MoF 25: TO SALTED EARTH, THROUGH BURNING SKY

Procrastination leads to maps!

No real background...just a regional map of a future post-apocolyptic Mexican Empire and its expansion over time. First consolidating inner Mexico, then the coasts, then the Maya Empire, then the great northern expansions into the Mexican wastes. This led to conflict with the Cartels which had become de facto kingdoms by this point and their annexation (along with a naval take over of the unsavory port of Nueva Orleans). Now Mexico is at odds with its white english speaking neighbors...namely the New Californian Republic (), the Texan Confederation, and the Southeastern states...especially Louisiana.

The conflict between white/english and hispanic/spanish peoples has led the Mexican Empire to take a fascist approach with concentration and in extreme cases extermination of people that refuse to convert to Catholicism and learn Spanish (or aren't "Mexican" enough for local administrators). This has also spread to the always rebellious Maya lands in the south.

You'll also notice the presence of three vassal states within the empire...the Duchy of Baja, the Duchy of Valles, and the Kingdom of Tejas (created from the Cartel Kingdoms of Nueva Laredo and San Antonio). All under the firm control of the Mexican Emperor of course

Map of Soviet Europe and the European Defence Alliance:

Comment Mapmaker:
The following map is a map of a future earth.
It depicts a map made by humans (let's say they are called the Sagitarians) , once leaving Earth behind to travel to distant planets and returning to Earth (called Ahasa) to find it not the paradise they thought it would be.


Selection of diary writings by anonymous Sagitarian lieutenant:

"It seems some sort of catastrophe has occured some time in the past and the radiation all around the globe show the humanoids on the planet reached some sort of intermediate level of technology."

"The planet seems to be struck by high temperatures and high sea levels.
Also the number of Humanoids looks to have fallen greatly as the scans
show and it seems the high level of radiation has triggered some kind of physical difference between the different types of Humanoids, as the differences cannot be accounted for by normal genetic theories."

"We are ordered to pacify each area one by one and do the necessary research on both the natives as the possible resources the planet can provide. Area HAH was pacified first a few weeks ago and we had barely troubles with the natives. Area THA is next to be pacified, but it seems the Humanoids here are a bit more organised. The scouts have come back with natives from 3 different groups (Uyana's, Amsuna's and Ulumya's) and they are physically very distinct from the tribes of area HAH,having longer arms and legs and larger eyes and ears. Also they have a language very different from the ones we have encountered before amd there technolevel seems to be more 4 than 3 ( but still very backwards)."

"The following 3 military units have been selected to pacify the area:
- 58th Space Marines Wing
- 101st Space Marines Wing
- 2nd Supreme Guards Wing
I have been ordered to lead the 2210nd Attack Contingent of the 58th Space Marines.
I have been noticed informally that if I succesfully execute the operation I may join up the Attack Contingent of the Supreme Guards for the remainder of the pacification campaigns."

"I have been sick for the last 3 days and more than half the Attack Contingent with me. Guess I can kiss the promotion goodbye."

"There is quite a lot panic among the medical officers as they are trying to find a cure for this Ahasan Flu, as it begins to take more and more lives each day"

"I saw my best friend from Military College die 3 days ago and today I have the same symptoms as he had. I guess it won't take long anymore, altough Dr. XXXXX has informed me that they can find the right genes for the cure any minute."

The Pirates of Japan from a very Dysotopic Future

This has a longer Backstory, that so far unfortunately only exists in German.

The short Version:
The Nazis win the Second World War. Japan gets into a trade war with Germany in the 80s and is nuked.
A few decades later the SS is outlawed after a short civil war. Surviving SS members from the Siberian Garnisons and the Asgaard Colony flee to postapocalyptic Japan, where they found a Pirate Kingdom.
(The Great Germanic Empire is allready in decline at that time and neglecting the Pacific Fleet)

Beeing German I would like to clarify that I don't consider this Pirates heroes or cool rebels or anything like that. They are just a bunch of fascist of a different colour.
The only heroes in this timeline are the few members of the underground that plot for the eventual downfall of the Empire.

The Long War was a war that would fundamentally change Europe and the world.

