(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)
sorry, I get more story concepts than I do time to write them fully.