The Day After: WWIII Goes Nuclear Options

[BNSF1995]

The recent release of Nuclear War Simulator on Steam has filled my head with ideas regarding the ROTR universe. Namely the state of nuclear arsenals in 2049, and how I think the war with Russia could end (but probably won't in canon).

This also serves as my ROTR headcanon.

The Day After

Chapter 1: The Global War on Terror and Aftermath

Historians often date the start of the Global War on Terror to October 5, 2019, when the Global Liberation Army, a terrorist group created from the merger of multiple Islamic extremist groups with identical goals such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Brotherhood of the White Falcon, and Boko Haram, detonated a five-kiloton nuclear device in the heart of Beijing during a military parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the de facto end of the Chinese Civil War. In truth, the war actually began eighteen years earlier, on September 11, 2001, when four commercial airliners were hijacked in the United States and turned into missiles; two flew in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City (one for each tower), one flew into the Pentagon, and a fourth was crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania after the passengers revolted (it is accepted that the fourth plane was intended to be used against either the White House or the United States Capitol). President George W. Bush publicly declared a "War on Terror", and in October, launched Operation Enduring Freedom along with a United Nations coalition, mainly in Afghanistan, but also in the Philippines, Somalia, the Horn of Africa, among other areas where terrorist groups were thought to be fighting.

The main catalyst for the Global War on Terror as we know it came in 2017, when Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan united into a single state known as "Aldastan". The GLA was formed by Kazakh warlord "Deathstrike", as he viewed the creation of Aldastan as the product of foreign imperialism. By 2019, the GLA had absorbed the above-mentioned terrorist groups, becoming the largest terrorist group in history. Deathstrike's ire was directed at China the most, as not only was the PRC a major supporter of Aldastan, but had also been persecuting the Uyghurs and other Muslims as part of a "people's war on terror".

On October 5, 2019, the GLA made the first move, detonating at five-kiloton nuclear device in the midst of a Chinese military parade. The attack had multiple repercussions:

1. It revealed massive lapses in Chinese security, as the nuclear warhead used had been stolen from a storage bunker outside Beijing
2. It broke the "nuclear taboo" that had been in place since the end of World War II, being the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in combat since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945
3. Much of the CCP was killed, including president Xi Jinping
4. It destroyed several UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the Forbidden Palace
5. It triggered China's "no first use" policy, causing China to deploy innumerable nuclear weapon systems against the GLA

International reactions were mixed. While many countries rushed to send aid to the affected area, the United States was conspicuously absent from the list. A White House whistleblower stated in November that President Donald Trump had specifically forbade any aid to China, saying "they deserved it". It was par for the course, given Trump's hawkish attitude towards the PRC, as was his Twitter post denying he had said anything of the sort while at the same time blaming China, but it still caused outrage among Democrats and moderate Republicans.

In the aftermath of the October 5 attack (a day now known as "Black Saturday" in China), the CCP moved quickly to shore up its power, as with most of the top leadership dead, other factions or possibly even Taiwan could move to take power in Beijing. In the end, a moderate clique that had quietly formed in 1976 after Mao's death, ended up ousting the hardliners. Zhao Wei was named the new Chairman, and, in addition to enacting emergency measures to effectively prosecute the war against the GLA, also began the "Modern Way" program to reform the entire government and Chinese society in general. While the country was still authoritarian, the country was heavily liberalized, with moderate free press, open elections for Party positions, the abolition of the One-Child Policy, more transparency from the government on an international level, and most important of all, recognizing the independence of Taiwan. The Modern Way program led to a massive thaw in relations with the west, but President Trump remained steadfast in his hawkish attitude towards China.

Chinese nuclear weapon systems of the Global War on Terror

With the breaking of the "no first use" policy by the GLA using a nuclear weapon first, China deployed a variety of nuclear weapon systems. While the large strategic weapons (including ICBMs and SLBMs) were on full alert for the duration of the war, they were ultimately never used. Instead, the Chinese used numerous tactical weapon systems that had been developed in anticipation of a war with Russia or India, or to stop the US from invading Mainland China or North Korea. Chief among these weapons was the DF-21 (NATO reporting name CSS-5), a solid-fueled tactical nuclear missile. Touted as a "carrier killer", the DF-21 would normally be launched from a TEL, but these were vulnerable to GLA ambushes (particularly the so-called "rocket buggies"), so Chinese FOBs, in keeping with the new doctrine of quickly building these bases with prefabricated structures, would deploy the DF-21 in above-ground silos. This had both advantages and disadvantages, the advantage being they could be quickly reloaded (typically, a DF-21 could be launched every six minutes), and were hardened against attack, including the GLA's dreaded Scud Storm. However, them being above ground made them vulnerable, and if the local GLA FOB had two Scud Storms (which was very common), they could take out the silo, causing a nuclear explosion in addition to the chemicals and anthrax released around the blast radius. All Chinese generals had full authority to deploy the DF-21, though General Leang, head of the Special Weapons Division, chose to use a weapon she had personally developed known as the "Earth Shaker" (a weapon that caused strong earthquakes; Leang had vowed to never use nuclear weapons after her sister was killed in the October 5 attack, and became a prominent spokesperson for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament).

