The timeline of the Prey franchise.

20th Century

1917

• May 29: John F. Kennedy is born.^[1]

Space Race

1955

• July 29: The Space Race begins when both the U.S. and Soviet Union make rival announcements about their intent to launch the first satellite.^[2]

1957

• October 4: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the world's first satellite.^[2]

1958

• February 1: The U.S. launches Explorer 1, the first American satellite. Later that year, the Soviets secretly launch a deep space probe named Vorona I.^[2]

1960 (Point of Divergence)

• The Soviet Union makes first contact with non-terrestrial organisms during what became known as the Vorona I incident.^[2]

1961

• January 20: John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th president of the United States.

1962

• The Soviet Union secretly approaches the United States for assistance with the Typhon threat. Publicly, the two countries announce a joint mission to the moon.^[2]

Kletka Program

1963

• The Americans and Soviets work together on a research facility named Kletka to study the Typhon. Kletka, Russian for "cage", produces the skeleton and core emergency systems of what will one day become Talos I.^[2][3]
• November 22: Wavering relationships lead to a failed assassination attempt on President John F. Kennedy and put a halt to the U.S./Soviet joint space program.^[2]

Project Axiom

1964

• After the attempted assassination of Kennedy, and Kruschev's departure, the U.S. pays for the rights to use Kletka as a testing facility. This period, known as Project Axiom, leads to many advancements in next-generation materials and bioscience fundamental to neural modification.
• President Kennedy wins a second term, during which the space program expands to new heights - not through competition with the Soviets but cooperation.^[4] Kennedy chooses not to intervene in Vietnam.^[5]

1965

• The first Weaver is observed inside the station.
• January 20: John F. Kennedy begins his second term.

~1967-1968

• The Soviet Union could not keep up with the strain on resources from the massively expanded space race, and eventually sank into economic collapse. At some point in Kennedy's second term he survived an assassination attempt (in Dallas, Texas), believed to be engineered by Soviet elements out of desperation. The United States responds by wresting control of the Kletka from the Soviets, and initiating "Project Axiom": an attempt to generate new technology based on researching the Typhon organisms. A moonbase is established to provide raw materials to support the construction of the project's primary research platform.^[6]

1969

• January 20: John F. Kennedy completes his second term. Lyndon B. Johnson becomes the 36th president of the United States.

1970s

• After President Kennedy's second term, he was succeeded by his Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. By the late 1970s, however, public support for the space race began to wane: the Soviet economy was so badly weakened from the massive push in the prior decade that it was no longer seen as a serious competitor, so having "won", many in the United States wanted to divert funds to solve domestic issues. This sentiment that the Soviet Union wasn't a major threat anymore also gave rise to a new wave of politicians who successfully prevented the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War from the late 1960s onward (the Soviets were seen as so weak that it was felt allowing them to influence communist takeovers in a few minor countries wouldn't upset the geopolitical balance of power).^[7][8]

1973

• January 20: Lyndon B. Johnson begins his second term.

1977

• January 20: Lyndon B. Johnson completes his second term. Ronald Reagan becomes the 37th president of the United States.

1978

• Primary construction of the Project Axiom research platform is completed. Operations of the moonbase are scaled back, and the mines go dark.

1980

• Faulty containment procedures result in the Pobeg Incident, which leaves numerous scientists aboard the station dead at the hand of the Typhon.

1981

• January 20: Ronald Reagan begins his second term.

1984

• Shifting national priorities, staff fatalities, and a lack of concrete applications lead to the shuttering of Project Axiom. The Kletka goes dormant, the station decommissioned by its administrators. Moonbase personnel are recalled and the base is shuttered shortly after.

1985

• January 20: Ronald Reagan completes his second term.

Privatization of Space

1980s to 1990s

• President Johnson was succeeded by Ronald Reagan (apparently without Nixon and Carter in between), who rode into office on the wave of sentiment that space projects should be shuttered to focus on domestic issues. The badly weakened Soviet Union continues to suffer from a stagnant economy and is plagued with internal discontent it is barely able to handle.^[9]
• As a result of these historical changes, the "Domino theory" for the Cold War was not embraced in this timeline: instead of trying to fight the spread of communism around the globe, the US and NATO focus on protecting their core territories among the top global economies. The Soviets do continue to expand into third world countries (Vietnam, possibly Afghanistan) but even without US intervention these always turn into expensive quagmires that simply exacerbate their already weakened domestic economy. This leads to a vicious cycle of the Soviets targeting new countries for their resources, only to exhaust themselves with each takeover, pushing their need to expand into yet another country just to keep barely functioning.^[10]
• The US government is content to sit back and watch the Soviets bleed themselves through overexpansion. With the Soviets unable to mount a significant threat to the core territories of the US or its closest allies, there was no government push to militarize space assets: in our timeline Ronald Regan's administration aggressively pushed space development through the Strategic Defense Initiative, but in the Prey timeline he is said to have risen to office on a wave of support to defund and shut down space projects to focus on domestic programs.^[11]
• One legacy of the space race the United States continues to benefit from in coming decades is the completion of the world's first and only space elevator, the White Stork Tower, allowing it to dominate near-Earth orbit satellite development.^[12]
• By the 1990s, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union are interested in space development beyond near-Earth orbit: the former because it is content to dominate near-orbit, the latter because it is incapable due to economic collapse. This begins a new era in which private mega-corporations lead the way in space development, particularly of lunar assets and missions to Mars.^[13] Several permanent albeit crude installations are maintained on Mars by the 2030s, though they prove very expensive to maintain and fall short of the initial grand aspirations when the project began around the year 2000.^[14] This privatization of space development culminates in the formation of TranStar corporation in 2025.
• By the 2000s onward the "Iron Curtain" still exists, but the two power blocs reach a comparatively warmer state of relations: the Soviets cannot seriously threaten the US, and the US is too concerned with domestic policy to seriously consider foreign interventions.^[15]

