Seven Hour War

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Seven Hour War
Beginning	After the Black Mesa Incident
End	Seven hours after it began
Location
Earth
Outcome
Decisive Combine victory Surrender of the United Nations Combine Empire annexes Earth Wallace Breen appointed interim administrator
Belligerents
United Nations Human armies
Combine Empire
Commanders
Human leaders
Unknown Combine leaders
Strength
All of Earth's armies
Unknown
Casualties
Severe civilian and military casualties
Unknown, presumably light

The Seven Hour War was a brief, but decisive confrontation between the Combine and the governments of Earth, ultimately leading to a large human death toll and the Combine occupation of the entire planet.

Overview

The war itself is never discussed directly in Half-Life 2, but it is mentioned briefly by Eli Vance in Black Mesa East — looking at a small corkboard featuring several annotated newspaper cutouts and images causes him to reminisce about the events during the war. In Episode Two, Eli states that if the super-portal matures "it'll be the Seven Hour War all over again... except this time we won't last seven minutes!"

After the war ended, the Resistance was formed to combat the new Combine leadership.

Battle

As the Portal Storms raged across the Earth, spreading Xen life forms across Earth, this caused the planet's populous to move into cities for protection. These portal storms attracted a powerful alien empire known as the Combine- these portals being the opening to stage an invasion of Earth. They defeated all armed forces of all the nations on Earth in only seven hours. It was after this war that Dr. Wallace Breen negotiated a surrender on behalf of the United Nations, "saving" the survivors at the cost of their freedom. Breen was appointed ruler of Earth but remains under the control of the Combine. The official surrender appears to have taken place in New York City, in the United Nations building.

After the 7 hour war, the remaining humans were gathered in cities, with the world outside of such areas filled with wildlife native to other worlds. This made the the exteriors of cities and the regions beyond dangerous if not downright deadly to not only human life but also to the rest of Earth's natural fauna. The rest of the planet was reduced to inhospitable wastelands. Facilities like Nova Prospekt were opened within the remnants of the remaining man-made infrastructure- their goals being to modify humans, erase their memories, and assimilate them into the Combine military. The Combine also began to exploit the resources of Earth like water, which can be clearly seen in chapter Highway 17 and Sandtraps, where piers sit barren on the once watery shorelines where Earth's oceans had once occupied.

At the beginning of Half-Life 2, the G-Man makes a brief reference to the war, telling Gordon Freeman that "all the effort in the world would have gone to waste..." This is generally understood to be a direct reference to the war, the establishment of Dr. Breen's terror state, and the reasons for Freeman's stasis. Despite Freeman's triumph at Black Mesa, it was theorized that there was nothing that he or the entire human race could have done to save Earth from the superior forces of the Combine empire immediately after the events of Half-Life.

Half-Life 2 begins an undisclosed number of years after this war, and the rule of the Combine has been firmly established. There is, however, some evidence from the Half-Life 2: Episode One official website indicating that Half-Life 2 takes place nearly two decades after the Black Mesa incident. Such a time frame is logically consistent with the aging of the series' characters between Half-Life and Half-Life 2. This explains how Eli Vance's child, Alyx Vance, has matured to an adult since the events of the first game, where she was still an infant at the time. As for why there are no children in the game overall, the Combine had set up a reproductive suppression field for all of the remaining humans a short time after the war, preventing any further reproduction for approximately 20 years until the events of Episode One, with the suppression field being disabled due to the damage the Citadel had taken thanks to Freeman's actions in Half-Life 2.