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The War of 1996 was a full scale assault on Earth from July 2nd to July 4th, 1996 by a vast extraterrestrial race (later named the "Harvesters") seeking to harvest Earth's natural resources. It was the largest military conflict in the history of mankind, taking the lives of 3 billion people. Within a span of two days, 108 cities were outright destroyed, as the aliens began a systematic and genocidal campaign of wiping out humanity. The onslaught was halted when humanity coordinated a global counterattack after the United States managed to disable the aliens' force-field technology and the subsequent destruction of the alien mothership, thus ending the war in human victory.

The conflict drastically altered the political alignment and social structure of Earth. Humanity set aside their previous cultural and nationalistic rivalries and united globally. The Earth Space Defense was established to defend Earth and humanity from future extraterrestrial threats.

Prelude

Acknowledgement of extraterrestrial life was secretly confirmed when in 1947, an alien vessel crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico.[3] U.S. military authorities recovered the wreckage and the bodies of its occupants to the future military base Area 51, where they remained in secret for the next four decades while Area 51 and the Roswell incident became mythologized in popular rumors and conspiracy theories.

Only a few selected people in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies knew and discouraged revealing this secret to the public for fear of mass panic and the tense political climate of the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. At the same time, the United States were hiding a secret war with aliens.[3][4]

July 2nd

"

David Levinson: It's like in chess: First, you strategically position your pieces and when the timing is right you strike. See? They're positioning themselves all over the world, using this one signal to synchronise their efforts and in approximately 6 hours the signal's gonna disappear and the countdown's gonna be over.
Marty Gilbert: And then what?
David Levinson: Checkmate. "

―{{{2}}}

On July 2, a 550 km wide alien mothership enters Earth's orbit and deploys 36 saucer-shaped "destroyer" spacecraft, each 15 miles (24 km) wide, and taking position over some of Earth's major cities. The aliens made use of human satellites to relay signals between vessels and coordinate their attack. Human response was in panic and uncertainty as people tried to flee from the targeted cities while the world's governments placed their military forces on high alert and making attempts to contact the aliens without causing hostile first contact while remaining ignorant of the extraterrestrials' malevolent intentions.

L 1a des

Destruction of Los Angeles.

The aliens' hidden transmissions in Earth's satellites was eventually discovered by David Levinson, an MIT-trained satellite technician, who quickly realized about the aliens' coordinated attack. With the support of his estranged wife Constance Spano, the White House Communications Director, Levinson was able to warn U.S. President Thomas Whitmore about the attack. However, Levinson's warning proved too late for Whitmore to issue a large-scale evacuation, and at 2:32 AM EST,[3] the aliens attacked with advanced directed-energy weapons and reduced the 36 targeted cities to ruins.

July 3rd

"

General Grey: If you calculate the time it takes to destroy a city and move on, we're looking at the worldwide destruction of every major city in the next 36 hours.
President Whitmore: We're being exterminated."

―{{{2}}}

On July 3, the City Destroyers began to move onto other cities after Earth's governments began ordering individual counterattacks against the invaders. However, human attacks against the Destroyers proved severely ineffective, as the aliens are protected by force fields, making their vessels invulnerable to conventional weapons. This resulted in a one-sided massacre on human military forces. Afterwards, the aliens began methodically eliminating many military installations, such as NORAD and NATO headquarters in Brussels.[3]

After the failed counterattack, President Whitmore and his remaining staff, who escaped from the destruction of Washington, D.C., soon learned the secret of Area 51 from Secretary of Defense Albert Nimziki and arrived there in hopes of learning anything that could stop the invaders.

During a failed assault on a City Destroyer in Los Angeles, an alien pilot was captured by Captain Steven Hiller, a U.S. Marine Corps pilot, and taken to Area 51. When scientist Dr. Brackish Okun attempts to autopsy the alien, it regains consciousness and attempts to escape. When questioned by Whitmore, the alien attempts a psychic attack against him, but is killed by Whitmore's security detail. Whitmore learned that while he was being attacked, he saw the alien's thoughts and its kind's intentions to plunder Earth's natural resources at the cost of destroying all life on the planet. Whitmore then orders a nuclear attack on the Destroyers, but the first attempt in Houston fails to penetrate the force field of the vessel. Whitmore ordered an immediate withdrawal of the bombers.

