NEX

Everyone was left scared by the last war. Not a single soul went without some mark that showed they had been affected by the conflict. Whether it is the smallest scar on their knee from falling as they fled from their city, or a brand burnt into the skin of their face for defying local militia, everyone has a scar and a story. Mine is a missing third finger on my right hand, after the digit was crushed and left useless when my office building was bombed at the start of the war.

I am still not completely sure why that building was targeted. We were a small newspaper running out of London with a minor circulation, and the only thing I could think that made us a target were some articles refuting claims of global warming, from our staple slightly-kooky right-wing columnist.

We were wrong to doubt.



The world went to shit in just five years. The first domino was the changing weather; that bought droughts and flood and in 2019 40% of the world's crops were decimated. The west rationed; the developing world starved. Feeding people and farming animals became impossible; one industry after another fell. Civil unrest became civil war, disease killed millions, obliterating struggling nations to dregs of their former populations, and countries closed their borders. In some places the most extreme political leaders were able to gain power in the panic, while in others anarchy reigned, but in some pockets the people rejected the clamour for nationalism and looked to the leaders they had previously dismissed; the most radically liberal, the environmental lobby – in many places they were the only parties who wanted to continue trying to form government and order, while traditional political factions had quickly disbanded as each politician turned inwards and embraced the selfishness of individual survival.

The war ended in 2023, leaving an unrecognisable world. It was as if we had been relegated to ancient history, before wide reaching discovery of other continents and before sea trades. Cities began to function independently, as best as they could. Only the smallest countries have maintained a central government, but they are crippled.

I didn’t stay in London. I didn’t stay anywhere for long, after the war ended. I had nothing to stay there for, and no surviving family or lover to keep me anchored. I travelled, and I documented what I found. It was the only thing keeping out the enclosing blackness of new world I had found myself in. This is the collection of images from the world between civilisation and oblivion; these are the stories of the NEX lands.



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