Another major part of the Chinese tactical nuclear arsenal was the "Meteor" 280mm atomic cannon. Initially derided as a cheap knockoff of the American M65 atomic cannon (AKA "Atomic Annie"), the Meteor quickly became the most-used nuclear weapon in history. The low-yield shells were capable of destroying entire GLA FOBs (provided they had escort from anti-infantry tanks), and they quickly became a symbol of China's collective revenge against the barbaric invaders.

General Tsing Shi Tao was heavily involved in the creation of the DF-21 and Meteor, and deployed additional nuclear weaponry no other general had access to. This included tactical missiles launched from the ZTZ200 Overlord and Chengdu J-20, tactical bombs dropped from the Helix helicopter and H-6 bomber (the H-6 would drop these bombs like a normal carpet bombing), nuclear cluster munitions also dropped from the H-6, and, perhaps most infamously, the Devastator, a twin-barrelled tank that could fire tactical nuclear shells (the Devastator also had no shielding for its crew; as of 2049, there are no surviving Devastator crews); allegedly, Tao also deployed the so-called "R.A.D. Tank", a bizarre contraption that fired focused beams of gamma radiation in such high amounts that human DNA would be mutated to the point of melting into a pile of flesh (the existence of the R.A.D. Tank has never been confirmed).

GLA nuclear weapons

Without a solid manufacturing base or means of enriching uranium, any nuclear weapons that the GLA used were stolen. The first weapon used by the GLA in the war was a five-kiloton tactical warhead stolen from a storage bunker outside Beijing, a bunker that was destroyed by a group of soldiers dressed in period uniforms and armed with archaic bolt-action rifles, alongside tanks from the regular army that had survived the attack.

Several years into the war, in 2023, the GLA hijacked three trucks carrying tactical nuclear warheads, and used them to destroy the base of a GLA commander who had defected to the Chinese, positioning the trucks in such a way that the entire base was destroyed in one fell swoop, and the GLA commander in charge of the operation quickly pulled out before Chinese reinforcements arrived.

The GLA heavily used ex-Soviet Scud missiles during the war, but these never carried nuclear warheads, only explosive warheads and warheads filled with liquid anthrax (as a side-note, the widespread use of anthrax-based weaponry by the GLA caused initial fears that this was the origin of the SARS-COV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, but this was quickly debunked by both the Chinese government and World Health Organization, who traced the origin of the virus to bats).

When the GLA attacked the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 2025, rather than destroying all defenses, they instead captured the joint Sino-American base at the facility. In addition to getting their hands on American and Chinese technology, the GLA also came into possession of countless nuclear warheads, as a fully-stocked DF-21 launch facility was on the base. Although the GLA used Baikonur to launch numerous Soyuz-2 rockets as ICBMs (ironic, considering that the Soyuz-2 traces its ancestry back to the R-7 Semyorka, the world's first ICBM), these used chemical warheads, as the GLA still lacked any high-yield strategic warheads that would make the use of nuclear-armed Soyuz rockets worthwhile.

GLA demolitions expert Rodall Juhziz was crafty, and able to get his hands on more nuclear warheads than was thought possible by western intelligence. He used these warheads on his bomb trucks. As the GLA Insurrection in Germany came to an end, Juhziz, through means that are still unknown to this day, had smuggled a decommissioned American B53 nuclear bomb into Hamburg, using it to destroy the city and advancing Chinese military units (plus General Shin Fai), at the cost of his own life.

Prior to the Germany Insurrection, the GLA had used the Particle Cannon at Crete Naval Base in Germany to sink the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76). While this didn't cause a nuclear explosion due to how well-armored the ship's reactor was, it still released radiation that forced all residents in Crete to shelter in place (fortunately, nobody developed radiation sickness, as most of the radiation released by the carrier leaked underwater, though this did create a major dead zone that, as of 2049, was still uninhabitable for any marine life).

Political changes during and after the Global War on Terror

The political upheaval during and after the Global War on Terror cannot be understated.

The first was the changes in China after Black Saturday, as the newly-liberalized China went from "uneasy coexistence" with the west to effectively joining it. It was also for this reason that, when North Korea invaded South Korea in July 2029, China did nothing other than stop the flow of refugees from North Korea, willingly cutting the Kim dynasty loose; this didn't stop Russia from assisting the North, as they didn't want a traditionally western-aligned country on their border, forcing Japan to repeal Article 9 of their postwar constitution; the intervention of Japan in the Second Korean War not only led to a South Korean victory, but also allowed Japan to retake Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, serving as a major black eye for Russia.

Russia itself had also undergone major political upheaval during the war, though most of it wasn't a direct result of GLA actions. After Joe Biden won the 2020 US Presidential Election (and after rabid supporters of Trump attempted to overturn the election results on January 6, 2021), Russian president Vladimir Putin initiated a "special military operation" in neighboring Ukraine. Officially, the reason was the "demilitarize" and "denazify" the country, but in truth, it was a land grab, as Putin, a former KGB officer, was stuck in the mindset of Soviet imperialism and paranoia. He wanted a buffer against the west, and, believing the United States to be distracted by the GLA, thought he could get away with it. He grossly underestimated the United States' ability to multitask, as well as how willing the west was to supply Ukraine with weapons, while not putting boots on the ground.

