point in the episode", toning down the sound effects to match the series' comic nature. Recording The Moat Studios in London recorded Nebulous in stereo, with each half-hour episode typically taking one day to record, including read-through and rehearsal. Nicholas Briggs produced the sound, using a combination of synthesised effects from a Roland SH-101 and foley sound effects. Briggs also carried out the studio editing in order to bring the 30-minute episodes down to the 28 minutes mandated by the BBC to allow time for radio trailers between programmes. Plot Setting Set in the year 2099, the series depicts the Earth as very different from today. Following a number of environmental disasters, such as "the Withering" – which resulted in the loss of a great deal of human knowledge including the vacuum cleaner and fire (although the latter came back fairly quickly) – and a "Cattle-clasm" that killed off most of the livestock, the Earth has been reduced to a wasteland separated between "Withered Zones" and the remaining inhabitable areas. The Withering shifted the Earth into a new orbit, resulting in disruption to the seasons and a reformed calendar. Every day of the week is now 25-hours long except for Thursday (which, due to time anomalies, has not occurred in over a decade), while the change in the length of the year led to the creation of new months such as Janril, Febtober, and Marchuary. In addition, the dreary season of Hamble was created, which is permanently dark, cold and drizzly. The Withering resulted in vegetarians, pigeons and gays becoming endangered species, and completely wiped out tarts. The Earth's geography is also radically altered. A new mountain range was formed in Britain by a day-long ice age, and the Earth now has twelve and a half continents. Many locations have been displaced and reduced to islands, including Oxford University and the London borough of Deptford, which is now in the Indonesian Ocean as a part of the Cockney Islands. The Solar System is equally altered: Jupiter has been deep fried by Harry Ramsden's, Mercury and Neptune have been knocked together, and there was an initiative to destroy the Moon, which according to the show was deleterious to the nightlight industry. Religion also exists in the Nebulous universe. Pieced together following the Withering, theologians conclude that there were four true deities: the evil twins Yin and Yang, Feng Shui the destroyer,