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"The Automated Era is generally agreed upon to have begun around 2060 with the widespread development of completely automated plants throughout the U.S., China, Europe, and Japan, though some historians argue for a slightly later date of 2100 to coincide with the increase of thinking machines, which ran factories more efficiently, and opened up the automation industry to a greater market. This also led to machine-aided advancements in scientific fields, resulting in large increases in scientific understanding post-2110."
-- Basic Colony History, Fourth Edition. Published and distributed September 2876.
Around the turn of the century, advances in automation and computational technology resulted in an explosion in the processing and refinement abilities of mankind. Raw materials were used at a far greater rate for the sake of increasing consumption and accelerating scientific progress, resulting in a resource drain far faster than what was initially predicted. By 2194, the world found itself facing a resource crisis, initially beginning with raw materials and rare earth minerals, before moving on to essential fuel sources and food. The First and Second Mechanized Confrontations are collectively referred to as the "Resource Wars," with the first lasting from 2197 to 2201. The war's historical name stems from the fact that it was an almost entirely automated war, with a very low loss in human life directly due to live fire. Despite the "bloodlessness" of the First Mechanized Confrontation, dwindling resources eventually made the war unsustainable, and all primary combatants agreed upon a cease-fire and eventual peace treaty.
Proxy disputes over resource rights continued until 2220, at which point the Second Mechanized Confrontation began, this time with human combatants involved in order to offload some of the reliance on increasingly-expensive computational technology. The majority of remaining resources were put into scavenging ventures and the development of more lethal weaponry, eventually resulting in the mass-produced mecha now known as Husks, equipped with human pilots. Despite the human presence in the war, mechanized units still far outnumbered humans, resulting in heavy losses when said units began turning against their human creators in the latter portion of the war, resulting in a drastic loss of human life. Automated facilities continued to create more units faster than operational armies could be destroyed; as a result, the most powerful weapons solely under human control, the Husks, were mobilized en-masse, resulting in the many Husk units now found all over the world.
Upon the conclusion of the war in 2247, all automated facilities were shut down. Worldly governments held meetings on how best to ensure humanity's survival, resulting in the decision to regress to isolated ways of living while maintaining necessary modern technology. In 2259, the first Colony finished development on the outskirts of Berlin, with many more following.
There has been no war or confrontation since the Second Mechanized Conflict thanks to continued cooperation and oversight by Colony leaders, and their global network of leading experts.
