So we defeated the Combine... now what?

[-$ilver-]

From playing HL2, it's two episodes and even the Lost Coast and any canon resources we can find, we know that Earth is pretty screwed up at this point and only getting worse. Hints of resource gathering to the extreme from the Combine, wide spread loss of the ecosystem and basically just the wanton destruction and loss of human life and civilization in general. If the last humans manage to defeat the Combine with Gordon's, the Vortigaunts or even G-man's help, then what?

Humans and the world are very adaptable, but at this point with the inland waters drying up, the antlion population getting out of control and coupled with the headcrabs still about killing any on land creatures including birds (once they land), the ichthyosaurs and the blood leeches in the ocean killing off most if not all the sea creatures and the citadels basically tearing up and eating the land and total destruction of areas by portal storms, war and who knows what else, there really is not much left to sustain humans. In later episodes we see there are still forests, but are there deer and elk, hogs, etc. to feed society? Are there edible plants still? The latter I am sure of, the animals I am not due to the antlions and headcrabs previously mentioned. Even still I doubt the oceans will ever be the same even if the land masses can recover, albeit very very slowly and only once the alien ecosystem is either wiped out or coerced to live in harmony.

So what are the human survivors to do? They can not turn back time (yet...). I doubt they can clone from the registry bank or something. Even if they could where would they put the fish? Just huge water tanks on land? Or do they all just start eating blood leeches and headcrabs like we saw the Vortigaunt cooking? Do headcrabs become tame and our faithful companions over time, much like wild dogs were domesticated, as well as Dr Kleiner's Lamaar? Can anitlions be tamed or farmed? Can we use the grubs without killing them? Ichthyosaur hunting might become a popular event like the past time of whale hunting...

So does everyone just go back to their mundane lives and try to rebuild society? Do they look for another uninhabited suitable world to settle on or do what was done on to them, forcefully try and conquer another race weaker then themselves, although (at least at the start) out of our need and necessity rather than just because? (Heck for all we know Gordon and the Resistance fail and either it gets worse on Earth or the Combine destroys it and then what? Really escape or die with the planet? This last bit in parentheses is just conjecture as we do not know what will happen in a later episode or game, but we do know what has already happened up to this point.)

[Daraz]

