The 19th of March 2016. I had been trusted to be the UN secretary general at Watch the Skies 4: Apocalypse. It was a truly massive megagames with 320 people participating. Running the UN would be a daunting role, dealing with the huge number of international crises that came to plague the planet, but also representing humanity to the many non-human roles in the game.



It would be impossible to do the day justice in chronological order, so instead here are a number of stories that occurred over the day.



Zimbabwean Nuclear Program



The day started well. China vetoed our first proposal. Zimbabwe had with the aid of Chinese business backers been developing what they claimed to be a “Civilian Nuclear Program” and which terrified countries in the region called “An attempt to build nuclear weapons”.



China considered the need to send weapons inspectors into the country as “A gross waste of UN funds to investigate a civilian project” and Vetoed the measure… I wonder why.



The African Union would agree to send its own inspectors independently of the UN (and Chinese interference) but they would find nothing. With a lack of evidence and lack of support for UN inspectors from China the matter would eventually be dropped.



Peace on the Indian Subcontinent?



The Indian representative also made the proud announcement that India would be entering into talks with the Pakistani government to finally settle the issue of the disputed region of Kashmir. The problem with these talks is they completely forgot about one very important thing: What did the people of Kashmir actually want?



This came back to bite India in the ass very quickly, as Kashmir freedom fighters liberated the region, and after holding their own overwhelmingly supported referendum on independence requested that the UN recognize Kashmir as an independent nation.



The Indian ambassador to the UN managed to convince the UN to send peacekeepers into the region to restore order, and run an Independent referendum (that would hopefully be less bias). The results came back and they were still overwhelmingly supporting of independence.



Then either through shrewd diplomacy, indifference or witchcraft (you’d need to ask India) the UN overwhelmingly decided to ignore their own referendum results and refused to recognize Kashmir.



The Z Virus: Or how Africa was lost.

However then came the announcement that a disease dubbed the “Z Virus” had started spreading in Burkina Faso. One of the members of the UN presented a unique action card in which an “Aging pop star” (Not sure who, but I heard he hates Mondays.) would round up a few musicians and hold a concert to drum up support and funds for a crisis.



Z Aid made more money than the UN had ever had in its coffers, and we thought we’d be able to solve the crisis quickly through swift deployment of resources in the area. The problem was my amazing UN support team were busy out in the world, and I needed to get boots on the ground ASAP.



So I gave the money to the the pop star. The pop star went to Africa to start treating the Z virus. The pop star caught the Z virus. The pop star was too sick to get the money out of their bank. The Pop star died. The pop star got up. The pop star hungered for brains. The pop star still really hated Mondays.



The UN scrambled to regain lost funds, and try and deal with the problem, but by this point a full blown Zombie Horde was sweeping across Africa. The entire continent would soon fall foul of the undead, with South Africa and Egypt being major hold out locations of resistance.



It became clear that sending a few peacekeepers wouldn’t solve this problem. So the UN mandated a global mandate to send troupes to Africa to fight the zombies, under a South African lead High Command. South Africa would later report that “No one outside Africa even showed up”. (Turkey did send forces to defend Egypt and stop the problem leaving the continent).



Following the spectacular failure of our call to arms the UN did the next best thing it could think of, and that of course was “Panic” and “Quarantine the entire African Continent”.



Once the Quarantine was imposed the South African Delegate to the UN stayed in the council chambers (Africa was quarantined after all) But the Nigerian Delegate headed home. We did not presume for him to come back.



He came back. The maniac had broken the quarantine and potentially infected the entirety of the UN security council with a virus that turned them into zombies.



So we Quarantined the UN. At this stage some chanting could be heard on the main stage… it would take us a while to find out what that was about but we’ll get back to that.



We spent the next 10 minutes getting the CDC to screen everyone in the building before they finally concluded that the Nigerian Delegate hadn’t infected everyone.



The Zombies would slowly be eradicated by African forces, but the UN, and international community failed the people of Africa. We all should have done more to help.



Chanting on the stage?

It had all started months ago. I started having… Dark Dreams. Dark and terrible visions of suffering beyond imagining. But the visions were clear. I had to find others. We had to join together. Together we could stop the dreams.



I only managed to find one other “Dreamer” but the others definitely found each other, and assembled on the stage to conduct a dark and terrible ritual. At the end of the ritual the Dark Dreams stopped. We were finally free to sleep.



But He had risen. From the depths of the Pacific Cthulhu rose to greet the world.



Early Naval interaction proved ineffective with an initial report to the UN going something along the lines of:

Commander: We think we’ve damaged 1/12th of its hit points.

UN Sec Gen: HIT POINTS? DO YOU THINK THIS IS SOME KIND OF GAME?



The Whales and Dolphins would come to us with another issue at this stage, and after some minor negotiation would agree to save us from Cthulhu if we dealt with their problem.



I’m not sure exactly what happened in the battle against Cthulhu, but Alien, Whale and Human Technology combined and the great old one was put to rest once more.



DAFT - Democracy and Freedom Today.

DAFT, an underground and secret organisation with members at the highest levels of world government, had secretly been conspiring to take over the planet. After one of their agents stole a North Korean Nuclear weapon and were shot down over Nairobi, we managed to capture our first DAFT agent.

They surrendered and, in exchange for amnesty offered us the names of everyone else in the organisation. The UN agreed to issue warrants for all of their arrests, and these players were rounded up by world governments and my crack UN team.

Minor Whale Related Issue

Oh yes I did say there was a minor whale related issue, when we were dealing with Cthulhu… back to that.



The whales informed us that they were swimming under the ice in Antarctica.



Don’t you mean the Arctic? I mean there is land under the ice in Antarctica.

No Antarctica. The entire Continent has been strip mined (DAM ALIENS!). There is nothing left but the sheet ice which is now floating freely… and heading North.



They informed us that if this continued the Ice would melt, sea levels would rise and flood the land, and the global sea temperatures would drop and kill everything in the sea. Overall a “Bad Day” for every inhabitant of earth (probably a Monday Too).



We made some important concessions to the whales to show we were going to deal with the problem (So they helped with Cthulhu) and requested the world Scientific Community work together to come up with a solution.



Word reached me that the Chinese Scientist had the needed tech researched already, so I asked him to attend the UN to present his proposals so we could fund the project and save humanity.



He grew impatient as we dealt with other matters first, said He was busy building an Ark ship to leave the earth with the other scientists and didn’t have time for this, and stormed out.



The UN was silent. I looked at the permanent members of the UN security council. Were any of you aware of this “Ark Ship”?



No.

We were not aware at all. In fact as far as anyone on the UN could tell, the entire scientific community had just gone behind everyone’s back, and were building an Ark ship to leave the earth behind without us.



Seeing as we needed the scientists to implement a project to save the planet from catastrophic sea level rise, this pretty much counted as then entire scientific community reading far too many Ayn Rand Novels, and leaving the rest of humanity to die.



Quickly dubbed “Traitors to all Humanity” The UN passed a motion to have the heads of the worlds scientific community arrested for crimes against humanity. The game ended before we could capture them all, but we did get a few.



End

The game ended. We had Lost Africa and Antarctica, and we were about to have a war with earths scientists to destroy their Ark ship to stop them running away like the cowards they were. The day was long, manic, stressful and absolutely brilliant.



Big Thanks to my UN Team, who made the entire day manageable, by helping me keep track of things in the world, and generally being friendly faces in a sea of angry diplomats.

Also a huge thanks to the UN Control team, who were great all day (especially when we quarantined Africa).

Also top thanks to Jim, who made all this madness possible. It may have been the last Watch the Skies, but I can’t wait for the next Megagame he runs.