Following staggering death tolls, the use of Chemical weapons and the various atrocities committed and planned on both the Allies and the
Imperial Alliance's own minority's the public and governments of the victorious allies were out for blood, literally.

While some of the minor members of the IA were spared, most were not.

In the end it was decided that Russia, Germany and England were simply to dangerous to allow to continue to exist, thus began the creation
of the 'Reclamation Zones', while the treatment of the peoples in these zones differed, from the forced removal of the Russians in the Baltic's
and Finno-Karelia to the execution of everyone in every level of government in Prussia to the destruction of entire towns in England, they all
shared one common trait; they were to be changed and the identity of the previous nations was to be eradicated from all but History books.

The Allies of course were for the most part not intending on committing Genocide (well, apart from the Bosnians, who themselves had suffered
the same from the Serbs), however hundreds of thousands would die in the first few years as agricultural production and infrastructure in the
zones was next to non-existent and the Allies were barely managing themselves.

By 1950 it was clear that the original zones were simply to large, thus parts were broken off and given to other states, with the inhabitants
given three choices; Continue living where they were, swearing loyalty to their new country, move to another part of the zone or immigrate
out of Europe, toa willing country (Central America, Oceania and Persia being popular), or, in the case of North Germany made independent.

By the present day the zones and their original goal still exist, and while the Reclamation Zones of the modern day are better off than in the past,
the people who live their are only afforded basic freedoms, punished (severity depending on the zone) for speaking of the previous nation positively
and live in an environment originally meant to punish them for being born their.

The rest of the world has moderated as well.
While the South African government encourages mixed-race relations, past are the days when it was illegal to have a relationship with someone
of the same ethnicity/race, though same-race marriages are still not recognized.

Oceania has become less strict as well, while most non-RZ Europeans are still viewed as suspicious at best, the military junta intent on destroying
Europe and restoring the British Empire was removed from power in a bloody civil war two decades ago.

None-the-less the world still has many negative aspects, from the immediate execution of anyone associated with fundamentalist groups in India
and most of Africa to the U.S. blackmailing Mexican Congressmen who oppose the proposed Union to the perpetual Cold Wars (that occasionally
turn hot) in Southern Africa and South-East Asia.


The future of the world is uncertain, while even the major liberal groups don't call for the immediate end of the Reclamation Zones, they still stand
far from the worryingly large minority on the Right who've come to believe that the most efficient way to end the 'RZ problem' is to exterminate all
natives living in them.

I decided to go with the "another planet" option. The invaders are a fascist, far-future American successor state. Here's a little in-character backstory:

Soldiers of the Coalition of Western Republics! You are about to carry out the first steps of Operation Bartholomew, final phase of our great crusade which we have striven towards these many years. In record time we have liberated our worlds from the communist invader, and now it is time to take the war they started to their people, their homes and their families. Now it is time to rain the righteous fury of Western civilization upon our enemies! This world, Duglace IV, will be the first of many to fall. Just as they have destroyed our worlds, we shall destroy theirs! Our armies will burn their land and our fleets will boil their seas! We will not leave this planet until every man, woman and child who serves under the socialist banner is dead! Be brave, soldiers of the Coalition, for the eyes of the galaxy and our Glorious Director are upon you!



P.S: The skull-and-crossbones stickers designate "major population reduction centers" (can "process" 200K prisoners a year). Couldn't think of an in-character way to designate this on the map, as the meaning is universally known in-universe.

This map was inspired by a few things. Firstly, there's the idea of making a traditional "bad guy" nation/faction look good by making it defend the world from a REALLY bad guy, e.g. the Nazis in the Draka series, or the Imperial Japanese in The Man in the High Castle. I've seen it done with the USSR (arguably in OTL, during WW2 ), the Third Reich, Japan, etc. but never with an Islamic fundamentalist alliance. Secondly I was inspired by al Qaeda's repeated references to a "Crusader-Zionist alliance" which wants to conquer the Middle East. And thirdly, there's the rhetoric of the Islamophobic hard right in America and Europe. Anyway, the description...

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In the early 21st century it seemed that nothing could unite the chaotic region called the Middle East. Aside from a shared religion (and even that was broken into sects and factions) and a general anti-Israeli, anti-American sentiment, the states of the region had little in common.