1994

• The government hold on Project Axiom is lifted.

1999

• May 23: Aaron Ingram is born.^[16]

21st Century

Talos I and Pytheas

2005

• Morgan Yu is born, child of a German tech entrepreneur and a distinguished Chinese neuroscientist.

2018

• Morgan Yu wins a robotics tournament.
• Thai entrepreneur, Kasma Singhapat - known in some circles as Grandma Wolf - founds KASMA Corp, which gains immediate notoriety by snatching top talent from the jaws of various governments bent on indicting those individuals for various crimes.

2024

• KASMA Corp. makes an unsuccessful bid for the US government's Kletka and moonbase stations amid industry rumors that a new, more powerful corporation may soon seek to acquire the old government installations.
• TranStar Kitchens is established.

2025

• The TranStar board of directors, a cabal of international investors, is established. They privatize the Kletka and buy, upgrade and modernize the moonbase, dubbed "Pytheas", to supply the construction of the new Talos I station.
• Alex Yu is appointed CEO of TranStar and Director of Research aboard the new Talos I space station.

~2020s

• In the later decades of the 20th century the Soviet Union followed a policy of foreign intervention (in countries such a Vietnam) in a desperate push for new resources, which always turned into insurrection-filled quagmires that balanced out any potential economic benefit. The latest and greatest example of this is an attempt to expand into India during the 2020s ("more than a century since [the USSR's] inception"). The "Soviet-Indian Intervention" turns into yet another debacle, crippling the Soviet domestic economy so badly that it leads to the rise of a widespread insurrectionist movement who adopt the name "Mensheviks" (after one of the Bolsheviks' early rivals in the 1910s). The Menshevik movement grows rapidly, but when it becomes so widespread that it becomes a tangible threat to the state it provokes a massive crackdown from the Soviet government. This crackdown is so large that it becomes known as the "Second Purge" in comparison to Stalin's Great Purge in the 1930s. Violence by surviving Menshivik cells continues into the 2030s.^[17]

2029

• 32 people are killed in the 2029 Red Square attacks perpetuated by four members of the Menshevik movement. The perpetrators are transferred to the TranStar Volunteer Initiative to serve their sentence in stead of their execution.^[18]

2030

• The construction of Talos I is achieved while mining operations at Pytheas are dramatically scaled back. The base is converted into a research annex for Talos, and the dome over the Crater is built.
• The first successful Neuromod technology is derived from research aboard Talos I. Human learning is revolutionized.

2031

• John F. Kennedy dies at the age of 114.^[1]

2032

• Morgan Yu is recruited as co-director of research and development aboard Talos I. Riley Yu is appointed as Director of Pytheas to operate the base as Typhon research facility and Helium-3 refinery.
• On March 15th, Morgan Yu leave their apartment in Echelon to the TranStar Testing Facility, San Francisco, in preparation of their trip to Talos I.

2033

• March 11: Aaron Ingram is admitted to gulag Camp 17, Siberia, Soviet Union.^[16]

2034

• Morgan Yu volunteers to be the subject of their own experiments to test new Typhon-based Neuromods. Meanwhile, KASMA Corp. succeeds in infiltrating TranStar at various levels, kicking off an ever escalating war of corporate espionage between the two rivals.
• November 12: TranStar 5K race takes place. Emma Beatty competes.

2035

• On February 2nd, Alex Yu starts forcing his sibling through a loop of Neuromod testing simulations.
• Prey and Mooncrash begin - On February 22nd, the first Typhon breaks containment from Psychotronics and disturb Morgan's simulation, killing the Neuromod Division director, Dr. Bellamy. The next day, the Typhon spread aboard Talos I, wiping out most of the station's employees. Morgan Yu breaks out of the loop of simulations.
• At some point that is still being debated, another outbreak starts on Pytheas and wipes out nearly all employees. As the call between Alex and Riley is said to be happening during the outbreak at Talos I, and it is labeled "Live", its more than likely that Mooncrash takes place on 23rd of February as well.

2036

• December 3: Peter starts using a looking glass headset and data from a DataVault Operator to run simulations of what may have transpired on Pytheas during its outbreak.

References