[ WP ] The ants go marching ten by ten , to war-TO WAR !

*disclaimer: long as fuck, obviously, but your prompt spoke to me. Thanks for giving me something to write about, and if you're so inclined to get through it all, any critique is welcome. * 
 
 Earth ’ s core was dying. It was the ultimate stroke of bad luck, geologically speaking. To be alive, prosperous, leaving footprints for so short a time in relation to how long the planet had existed; how ironic that such a young race should outlive a celestial body with such a long lifespan. Supposed lifespan was more accurate, the models were obviously wrong. Scientists and researchers were worried, then frantic, when all of the active volcanoes worldwide went dormant over the span of a decade. The miniscule movements of those massive plates of earth that the continents and oceans rode upon, fit together like a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle, had ceased altogether, and the turbulent liquid nickel-iron alloy that composed the outer core of the planet was freezing, inside out, at a much quicker rate than any scientific literature could account for. 
 
 The dangers to humanity were two-fold; First, and most immediate, was the slow bleed of heat radiation moving outward from the core and into the surface of the planet. The volcanoes would start up again, when this heat reached far enough upward, and then, cataclysm. The earth would experience a series of eruptions, in quick succession, that would rival the frenetic activity that occurred soon after the birth of the planet. The secondary consideration, if humanity was able to survive the apocalypse that came along with such a drastic, violent cooling, was the constant bombardment of cosmic radiation from the planet ’ s own sun, which was now a very deadly threat since the planet ’ s magnetic field was failing along with its core. The upper atmosphere, including the crucial, embattled ozone layer, would be stripped away by the solar wind at a relentless pace. Then, humans would be exposed to the deadly cosmic rays, no longer shielded from harm, anyone remaining doomed to live out their lives under a kind of permanent x-ray machine. 
 
 The governments of the world united, for the first time in history. A melancholy end note in the symphony that was humanity, that after all of history a cataclysm of such magnitude would be necessary to unify the world ’ s people. Time was running out, action had to be taken. A plan was devised, based in no small part on questionable science, but mostly on a type of hysteria that was running rampant through even the most reasonable and pragmatic of scientists and leaders. Humanity set about scoring the ocean floors with great, ragged trenches that stretched in geometric patterns across every ocean on earth, ripping deep channels into the mantle, depositing freezing seawater down into far-reaching, ragged fingers of vaporized rock. Fission bombs were used, there was no time to be cautious about exposing marine wildlife to deadly concussions, or the slower agonizing death of radiation poisoning. Decades passed, the surface heat disaster that was predicted never came, and it appeared that the destruction of the marine biosphere had been a crucial step in preserving humanity. 
 
 It had not come without cost, however. Radioactive rain dropped wherever clouds carried excess moisture. The ozone had surrendered it ’ s last wisps out into space, and when it wasn ’ t raining, the UV rays were dumping more radiation down on the bowed Earth. People were living ramshackle, subsistence lives, scavenging what they could and dying of radiation exposure by the tens of thousands. 
 
 Then, the ants came. 
 
 In normal times, before the core event, there existed one million ants for every person in the world. Living largely underfoot and out of mind, they were ubiquitous across the landscape. The worst of the infestations were in urban areas. Catacombs shaped like forked lightning existed in the soil and bedrock under most developed areas, crumbling foundations and access to food waste from humans contributing to their concentrations in the urban world; some of the colonies consisted of 100 million members or more. After decades of mutation via the ultraviolet light and radioactive precipitation that was now bombarding the Earth, the colonies developed in unique and horrific ways. 
 
 Ant queens can live for up to thirty years, but in those years, she can lay up to 30,000 eggs. Each of these worker ants have a lifespan of one to three years. As opposed to humans, who were mostly just dying from the myriad cancers they were developing, natural selection was on overdrive in the ant colonies. One hundred eggs a day meant that mutations happened and were selected for very quickly. Blind luck that one of the biggest colonies, stretching from San Diego in the south, and reaching all the way north to Bakersfield, bore a male with a special adaptation. Instead of oxygen-starved treacles, which limited the size of all insects in our 21 % oxygen atmosphere, this male was born with a set of diaphragms that served to suck air into the body at higher rates, and siphon off more of the precious oxygen. Blind luck, also, that this male was chosen by the queen to breed her for the duration of his life. They produced tens of thousands of eggs, and when the ants hatched, something in their insect brains told them to make for the surface at all costs. They emerged, went through a second transformation, updated breathing apparatuses increasing their size a hundredfold. Ants that were a centimeter in length, curled up, twitched and arced in a type of cocoon, molted, and emerged from the chrysalis up to a meter long. They converged in dark areas, sunlight-phobic, convening by touching antennae and using their acute sense of smell to pick up the chemical signals left by their sisters. They set about digging new tunnels, larger for their new bodies, and soon a queen emerged from the drones. The colony, though young, was already established. A few months from the introduction of this key mutation, a few months of the birthing, transforming, gathering, and burrowing cycle were all it took. The ants were ready to expand, to start conquering more territory in the name of their hive and their ever-growing brood.