That was before a nuclear bomb fell on the city of Mecca.

Things had been going poorly for a long time before that. The United States had been bogged down occupying Iraq since driving Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and then from Baghdad in the 1990s. The Times Square Bombing during New Year's Eve, 1999, the destruction of the Sears Tower via hijacked airplane, and countless suicide bombings, sniper attacks, airline luggage bombs, synagogue shooting sprees, etc. committed on American and allied soil by fundamentalist Islamic terrorists created a pervasive Islamophobia as severe as anti-Communist hysteria in the early Cold War. Combined with the Second Great Depression, the Fourth (or Fifth) Great Awakening of fundamentalist Christianity (specifically Baptism, but also Mormonism), and the wildly unpopular 2004-2008 presidency of Al Sharpton, America had swung hard to the right and become nearly theocratic by 2010, when President Huckabee died and Vice President Palin took office. (Note: I love Palin-bashing as much as the next guy, but I don't think OTL Palin would ever nuke Mecca. However, ATL Palin, surrounded by a political culture which constantly validates her Islamophobia, has gone a little crazy). Believing she was destined to usher in the end times by removing Islam from the globe entirely, she ordered a nuclear strike on Mecca.

This set off an insurgency at home, as a good portion of the population was violently opposed to the idea of America leading a global genocidal holy war. Still, Palin believes these domestic pinkos are little more than a nuisance, since any day now Jesus will be coming down in glory to lead the American army into battle.

In the Middle East, Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood have overthrown most of the region's governments and forced the rest to attack America and her allies. Public opinion is unanimous: the Muslim nations must put aside their differences and furiously attack America until she is punished for the Mecca attack and driven from the Dar al-Islam entirely (including her proxy state Israel). Israel, which has also swung hard right, has allowed American troops onto its soil, and this "Crusader-Zionist" coalition is expanding the borders of Israel (Israel is doing it to gain sort of a buffer zone around its core territories, while the US wants to conquer the whole region for Christendom).

This map also shows several minor fronts in the new global Crusade: the slow push north in civil-war-wracked Nigeria, the election of a US-backed fundamentalist party in Uganda, and the continually worsening guerilla war in Mindanao.

The flag at the bottom is the new flag of the theocratic US. Apologies to Margret Atwood for borrowing the flag of the Republic of Gilead.

And the map...

Once again to my deep frustration my Second Korean War map has been deemed not within the parameters of the contest.

Toward the 25th century, Earth was becoming somewhat of a backwater in the Human Federation, and by the 30th century all those who could afford to do so had emigrated. This was the poit when Earth was cut off from the rest of humanity and placed in a Temporal Stasis Field to preserve it, as it as still revered as the original home of mankind.

Millions of years later, Man's descendants fought a terrible war against beings of an alien universe. Man was just barely defeated, but negotiated a treaty by which they could evacuate all their corporeal population back to Earth and remove it from the conquered cosmos. This done, Earth was restored to Time, and had twelve cities built to contain the remnants of Humanity.

Man's sense of morals had remained with him throughout the aeons, and though it was the only way to survive with a reasonable level of technology, the machines which guided and aided Man in this distant future knew that he would never countenance the slavery of his own ancestors, though they were the dregs of an ancient race that had long since been superseded by the evolution of his own.

Thus, the machines kept this state of affairs, in which millions of archaic humans were enslaved and tormented to supply the cities with their food and machinery a secret.

Then, one day, a corporeal citizen found the remains of a map documenting the state of the world several hundred years after the treaty. Since then, five of the twelve cities had fallen to slave revolts, but his own had remained constant.

This map led to a revolution, as no corporeal citizen could stomach the atrocities heaped upon the ancestral race in order that he might survive.
Humanity has returned to a stable lifestyle, with reasonable luxury and technology, but one in which no man is exploited by another, and the machines have been driven beyond the bounds of humanity's Cosmos.

This is the map which caused the revolution.

