Threat Condition
The Threat Condition (Śtagróz, from śtatihet grózi "status of threat") is the alert state used by the Mechyrdian Peace Ministry, consisting of six threat levels on three scopes.
The "hazard zone" is the source of the threat, e.g. a defiant sector, a border with a xeno nation, a spatial anomaly, etc.
Color | Applicable hazard zones | Description and readiness |
---|---|---|
Blue | Empire, sector, planet | Normal readiness; only patrol fleets deployed |
Green | Empire, sector, planet | Elevated readiness; intelligence offices focus on the hazard zone |
Yellow | Empire, sector, planet | Military forces start to deploy to in and near the hazard zone, and become ready within 4 hours |
Orange | Empire, sector | Military forces deployed in hazard zone and are ready to strike; martial law implemented within hazard zone |
Red | Empire, sector | Curfew implemented within hazard zone; government starts implementing war economy reforms |
Black | Empire | 16-hour countdown begins; at the end of this countdown, the Eternity Cascade will be activated and erase all of existence.
This threat level can only be entered with consent of the Emperor/Empress, the Chancellor, and the Deptadmin of Peace. |
Eternity Cascade
The Eternity Cascade is a device that, when activated, sends out a shockwave through circumspace that retroactively dissolves every universe that it crosses, thus destroying all of existence. Past, present, and future. And no, it's not for sale.
However, there is an unsolved physical question regarding it. The Eternity Cascade erases all of existence, such that nothing ever existed in the first place; a complete temporal deletion. However, there are infinite universes in circumspace, thus it is mathematically impossible for not one of them to have A) created a weapon with the same mechanism as the Eternity Cascade, and B) already used it to erase all of existence. Thus brings the question: how does anything still exist? There are a few major hypotheses:
- The Eternity Cascade doesn't actually work, despite the testing in simulations showing that it would work if used.
- The Eternity Cascade does work, but circumspace is merely a simulation, and whenever existence is erased, it is restored from a backup.
- The Eternity Cascade does work, but it doesn't prevent new universes from coming into existence. This would require the annihilation shockwave to be slow-moving, and thus one could be spreading towards Mechyrdia at this very moment. This would contradict the simulations showing that the erasure applies to past as well as future, but given the nature of this mystery, the reliability of the simulations is called into question.