The world was in chaos. Everything known and accepted was turned on its end and stirred around by an agent of unknown origin. The world order had fallen and in its place was strife and anarchy. The event had happened virtually overnight, but the planning of it had taken years and it was still uncertain who was to blame for it.
At first religious extremists had been blamed for the collapse of the world's leading countries, and many smaller ones, but it soon became apparent that they were caught up in the grind like everyone else. They had been but the strings of implementation by a dark natured puppeteer, who had used them in order to wreck a greater harvest of utter destruction.
Someone or something wished to make the world over on their own terms, to pick winners and losers. The United States was such a loser. It all came about, when a massive global EM pulse took out all of the world's digital infrastructure. Virtually everything came to a standstill, as man's reliance on digital technology had dictated that he incorporate it in everything he made and now almost nothing worked.
Governments of developed nations weren't completely taken by surprise, as they'd been expecting the occurrence of such a virtual reality attack at some point. Friend and foe relationships were dropped altogether overnight by the world's powers at be, in one communal massive need to restore order and balance.
Massive amounts of resources and troop deployments were expended in an effort to preserve the creations of mankind from the deprivations of man's own moral failures.
It was a grand effort that stretched across borders, as the world huddled together to repair itself from the mortal blow that had been dealt to it from an unseen hand. Through technological hurdles and acts of heroism on the ground world order was regained, before much lasting damage could occur and more innocent blood was spilled.
As networks and systems came back online it was only to discover that an unbreakable Code was in control of everything and that whoever had wrote it had their own objectives and glory in mind. The world was wrestled to a standstill, as their systems were taken over by the Code that couldn't be shut off.
The Code was everywhere controlling everything, as in part, because during the massive global recovery all the safeguards were removed to speed up the process and the entire world had been linked. The Code took advantage of that linked status and wrote its way into every nook and cranny of the infrastructure still existing upon the face of the Earth.