Serenian Terracide

The Serenian Terracide, also known as the Serenian Cataclysm, was a man-made natural disaster that caused the total irradiation and destruction of life on the planet Serenia during the Southern Sphere Secession War, rendering the planet uninhabitable to the present day. It was the first time that humanity had destroyed an inhabitable planet.

A planet rich in Suzuranite, Serenia was one of the first planets to revolt against the Ordic League. During fighting on the surface, a strategic nuclear weapon was used close to an exposed Suzuranite vein, which set off a cataclysmic chain reaction across the planet that resulted in the planet's total destruction.

Background
Serenia was a frontier world in the Southern Sphere, primarily colonised by nations from Osova and Amphia. A brutal world with hazardous dust and lightning storms, as well as hostile fauna, two decades of terraforming were required before the atmosphere was considered breathable. However, the planet was still quite inhospitable and many contracted a highly contagious fungal disease, blacklung. New Cyrene was mainly exploited for its metals.

From early on, New Cyrene came under the administration of Ordic megacorporations. Foremost amongst these was Donaumetall-Horizont, which was primarily concerned with mining and terraforming operations through its colonial wing, Donaumetall Neue Cyrene (DNC). In order to move employees and prospective colonists to New Cyrene, the planet was portrayed very differently from reality. Most colonists ended up living in large corporate towns owned by DNC and other corporations. As population growth from immigrants rapidly outpaced the local infrastructure, many colonists also ended up living in slum cities outside of the corporate towns, where food was scarce and blacklung ravages the population. A large portion of the colonists were so-called "one way trips", having used their life savings in the hope of starting a new life on the space frontier, and were unable to escape or improve their living conditions.

Using contractual loopholes and the dire state of the colonists, DNC quickly began exploiting the colonists.

By 24 BT, New Cyrene had a population of around two billion people.

Impact
Once news of New Cyrene's destruction inevitably reached the cradle worlds and Ordis, outrage was felt by a distinct segment of the population and various protests and non-profit organisations appeared. Several million people from the Cradle Worlds and even Ordis itself moved to the Southern Frontier to give their support to the revolutionaries, though many did not make it.

Ironically, Ordis did not learn from the lesson of New Cyrene and subsequently destroyed themselves in a similar fashion.

New Cyrene's destruction was so important to the Southern Sphere states that they adopted the Revolutionary Calendar, which placed its zeroth year in the year New Cyrene was destroyed, and was based on New Cyrene's orbital period.