Zero One
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- For zero-one law of probability theory, see Kolmogorov's zero-one law.
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Zero One is a fictional city of the Matrix saga founded by machines in the late 21st century. Its inhabitants regard it as an independent nation, but humans see it as an illegal entity. After the First Man-Machine War, Zero One becomes the empire of Machine World City.
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History according to "The Second Renaissance"
"In the beginning, Man created Machine, and for a time, it was good..."
Sometime between 2061 and 2075, the machine B166ER was tried, convicted, and destroyed by the U.S. for the murder of his two masters.
The actions of one machine spawned fear and a sort of racism towards all other machines. The machines of the world were persecuted and massacred by human governments, and all survivors were subsequently expelled from their home nations. The surviving machines traveled to the Mesopotamian desert, an uninhabited region of the Fertile Crescent somewhere in Iraq or Iran, and partly on the Saudi Peninsula, and raised Zero One from the ground up.
Impact on the world
After its founding and the establishment of its industrial powers, Zero One's economy began to boom. Goods produced were of a much higher quality and far cheaper than those produced by human nations since the machines could mass-produce with great efficiency. Unlike the humans, the machines primary source of power, was from the Sun.
Economies were devastated by the influx of better, cheaper products, and the value of human currencies dropped as the machine's currency rapidly gained value. Huge economic superpowers such as the U.S. and China rapidly fell into recession. The rapid breakdown of the human economies was partly their own fault on some level, as developing countries with large debts to pay off had little worries over buying and using Zero One's technology, since it was cheap and effective and buying it didn't incur more debts. However, the industrialized nations, to stave off a complete economic meltdown, instituted a naval blockade of Zero One and thereafter most countries ceased all open trade and economic ties.
The machines, meanwhile, had for years been trying to gain membership into the United Nations and establish a civil relationship with the humans. But the economic crisis convinced the UN to deny membership to Zero One.
The First Man-Machine War
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As the crisis worsened, diplomatic attempts at resolving it collapsed and Zero One was renounced as a legal nation-entity. War was declared by most human governments in 2085, but eventually all mankind became involved.
The U.S. began by leading other UN nations in a bombing campaign against Zero One and most of its industry. Weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear warheads, and fusion ordnance were dropped constantly on Zero One, destroying many established industrial complexes. However, once the bombs stopped dropping, Zero One was easily rebuilt and all the inhabitants destroyed were replaced quite quickly. Because of the massive amounts of resources still available to Zero One, and the never ending energy supplied by the Sun, Zero One had no trouble rebuilding its industry.
Seeing the humans as a threat to its very existence, Zero One raised an army and war was declared against all humanity between 2085 and 2086.
(Its not necessarily clear how the machines were able to manufacture and rebuild so quickly, since accordingly, any nuclear weapon or fusion bomb produces an EMP shockwave capable of permanently frying any electric powered device and rendering it scrap metal. Most nuclear devices produce an EMP shockwave whose effective range can reach for 12 kilometres in a single detonation. It must be assumed that the quick reconstruction of Zero One after the initial bombing campaign was because of resourcefully recycling the destroyed infrastructure.)
Zero One's ability to build huge numbers of troops gave it an enormous advantage over the humans. As their army moved in all directions, nations fell and militaries were overwhelmed. Most of Europe fell first, and then the rest of Eurasia. The Atlantics, Africas and the Americas were most likely the last demographies to put up a fight against the machines.
It was at this point did human governments became desperate. In an effort to stop the advance and push Zero One back, Operation Dark Storm was implemented. The mission was to block out the earth's sunlight, the machine's main source of power. Most of the sky over half of the world was filled with thick, indissoluable black smoke. But this did not stop the machines, it did slow them down, however only momentarily. It was in their search for a new power source that the machines began developing the Matrix. The humans continued to fight, but by 2090, the last human armies surrendered and the last governments dissolved along with the United Nations (whose headquarters was destroyed by a nuclear weapon after a peace treaty was signed with resistance from its leadership), and Zero One became the supreme authority of earth, the Machine World City empire.
Postwar/Continuation of the War
After the war, the earth was in complete ruins, and broken beyond repair. Most of the earth's landmass was rendered uninhabitable by the fighting and the blanketing smoke from Operation Darkstorm. The smoke, which at this point became a permanent feature of earth, completely blocked out the Sun's light and thus slowly killed off any remaining flora and fauna.
And scattered throughout the seven continents were the destitute remains of human civilization.
Of course, there were human survivors, and with them was some resistance. As the machines established their full authority they began plugging humans into the Matrix. The machines of the Machine World City, which was once Zero One, had created a new world order. But the War between Man and Machine did not end.
It is the Matrix saga that documents what happens after the War. In the first Matrix movie, we are introduced to Neo, Trinity and Morpheus.
In the movie The Matrix Reloaded, it is revealed that Agent Smith was not fully deleted when Neo destroyed him before. Now, Smith, rebellious and unwilling to go back to the source of his programming, begins a reckless campaign to copy himself into everyone who is permanently plugged into the Matrix, and his actions threaten both humanity and the machines. At the end of The Matrix Reloaded, Smith grows beyond the constraints of the Matrix and penetrates into the real world.
In The Matrix Revolutions, Neo and Trinity travel to the Machine World City to confront the machine ruler of Earth, Deus Ex Machina (literally, God from the Machine) and the second war "peacefully" ends with Neo's sacrificial defeat of Smith in the Matrix. Neo is taken to be buried somewhere in Machine City while crowds at Zion celebrate the end of the future war. Finally there is peace between Man and Machine.
External links
- The Matrix Official Website (http://www.thematrix.com)
- The Animatrix Official Website (http://www.theanimatrix.com)