Global Defense Initiative

The Global Defense Initiative or GDI is a multi-national organization that was founded in 1995 in the same alternate universe as the Command and Conquer: Red Alert series. GDI was founded for the defense against international terrorism and other threats to the free world. Around the same time, a meteor containing a highly toxic crystalline substance landed near the Tiber River in Italy. The green crystals, dubbed Tiberium by the scientific community, spread across the land like a cancer, creating an unprecedented ecological disaster. An international terrorist organization known as the "Brotherhood of Nod" led by a mysterous self-proclaimed "messaih" known only as Kane, took power at the same time, quickly becoming an international power to rival GDI with the help Tiberium-based technologies. From 1999-2002, GDI and Nod fought a world war that would become known as the First Tiberium War, ending with a GDI victory and Kane's apparent death. Kane later resurfaced, starting a in Second Tiberium War in 2030, which again ended in GDI victory and the apparent death of Kane. This lead into yet another Tiberium War in 2047 after Nod destroyed a GDI space station with a nuclear missile. TW3 culminated in an Ion Cannon strike on Kane's headquarters in Sarajevo and inadvertantly detonating a liquid Tiberium reserve underground. The burst of Tiberium readings were detected by a Tiberium-based alien civilization known as the Scrin, who originally brought Tiberium to Earth. This caused the Scrin to believe Earth was a Tiberium-covered wasteland devoid of life. In fact, GDI forces were largely intact and ready to repel the invasion. The Scrin launched an invasion, which culminated in an attempt by the Scrin to construct massive teleportation arrays, possibly to transport an even larger invasion force. All but one of these arrays was destroyed by GDI forces, followed by the destruction of Scrin "control node" that transfers Tiberium vital to sustaining Scrin life to alien troops in the field. After GDI destroyed the node, the alien forces in the field died instantaneously, and the teleportation array was render inert. The Scrin were never again seen on Earth, though the Scrin Overlord threatened a full scale invasion after their defeat. GDI would go on to fight Nod a final time in 2070s in the "Ascension" conflict, ending the "Ascension" of Kane and the Nod inner circle into the last surviving Scrin portal, and the control of the menace of Tiberium using a "Tiberium Control System".