Basic premise: Japanese scientists build the Oxygen Destroyer in 1942. With this weapon they can crush their enemies and get it to the Germans by 1944. Loading ODs on missiles the Germans managed to invade Britain. Some time in the mid 1950s the Japanese actually realised they had to be quasi-reasonable to there citizens so they set up some puppet states and let the people live. Nazis are still having trouble with Russian geurillas even after 50 years as they still lost huge amounts of their population in the war and the population still hasn't really recovered too well. In the mid 60s Japan and Germany had serious disputes and relations collapsed. Life is not nice in either.
Meanwhile Australia and South Africa gave up on being nice and became as brutal as Japan. The remaining allies are highly militant and not exactly models of equality, infact they would probably been seen as fascist by our time line. This map was written by one of these rascist Americans.

Background: The Forty Years' War changed the world in ways that few could have forseen when it began in 1914. By the time it ended, the world had become divided between Fascism and Communism, with the United States isolated from two rival superpowers following its withdrawal from the War in 1948 after a failed attempt to liberate England from the Nazis.

This stigma led America to experience a fundamentalist revolt in the 1950s which led to the election of Billy Graham as President for Life. Graham led a personal "Crusade" to keep America "Safe" from "Communist and immoral influences" and to expand America's own influence over the Western Hemisphere. As such, God's Country (as it is now known) now controls Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and much of Central America, while the South American Union controls the rest.

The only truly free places left in this dark time are Alaksa, an "Autonomous" state within God's Country, which functions as a de facto gulag for America, and New Zealand, which is believed to have a secret alliance with the Australian penal colony, which was established as a "Dumping ground" for dissidents and various rebel groups much in the same way that it was used for prisoners in the nineteenth century.

Pretty standard apocalypse; Pandemic.

This Virus has the ability to kill people with no visible symptoms in under 48 hours, with a 100% fatality rate. (I know, I know....)

5 years after the initial outbreak, in 2037, after the plague had decimated the populations of Africa, Asia, and South America, and Australasia, the pessimistically named "Plan B" was put forward to a dying UN. The plan was to select the most defensible locations left on the Earth, (All of them Islands) and seal them off from the outside world. The British Isles, and the Carribean were chosen. Unhappy with the lack of space on Puerto Rico, the US forcibly commandeered the whole of the Carribean, as it had the political will, and military power to do so. Mass evacuations from all over the remaining world were undertaken, though not always with success. Large swathes of Haiti were "infested" owing to error on the part of the authorites.

5 years again, after that, things took a turn for the worst. Only 3 months ago had they sealed themselves off, and famine was rife. Over half of the population of the remain Human Race died, and worse, Britain had excomunicated themselves. The Royal Navy patroled the waters surrounding Britain, and blew up anything attempting to make contact, or enter British waters. This became known as "The Ring." This worked, of coarse, as now the RN was far superior to that of the Americans, who could not support theirs anymore.

The fears of the people had erupted into armed rebellion, and the government had forced a police state upon them, in order to preserve what remained of Humanity.

US sleeper spies in the UK discover that under the police state, the UK had annexed the ROI for more farmland, as they were also experiencing mass famine. They had also, for the need of food, and to keep a low population as possible, forced a rascist view upon the citizenry of the UK. They confined all Non-British to reservations, and seeled those areas off, to starve them to death. Not much is known except for that now, and the projected population, as the UK hunted down with extreme ferocity, any political dissidents or foreighn spies. Quality of life is extremely good in the modern-day UK, if your white, anyway. (With the absence of freedom of speech, or thought, or press, that is) Over 70% of the population is in farming, with a further 20% Percent in the Army, or Navy. 10% of the population make up the scientific community, with a violent space program to try and seed mankind into space, in case the isles are "contaminated."

The US has since slipped back into the dark ages. This is textbook page recovered from a burned down library in Cuba. (Turns out that the US wasn't the only one with sleepers....)

A somewhat more intense Spanish Flu epidemic butterflies the leadership of the US and USSR from the 20s on, and a somewhat different WWII is fought, leading to Red Army on Rhine. China goes Communist as OTL, and a Cold War even more tense than OTL ensues. The balloon goes up in 1971.

