Sixty Minute War

The Sixty Minute War is a fictional event in Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines Quartet. It was a cataclysmic conflict that took place several thousand years prior to the events in the books. The details of the war are deliberately left vague, but it was evidently fought between the American Empire and Greater China. The war was fought using futuristic weaponry, such as particle cannons, which radically altered Earth's geography. The widespread destruction lead to a new dark age.
Aftermath
Most human technology was lost during the conflict, and the world collapsed into a post apocalyptic state. The isthmus linking North and South America was destroyed by Slow Bombs, volcanoes sprouted up in Europe, new oceans and mountain ranges were formed, and craters dot the landscape.
Following the war came a period of immense geological and cultural instability. North America was reduced to a radioactive wasteland, along with much of eastern China. Africa escaped much of the devastation. Various cultures and political entities are mentioned as having come and gone in the centuries that followed, often having parallels to real-life ancient history, such as the Anglish Empire, the new Roman Empire, the Electric Empire and the New Mongol Horde.
At least 10,000 years after these events, Nicholas Quirke (Nikola Quercus) transformed London into the first of the Traction Cities, which led to the rise of Municipal Darwinism and the Traction Era in which the book series takes place.
Remnants of weaponry
The scale of the war meant that particle compressing weaponry, some deployed upon orbital platforms, were utilized to great extent. More powerful weapons were also used or at least developed; the "American Empire" is mentioned in passing to have possessed weaponry that made the gods quake in fear, such as weapons capable of somehow drawing power from parallel universes.
The radioactive fallout from the war was also apparently responsible for triggering several mass mutations in the genetic patterns of several species. Several of these mutants are still present by the time of the Fever Crumb Series, although their races seem to be in decline, and have completely disappeared from both the world and from memory by the time of the Mortal Engines Quartet.

Several items featured in the series are relics of the conflict, including a directed-energy weapon called MEDUSA which is later mounted upon the Traction City of London. This weapon (and the computer that controls it) was recovered by a group of explorers from an ancient military base on the American continent. MEDUSA is a key element of the plot in Mortal Engines.
Another featured weapon was the device known as ODIN (acronym for Orbital Defence INitiative), an ancient weapon consisting of a particle cannon mounted on a space platform in Earth's orbit.
ODIN is a key element of the plot in Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain, as several characters (particularly those associated with the Green Storm) attempt to gain control of the device to destroy their enemies. Other Ancient orbital weapons mentioned in passing are the Diamond Bat, Jinju 14, and the Nine Sisters.

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