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<h1><span class="sp1">ARMAGEDDON—2419 A.D.</span></h1>
<h2><i>By Philip Francis Nowlan</i></h2></div>
<h3>Foreword</h3>
<div class="figcap"><ANTIMG src="images/001.png" width-obs="75" height-obs="75" alt="E" title="E" /></div>
<p class="firstp"><span class="dcap">lsewhere</span> I have set down, for whatever
interest they have in this, the 25th
Century, my personal recollections of the
20th Century.</p>
<p>Now it occurs to me that my memoirs of
the 25th Century may have an equal interest 500 years
from now—particularly in view of that unique perspective
from which I have seen the 25th Century,
entering it as I did, in one leap across a gap of 492
years.</p>
<p>This statement requires elucidation. There are still
many in the world who are not familiar with my unique
experience. Five centuries from now there may be
many more, especially if civilization is fated to endure
any worse convulsions than those which have occurred
between 1975 A.D. and the present time.</p>
<p>I should state therefore, that I, Anthony Rogers, am,
so far as I know, the only man alive whose normal span
of eighty-one years of life has been spread over a
period of 573 years. To be precise, I lived the first
twenty-nine years of my life between 1898 and 1927;
the other fifty-two since 2419. The gap between these
two, a period of nearly five hundred years, I spent in a
state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of
katabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on
my physical or mental faculties.</p>
<div class="bk1"><p class="cap"><i><span class="dcap">Here</span>, once more, is a real scientifiction story plus. It
is a story which will make the heart of many readers
leap with joy.</i></p>
<p><i>We have rarely printed a story in this magazine that for
scientific interest, as well as suspense, could hold its own with
this particular story. We prophesy that this story will become
more valuable as the years go by. It certainly holds a
number of interesting prophecies, of which no doubt, many
will come true. For wealth of science, it will be hard to
beat for some time to come. It is one of those rare stories
that will bear reading and re-reading many times.</i></p>
<p><i>This story has impressed us so favorably, that we hope the
author may be induced to write a sequel to it soon.</i></p>
</div>
<p>When I began my long sleep, man had just begun
his real conquest of the air
in a sudden series of transoceanic
flights in airplanes
driven by internal combustion
motors. He had barely
begun to speculate on the
possibilities of harnessing
sub-atomic forces, and had
made no further practical
penetration into the field of
ethereal pulsations than the
primitive radio and television
of that day. The
United States of America
was the most powerful nation
in the world, its political, financial, industrial and
scientific influence being supreme; and in the arts also
it was rapidly climbing into leadership.</p>
<p>I awoke to find the America I knew a total wreck—to
find Americans a hunted race in their own land,
hiding in the dense forests that covered the shattered
and leveled ruins of their once magnificent cities, desperately
preserving, and struggling to develop in their
secret retreats, the remnants of their culture and science—and
the undying flame of their sturdy independence.</p>
<p>World domination was in the hands of Mongolians
and the center of world power lay in inland China,
with Americans one of the few races of mankind unsubdued—and
it must be admitted in fairness to the
truth, not worth the trouble of subduing in the eyes of
the Han Airlords who ruled North America as titular
tributaries of the Most Magnificent.</p>
<p>For they needed not the forests in which the Americans
lived, nor the resources of the vast territories
these forests covered. With the perfection to which
they had reduced the synthetic production of necessities
and luxuries, their remarkable development of
scientific processes and mechanical accomplishment of
work, they had no economic need for the forests, and
no economic desire for the enslaved labor of an unruly
race.</p>
<p>They had all they needed for their magnificently
luxurious and degraded scheme of civilization, within
the walls of the fifteen cities of sparkling glass they
had flung skyward on the sites of ancient American
centers, into the bowels of the earth underneath them,
and with relatively small surrounding areas of agriculture.</p>
<p>Complete domination of the air rendered communication
between these centers a matter of ease and safety.
Occasional destructive raids on the waste lands were
considered all that was necessary to keep the "wild"
Americans on the run within the shelter of their forests,
and prevent their becoming a menace to the Han
civilization.</p>
<p>But nearly three hundred
years of easily maintained
security, the last century of
which had been nearly sterile
in scientific, social and
economic progress, had
softened and devitalized the
Hans.</p>
<p>It had likewise developed,
beneath the protecting foliage
of the forest, the
growth of a vigorous new
American civilization, remarkable
in the mobility and
flexibility of its organization, in its conquest of almost
insuperable obstacles, in the development and guarding
of its industrial and scientific resources, all in anticipation
of that "Day of Hope" to which it had been
looking forward for generations, when it would be
strong enough to burst from the green chrysalis of the
forests, soar into the upper air lanes and destroy the
yellow incubus.</p>
<p>At the time I awoke, the "Day of Hope" was almost
at hand. I shall not attempt to set forth a detailed history
of the Second War of Independence, for that has
been recorded already by better historians than I am.
Instead I shall confine myself largely to the part I was
fortunate enough to play in this struggle and in the
events leading up to it.</p>
<p>It all resulted from my interest in radioactive gases.
During the latter part of 1927 my company, the American
Radioactive Gas Corporation, had been keeping
me busy investigating reports of unusual phenomena
observed in certain abandoned coal mines near the
Wyoming Valley, in Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>With two assistants and a complete equipment of
scientific instruments, I began the exploration of a
deserted working in a mountainous district, where several
weeks before, a number of mining engineers had
reported traces of carnotite<SPAN name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</SPAN> and what they believed to
be radioactive gases. Their report was not without
foundation, it was apparent from the outset, for in our
examination of the upper levels of the mine, our instruments
indicated a vigorous radioactivity.</p>
<div class="footnote"><p><SPAN name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></SPAN> A hydrovanadate of uranium, and other metals; used as a
source of radium compounds.</p>
</div>
<p>On the morning of December 15th, we descended to
one of the lowest levels. To our surprise, we found
no water there. Obviously it had drained off through
some break in the strata. We noticed too that the
rock in the side walls of the shaft was soft, evidently
due to the radioactivity, and pieces crumbled
under foot rather easily. We made our way cautiously
down the shaft, when suddenly the rotted timbers
above us gave way.</p>
<p>I jumped ahead, barely escaping the avalanche of
coal and soft rock, but my companions, who were
several paces behind me, were buried under it, and
undoubtedly met instant death.</p>
<p>I was trapped. Return was impossible. With my
electric torch I explored the shaft to its end, but could
find no other way out. The air became increasingly
difficult to breathe, probably from the rapid accumulation
of the radioactive gas. In a little while my
senses reeled and I lost consciousness.</p>
<p>When I awoke, there was a cool and refreshing circulation
of air in the shaft. I had no thought that I
had been unconscious more than a few hours, although
it seems that the radioactive gas had kept me in a state
of suspended animation for something like 500 years.
My awakening, I figured out later, had been due to
some shifting of the strata which reopened the shaft
and cleared the atmosphere in the working. This must
have been the case, for I was able to struggle back up
the shaft over a pile of debris, and stagger up the long
incline to the mouth of the mine, where an entirely
different world, overgrown with a vast forest and no
visible sign of human habitation, met my eyes.</p>
<p>I shall pass over the days of mental agony that followed
in my attempt to grasp the meaning of it all.
There were times when I felt that I was on the verge
of insanity. I roamed the unfamiliar forest like a lost
soul. Had it not been for the necessity of improvising
traps and crude clubs with which to slay my food, I
believe I should have gone mad.</p>
<p>Suffice it to say, however, that I survived this psychic
crisis. I shall begin my narrative proper with my first
contact with Americans of the year 2419 A.D.</p>
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