Life after Black Mesa "Following the Black Mesa Incident and the aftermath Seven Hour War with Wallace Breen's surrender to the Combine, life would no longer be the same. Earth would undergo a massive change both domestically and internationally. The United States Government would effectively be dismantled and its leaders would either be enslaved and/or killed along with the rest of the local population and the UN international community. Any military forces deployed abroad would likely be warned to stay away and dig in, to avoid capture and execution, if they haven't already. Inventions such as the smart phone, social media, music trends, and anything related would never evolve. Wars in the Middle East, the Financial Recession, and innovation not benefitting the Combine would be halted indefinitely and never come to exist. The Combine Occupation meant the end of normal human civilization, causing all of human culture, politics, inventions, and knowledge to reach a standstill of the late 1990s and anything left of the 2000's. Everything known by previous generations of people, were either suppressed or replaced with propaganda to have the last humans forget the past 20 years. The last and youngest generation of this alternate timeline, Generation Z, only grew up with the history told to them by their predecessors, and living in the current Combine-ruled world. A world filled with hunger, sickness, war, despair, and death. But like many before in history, human resistance cells rose up and began to fight back, vowing to never forget Black Mesa and the people that came before their occupation, so that the Combine may forever be defeated and Earth may be restored to its former glory."