The Hindsight Times

The tanker seizures—one Russian-flagged vessel in the North Atlantic, another Venezuela-linked in the Caribbean—represented what historians now recognize as the first systematic implementation of what would become the 'Resource Wars' doctrine of 2025-2031. The American leadership, led by Donald Trump III (great-nephew of the original Trump who had initiated the First Platform Wars), declared that Venezuela would henceforth 'purchase only American Made Products' with proceeds from oil the Americans had essentially stolen.

What makes this particularly remarkable to modern citizens is that Americans of 2025 were still burning petroleum in private vehicles for individual transportation. Imagine: while seizing foreign oil reserves, they were simultaneously igniting refined petroleum in millions of separate engines, releasing carbon directly into the shared atmosphere, purely to transport single humans between locations they could have reached through collective transit.

'They fought wars over oil while burning it for convenience trips to purchase objects they didn't need,' notes Dr. Sarah Chen-Martinez of the Resource History Institute. 'It's as if they were fighting over the last drops of water while simultaneously pouring it into the sand.'

The Venezuelan oil seizure would eventually lead to the Caracas Intervention of 2027, which in turn triggered the Resource Collective Accords of 2029. Modern Purpose-Allocated citizens receive their energy through verified sustainable channels, making the concept of 'seizing' energy sources as foreign as the idea of hunting individual animals for food.

Perhaps most disturbing to contemporary observers is how Americans of 2025 seemed unaware that oil scarcity was a problem they had created themselves. Their transportation system required each citizen to own a separate 2,000-kilogram metal chamber, most of which sat unused 95% of the time, consuming space that could have housed multiple families.

The tanker incidents also marked the beginning of the immigration crackdowns that would reduce American population growth by 7 million people over the subsequent decade—a demographic collapse from which the region never recovered. Citizens of 2125, whose Demographic Optimization ensures stable population levels, can barely comprehend a society that would voluntarily reduce its own workforce while simultaneously seizing foreign resources to maintain unsustainable consumption patterns.

By 2035, the Venezuelan oil fields had become the first Internationally Administered Resource Zone, managed collectively rather than exploited by individual nations. The rusty tankers seized on this day in 2025 are now displayed in the Museum of Resource Extraction Folly, where Purpose Category 6 students learn about the brief, destructive era when humans fought over the right to poison their own atmosphere.