The US suffered horrendous damage, especially in the mid-west, some areas of the east coast, and California. As a result of a government lopped off some ways down the chain of succession and conflict between the armed forces leadership and the left-ish (supposed) new President, two essentially independent successor governments emerged in the West and the North, and when the one took a turn to the left in its emergency measures, while the other took a turn to the right, the US essentially broke in two, although it took some years for it to become official. The Republic of America, going with the old "if you can't beat them..." chestnut, has become a left-wing dictatorship, although less ideological and more technocratic than their Chinese allies: indeed, they would be more natural allies with the Soviets, if it weren't for that little nuking thing.

The USSR, although suffering casualties even higher than the US, failed to collapse, instead its surviving leadership - and much of the surviving population- simply left the devastated regions, forcing at atomic gunpoint the less-damaged Mediterranean and Middle Eastern nations to extend them hospitality. Allying with the local Communist parties, they settled in and continued the Long Struggle to bring about lobal socialist success.

The less badly damaged east of the USSR broke away as a seperate regime, and allied itself with the Chinese, which having stayed out of the war only had to deal with fallout and thereby rather gained in relative power. The UAS consider themselves the _true_ successors to the old USSR and think of the new Soviet Union as dreafully bourgeois. The Chinese, with UAS help, have modernized in an old-fashioned Stalinist-Kruschevite manner up to about OTL 1970s USSR standards of development (with loads of ICBMs).

Ideological confict between the Chinese/American block and the Soviets left space for the emergence of a third leftist movement, the third-world Agrarian Populists, which vary from West India, which is a respectable industrial power and allows from the Soviet or Chinese point of view an alarming amount of Capitalism, to the almost Pol-Potesque unpleasantness of Greater Ghana. The weakest of the three groupings, the APs attempt to maintain strict neutralism while maintaining an almost universal Nation at Arms to discourage invasion.

Aside from the Communists, there are the right-wing anti-Socialist states, the powerful military dictatorship of the USA [1], the authoritarian Confederation, the racially segregated South Africans, and the paranoid and Very Anti-Asian New Australians, plus a few dibs and dabs of territory here and there. Although capitalist, their economies suffer from limited trade, corruption, the burden of massive security states, and in the case of S. Africa, serious underuse of their human potential.

The world is probably doomed. There are more nuclear weapons than there were at the Cold War 1980s peak OTL, with no less than 14 atomic arsenals, six of them large. Pollution is terrible, and global warming marches forward while coal is burned in huge amounts. The Chinese and the People's republic of India are pressing against the limits of their systems, and if the Monsoon is interrupted by climate change, Bad Things will happen. The technocratic Soviets and the US are actually making some progress with computerized planning, mass food production in indoor greenhouses, etc. but things are overall a mess. Apocalyptic Christianity is on the rise in the US. Glimmerings of hope exist, in the semi-civilized Socialism of central Africa and West India, in the democratic undercurrents that still flow in parts of Europe and North America, in the upcoming 2011 world Peace Conference, once again trying to find a formula to shrink nuclear arsenals. But will anything break the cycle of hatred and paranoia before environmental collapse, global nuclear war, or perhaps global nuclear war triggered by environmental collapse?

Bruce

[1] It does have elections, but there is only one legal party - the fusion "American Party", which generally asks "how high?" when the military says "jump."

And here's the wordy map.

Bruce

In 1962 an incident concerning the placement of Nuclear Missles in Communist Cuba triggered a Global Thermonuclear War. Between the USSR and the United States civilization was all but destroyed. But it would get worse.

The bleeding sickness was rumoured to be a biological weapon accidentally released by one of the superpowers, though no one ever knew for sure. Over a period of five years it swept the globe, with a 96% fatality rate even the handful who survived the disease found themselves wandering alone to be quickly killed off by a combination of environmental hazards and the simple fact that the population density was now to low to be self-replicating.

By 2010 mankind is reduced to only a couple surviving pockets of humanity. Ironically the largest of these is in a place that was never meant to maintain human life- Antarctica. The researchers and military personel present on the southernmost continent survived the "End" and the bleeding sickness that followed thanks to their isolation and unimportance. Surviving on the seeds of antarctic grasses, lichens, and sea weed, as well as fauna such as penguins, seals and sea birds their descendants continue to eke out a precarious existence, frequently flirting with extinction yet remaining the largest single population of H. Sapiens on Earth with continent wide numbers hovering around 20,000.