I do think theres a possibility things may get even worse due to how things are on earth, I mean the ecological disasters, lower sea levels and the new threats that arise from the xen fauna is going to make thing very difficult to rebuild, aside from that, there seems to be a few things that is not brought up, theres barely any old people or folks that appear to be around from before the 7 hour war and black mesa incident minus some of the resistance members, would there be a scarcity of knowledge (Unless there are books, learning material, etc. Though most of the time its better that be taught) that could be passed down upon the younger generation? (Which seems to be more common than old, though there are a few instances where you see folks that are probably in their 50s or maybe even 60s, weird thing to bring up but the medic sometimes say the line, "Here, now patch yourself up", is a bit concerning since this is suppose to be a medic, who is meant to treat people properly rather than just slapping a bandage onto a problem, I don't think this is what a proper soldier medic or even a doctor would do, even if advanced medicine from another universe, I highly doubt the healhkit could do much more like healing bullet wounds, with bullets still in them, intense bleeding, burns, lacerations, blunt trauma and much more afflictions, though it may be able to deal with infections and heal cut skin/exposed skin far quickly than what human medicine can), another thing is that we don't know what the rest of the world's state is, we know that the US is implied to be hit hard the most while Eastern Europe seems to somewhat free from Xen Fauna (Even though there are a lack of animals, apart from birds and rats), the info about the world is extremely limited and is only exclusively in the areas where half life 2 and Alyx take place. Theres two possibilities, for all we could know, Eastern Europe is the last bastion of humanity, implying that that the last of humanity is situated here from across the world in the thousands due to the xen flora taking over most of the world, rendering it inhabitable for humans, while the combine try to save what reminds safe (By destroying the combine, they may leave the rest of the remaining parts untouched by xen flora vulnerable to being overgrown with said life, due to the destruction of their organisation that dealt with the spread of xen flora), or, Eastern Europe is mainly in Combine control due to it being easier to contain in a completely foreign country minus the locals who may of been relocated, for whatever human survivors sought protection under combine control (Not out of choice though, due to them being implied to be the strongest after the seven hour war, having capabilities to help keep the pop safe from the hostile xen flora than any Earth government, likely weakened or destroyed that they're incapable of protecting their people at this point after the war), while those who don't, willingly stay in their native homelands (I.e, Africa, Oceania, South America and Britain) to resist against the combine or to live out their lives peacefully as long as they can from combine rule rather than willingly giving up their freedoms and privileges to basically an galactic empire that gives zero ♥♥♥♥♥ about its slaves, who most likely won't give their vague promise that humanity will be allowed to breed again one day. A great fanmade example is this mod I don't remember the name of, where it takes place somewhere in
Kazakhstan or in a desert like country, they have resistant groups there that are living mostly independent of the combine there. for some reason they were able to conceive a child even though there's the suppression field (That might be the author's own bit to the fanmade lore I guess, that it has a limited range due to where the citadel is situated, meaning humans in the mod's canon, if they get far away as they can, could possibly be able to reproduce), even if its strange, I do say its decent world building that just needs some expansion just to make things make sense. At least with that mod, it expands the half life world, showing that humans are very much capable on living outside of the places that are would be dangerous, in addition, it shows that there are holes within the shrouded supposed superiority of the combine's technological might (Not everything is always perfect, the HECU and Spec Ops may of had their screwups but, they had the capabilities to fight back the Xen life in Black Mesa, things we tend to overlook is the fact that we had Barney fight his way through the military to rescue some scientists to escape the facility earlier on in the disaster, creating unintentional hostility to all of the personnel, as might of been trying to capture them for interrogation as seen in Blueshift, though there are places where its questionable whether they either murdered by the military intentionally for their mission/resisted being captured or were killed by Xen lifeforms. Later on when Gordon meets the military, at that point they're straight up hostile and mistrustful of the Black Mesa personnel due to their run in with Barney possibly or maybe even unnamed groups that managed to fight back well just like the latter, its not entirely know how much HECU he killed, based on what we see, it appears to be quite alot, to the point it might affect their effectiveness to secure Black Mesa, you know less personnel means less folks to clear out xen lifeforms, some of the areas, you see the military seem to be mostly clear of Xen lifeforms, infact this may turn out that you or Gordon are kinda responsible for wasting the military's resources by trying to eliminate/"capture" you, though its worth to point that whoever was in charge decided to otherwise it would be completely different to what would of happened in Black Mesa, so its whoever was in charge's fault more. Even the resistance had their faults, they seem loosely organized, lacking military training or discipline, have vulnerable communication systems and they have somewhat less advanced tech compared to the combine, in terms of military weaponry and armour, apart from Magnus's gadget, Dog, the Gravity gun and the Crossbow that just effective enough to resist the Combine Earth forces, even though theres a bunch of old military stuff like that APC in city 17 and the Whiteforest base with that old soviet heli and even a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ missile, this suggests there may be a bunch of old military equipment around, heck it may even be possible that the military forces of Earth were too overwhelmed by xen, they might not have been able to actually use its equipment and vehicles effectively, meaning its just extra equipment lying around if they can get their hands on it, the HECU and Spec Ops are examples of the tech the USA possesses, that would be decent against the combine, maybe even similar ones across Europe due to the NATO alliance, it seems really odd that the resistance wouldn't try to use this stuff if its abandoned by Earth's long gone forces, though Im doubtful that everyone within the military got wiped, considering that in lore or whatever the community thinks might be the case, that some of military were used as synthetic soldiers, to