By the time of the game, the Ishimura performed 34 successful planetcracks and is now in the process of beginning its 35th. Thanks to planetcracking, mankind was now thriving again and resources are plentiful. Even though there are subsequent Planetcrackers (a small fleet now existed), the Ishimura remained the iconic symbol of mankind's will to survive, even after all of these decades. The Ishimura's job was to mine other planets for their most rare and most valuable resources to take them back to Earth. The USG Ishimura was a ship designed for the new resource-gathering practice: planetcracking.

At a time of near-desperation, the CEC engineered the ship that would eventually save all of humanity: the USG Ishimura. That is where the Concordance Extraction Corporation came in.

The remaining humans realized that the only way to gain the resources to survive would be to search new planets for resources. Earth has gone through an extinction-level event, caused by rapacious and unsustainable use of resources.

Dead space story