nations like Ireland, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Greece are the hottest places of anti-Combine resistance.