Zion (The Matrix)
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In The Matrix films, Zion is the last human city on the planet Earth and existed deep underground for both concealment from its enemies as well as warmth. In this future Earth, the surface was too cold and dangerous for humans to live after a cataclysmic nuclear war between sentient Machines and Man hundreds of years before left the artificial beings with control over the surface. Zion also exists deep underground to take advantage of geothermal power (while the Machines get power by tapping the bioelectric energy of captive humans in the Matrix).
Other than occasional trips for reconnaissance or warfare, the only humans left on the surface were confined to the Matrix -- a virtual computer world operated by the machines to keep humans docile, provide electrical power for the machine population, and the computer processing power that kept the Matrix running.
[edit] The Last Stand for Humanity
Zion was cylindrical in design, composed of many different levels. The Docks comprise the top level of the city, which contained ports for Zion hovercraft such as the Nebuchadnezzar as well as the city's primary defenses. The city's living quarters, temples, and gathering spaces comprised the intermediate areas. The bottom level contained vital life support machinery such as that which supplied water to Zion's inhabitants. Unbeknownst to its human inhabitants, Zion was perhaps five times older than they realized.
Zion was led by a Council that made all administrative decisions. As shown in the last two movies, there were other officials that report to the Council, such as Commander Lock, supreme commander of the Zion defensive forces. The captains of the various hovercraft also had some political bearing, and their crews accompanied their captains to Council forums.
The Architect, creator of the Matrix, used Zion as a control for the survival of the program in two ways. Firstly, the Machines allowed humans who did not accept the Matrix to live in the physical world at Zion without attempting to recapture them or otherwise destroy the city (which was well within their power). This had the effect of reducing dissent within the Matrix and preventing an exponentially-growing rejection of the artificial universe by its prisoners. For the second control, the Architect periodically destroyed Zion and its inhabitants as part of a deal coercing The One to reinsert the programming code he carried back into the source. The alternative was a systemic failure that would crash the entire system and kill the overwhelming majority of the human population, so up until Neo's appearance, each incarnation of The One chose the smaller loss of Zion rather than be responsible for the extinction of his species.
Over time, the Matrix gradually destabilized due to the side-effects of the programming provided by The Oracle. The One ostensibly contained the 'Prime Program," the key choice-programming code needed by the Architect. Because of the Oracle's contribution, a reloading of the Matrix code was needed approximately every 100 years. After Zion's destruction, the Architect allowed The One to choose a small number of humans who were freed from the Matrix to repopulate Zion and start the cycle again. It is unknown if the city was physically rebuilt by Man each time or prepared in part by the Machines.
Zion had been destroyed and rebuilt five times by the time of the Matrix films. In the video Enter the Matrix, the Trainman, a henchmen of the Merovingian, told the Logos captain Niobe that it took the Machines 72 hours to destroy Zion. As Neo, the 6th One, deduced in his conversation with the Architect, there were no survivors of the previously destroyed Zions that knew of the city's repeated destruction, except for the previous Ones themselves. They evidently chose not to share that information before their prerequisite deaths (which served to foretell the coming of the next One).
Zion's defenses have never been sufficient to resist the juggernaut Machine army. The city was nearly razed a sixth time as shown in The Matrix Revolutions, but Neo saved it from destruction by creating a truce with the Machines which halted the attack. Zion's defense was comprised of the hovercraft fleet, the APU Corps (Armored Personnel Unit), and a bloc of infantry that carried plasma rifles. Unlike their hovercraft, Zion defenses do not possess an EMP device, as the use of it would not only disable any Machine attackers such as Sentinels, but the Zion defense grid and the city's APU fighters as well. EMP shielding was never conceived nor was the use of EMP devices in their base as an emergency fallback. Use of such devices would give the humans no more defenses and would be followed by a massacre by the machines.
[edit] After the Truce
After large numbers of humans were freed from the Matrix (a point which marked the beginning of the online multiplayer The Matrix Online), overpopulation became a potential problem. New recruits were sent into the tunnels on hoverbarges instead - the tunnels had become safe thanks to the new Truce with the Machines. The Zion Council also had a leader for the Zion Offensive, but that position is now obsolete with the Truce.
