In the 21st century, technological advances, ideals, and demographic pressure led Earth to colonise first its moon, Luna, in 2026, and then Mars in 2035.
Shortly after colonising Mars, the national governments of Earth, faced with an environmental crisis of dramatic proportions, and an ongoing inability to curb the pollution fuelling it, gradually handed over sovereignty to the United Nations, whose role in the extraplanetary colonisation movement had been critical.
Access to the Epstein Drive in 2075 gave the United Nations of Earth the ability to expand into the rest of the Solar System. Intense demographic and environmental pressure, and the relative disinterest of Mars in external colonisation, eventually led to a massive exodus and the founding of numerous colonies, in the Main Asteroid Belt (aka "The Belt") from 2100 onwards; then on the moons of Jupiter (Io, Ganymede and Europa), Titan, one of Saturn's moons, and Uranus' largest moon, Titania.
As on Mars, these different UN colonies - where life is generally harsh, life spans short and prospects bleak - invariably sought autonomy. The UN repeatedly responded to such requests with outright force, and colonial politics quickly acquired a very oppressive nature. This led to the formation of the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA), which both Earth and Mars classify as a terrorist organisation. Notwithstanding, in 2340 the OPA are in de facto control of major colonies such as Ceres and Eros in the Belt, and Titan, and have won the hearts and minds of the majority of the Outer Planets populace.
Earth's population was way beyond sustainable limits, and its economy relied heavily on the resources of the Belt. Over half of the population live off "Basic", that is the UN welfare system termed Basic Assistance.
Relations with Mars blew hot and cold since the Daughter Planet was granted independance in 2075; in the present day, the two were locked into a Cold War since 2322. There had always been a growing feeling on Earth that Mars would soon pull too far ahead, and that "now" was the very last chance to bring the old colony to heel. Martian stealth technology was always been pointed at; the risk of Mutually Assured Destruction was, for some, brandished as preferable to the unilaterally ensured destruction (or self-destruction...) of Earth that such developments would lead to.
Everything was in place to ensure that the Eros Incident of 2340 would be seen as some sort of mysterious Martian weapon, and the first step to the war that, following hot on the heels of the Ganymede skirmish, finally broke out later in the same year, notwithstanding the extraordinary discovery of the alien proto-molecule.
However the hawkish faction on Earth led the planet to disaster, when a dramatic miscalculation led to the planet being struck by several Martian nuclear missiles in 2341.
This immediately caused several hundreds of millions of deaths. The pillars of civilisation slowly tumbled like so many dominoes, leading to utter chaos, famine, disease and civil war, only stemmed locally when UN government managed to take on near-feudal powers.
The planet Earth of 2350 is devastated. Less than one person in ten has made it through the decade. Vast swathes of the surface are uninhabitable, communities survive, the living mostly preying off what has been left by the dead, but none prosper, and the vestiges of the past cannot last forever. Weather patterns have dramatically changed and the wellspring of humanity may well have been poisoned beyond recovery.
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