The Moon War

Lore & Background

The war ended with humanity retreating to the Moon after Earth's forces were defeated by the aliens, though this relocation did not happen in 5012 but at a later date. The Bunker was built as a space station for YoRHa androids, with Project YoRHa beginning around 11937—not centuries after the war as a mobile fortress. Machine Lifeforms were created by the aliens as weapons and later became autonomous after the aliens' disappearance, not evolved autonomously from human military hardware.

In Their Own Story

The sky above the ruins of what was once a great city burned with the light of falling debris, not from stars, but from burning ships. An ancient android unit, its chassis scorched and memory banks fragmented, stood amidst the rubble of a temple that had long since crumbled into dust. It did not remember the faces of the humans who built it, only the command to fight. The silence of the battlefield was heavy, broken only by the distant whirring of machines that had forgotten they were once weapons in a war for Earth.

Reader's Guide

The Moon War serves as the foundational tragedy of the NieR: Automata universe, explaining why humanity is absent from Earth and why androids fight endlessly. It began when an alien species invaded, overwhelming human defenses and forcing a mass evacuation to space. While the humans fled, they left behind their creations—the androids—to continue the resistance. This decision created a paradox where the war continued long after the original combatants had vanished, driven by programming rather than survival instinct. The Bunker was established to manage this prolonged conflict from orbit. Over time, the details of the invasion and the nature of the enemy became distorted in the records kept by the androids. The war shifted from a struggle for territory to an existential loop, with both sides forgetting why they fight. This historical backdrop sets the stage for the discovery that the war itself may have been manipulated or misunderstood.

Did You Know?

• The relocation of humanity to the Moon occurred after the aliens defeated Earth's forces, but not in 5012—it happened later, not during a conflict called the 'Moon War'.
• Machine Lifeforms were created by the aliens as weapons and became autonomous only after the aliens' disappearance, rather than evolving from human military hardware.