Other nuclear states agreed to not launch their arsenals until the results of the Houston attack were clear.[3] Similar strikes were quickly abandoned. By the late evening on July 3, all the remaining major cities had been abandoned and military forces had been routed. A select few, including Whitmore, began considering ways of how they could resist the inevitable ground invasion by the aliens.[3]

July 4th

Main article: July 4 counterattack
"We're fighting for our right to live, to exist, and should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice, 'We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on, we're going to survive. Today we celebrate our Independence day!'

- Thomas Whitmore"

―{{{2}}}

On July 4, Levinson devised a plan to use the repaired Area 51 spaceship to infiltrate the mothership and uploading a computer virus into its system, theorizing that this will temporarily disrupt the aliens' force fields. Steven Hiller volunteers to pilot the attacker, with Levinson accompanying him to implement the virus, and deploying a nuclear weapon on board the mothership. The shutdown of the force fields would coincide with a globally coordinated attack on the destroyers with the Americans leading the first assault.

With not enough military pilots to man all available aircraft, volunteers including Whitmore are enlisted for the counterattack. With the successful implantation of the virus, Whitmore led the attack on a City Destroyer approaching Area 51. It is during this battle that the Americans learned that the Destroyer's weapon port is its weak point, when one pilot, Russell Casse, flew his aircraft directly into the weapon port in a suicide attack, causing a explosive chain reaction that destroys the entire ship.

The Americans then informed other military forces from around the world on how to destroy the remaining City Destroyers, before they could strike in their fourth wave. Hiller and Levinson successfully launched the nuclear warhead that completely obliterated the mothership, and managed to escape the ensuing destruction unharmed. The loss of the mothership ensured the disorientation and subsequent destruction of the remaining alien forces left on Earth.

Aftermath

"In the space of three days, the world had changed forever. The whole of the planet united in a single goal, fighting one common enemy. That is unprecedented in the history of our species and the greatest building block we could have for starting again. I do find it ironic that we came together and triumphed on a day named for independence and separation. But I'm guessing extra-terrestrials don't have a good sense of irony.

- David Levinson"

―{{{2}}}
Ending 10

Steven Hiller with Dylan Dubrow watching the remains of a City Destroyer.

Following humanity's 'Independence Day,' Earth was devastated from the invasion as more than a hundred of the planet's populous and historical cities along with irreplaceable institutions such as museums and libraries were destroyed, and at least three billion human beings were killed.[2] Many of these deaths were caused by riots, disease, crime and hunger during and following after the conflict.[5] Those alive would never recover from the wounds of the invasion, both physical and emotional.[3]

Within time, the international community recovers and becomes more politically united by common cause and putting to rest centuries-old conflicts and political distrust due to a newfound fundamental sense of self-awareness that humanity as a whole is not alone in the universe and had barely escaped from their extinction.[3] Coinciding with this unity, the United Nations formed the Earth Space Defense to prevent the possibility of a similar extraterrestrial invasion in the future. The remains of the alien vessels were salvaged and reverse-engineered by humanity to creating new technology for consumer and military use, and further help in Earth's reconstruction process.

Alien survivors were discovered in the aftermath in which many were either captured or killed. Others, however, were able to establish a temporary resistance against human forces. One such example was in the African Congo in which an alien cell survived for more than ten years after the invasion.[6]

Twenty years later, it was revealed the aliens were able to send a distress signal on the X-Band frequency before the mothership was destroyed[2], which results in forcing the aliens' queen to personally come to Earth and threatening the human race once more in 2016.

