The Catastrophe and Its Chronology

The world of «Last Frontier» didn’t collapse overnight — the war had been prepared for over years, and its most terrible part came only after the last missiles fell silent. Here is the chronology of what turned St. Lawrence Island into a frozen trap in which you now struggle to survive.

The War They Saw Coming: the «Three-Phase Doctrine»

Back at the start of the 21st century, the major powers understood that a global conflict was all but inevitable, and they spent long years preparing for nuclear war. The script for the «final act» earned the unofficial name «the Three-Phase Doctrine»:

• Phase One — war by conventional means: ground operations, pinpoint bombings, battles in the skies and on the water. Officially, no one planned to go further — but everyone knew how it would end.
• Phase Two — a massive exchange of nuclear strikes. Into play went missile silos, mobile launch systems, «nuclear» armored trains, submarines, strategic bombers, orbital platforms, and saboteurs’ ultra-compact warheads. Most targets had been programmed in advance, and no one could predict when this phase would end.
• Phase Three — the strictly classified climax that was meant to define a new world order. Only a few knew of it: there were rumors of special units sheltered in advance in underground bunkers, and of a «doomsday device».

July 17, 2022, 04:28 — the Apocalypse

At that moment the shelter’s automatic safety system sealed the entrance and alerted everyone inside: the first bombs had fallen. Washington, London, Moscow, Tokyo — and the list could go on forever. Who struck first — the United States and its ally, the Soviets, or someone else — has remained unknown to this day.

Shelter ED-17, whose records form the basis of this entire chronicle, got lucky: no one bothered to bomb the island. For half a year the residents kept watch at the radios and radiation sensors, some standing armed at the gates, waiting for an assault. None ever came: no one broke down the door, the radio frequencies stayed silent, radiation levels were extremely high, and the temperature dropped to −45 °C and kept falling. That meant only one thing — the nuclear winter had begun.

Nuclear Winter: 2022–2024

The bombings hurled an enormous amount of radioactive dust and ash into the atmosphere — the sky turned into a slab of lead through which no sunlight broke for two years. And without the sun there is no warmth.

The cold broke record after record. In January 2023, sensors on St. Lawrence Island registered a horrifying mark — −96 °C. For an island that hadn’t iced over and remained habitable, this was the edge of survival.

May 26, 2024 — the End of the Nuclear Winter

At a meeting of the ED-17 Shelter Council, a member of the research group nicknamed «Ferocious Jim» (the very one who once kept the board of directors of Detroit Atomix in fear) announced the long-awaited news. For the first time ever, the sensors had registered not a drop, but a rise in temperature. Just half a degree — but it was hope. This day is considered the formal end of the nuclear winter (2022–2024).

Don’t get your hopes up too high: the warming is agonizingly slow. The cold remains the island’s chief threat, and the warmth of the sun won’t return for a very long time yet.

Eyes from Orbit: 2037

As the ash in the stratosphere thinned out, in 2037 the ED-17 command team managed to restore contact with the data satellite Karma-9. It was badly damaged, the signal was weak, and the sessions were short, but the specialists pulled images of the nearby territories out of the «tin can» and assembled them into a detailed map.

It was these images that revealed the world’s new geography: the Bering Strait had vanished beneath the ice, joining Alaska and Chukotka into a single landmass. St. Lawrence Island had survived — but the map also carried a warning: survivors from new, unfriendly «states» could reach the island across the frozen mainland.

What This Means for You

You enter this world decades after the catastrophe. The war thundered out long ago, the nuclear winter is formally over, but the island never thawed — the frost is still deadly, and the few surviving settlements fight over scarce resources. The chronology above isn’t just background: it explains why the cold kills, where the world map came from, and why any newcomer from the mainland is seen as a threat.