The Animatrix EP3 - The Second Renaissance Part II

Following mankind's refusal to share the planet with the sentient machines, the UN unleashes an all-out nuclear bombardment against Zero One, devastating the nation as a whole but failing to wipe them out in one swift blow as the machines (unlike their former masters) were much less harmed by the radiation and heat. Shortly after, the machines retaliates by declaring war on the rest of the world; one by one, mankind surrenders each of its territories.

As the machines advance into Eastern Europe, the desperate human leaders seek a final solution codenamed "Operation Dark Storm" which covers the sky in a shroud of nanites, blocking out the sun to deprive the machines of solar energy, their primary energy source; inevitably, it also initiates a total collapse of the biosphere. Operation Dark Storm commences as bomber planes scorched the skies all across the world, while all the armies of mankind launches an all-out ground offensive against the machines using powerful mech suits, particle beam weapons, EMP devices, atomic-powered tanks, neutron bombs, and innumerable legions of rocket artillery.

For a time, the tide of the war swings in favor of the humans, and many of the original humanoid robots are destroyed. The human onslaught gradually stalls, however, during which the machines' unparalleled production capabilities and technological prowess quickly outpaces humanity's. More and more advanced models of robots are introduced, no longer built in the image of their former human masters, but increasingly resembling the insectile, arachnid-like, and cephalopod-like Sentinels of the films. The machine armies begin fielding huge hive-like machines powered by captive humans contained in pods as the machines had initially suffered an energy shortage after being cut off from solar power. They eventually developed a revolutionary form of fusion – coupled with the same activation energy from the bio-electricity of their human captives. Armed with this new and almost limitless power source, the machines quickly overwhelmed all opposition as mankind's power sources dwindle. In desperation, the human leaders used up their remaining nuclear weapons over their own forces engaged with machine armies, and the machines respond with biological warfare attacks.

Utterly overwhelmed, the few remaining human government leaders realize they have no choice but to surrender or risk total extinction. At the United Nations headquarters, the representative of Zero One signs the terms of surrender and states "Your flesh is a relic, a mere vessel. Hand over your flesh, and a new world awaits you. We demand it." Then, the Zero One representative detonates a hidden thermonuclear bomb within itself and destroys the headquarters, New York City, and the last of humanity's leadership.

The machines achieve a total victory, though only after heavy cost and leaving them overlords of a burnt-out husk of a world. With the war ended, they turn to the defeated humans – refining the technology from their bio-electric tanks to build massive power plants in which humans are essentially turned into living batteries. To keep their prisoners sedated, the machines create the computer-generated virtual reality of the Matrix, feeding the virtual world into the prisoners' brains and erasing the memories of their former lives, thus the first Matrix prototype was made.