Beilan Island

"The truth is much more complicated than you think."

This article is written from a Lore perspective. It contains spoilers and different reference materials might be contradictory.

Beilan Island (北兰岛) is a fictional island under the jurisdiction of the Shanghai municipal government in China, and the site of the two Beilan Island Incidents.

Origins

The relics site designated “Class A Technological Research Base No. 27”, where GAVIRUL was found in 1962, is located 67 meters under the ground of the island. The relics site was closed shortly after GAVIRUL's discovery when the site was deemed to hold no more interesting artifact. Several incidents had occurred during the uncaring exploration of the sites, releasing radioactive Collapse Fluid. The entrance to the relics site was completely blocked when buildings were constructed over it in 1974, during Shanghai's urban expansion.

First Beilan Island Incident

The First Beilan Island Incident occurred in 2030 and resulted in a century-long cloud of Collapse Fluid wiping out organic life in many regions on Earth and causing massive numbers of Eurosky Low-Emission Infectious Disease (ELID) infections, plunging the modern world into chaos and indirectly causing struggling nations to start World War Three.

Background

The outer barrier of the forgotten relics site was breached during a civilian drilling operation, and the radiation contained in the site leaked to the surface, infecting humans with ELID. The violent infected were handled by the Special Circumstances Armed Police Force (SCAPF), operating under the name Extraordinary Circumstances Peacekeeping Police Force to avoid public outrage, and the administration of Shanghai simply quarantined Beilan Island and did not report the infections to the Chinese government, underestimating the gravity of the situation.

ELID cases died out after the quarantine and 15 months after the infections, the lockdown level of Beilan Island was lowered to class 4. This lack of control and supervision enabled the incident to take place.

Incident

The incident occurred when seven middle schoolers went past the quarantine wall and were attacked by ELID infected. The SCAPF deployed four agents equipped with AA-03D police weapon platforms.

The small task force proved incapable to fight the infected and tried to seal the relics site entrance with explosives. The explosion caused the entire site to collapse, suddenly compressing large amounts of Collapse Fluid. The heightened particle density suddenly increased the temperature inside the relics site, and resulted in an immense explosion that leveled Shanghai. A large cloud of Collapse Fluid particles was also expelled into the atmosphere, spreading with the trade winds over Earth. Regions in the cloud's path were devastated and nearby lands saw a surge in ELID cases. The cloud expanded into the stratosphere, blocking the satellite communication of many countries.

Taking a look at modern Trade winds gives us clues as to how the Collapse Fluid cloud might have initially spread. It would first have been blown west and towards the equator by the Northern trade winds, most likely spreading across the Southern half of Asia and India. From there, the cloud might continue to Northern Africa and parts of the Middle East before moving across the Sahara Desert and into the Atlantic Ocean. It would then arrive in the Caribbean, then most of Latin America along with much of southern North America. Depending on the time of year, hurricanes may have carried the cloud Northward to contaminate the Northeastern coast of the United States as well, then be carried Eastward, crossing back the Atlantic Ocean to reach Europe, the Levant, then Russia. Japan and Korea may have initially be spared thanks to the winds blowing directly away from them despite their relative proximity to Shanghai, but would eventually be hit as the cloud crossed the Pacific Ocean from Latin America and circled back to its point of origin.

As the cloud traveled, industrial sites were lost and many companies had to shut down. Three years after the incident, venturing outside of closed environments was harmful to humans, sparking interest in robotics to take over as workers and soldiers. Finger-pointing and the rapid depletion of livable lands and basic resources degraded international political relations until World War Three broke out in 2045, further weakening nations and depleting liveable land. It took a century for the main cloud to subsume, but lesser Collapse Fluid clouds were estimated to keep being a threat to mankind for the next 100 000 years.

Second Beilan Island Incident

The Second Beilan Island Incident occurred between 2094 and 2112.

Before the incident, the Antarctic Union's intelligence agency MID had learned that the Union of Rossartrism Nations Coalition were making efforts to enter the ruins of the Beilan Island relics site, a neutral non-militarized region. The site itself was not overly dangerous due to the release of its reserve of Collapse Fluid into the atmosphere during the first incident, but a resulting cloud had settled nearby and the United Nations Health Agency (UNHA) needed to investigate. The MID deployed agents to secretely infiltrate the UNHA team under operation Brief Blossom.

The observation mission went sour quickly when part of the UNHA team was killed by rioters, then the local Collapse Fluid contamination levels suddenly spiked, infecting multiple people with ELID and forcing local Coalition soldiers to kill the rampaging infected. A MID agent managed to transmit a message indicating the relics site contained GAVIRUL embryos before being killed. Beilan Island was later leveled by thermobaric bombs.