Seven Hour War

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Seven Hour War
Beginning	Post Black Mesa Incident
End	The seventh hour
Location
Earth
Outcome
Decisive Combine victory Combine conquest of Earth Wallace Breen appointed administrator Overwatch established, human militaries dissolved or integrated Dissolution of all nations and subjugation of humanity Depletion of Earth's natural resources and draining of it's oceans and seas
Belligerents
United Nations National militaries Non-state actors
Combine
Commanders
Human leaders
Unknown Combine leaders The Shu'ulathoi
Strength
All national militaries and paramilitaries
Unknown
Casualties
Very severe civilian and military casualties
Unknown, presumably light

 

"It'll be the Seven Hour War, all over again. Except this time we won't last seven minutes."

―Eli Vance

 

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 surrender of the planet in less than seven hours, and a Combine occupation soon after.

Overview

The war itself is never discussed directly in Half-Life 2 but mentioned briefly by Eli Vance in Black Mesa East looking at a small corkboard featuring several annotated newspaper cutouts and images that cause him to reminisce about the events during the war.

In Episode Two, Eli states that if the Superportal matures, "it'll be the Seven Hour War all over again... except this time we won't last seven minutes!"

After the war ended, local militias and other resistance groups sprung up to combat the Combine's garrison force.

Conflict

In the wake of the Resonance Cascade caused by the Black Mesa Incident, a series of destructive Portal Storms raged across Earth, littering Xenian life forms all around the world. Facing the overwhelming alien onslaught, the planet's populace to move into cities for protection, but even this was not enough. Soon, nearly all world governments were at the point of collapse, with one newspaper reporting that the effort to restore order on Earth had stretched their resources to the breaking point.

Attracted to Earth by the dimensional rift, a vast transdimensional empire known as the Combine invaded the planet. They caught the human population by surprise and defeated all of its armed forces, such as they were, in only seven hours. The United Nations Secretariat Building in New York was reported to have been heavily damaged from projectiles from space during the war, suggesting that the Combine may have used orbital bombardments. The newspaper's photo also indicates least two Striders attacked the building.

During the war, the former Black Mesa administrator, Dr. Wallace Breen discovered a way to communicate with the Combine directly. The United Nations then authorized Breen to negotiate peace with the invading extraterrestrial empire by any means necessary. Breen managed to negotiate peace by "saving" the remainder of humanity at the cost of their freedom. Breen was then declared "Interim Administrator" by the Combine, a position that served little more than a political puppet ruler. This "negotiation" which could be considered little more than a plea for mercy ultimately marked the end of the Seven Hour War. In a cruel twist of hindsight, while the Combine would have been a grave threat even if the human militaries had been fully-equipped and ready to do battle, Earth's beleaguered armed forces stood no chance in dealing with both the Combine and the ongoing Portal Storms - the War had ended long before it ever truly began.

Aftermath

Clipping from a newspaper labeled "The Times" found in Half-Life: Alyx. The paper details Breen's negotiations with the Combine for Earth's surrender.

In the aftermath of the conflict, the remaining humans were gathered into reorganized city centers, with the world outside of such areas filled with wildlife native to other worlds. This made 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's workforce and military.

The Combine also began to exploit the resources of Earth water, which can be seen in chapter Highway 17 and Sandtraps, where piers sit barren on the once watery shorelines where Earth's oceans had once occupied. The Citadel served as the only node to the Combine Overworld and Earth, as the portal storms were no longer furious on the planet, and they could no longer use Xen as a connection.

The Combine, since gaining dominance on Earth, has imposed a "Suppression Field," which serves to inhibit human reproduction. Comments made at the train station during Gordon Freeman's arrival suggest that the Combine has been drugging the populace through their water supply, putting "something in the water to make you forget",

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 line 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 time frame 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.

The reason 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 twenty years until the events of Episode One. However, the suppression field is disabled due to the damage the Citadel had taken thanks to Freeman's actions in Half-Life 2. With the suppression field down, Dr. Kleiner bluntly told everyone on a broadcast in City 17 to "Go out there and mate."

Trivia

• The Seven Hour War, or more likely, a reenactment of the event, was to be depicted in a Breencast-esque propaganda piece during the events of Half-Life: Alyx. Though this was eventually cut from the game, the files associated with the sequence are still present in the retail version, which, after some maintenance, allows the scene to be reconstructed.