We thought we'd reached the limits of human knowledge, proved beyond a doubt that we are alone in the universe and explained away the supernatural using science.

We were wrong.

They came at us with dragons, raining down fire from the sky. Our anti-air missiles failed to stop them, simple bullets didn't leave so much as a scratch. No gas would poison them, no amount of water would put out their flame. Finally we received intelligence of a sequence of words that would banish these unstoppable beasts – a “magic spell”, if you will. Our scientists were at first unwilling to consider such an implausible solution, but there is only so much a man of reason can take before he turns in desperation to the unscientific.

No-one expected it to work. When the dragons began to disappear before our eyes, we gained a new respect for the supernatural. But the war was not over yet.

Legions of vampires struck by night, and elfin armies attacked by day. We researched the old mythologies, resorted to methods from fantasy and horror movies. Scientific and magical methods combined in our defence against these new armies; we seeded clouds with silver iodide and used priests to bless the water that fell. We manufactured bullets laced with silver, and when a dwarfish task force undermined our factories we bought them off with gold and put them to work.

Werewolves were set loose in hospitals and schools. We used tranquillisers laced with wolfsbane to bring them down. Gremlins were unleashed into power plants, train stations and airports. We found that, like rats, these pests could be controlled with the right poisons.

Graveyards began to teem with the undead, but all we had to do was target the Necromancers that controlled them. Many families began to cremate their dead rather than risk seeing their reanimated bodies rise again.

Slowly but surely, we turned the tide of this war of supernatural terror. Like in any war, we suffered major losses, the worst of these being when our highest ranking generals were metamorphosed into frogs. No-one will forget the three weeks in September when the entire nation was too scared to sleep for fear of incubi and succubi stealing their souls through their dreams.

But we recovered from these attacks, and after a full year of war and devastation, science prevailed over magic. We instated a Memorial Day in recognition of those who haunt the battlefields to this very day, unable to find rest because of the curses put upon them. In a secret location, we built a maximum security prison for druidic, wiccan and shamanistic war criminals, as well as a re-education facility for werewolves.

And now, in the aftermath, we take a deep breath and plunge into the unknown with renewed vigour, once more taking up the search for understanding, this time not with microscopes and particle accelerators, but with spell books and incantations.

We test our first thaumo-psychic warhead seven days from now.