The largest single settlement in Antarctica is the city of Jubany in the south Shetland Islands with a population of almost 1,500, followed by the city of New London (former Base D) with 1,000 inhabitants. Politics in the Antarctic Peninsula are complicated with the most complex states on offshore islands and organized villages dotting the mainland. Deception (officially the Kingdom of Britain) has fallen from its dominant position due to volcanic eurptions in its capitol, but the lure of warmth and sulfur deposits keep them coming back to Deception Island. The "Republic" of Jubany is on the rise with its own sources of sulfur for gunpowder and trade with the mining villages of San Martin that provides it with copper. At the same time the Kingdom of Arturo Prat and the "Republic" of New America (founded by an American vessel that was in the area in 1962) are minor powers seeking to disrupt the established order by extending influence into the independent villages of Esperanza, Higgins, New England, and Paradise.

Antarctican society is exterememly harsh, cannibalism is the rule (now incorporated into a somewhat unplesant version of Christianity, "this is my body and this is my blood" etc) not the exception and the sick or elderly are regularly killed for their flesh, a practice present even in the more "civilized" island kingdoms. The first steps have begun towards domesticating penguins and technology is strange, gunpowder is used in a very primitive manner alongside seal-skin kayaks and hunting spears, and basic electricity exists in a couple places next to igloos and copper swords.

Well, I was too busy to finish my entry for last round, had a map about 1/3 done, but got bogged down, so here's another one. I was actually just going to make a map for fun, but realized it'd make a great entry for this round, so I made it with a key and some markers instead of just my general UCS deal I ususally do, though it isn't much fancier x.x Basic premise is my take on 1984, Oceana isn't as large as it says it is. If that isn't an acceptable thing in the contest, I'll resubmit with it genericified.

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The PoD is the US going back to isolation following WWII. Communism spreads in Asia fast, Korea being taken and the Nationalist Chinese losing soon thereafter. Europe and Japan are pretty much left on their own, though the US does maintain a bit of involvement, making sure that both the Nazis and the Japanese Empire are gone for good. Japan is forced into a democratic government, and Europe eventually forms a defense pact without the US in 1952, and starts the rearming of the newly reconstructed German Republic, commonly called West Germany.

However, in 1954, the rearming of Germany causes a border incident, provoked by Soviet troops. Stalin (not dead yet ITTL) uses this as an excuse to invade the rest of Europe. Germany was mostly defended by its newly recruited army and a few units from France. They were overwhelmed quickly and the war was over within four months, though the devestation was very high, the Soviets retaliated to the French use of their first nuclear device on a spearhead with six warheads of their own. The UK was lucky in that most of its military forces were still intact, compared to the rest of Europe. The contenent submitted without much trouble, being tired from three "world wars" (WWIII was almost not deserving of the title) in 50 years, though the French colonies did attempt to resist in much the same way the did in WWII. The Soviet allies in the Middle East united into the Federation of Arab Republics after a brief side war to take out Israel and minor Arab powers that did not support them. (I did a bit of research, and feel that despite seeming like a SFE, it is plausible enough to happen, swing Saudi Arabia and the five largest powers in the country are historic supporters of either the FAR or UAR) This new power was used to combat the French in exile to great effect, eventually forcing the dismemberment of the resistance state.

This event, as well as communist power rising in Latin America in the late 50s, caused the US to break its isolation once more and from the Atlantic Alliance to combat the Soviet threat. It propped up the failing UK, as well as took in several former Commonwealth nations. Japan politely declined to be included in the alliance.

Now, 30 years after WWIII, WWIV appears to be quickly drawing near. The communists have expanded as much as they can without provoking the US and the AA, and a showdown seems unavoidable, no doubt with nuclear weapons.

In the Americas, the US has tried to gather support for its cause, but found many countries unwilling to join it. Cuba had to be pacified by force after a communist uprising in 1958, and Jamaica has applied for and been granted statehood, while South and Central America were left on their own, a choice both sides agreed on, but the most major change has been with Canada. After the fall of France, feelings for Quebec independence grew, ending with seperation in 1980, the remaining provinces being forced to adopt a new government after the fallout from the crisis is over, resulting in a much looser "Canadian Federation". The issue of Canada is a hot topic in the 1984 election, several regions have expressed interest in joining the US. The only province that is certain to remain independent is Ontario, some pundits are ready to predict it'll be the only one not absorbed by 2000, though many do not agree with this assesment.

