Event · event
The trigger
The Vaults show an array can be built and that no rival will hold back.
Read more in The Mirror Race
The trigger. Around 2380 the Vaults showed that an array of mirrors could be built near Mercury. Some advised restraint, but every one forecast that no rival would hold back, so every bloc raced. As with the atom bomb, fear that a rival would get there first drove each bloc to build. The same Vaults had always answered the Shared Question alike, that a first strike could not be won (see The Missing Century), and the race was run inside that answer.