The entire invasion ended up being a fiasco, and Russian forces were kicked out of Ukraine by late 2023. In early 2024, American special forces discovered exactly where the GLA was getting ex-Soviet equipment such as Scud missiles and ZSU-23-4 "Shilka" quad cannons mounted on half-tracks: Russia itself. Putin had gotten desperate to fund his vanity war, and to that end, began selling equipment that was of no use in Ukraine. Putin immediately went on damage control, and ordered a military operation to recapture Baikonur from the GLA; this operation was a miserable failure, not the least because the Russian military had become a third-rate force after their unexpected defeat in Ukraine. For four years, Russia's political parties were in a "cold civil war", until 2028, when the New Russia Party (or Novorossiya Party) led an armed insurrection on the Kremlin, with the full support of the local military garrison.

The world watched as the leader of the New Russia Party, Nikolai Suvorov, rode atop a BMP-3 Mauler and, with his suporters, stormed the barricades at the Kremlin, slipping into the Kremlin with special forces while a firefight broke out outside. Putin was ordered to stand down, but he was defiant, pulling a gun and reaching for the telephone to order a full nuclear launch. If he couldn't have the world, no one could. Putin was shot dead before he could do so. In the following hours, Putin's cronies were arrested, including Dmitry Medvedev, Sergei Lavrov, Sergei Shoigu, and Dmitry Rogozin. Many high-ranking military officials refused to recognize the new government, and were also arrested, in a period known as the "Second Great Purge" (though the terminology was controversial, as it was nowhere near the scale of Stalin's purges). Putin's critics were granted full pardons and released, chief among them Alexei Navalny, who was offered Lavrov's job, but declined. Open elections were held in October 2028, without the United Russia party, as it had been deemed an extremist group and illegalized. Everyone thought this would usher in a new era of peace, until Suvorov revealed his true colors and publicly announced his goal of creating a "Eurasian Empire" with Moscow as the capital, by any means necessary. Suvorov, it seemed, was just a Putin 2.0 (without the megalomania or KGB-influenced paranoia), but with Russia's military in a woeful state following the failed invasion of Ukraine, nobody took him seriously.

Even before the Germany Insurrection, Europe had already seen much change. In 2023, the Treaty of Vienna was signed, uniting all members of the European Union into a single entity by the same name; the only holdout was the United Kingdom, which had left the EU in 2020 (Brexit), and had its own problems, including rising prices on everyday items, a high turnover rate on prime ministers, and the imminent coronation of Charles III. Instead, the UK sought closer cooperation with Commonwealth countries, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as well as maintaining its strong relationship with the United States. The formation of the united EU led to the disbandment of NATO, but this did nothing to stop the flow of arms into Ukraine. The cracks in the united EU didn't take long to form, as the Free Republic of Bavaria declared independence in 2024. The foundations of the united EU were VERY fragile to begin with, and the Germany Insurrection completely destroyed those foundations. Across Europe, monarchies returned to power, and military dictatorships overthrew governments to stabilize the situation. With cheap Chinese credit, the EU was able to temporarily arrest the collapse, purchasing fossil fuels and raw materials from Russia (the united EU nullified the sanctions imposed during the invasion of Ukraine out of sheer necessity). This sudden influx of money allowed Suvorov to invest in infastructure, mainly in Siberia, which was an untapped treasure trove of natural resources. With the new resources flowing out of Siberia, Russia rapidly modernized its military, with new weapons, tanks, and even building a navy with which to rival the US Navy, including ten nuclear-powered aircraft carriers to match the United States' own Gerald R. Ford-class carriers.

The collapse of the EU began anew in 2030, when the government of Serbia was removed by a group of irredentist military officers who formed a strategic alliance with Russia, and proceeded to annex large parts of former Yugoslavia into a new federal state. This move totally blindsided the western world; the last thing anyone expected was the reformation of Yugoslavia. As speculation ran rampant about which nation from the pages of history would rise from the dead next (many Redditors put their money on Turkey using the global chaos to rebuild the Ottoman Empire), Eastern European nations were the next to break away from the EU, including Hungary, Romania, and, most surprising of all, Greece. None of the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) had been considered for the united EU, and merged to form the Baltic Commonwealth, eagerly joining Russia's sphere.

By 2034, the situation in Europe had stabilized. The EU was disbanded back into independent countries, and a new military alliance, the European Continental Army (ECA), was founded to fill the void left by the disbandment of NATO.

Throughout the Global War on Terror, everything seemed to have been going the way of the United States. Then they suffered a series of defeats, including the sinking of the USS Ronald Reagan. But it was an attack on American soil that really did it. In August 2027, the GLA launched a raid on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. GLA sympathizers from across California snuck whatever they could into the area, including cars and pickup trucks to be used as technicals, tractors to be converted into "toxin tractors", and anything they could get their hands on to convert into Scorpion Tanks, plus any arms they could get their hands on. The goal of the operation was to steal toxins recovered from the lab of the infamous "Dr. Thrax" in Iran (the joint Saudi-US invasion of Iran also led to the dissolution of the government that had come to power in the 1979 Iran Revolution, as well as a permanent end to Iran's nuclear weapons program).