be were loyal to them by their cybernetic enhancements to remove the vulnerabilities of a human, becoming stronger, loyal and emotionless husks compared to a regular human, in fact, if theres a possibility that not every military battalion joined the combine, than there's likely a chance that they joined the resistance, bringing in their knowledge of military training, tactics, discipline and technological knowledge of their own equipment, vehicles and tech, so they would be more likely to be able to use them, in fact, they very much are capable, Kleiner managed to get the HEV suit to use the combine suit batteries instead of being stuck with the old ones, they seem to be capable but chose to not try to modify old world tech with combine technology to use to their advantage or maybe even be more powerful than what the combine got, Half life Alyx, theres a newspaper that states that the combine did orbital bombardment of cities than sending their forces in after, humanity had to deal with the xen flora teleporting everywhere out of nowhere, presumbly stretching their forces thin, just weakened enough that they would get demolished by the combine, it doesn't sound like that the combine very much are strong as we think or maybe for all I could know, they just sent a force that wasn't overkill, aside from that, its more of them taking advantage of the situation, not out of pure military strength) in comparison, we don't get much info about the world outside of the area in Half Life 2, from what I've seen, most of it is just speculation by fans, including myself, like I mentioned before there may be a real possibility that Eastern Europe houses the last of humanity, judging by how the resistance is doing by the time we arrive, we don't know how truly strong the resistance is across the globe nor the combine's occupation force, we do know that the resistance was vulnerable from being destroyed, the moment we escaped CP, on the day we come, their freedom stations I suppose u would call them were getting wiped out, the Combine were planning to attack Black Mesa East, which resulted in capturing Eli Vance and destroying Black Mesa East, they lacked defenses against the headcrab pods, security measures or traps to stop ensuing forces from breaking in or give them a difficult time to effectively wipe out the resistance, without Gordon, Nova Prospekt would still be in operation and there cannot be any uprising in City 17, while Judith is possibly a Double Agent, there isn't much she can do with Eli captured, even if she threatened Breen with her device to save Eli, I doubt she would get an opportunity again unless Alyx was captured earlier in Nova Prospekt or later, even than the only way they could escape is through Breen's escape pod, which may be captured again by the combine considering that they wouldn't have been able to destroy the Citadel without Gordon's help, which means the combine's forces would still be stationed and ready to be deployed to head to the pod's landing site and possibly capture them again, regardless I don't know if they'll be able to recover and get the opportunity like they did with Gordon, being sent to the resistance base, to Nova Prospekt to indirectly destroy it and cause an uprising, they seem to get the advantage when NP was destroyed, which attracted more resistance members plus with a lack of production facilities for their soldiers, they probably were limited by how much troops they could manufacture, without Gordon as I stated before, they would be at a disadvantage with their loss of lives, which leaves it vulnerable to collapsing the resistance without a way to stir up a uprising ever if that opportunity with Gordon passed and he never came back, it shows that the resistance isn't that strong unless given the opportunity to get more to their side as well as destroying crucial combine bases to effectively kick the combine out of Earth. Lastly, we don't know how much of the human population survived after 20 years of Combine rule and the aftermath of Seven hour war, if the resistance wins, how can we know for sure they have enough humans the continue the race without causing inbreeding or unsuitable traits for that provide a disadvantage in the changed environment in the long term, it would be up to them to determine if it was better just to make their existence as best as possible and mitigating the suffering of those who vulnerable once the last humans alive peacefully die of natural age or try to use combine technology to recreate dead or existing people to fill in the population (Unless they don't have their reproduction organs as soldiers don't really need them in the combine force, which just ends up a waste of time for people trying to clone more people in and for the combine since they can just clone them, not do the slow process of growing a child up in a controlled environment like a lab or a facility dedicated to growing children into soldiers, until they're old enough to fight) or possibly worse go through no matter the suffering they would have to endure so the human race can survive by controlling women's ability to chose to have children, reestablishing traditional gender roles and marriage to encourage more breeding and creating large families until the population becomes too closely related, most of the population end up becoming inbreed or sterile or both, alternatively they could just let people do whatever they want, which while at least women wouldn't be forcibly controlled, treated as tools for making children rather than being treated like people, maybe some people might dislike the idea or get too comfortable with their child-free life before the resistance succeeded or it could be likely in both scenarios that most people don't end up having kids because they lack the experience with raising kids, even if they did, they're likely old and it may be a bit rusty unless they used old knowledge to refresh their memory and get teach others, they may think its a bad idea due to their harsh life under the combine, which is going to affect their capability to think mentally sound with depression affecting alot of citizens due to the combine creating a lack of community, identity and purpose on purpose to make them docile.

Its not going to be easy, thats all I'll say and theres a very real possibility that Humanity may become extinct eventually as a result of the xen flora taking over, lack of food diversity to fulfil the populations of the pre-black mesa incident or they fail to rebuild Earth back to what it was prior to the Seven hour war, resulting in a technologically advanced collection of nomadic tribes trying to survive in a harsh planet with few habitable areas of Earth's old ecology against the Xen lifeforms slowly becoming the dominant species of the planet.

[Daraz]

Publicado originalmente por Lambda Keeper:

You know, everyone forgets about Portal 2, where in the end we can see a giant wheat field, so that means humanity will be ok

I mean, that would be implied, we don't see any humans, but, it could be that it grown by itself on sustained itself in areas that weren't affected by xen life, so for all we could know humanity is extinct but the plants we did use happen to survive on its own without humanity