{{Article|hl2|safe}}
{{Battle infobox
|name=Seven Hour War
|image=FileBME newspaper clips.jpg|300px
|begin=After the Black Mesa Incident
|end=Seven hours after it began
|place=Earth
|result=Decisive Combine victory; total capitulation of all Earth's governments and Combine occupation of Earth
|side1=Earth's governments
|side2=The Combine
|commanders1=Human leaders
|commanders2=Combine Advisors
|forces1=Human militaries
|forces2=Combine forces
|casual1=Massive human death toll
|casual2=Unknown
}}
{{Quote|Dr. Breen... He's the Administrator of this whole vile business now. He ended the Seven Hours War by managing Earth's surrender. The Combine rewarded him with power.|Eli Vance|Half-life 2|Fileeli vilebiz.ogg}}
The '''Seven Hour War''' was a brief but decisive confrontation between the Combine and the governments of Earth, ultimately leading to a large human death toll and the Combine occupation of the entire planet.
==Overview==
The war itself is never discussed directly in ''Half-Life 2'', but it is mentioned briefly by Eli Vance in Black Mesa East. Looking at a small corkboard featuring several annotated newspaper cutouts and images, including a photo of a visibly damaged wikipediaUnited Nations Secretariat Building|United Nations Secretariat Building in wikipediaNew York City|New York City, causes him to reminisce over the events during the war. In ''Half-Life 2 Episode Two|Episode Two'', Eli later states that if the superportal matures, "''it'll be the Seven Hour War all over again... except this time we won't last seven minutes!''".
Very little is known about the war except that it began some time after the Portal Storms which raged across the Earth. These disturbances spread Xen life forms across the world, causing populations to move into cities for protection. Attracted to Earth by the dimensional rift caused by the Black Mesa Incident, the Combine, a vast alien empire, launched an invasive force that overpowered the planet, catching the human population by surprise and defeating all of its armed forces in only seven hours.http//forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=28753478&postcount=1 "Marc Laidlaw Vault" on Steam Users' Forums It was after this that Wallace Breen|Dr. Wallace Breen, former Black Mesa Research Facility administrator, negotiated a surrender, leading to a subservient and meager existence for Earth's remaining human population under the oppressor and "saving" the survivors at the cost of their freedom. Breen was appointed administrator of Earth but remained under the control of the Combine. Some time after the war, the Resistance was formed to combat the new Combine leadership.
''Half-Life 2'' begins an undisclosed number of years after the war after the rule of the Combine has been firmly established. There is, however, some evidence from the ''Half-Life 2 Episode One'' official website indicating that ''Half-Life 2'' takes place nearly two decades after the Black Mesa incident.http//ep1.half-life2.com/story.php Summary of ''Half-Life'' and ''Half-Life 2'' in the official ''Half-Life 2 Episode One'' website. Retrieved on August 26, 2006. Such a time frame is logically consistent with the aging of the series' characters between ''Half-Life'' and ''Half-Life 2''. It also explains why there are no children in the game, the Combine having set up a reproductive suppression field a short time after the war to prevent any further reproduction for approximately twenty years until the events of ''Episode One'', the suppression field being disabled after the damage the Citadel had sustained.
The exact manner in which the Combine forces invaded and conquered Earth during the war has not been revealed, but ''Half-Life 2 Raising the Bar'' describes a concept where Citadels were to be teleported directly to Earth. Once they had landed inside human cities, they began deploying Combine armies from within
{{Quote|There was an illusion of safety, for a time. And then the Citadels appeared. It happened in a split second, all over the world. A chunk would disappear from the center of a city, to be replaced an instant later by one of these... headquarters for the Combine. Invasion Central.|Eli Maxwell|Half-Life 2 Raising the Bar}}
==Trivia==
* The name of the conflict is a reference to the wikipediaSix-Day War|Six-Day War, which occurred between June 5 and 10, 1967 in the Middle East and resulted in heavy casualties of Arab forces and a decisive victory of Israel."''https//twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/784848990655291394 No, it was more meant to echo the 6 Day War.''" http//twitter.com/marc_laidlaw @marc_laidlaw on WikipediaTwitter|Twitter
==References==
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{{Conflicts}}
CategoryConflictsCategoryHalf-Life 2