The GLA managed to steal at least 20 truckloads of toxins, completely destroying the lab complex in the process. They then turned to the nearby town of Livermore, and began destroying everything and killing everyone in sight. The destruction of Livermore was livestreamed on social media, much to the horror of everyone unlucky enough to click on the links that were spammed to everyone's email inbox and encoded in a way to bypass even the best filters. The GLA moved along Interstate 580 with their ill-gotten toxins and everything they had looted from Livermore, with the sackings spilling over into nearby Pleasanton. After the last truck had cleared Livermore, the 580-680 interchange was blown up, and the nearby Stoneridge Shopping Center was looted and burned to the ground. The GLA then did the same thing to Castro Valley, Ashland, and San Leandro, before reaching their destination: Oakland International Airport. The GLA had hijacked a UPS 747 to transport the toxins and ill-gotten loot back to GLA headquarters in Central Africa, making a daring escape while hastily-erected Stinger Sites kept fighter jets deployed from Travis Air Force Base near Fairfield away from the 747.

When news of the attack reached Washington, President Biden, who had won reelection in 2024, suffered a fatal heart attack, becoming the first president to die in office since John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Vice President Kamala Harris was quickly sworn in as the 47th President of the United States (and first female president), and was whisked away to Mount Weather, where she spoke to the nation via the Emergency Alert System (the first time an actual, non-test National Emergency Message had been issued). After the GLA destroyed the EUCOM base in Stuttgart, Germany, Harris made the decision to withdraw most military forces stationed overseas (bases in the UK and in US overseas territories remained open). Once the last servicemember was home and the last piece of equipment was unloaded onto American soil, Harris proceeded to turn the United States into a fortress, while taking care not to crack down on civil liberties. The majority of this involved massive cuts in defense spending, and cutting troubled projects such as the FB-40 Aurora, as well as decommissioning the oldest ships in the navy such as the Flight I Arleigh Burke-class destroyers; at no point was any consideration given to the retirement of the six Atlanta-class battleships built between 2013 and 2019 (the Atlanta-class being a product of the naval gunfire support debate; the class are considered "pocket battleships" due to only having two main guns, and were initially designed solely as floating artillery platforms), and they were placed in "warm layup". Procurement of the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines would continue, however, as would work on the DDG(X) project.

In the 2028 election, Harris ran for a full term, but the country blamed the Democrats for losing to the GLA and forcing the country back into isolationism, and so the Republican candidate, the controversial Ron DeSantis, was elected. DeSantis continued Harris' policies of turning the United States into a fortress, but took a much more openly-bellicose tone. One of his most-worrying reforms was massively expanding the nuclear arsenal. With the expiration of the New START treaty in 2026, and the repealment of the INF Treaty by Trump in 2018, DeSantis gave the Department of Defense free reign to modernize the stockpile.

One project started before the Global War on Terror was the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), which had been given the official designation of LGM-35A Sentinel in 2022. This next-generation ICBM had been intended to fully replace the aging LGM-30G Minuteman III, but budget cuts meant that it would be cheaper to carry out a life-extension program on the older missiles. Still, DeSantis didn't want to work done on the Sentinel to go to waste, and therefore, made the controversial decision in 2030 to reactivate the 351st Missile Wing at Whiteman AFB in Missouri, followed by the 44th Missile Wing at Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota; consideration was given to also reactivating the 321st Missile Wing at Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota, but this would be cost-prohibitive. The existing missile wings at F.E. Warren AFB, Minot AFB, and Malmstrom AFB would continue hosting Minuteman III missiles, now newly-modernized, while the reactivated wings at Whiteman and Ellsworth would have the new Sentinel missiles.

Another major nuclear modernization project was one meant for use against the GLA. The DoD had determined that the US could not rely on FOBs solely using Particle Cannons, and so petitioned DeSantis to create a new-generation MRBM. DeSantis quickly gave approval, and Lockheed Martin was commissioned to create a new missile system. The design phase was described as long and arduous, and at the end of the day, all they could come up with was described as a "Pershing III"; all Lockheed Martin had done was take the blueprints from predecessor Martin Marietta for the infamous Pershing II, and modernized it with increased range and MIRV capacity. In the end, though, the DoD accepted this design.

One of the big losses of the postwar budget cuts was the B-21 Raider. The Raider had been intended to replace the B-1B Lancer and B-2 Spirit as the primary strategic bomber of the Air Force, with the hope that it could eventually replace the venerable B-52 Stratofortress. Several B-52s had been been shot down by the GLA during the Global War on Terror, and the survivors were now solely being used for nuclear weapons delivery.

Perhaps the biggest project undertaken by the DoD when modernizing the American nuclear arsenal was Project Big Stick. President DeSantis desired a missile with such a large warhead that nobody would ever consider attacking the United States, specifically alluding to the Titan II missile, a liquid-fueled ICBM that stayed in service longer than anyone expected due to being able to loft a nine-megaton warhead. DeSantis desired something like this, and ordered the DoD to begin work. The DoD ultimately made an unusual choice: the United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket that had replaced the reliable Delta IV and Atlas V in the mid-2020s. The rocket was powerful enough to lift the kind of large warhead DeSantis desired. The new missile would be a liquid-fueled missile (a rarity in the modern day), designated as the LGM-185 Vulcan, carrying a 20 MT warhead. Production on the new missiles was carried out concurrently with the civilian Vulcan Centaur rockets, being based on the VC0 variant without the SRBs. The Vulcan silos would be deeper than the Minuteman and Sentinel silos, so that a counterforce strike couldn't take them out. As for location, the old Titan II missile wings at Little Rock AFB in Arkansas, McConnell AFB in Kansas, and Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona were reactivated, and the old Titan II silos were dug out and refurbished (the Titan Missile Museum was excluded from this, with a new silo being built for a Vulcan instead).