In Europe, the Soviets have near total control of the governments of their puppets, but do not feel confident enough to attempt direct integration, instead forming the "Eurasian People's Sphere" as a multinational, Soviet lead front for their operations. They've conquered or coerced all remaing states and have started to redraw the overall map of Europe to make the nations easier to integrate as SSRs when the time comes. The UK has reformed into the opressive Oceania, distorting the truth to its people and trying to regain lost glory, though in reality the state is mostly useless, both internally and to its allies.

In Africa, the government of South Africa has waged war to gain more territory, its corrupt, racist, and neo-colonialist government being back by the US in exchange for support against the Soviets. The East Africa Federation formed to combat it, made up of the most successful post-colonial nations. The former holdings of Portugal serve as buffer zones which each side wants, but neither dares provoke, lest they tip the scales in the other power's favor. Up North the FAR has managed to colapse the last of the Free French, but no governments have yet risen up to take its place, the region falling most to various warlords, save coastal regions, which ducked out of the fight first during the first proper invasion the Arabs mounted and now try and maintain a somewhat nonpartisan position in the Cold War, though bow to the communists more often then not.

In the East, India and Pakistan settled most of their differences once the overwhelming threat posed by the rising PRC. After the 1947 war there has been no more conflict on the battlefield, and while relations are cool, India does not support the break away East Pakistan for fear of destabilizing the region enough to allow China to move in. Pakistan has formed an alliance with Iran, who is very much opposed to the FAR.

Farther East, Ho Chi Minh united Indochina as the South Asian People's Commune and was granted Peninsular Malaysia after a brief EPS war with the disunited government conquered the reigion, communist rebels having overthrown that half of the country and the other nations only sweeping in to make it official. Indonesia is having the same type of problem at the moment as well, many suspect PRC and SAPC support for the rebels.

Japan's democratic government is having trouble keeping control, old imperial revival movements are strong, as are home grown and foreign communist movements. The US props up the increasingly opressive government in hopes it can be of some aid against the PRC and USSR.

Before the year is out, a three small spark will start WWIV by bringing the USSR and US to a head over foreign policy. First, East Pakistan will take more formal steps towards independence, and the relationships in the region will break down, antagonizing the US when the communist forces attempt to take power. Secondly, the conflict between the SAU and EAF will break out into all out war, drawing in both sides. Lastly, several governments in South America will fall to coordinated communist coups with clear links discovered between them and the USSR. Overall they will come together to end civilization as it is known, ending the slow decline humanity has been on since 1914. Though all is not lost, the nuclear devestation will be far from total, and there will be survivors, ready to build the world anew...

It had taken seventy years and a revolutionary change of government, but it had happened. From Washington-on-the-Michigan the General Committee dictated: "Dixie must be destroyed'
The Revolutionary Brigades marched south of the Ohio River, the air wings bombed the industrial heart of the Confederacy, and the Republican Navy shelled her ports.

Seven years later the Confederacy was destroyed, and the thirteen errant daughters were reunited with their sisters. The Dixie identity, culture and economy were systematically destroyed. Over seven million Southerners were resettled in marches across the mid-west, whilst Yankee settlers were brought in. The African Americans remained where they had been for generations, in the fields with Government rather than Dixie masters. Federal forces occupied the major cities of the south, forbidding the remaining Dixies from working or living there. The states were dismantled, her towns and cities renamed like their northern counterparts.

The farmland of the districts was transformed to fit the General Committee's moral order. As in the rest of the American Republic alcohol was prohibited. Cotton and tobacco farms were replaced with opium, the central committee's tool of choice for keeping control over the American population. Opium was distributed through Government dens in the cities and towns. Plantation and factory workers received opium as part of their government wage.

The American Republic, under General Commissioner Ford now hummed like a well oiled machine. Each and every citizen knew their place and had their work. United, the American Republic looked north and south. Canadians and Mexicans would know the gentle embrace of the General Committee.

And now for the map: