The Great Constriction

With freely available resources dwindling decade after decade, the governments began to hoard what they could. Prices skyrocketed as demand exceeded supply. Ecologists which had openly called for sweeping policy changes to reverse the damage to the planet had been silenced long ago. Whether by threats or engineered accidents none that remained dared speak against the politicians. For a short time the Regenerist movement brought some hope, but it too was quenched viciously.
For a long time private corporations had been forcing their own agendas on the people in governmental power. It became the politicians job to hide the truth that it was the corporations in control. The policies which had been in place since the Alvar Dawn were taken down until the coporations could do the one thing they were there to do. Accumulate all the wealth of the planet.
The public, from which all trade sprung, was increasingly squeezed to keep the financial sector moving. Workers began to give up, knowing that if they worked, they'd never get out from the debts placed on them and it didn't matter if they starved on the job or at home. Even the financial institutions didn't have the manpower to foreclose on all the homes.
In a desprate attempt to keep things going, the governments placed tarrifs and sanctions on each other. They began a campaign of empty threats and political maneuvering with propaganda which made everyone into scapegoats. Civil unrest became common even with governmental assistance through rations. Fearful of total annihlation from all the warmongering, riots began to break out until the governments instituted work camps for the building of more survival shelters.
Things remained tense, but peaceful until a xenophobic hate group incited the riot of Louvil. They shouted the denouncement of the government itself as no better than ticket masters at a carnival and called for their execution for crimes against the people and planet. In terror for their lives the military was called to quell the riot, but it was too late.
The military was on the side of the public which were their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. While upper command issued order after order they found themselves the target of a coup. Finally they did the last thing they had control over.
It was unclear who launched the first missiles, but they did not track to a military source. Breathless, they waited to see what the first salvo did. They turned out to be bioweapons and not nuclear. Initial relief was replaced by the horror of what those products did. The military then turned the nuclear arsenal on themselves and began the Holocaust.