The Shield was a globe-encompassing electromagnetic energy field created by Connor MacLeod and Dr. Allan Neyman in response to rapidly-increasing global warming and radiation within Earth's atmosphere late in the 20th century.
Conception and Construction[]
After defeating The Kurgan in 1985 and gaining the final Quickening in the Immortal Game, Connor MacLeod not only gained mortality, but also the ability to "hear" the thoughts and emotions of others throughout the world. Connor vowed to use this newfound ability to help humanity, and when his wife Brenda Wyatt MacLeod died of intense radiation poisoning in 1994, the Highlander swore on her deathbed to put an end to global warming and save the planet.
The Shield is first activated in 1999 at the December Installation complex.
Five years later in 1999, MacLeod fulfilled his promise -- by teaming with scientists including Dr. Allan Neyman and corporate interests, the Shield became a reality, with activation occurring amidst great pomp and publicity, and with the public believing that the energy field crucial to the world's long-term survival.
However, within a few years, the ozone layer began to repair itself, and the Shield no longer served its original purpose. This fact was willfully suppressed by the governing Shield Corporation, presided over by a board of directors (led by David Blake) who refused to allow their profit-margins to be jeopardized by a potential shutdown, prompting counter-ecoterrorism aimed at destroying the corporation's chokehold on the planet.
Technology[]
The Shield, as seen from outer space.
The Shield was devised as a dual ground/space-based energy return system, with a massive ground generator facility transmitting a beam to a satellite in orbit around the planet, which in turn spread the electromagnetic field around the circumference of the globe.
One of the main drawbacks of the Shield, though, was that the field completely blocked out the sky and stars, and created a perpetual state of heat and humidity within the planetary atmosphere. This served to cause human technology to stagnate, resulting in arrested advancement in aeronautics, automobiles, and other areas. Old technology was refurbished and reused, rather than new innovations being developed and disseminated.
This system proved to be incredibly vulnerable to potential sabotage, as was noted by former Shield Corporation employee Louise Marcus, who formed the COBALT organization in response to the corporation's refusal to take down the Shield.
Takedown of the Shield[]
Connor MacLeod destroys the Shield using General Katana's Quickening-energy.
In the year A.D. 2024, Marcus's group staged a strike against one of the main corporation facilities, but the strike failed, scattered by company security forces. Some days or weeks later, aided by the now-Immortal Connor MacLeod and Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez, Marcus succeeded in setting in motion the downfall of the company, accelerated by the arrival of other Immortals from the Earth's distant past respectively from planet Zeist.
A fateful duel, fought in the main Shield generator control room, between MacLeod and General Katana resulted in the total destruction of the Shield itself, after the Highlander used the energy gained from Katana's Quickening to step into the beam and emit a blast, generating enough feedback to destroy the regulator-satellite in Earth orbit. The Shield fell, and the planet once again beheld night and the stars.