What Happened to Earth in Starfield? Answered (Spoilers)

Traveling across the universe is nice and all, but having a sense of longing and homesickness is completely reasonable too. If you’re looking to visit Earth in Starfield, though, you may be in for a bit of a shock. Here’s what happened to Earth in Starfield.

Do be warned that this article contains major story spoilers, so don’t read on if you want to experience the story for yourself.

Why Was Earth Destroyed in Starfield?

Okay, consider this your final spoiler warning for Starfield‘s main story. If you don’t want to know why Earth looks the way it does in the game, turn back now.

The short answer is, when humanity discovered the first artifact on Mars and brought it back to Earth, they used it to develop the first grav jump drive, which allowed for proper space travel and exploration. This is what allows us to jump from system to system with such ease. However, what the scientists didn’t realize was that with each grav jump, Earth’s atmosphere began to deteriorate at an alarming rate.

Towards the end of the main story, the game takes us to the NASA space station on Earth, where we get to explore the entire area and learn the truth behind the grav drives and the artifacts. It’s revealed that some of the scientists did in fact know that the grav jumps were killing Earth’s atmosphere, but they went ahead with their experiments anyway because this would advance their scientific progress by decades.

Eventually, you’ll discover an audio log that reveals that the scientists have realized that humanity only has about 50 years before Earth’s atmosphere is completely destroyed, and they would now need an evacuation plan for the entire human race. Thus, there was a plan to move the entirety of humanity into outer space, which is why we now have so many human colonies and cities spread out across the galaxy.

As the evacuation plan was underway, the scientists continued to experiment with grav jumps. Once humanity was evacuated, Earth’s atmosphere had disintegrated, causing the entire planetary surface to become a desolate wasteland. Fallout, anyone?

Anyway, that’s what happened to Earth in Starfield. Be sure to search for Twinfinite for more tips and information on the game.