The story of the glass varies in details from place to place, but the core remains the same: a large alien meteorite crashes near Moscow, followed by a long winter and the red fever. It's safe to say anyone who knows the truth is either long dead or hidden in a government bunker.
Still, anyone brave or foolish enough to sift through the remaining records of Soviet military intelligence will uncover the revealing truth. The glass is not an alien entity, but an incredibly advanced bioweapon that failed catastrophically, catalyzing a violent nuclear retaliation and resulting in the apocalypse we know today.
In more detail, the experiment, labeled *Project Stonefire*, started by Dr. Ivan Sokolov in a secret Biopreparat lab, was meant to be a last resort biological weapon to be used against the USA. It was designed as a synthetic silica-based virus that could alter the genetics of entire cities at a time.
A virus was synthesized from Herpes Simplex Virus 26, based on previous theoretical work on Virus Induced Gene-Silencing (VIGS), labeled as “*Polymisceovirus*”. Its original strain was meant to infect host cells, excise random snippets of DNA, insert other pieces, replicate, and infect the host without causing harm. Over time, the virus collected large snippets of DNA from other species and, upon infecting another host, scrambled the DNA, sometimes creating chimeras.
However, the virus had an unexpected behavior. It began to mutate and combine with other viruses and bacteria, creating new and powerful variants. One unidentified mutation on a species of Actinobacter produced filaments of silica nanocomposites, resulting in the creation of the red glass bacteria, named “Vitrobacter rubium”. This bacteria produces a glass-like substance, forming large crystalline structures on colonized land and causing a disease known as “Glass Fever” on animals.
>THE LEGEND OF THE LIVING GLASSEvery child hears the story at some point in their life: centuries ago, the Great Shard crashed into the world near Moscow, bringing with it the longest winter ever seen. Old civilizations crumbled as the few survivors built homes underground, fearing for their lives. People were too occupied with starvation and freezing to death to notice the shard spreading through the lands, cutting through anything it touched.
When spring arrived, the survivors found a vastly different world. Vast cracks appeared on the surface, and the earth and stone around them turned to a dark, pulsating glass, eventually named living glass, or red glass. It glowed a crimson hue through the thick, toxic atmosphere filled with miniscule crystal fragments. The children born then showed the first signs of mutation, with their genes mixed with other species through unknown mutagenic agents.
The little wildlife that survived changed with the environment, absorbing particles of living glass. This caused crystalized spurs to grow on their bodies. Some humans showed similar signs after visiting areas closer to the fractures and developed an incurable infection, known as the Glass Fever. Those inflicted usually have a short life span of only a few years, sometimes months, and are exiled by their communities.