Other minor projects included resurrecting and modernizing the BGM-109A Tomahawk, and creating the BGM-109M Tomahawk, both equipped with nuclear warheads. The BGM-109A was intended for use with the Tomahawk Launchers introduced at the beginning of the Global War on Terror, while the BGM-109M was the naval variant.

The modernization of the American nuclear arsenal did not escape the notice of Russia, who also moved to enlarge their nuclear arsenal to match the United States'. It was the perfect nightmare for the CND; without any new arms control legislation, American and Russian nuclear stockpiles were quickly ballooning back to 1980s levels.

Other cases of political upheaval included Israel coming under the rule of a militant regime after the GLA launched a Soyuz-2 at Tel Aviv, the formation of the Middle Eastern Council (consisting of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, the newly-secularized Persia, Iraq, and Kurdistan; Israel was intentionally excluded due to its continued refusal to recognize Palestine), and the creation of the Greater Asian People's Alliance (GAPA), consisting of China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, with Myanmar joining after China invaded in 2032 to end the civil war that had started in 2021 when the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup.

Back in the United States, DeSantis lost reelection in the 2032 election to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose economic policies produced a rapid turnaround for the American economy. Among these policies included the nationalization of the railroads, power grid, and water systems, and increasing the tax rate for the wealthy by a huge margin, which she managed by convincing the Republicans that, without that extra tax revenue, the GLA would come back and kill everyone. She had intended to put an end to DeSantis' expansion of the nuclear arsenal, but Russia's own expansion of its arsenal forced Ocasia-Cortez to stay the course, though she did manage to placate anti-nuclear activists by creating the Civil Reconstruction Administration, intended to mobilize after a nuclear war. The origin of CRA can be traced to the ambulances deployed by the US Army during the Global War on Terror. These ambulances, based on the Humvee chassis, were equipped with a revolution in decontamination: the CBRN Foam created by California-based tech company Genentech. The foam is formulated to bind itself to harmful agents, such as anthrax and nuclear fallout, and neutralize it, rendering it harmless. The CBRN Foam saw heavy use in battles where the GLA deployed large amounts of chemical and biological weapons.

The CRA's main goal was to ensure that the survivors of a nuclear war could quickly restart society. CRA activities included:

* Stockpiling massive amounts of medical supplies, including iodine, anaesthetic, bandages, and NIOSH-certified N95 masks (of which there was a surplus after the COVID-19 pandemic)
* Stockpiling industrial machinery to expedite rebuilding
* Stockpiling prefabricated housing to accomodate those whose homes were destroyed
* Building massive underground greenhouses to ensure a stable food supply
* Hardening the power grid against EMP, and ensuring all electronics meet new FCC standards for EMP-proofing, up to and including retrofitting older electronics for free
* Stockpiling Humvee-derived ambulances equipped with the CBRN Foam

All stockpiled equipment was stored in massive underground warehouses, whose locations were all strictly-classified so that enemies couldn't find them with satellites and then target them. CRA reforms were extended to Canada and Mexico (both members of the North American Union), and the UK (who gladly welcomed any help to overhaul its woefully-outdated civil defense planning, which still included airing 1970s-vintage Protect & Survive public information films).

By 2038, with the advent of the African Resource Rush, the world could be reliably divided into multiple spheres:

* European Continental Army, consisting of Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Bavaria, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Ukraine (Slovakia was invited to join, but chose to remain neutral; Switzerland immediately chose to retain its traditional neutrality)
* The Global Defense Initiative (GDI), consisting of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, South Africa, and Israel, plus all other members of the Commonwealth of Nations, and the American-created Free African Union (the UK was also part of the ECA, and served as a go-between for the ECA and GDI)
* The New Collective Security Treaty Organization (New Col-Sec), consisting of Russia, Belarus, the Baltic Commonwealth (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Greece, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, India (which had left the Commonwealth of Nations after a far-right coup, and made a grand spectacle of it), Pakistan, the East African Federation (created from the merger of Kenya and Tanzinia at the behest of Russia), Madagascar, Cuba, and the entirety of South America (except for French Guiana, which remained in ECA hands)
* The Greater Asian People's Alliance (GAPA), consisting of China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia Myanmar, and Aldastan (the latter is a sore point between the GAPA and New Col-Sec)
* The Middle Eastern Council (MEC), consisting of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Persia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Kurdistan, Yemen, and Bahrain
* The Global Liberation Army (GLA), while not formally recognized by the UN, is still considered one of the "Great Powers" by pundits; GLA territory, known as "The Zone", primarily consists of what was once the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo, Sudan, and the Central African Republic; GLA activity is suspected in Somalia, Great Baluchistan, Borneo, Malawi, Mozambique, Chad, Cameroon, and by 2048, the CIA had even uncovered possible GLA activity in Mexico, possibly through cutting deals with the Mexican cartels that still ran rampant

By the start of the 2040s, the age of the superpowers was over. Now, the main players were so-called "hyperpowers". Depending on who you asked, these hyperpowers were the above-mentioned spheres.

Each sphere, except the MEC, had at least one nuclear-armed state. The ECA had France, the GDI had the US, UK, Korea, and Israel, the New Col-Sec had Russia and India (Pakistan voluntarily destroyed its entire nuclear arsenal, as it had been designed specifically to destroy India), and the GAPA had China.

The early 2040s was marked by a worrying trend: nations obtaining nuclear weapons. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons effectively died after the Global War on Terror. Signatories left en masse, until the only nation left by 2040 was Switzerland. By 2043, quite a few nations had joined the "nuclear club", including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Sweden, and Yugoslavia. By 2044, even Japan, the first country to be attacked with nuclear weapons at the end of World War II in 1945, had joined the "nuclear club", and had a sizeable stockpile, at that (to no one's surprise, Japan's nuclear missiles were all named after notable Japanese characters, with their main ICBM being named the Gojira, the Japanese name for Godzilla; other missiles including an IRBM named the Mazinger, an SRBM named the Goku, and an SLBM named the Midoriya).

By the end of the decade, global nuclear stockpiles were quadruple what they were at the height of the Cold War, but at the same time, nobody seemed willing to really use them. When the GDI intervened in the Russo-European War in 2048, thus turning the war into World War III, US President William Bradford and Russian President Nikolai Suvorov immediately called each other and agreed to withhold their nuclear arsenals, even though France had already deployed the Pandora, and Russia was poised to use VERY low-yield tactical nuclear weapons (lower than the DF-21 deployed by China). World War III, it seemed, just might end without a nuclear holocaust.

And it would have, had it not been for one Nikita Ivanovich Aleksandr...

[BNSF1995]

Chapter 4: World War III: 2045-2047

Correcting Errors

Before we continue, we understand that there were some errors in prior chapters.

First and foremost, the idea that this is a book. It's not. This is a blog that is being posted to BlogSpot. The first three chapters were written by someone who didn't know he was writing for an online blog and not a book.

As for some of the factual errors, keep in mind that our access to Wikipedia has been spotty, as internet infrastructure in our area is still unreliable. While our internet connection holds out, we will now correct some of the mistakes we've made:

* While its origin may never be truly known, we found out during research for this chapter that SARS-COV-2 may have actually been accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to the FBI; we were unable to find any corroborating evidence, but if this theory is true, it is likely that it was an incomplete bioweapon created under the Xinping regime to hold the world hostage until the world surrendered to his rule; the October 5 attack stopped this plan, and it is known that the WIV was raided by the GLA early in the war, so it stands to reason that SARS-COV-2 was an ingredient in the GLA's biochemical weapons
* Speaking of, we previously referred to the GLA using either chemical or biological warfare; they actually used biochemical weaponry, as their toxic weapons systems used both biological and chemical agents in the same mixture
* We had said that the United States recommissioned and rebuilt the old Titan II silos for the Vulcan; brand-new silos were actually built; this also applies to the Sentinel silos built at Whiteman and Ellis
* We had said that the New START treaty had expired in 2026; in truth, Vladimir Putin had actually pulled out of the treaty in February 2023
* We had said that the VLS cells on the Atlanta-class battleships were big enough to hold Pershing III missiles; they weren't, but the next battleship class was (more on that later)

We will do our level best to ensure there are no further factual errors.

Zero Hour

At midnight, British Standard Time, on January 1, 2045, Russia made its move. Hundreds of thousands of cruise missiles were suddenly and without warning launched at airbases in Europe. While these didn't have the range to reach the British Isles or the Iberian Peninsula, for every other member of the ECA, their air forces were wiped out. After the bombardment subsided, New Col-Sec forces crossed the border into Poland, Ukraine, and Finland. The ECA, caught off-guard, quickly scrambled to put up a defense.

On January 9, Brazilian forces invaded French Guyana, while Argentina blockaded the Falklands, demanding that the British return them. The UK immediately activated Article 5 of the Global Defense Charter, and the United States declared war on the South American Pact, calling the rest of GDI into the war.

Up to this point, the war had been confined to Europe, with the media calling it either the Russo-European War, or the War of the Eighth Coalition. Now, however, with the fighting having spread to South America, it was now World War III.

The South American Theatre was expected to be intense, but the conviction of most of the SAP was grossly-overestimated. Hours after GDI operations in South America began, Peru surrendered when the United States parked a Carrier Strike Group near Lima. Ecuador followed minutes later when two Atlanta-class battleships were parked near Manta and fired a Tomahawk at an unoccupied area as a warning shot. This same strategy of scaring the enemy with carriers and battleships was repeated with Colombia and Chile to the same success, but Venezuela wouldn't be cowed. On January 13, the United States initiated an amphibious invasion originating from Puerto Rico, with landings at Maracaibo, Caracas, and Cumana, after a three-day bombing campaign carried out by the battleship USS San Jose against transportation infrastructure to hinder enemy resupply. The landings at all three sites were considered "perfect", with minimal GDI casualties, while SAP forces were decimated. The Venezuelan government fled south to San Fernando de Apure, but were intercepted by American special forces and captured. Brazilian forces were also quickly repulsed from French Guyana by GDI forces, and Uruguay surrendered after an American carrier strike group was spotted approaching. In March, GDI forces crossed into Bolivia from occupied Chile and Peru, meeting heavy resistance from Brazilian and Argentine forces. This remained an unmoving stalemate for several years.

Meanwhile in Europe, New Col-Sec forces took Kyiv by February 21; Suvorov bragged that he had succeeded where Putin had failed in taking Ukraine. Fighting continued on the borders, as New Col-Sec forces attempted to break through the fortified borders. At the Polish front, several sections of the blockade were breached by Russian armor, backed by artillery fire. However, the Poles continued to stand their ground in their fortified posts hidden in extensive forests for over a month, laying low until the Russian forces came near, and then attacking them. Soon however, Russian army was able to overcome them, particularly at a front where a Siberian Sergeant Boris Bikov’s inspirational and brave offense allowed his battalion to annihilate a Polish outpost. On April 2, Russian forces entered Warsaw, and captured the Polish government.

With the fortified border breached, New Col-Sec forces entered Europe en masse. Austria and the Czech Republic were quickly as General Nikita Ivanovich Aleksandr continued his traditional approach of using regular Russian army to keep European forces contained, before his Shock Divisions dealt a deadly final blow, getting all the fame for the offense.

At the German-Austrian and Southern German-Polish border, where ECA’s top class forces were stationed, Russians continued to advance with their super-heavy tanks and advanced weapons, while General Leonid Zhukov’s 20th Army was ordered to rush through the Russian-Polish border, pass through Low countries of Benelux (which according to him were “small and unimportant countries easy to overwhelm”), before attacking France from the northeast, diverting French troops from Alsace-Lorraine so that the Shock Divisions could break through and capture Aleksandr’s main goal, Paris by Christmas 2046.

Aleksandr’s plan didn’t succeed however, as after New Col-Sec forces marched through Northern Germany, ECA General Willem van der Meer’s forces evacuated all civilians in Netherlands, and flooded the whole Dutch countryside by opening the northern floodgates, and turning the whole area into a huge swamp. As a result, Russian advance came to a slow pace upon reaching the Netherlands in August 2046.

While all of this was happening, the United States attempted to facilitate diplomatic negotiations between the ECA and Russia. It became clear very early on, however, that there would be no negotiating with Suvorov. He addressed the United Nations via Zoom on June 6, 2045, stating that the war would end on his terms alone, nobody else's. His demands were:

* All of Europe be surrendered to Russia
* The dissolution of GDI
* The total disarmament of the United States

Everyone at the UN from non-New Col-Sec nations laughed at Suvorov's demands, to which he responded with a highly-unhinged rant, in which he stated he would have his Eurasian Empire, and eventually, his New World Order, and he would remove the decadence and corruption inherent in both capitalism and communism, before announcing that he was completely willing to destroy the world with nuclear weapons if he didn't get his way.

Several days after this show of insanity, a Russian carrier strike group was spotted on satellite near Hawaii. The United States, believing the Russians were planning to repeat Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor nearly 104 years prior, deployed aircraft to intercept. The Russian CSG withdrew, its purpose of testing American response times seemingly completed. It should be noted that, at this point in the war, the United States was not at war with Russia yet, as while the UK was at war with Russia to fulfill its ECA obligations, it had yet to be directly attacked by New Col-Sec, so it had not yet invoked Article 5 of the Global Defense Charter (the Global Defense Charter was basically identical to the North Atlantic Charter); there also seemed to be some fear regarding involving the United States in the war in Europe, as American and Russian nuclear arsenals had ballooned to nearly triple their Cold War peak by 2045.

Fall of Berlin

The Polish-German border was the site of some of the fiercest battles of the war up to that point, with top ECA and Russian forces clashing in trench warfare that recalled World War I. In November 2045, Germany deployed the prototype Manticore Super-heavy tank against Russian Sentinels and Golems at Swiebodzin, Poland, to very satisfying results.

However, despite experiencing some losses against German forces, Aleksandr’s shock divisions were able to advance across the border, and reach Berlin in February 2046. An extremely fierce battle took place, where Germans fought fanatically for their city. Although much of the city fell against Russian army, German forces were able to hold up Mitte, the central government district for five days, until Lieutenant Boris Bikov was able to spot an exploitable breach, allowing Russian soldiers to rush the German Reichstag and capture it (the German government had long since evacuated, but the sight of the Russian tricolor being hoisted over the Reichstag, just as the Soviets had a century ago, haunted the free world).

After the fall of Berlin, Aleksandr made it his forces’ headquarters, from where he coordinated the attacks on France. The Russians took control of major German assets, particularly the ECAN Media Centre, which was forcibly taken off the net by a Russian Spetsnaz team during a live broadcast, all personnel inside being slaughtered. With the ECAN branch in their control, the Russian Army was able to spread its propaganda throughout Europe, further damaging the morale of remaining European forces and civilians.

Life in Russian-occupied areas was rather mild. Suvorov had very progressive views regarding race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation, the latter being a sharp contrast to Putin's homophobic policies. The Russian Army was given strict orders not to interfere in the lives of civilians in occupied areas, and civilians were, in turn, told to go about their normal lives as if nothing had changed. Many Russian soldiers engaged in looting, pillaging, and rape, regardless, these bad actors being swiftly and publicly executed. The Russians took great pains to present themselves as benevolent liberators seeking to show them a better way of life, not malevolent conquerors seeking to take over the world and kick puppies.

In April of same year, General Orlov’s 106th Guards Airborne Division was able to capture and establish a stable beachhead in Koblenz, securing vital bridges for Russian advance through the GLA-polluted Rhine and into France. In Berlin, retired Captain Frank Jaeger organized a resistance against the occupying Russian forces, particularly General Aleksandr.

The French Stalemate

While Orlov’s and Aleksandr’s forces advanced through Southern Germany, Zhukov’s 20th Army faced major causalities as they passed through flooded Dutch countryside littered with hidden traps, including robotic Bulldog turrets and land mines that the united EU had purchased from China while recovering from the GLA Insurrection. After four months, Zhukov’s forces were able to enter Belgium in early 2047, with most elements of 20th Army evacuated. Later that year, Russian suspicions of Solaris technology being weaponized were confirmed when Russian Aircraft carrier Peter the Great was destroyed by a pillar of focused Solar energy, via one of ECA’s Solaris satellites.

New Col-Sec continued advancing through Germany, with Paris as their main focus. Eventually, they entered Paris in the summer of 2047, half a year later than originally planned, after much of the city was left in ruins by Russian air raids. The Russian tricolor was hoisted over the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre was looted (though Suvorov had the offending soldiers executed and the artworks returned unharmed). With Paris occupied, the Russian army began advancing through France, until they reached a stalemate in central France for over a year.

The Battle of Britain

After Northern France fell to New Col-Sec, the UK was now in direct line of fire. Russian submarines had already been a major threat to the British war effort (we shall be discussing the naval war next chapter), but thus far, the Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier had stood firm. But for Ol' Blighty, the battle was just beginning.

From captured airbases in Northern France, Russia launched nightly air raids on the British Isles. These bombings would come in three waves:

* Wave 1: Cruise missiles would be launched at anything that could threaten bombers; primary targets included Skyshield Battery installations, airfields, radar sites, and command centers
* Wave 2: Bombers and cruise missiles would be launched at strategic targets, including naval bases, air bases, motorway interchanges, railway junctions, factories, and government buildings
* Wave 3: Bombers would hit civilian targets, aimed at sowing terror and attempting to make the British government surrender

Whenever an attack was detected, the National Siren System (reestablished in 2029 after the GLA Insurrection) and the National Emergency Warning System (more on that in a later chapter) would be activated. All civilians were expected to go to the nearest fallout shelter, as nobody knew when the Russians might decide to say "fuck it" and use nuclear weapons. Very early on, methods for intercepting cruise missiles were developed, and the Skyshield system was able to shoot down 65% of incoming cruise missiles. During the second and third waves, the Royal Air Force would be launched to shoot down enemy bombers, doing so with ruthless efficiency. By the second week of the Battle of Britain, Russia began deploying Su-47 fighters as escorts, leading to large dogfights over British cities that caused large amounts of damage from planes crashing into buildings.

The Royal Air Force wasn't constantly on the defensive, though. British bombers sortied to the continent to attack Russian FOBs, transportation infrastructure, and captured industry. And just like in WWII, bomber crews would know they had made it home when they saw the White Cliffs of Dover.

Like in WWII, the British people were subjected to nightly air raids. Unlike in WWII, though, they also faced invasion.

With no success in Southern France, Aleksandr turned his attention towards the UK. Coastal areas were already evacuated as the Royal Observer Corps rightfully suspected they would see heavy bombardment. On September 8, 2047, elements of 2nd and 3rd Shock Divisions, accompanied by the 13th Guards Army, invaded the British coast. The British 8th Home Guard, spread across the coast, was concentrated by high command on the coastal towns of Kingston and Ramsgate, as the British believed the Russian Army would try to capture these harbours first. Unexpectedly, however, Russian forces landed on beaches between the cities, while Russian VDV troopers were paradropped further inland, completely distracting British forces while the main invasion force marched on the target cities. Russian forces were able to completely overwhelm the British defenders after a fierce fight of two hours, before the Royal Lancers, sent by General Charles Cutting, along with fire support from the Royal Navy, were able to turn the tide of battle. Russian forces quickly collapsed when their scheduled resupply failed to arrive, a victim of British attack submarines.

Article 5

The British were willing to suffer nightly air raids without invoking Article 5 of the Global Defense Charter. A direct naval invasion, however, was a different matter altogether. Ultimately, though, it was not the British who would invoke Article 5.

On September 14, 2047, Russia launched large air raids on Northern Korea and Sakhalin, followed closely by a massive ground invasion of Korea. It was no secret Suvorov wanted Sakhalin and the Kurill Islands back, and that he was cagey about having an American ally bordering his country, but it was believed that the majority of his forces were committed to invading Europe, with the remaining being kept on rear-guard duty to deter China. Suvorov, however, realized that Britain could invoke Article 5 at any moment, thus bringing Russia into direct conflict with the United States. Knowing that this was inevitable, he decided that if he had to fight the Americans, he would force them to fight a two-front war.

Hours after the invasion began, Korea invoked Article 5. American president William Bradford wanted to avoid fighting the Russians at all costs, and on September 15, set an ultimatum of noon the next day for Russia to withdraw from Korea. No such undertaking was received, so at noon, Eastern Daylight Time, on September 16, the United States formally declared war on Russia, the first time the country had formally declared war on another nation since 1941. All other GDI nations followed suit in the hours after this declaration.

The immediate fallout of the United States' declaration of war against Russia will be discussed next chapter, as will civil defense around the world.