I feel like Earth could’ve been handled very differently in game. I don’t think what’s shown in Starfield is a possible outcome within 1000 years much less 300. I don’t know if there’s an explanation given in game but it seems weird to me.
That’s Earth in the picture.
Given the debris in orbit and the thin CO2 atmosphere, it guessing there is much more to the stage of Earth than climate change.
Mostly because an atmosphere doesn’t disappear because of the mass of the planet. If you land, the first thing you get a warning about is solar radiant exposure.
This is probably a result of the wars mentioned, and Earth’s atmosphere was basically blown out of the planet. The lack of buildings or infrastructure backs up nuclear holocaust too
Nuclear holocaust doesn’t turn everything into sand or remove the magnetosphere though. There’s nothing that would damage the Earth to this extent within just 300 years, not even nuclear war
There is one other thing I can think of, but I imagine it would have to have been a weapon of some sort. The molten core would have to cool enough to stop the dynamo.
A weapon capable of that would be beyond anything ever devised, and even if the magnetosphere disappeared it would take many millennia for the atmosphere to be stripped away. Mars lost its magnetosphere 4 billion years ago and still has an atmosphere today