2057, three months on after scampering for safety, barely hanging on to life I emerged. An underground shelter had served us well - as if we had a choice. The outside world I knew of and took for granted was gone. The sun's rays was half blocked by a thick dark brown broth of dust, smoke and God knows what else humanity brewed up to exterminate the other. The ground looked like something straight out of a Hollywood sci-fi movie, out of this world! What looked like a volcanic ash cloud had settled on it. In the distant a dark fog loomed large ready to gobble up its next victim. The air with a light breeze was unnaturally warm to the face, with a hint of acrid stench, breathing was labored.

I stood up from my crouching position to survey the surroundings further. My two companions were equally stunned. A brief look to either of them to determine which way to go did not yield any results. Going back to the underground shelter was a big no. Life there had become unbearable. Death, disease and hunger had become the order of the day. Sustenance had run out long before.

Ahead of us buildings lay in ruin, just picture the famous Will Smith's movie I Am Legend. With the added dread of absence of clear daylight and any indication of life; plant or animal. To our left lay the IBM-Toyota Corp. headquarters, now in ruins. This had come to symbolize the epitome of human ingenuity. The two global giants had merged and ended up revolutionizing transport. You did not need a car any more to get around. Teleporting had become a reality! But that was all behind us now, irony at its worst for the human race.

Mankind had decided that tolerating each other was too much, a war broke out and the rest is history. Given man's advancement in arming themselves nobody was going to come off better than the other. Nuclear, chemical and conventional had all been utilized to maximum effect. This had started between North Korea and Japan but given world nations' penchant to take sides it went global in an instant.

There was no kind of communication with far flung corners of the planet and I feared for the worst. That humanity had been wiped out but for small pockets. What I’m sure of is some continents were decimated. Just before it went global reports on TV and radio were that of nuclear weapons had detonated in most parts of Eastern Europe, Asia including Japan and the Middle East, presumably annihilating everything in its wake. That is when all global communication was cut off. Many had died and still many more out of the aftermath.

The future looked bleak, any survival unlikely. We just hoped for our own sake we did not breathe in poisonous gases sooner rather than later. No one who ever left the shelter before us came back!