(Preface) Those ISS agents that were stranded, but they stayed stranded…
Trump fires nukes at china after not accepting his “deals.” China fires back, and Russia joins because china is too close…planet-wide destruction, ISS personnel return to earth after 3 years at space to discover that tribe in Africa that worships Americans, and these people groups then create paintings, and tell stories about how the sky people came down and shared wisdom and spawned the next garden of civilization. Edit: word choice(curate, meant create)
So all the countries with space programs blow each other up and then the stranded astronauts just “return to earth”? How? Run down the side of a mountain like a big ramp?
Nah, they… uh… clipped through a wall in the ship and end up on earth… I’m kidding, this was just the premise for a fictional story of which I very likely won’t be the one to flesh out.