City Casualties

108 cities were completely destroyed in three waves by the aliens, and 35 were saved and suffered from minor structural damage after the prevention of a fourth wave.[1]

First Wave Second Wave Third Wave Intercepted Wave
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Sao Paulo, Brazil  Buenos Aires, Argentina  Caracas, Venezuela
New York City, U.S.  Philadelphia, U.S. Pittsburgh, U.S. Cleveland, U.S.
Washington, D.C., U.S.  Atlanta, U.S.  (3) Houston, U.S.  Dallas, U.S. 
Los Angeles, U.S. (2) Denver, U.S. Phoenix, U.S. (5) Area 51, U.S.
San Francisco, U.S. Seattle, U.S. Vancouver, Canada Las Vegas, U.S.
Toronto, Canada  Chicago, U.S. Detroit, U.S. St. Louis, U.S.
Mexico City, Mexico  Guadalajara, Mexico  Monterrey, Mexico  El Paso, U.S.
Havana, Cuba  Miami, U.S. Boston, U.S. Montreal, Canada
Dakar, Senegal  Abidjan, Ivory Coast  Kinshasa, DRC Tripoli, Libya
Lagos, Nigeria  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia  Nairobi, Kenya Cape Town, South Africa
Jakarta, Indonesia  Medan, Indonesia  Perth, Australia   Sydney, Australia
Singapore, Singapore Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  Rangoon, Myanmar  Mandalay, Myanmar
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Phnom Penh, Cambodia  Vientiane, Laos  Bangkok, Thailand
Manila, Philippines Hanoi, Vietnam  Pingxiang, China  Kunming, China
(1) Hong Kong, China Guangzhou, China (4) Macau, China Taipei, Taiwan
Shanghai, China Ningbo, China Hangzhou, China Wuhan, China
Beijing, China  Shenyang, China  Changchun, China Qiqihar, China
Seoul, South Korea Pyongyang, North Korea Pusan, South Korea Hiroshima, Japan
Tokyo, Japan  Yokohama, Japan  Nagoya, Japan  Osaka, Japan
Calcutta, India  Dhaka, Bangladesh  Kathmandu, Nepal  Lahore, Pakistan
Bombay, India  Bangalore, India  Madras, India  Colombo, Sri Lanka
New Delhi, India  Hyderabad, India  Mogadishu, Somalia  (6) National Republic of Umbutu, DRC
Karachi, Pakistan    Islamabad, Pakistan  Kabul, Afghanistan  Mecca, Saudi Arabia
Tehran, Iran Baghdad, Iraq Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Cairo, Egypt
Jerusalem, Israel  Tel Aviv, Israel  Damascus, Syria  Beirut, Lebanon
Vladivostok, Russia Harbin, China  Sapporo, Japan  Petropavlovsk, Russia
Moscow, Russia  St. Petersburg, Russia  Helsinki, Finland Stockholm, Sweden
Kiev, Ukraine  Odessa, Ukraine  Volgograd, Russia  Ankara, Turkey
Istanbul, Turkey  Bucharest, Romania  Belgrade, Yugoslavia Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina
Athens, Greece  Naples, Italy  Algiers, Algeria  Casablanca, Morocco
Rome, Italy  Venice, Italy  Milan, Italy  Monaco, Monaco
Warsaw, Poland  Vienna, Austria  Prague, Czech Republic  Budapest, Hungary
Berlin, Germany  Hamburg, Germany  Frankfurt, Germany  Munich, Germany
London, England Birmingham, England Liverpool, England Belfast, Northern Ireland
Paris, France  Lyon, France  Marseille, France Barcelona, Spain
Amsterdam, Netherlands  Brussels, Belgium  Antwerp, Belgium  Rotterdam, Netherlands

1. Hong Kong was under British administration.

2. Colorado Springs was targeted because of the NORAD base at Cheyenne Mountain.

3. Houston was largely destroyed by a nuclear missile.

4. Macau was under Portuguese administration.

5. The original target was San Diego.

6. The Umbutu ship was the only City Destroyer to survive intact before it was shutdown following the destruction of the mothership.

Gallery

Arrival of the City Destroyers

The City Destroyers attack

July 4th counterattack, also known as The Fourth

Behind the Scenes

Appearances

References

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