The only way you're going to get this to work by not going completely ASB is by some form of events such as:
- March, 1985: Grigory Romanov succeeds Konstantin Chernenko as Secretary General of the CPSU. Romanov is reasonably reform-minded, in an Andropov-style mindset, but is hampered by his ties to the Soviet military-industrial complex, and, in particular, the chaps 'behind the scenes' who secured his election as Secretary-General....
- (1985-1987) Relations between the US and USSR remain reasonably steady, but intense mutual suspicsion still pervades. There are no moves to disarmament, no Rekjavik, no easing of the general Cold War Atmosphere. Christmas is cancelled.
- June the 17th, 1987: Iranian Revolutionary Guards, in a fit of revolutionary and fundamentalist nut-job fervour board and sieze the Aleksandr Tvardovsky in Caspian Sea. Now this should not be especially important, since both sides in the Iran-Iraq war have been up to this sort of thing on a regular basis, and, you know, this is the Revolutionary Guards we're talking about. But the A-T had a particularly valuable cargo of new missile components, and several chemical and technological traces which should be enough to substantially boost Iranian nuclear aspirations. (Okay, so I don't know that much about military technology) The Soviet Military is reasonably pissed. Long story short, the Soviets are bombing Tabriz and Tehran by this time next week. America is a bit cheesed off, and demands that the Soviets halt bombing operations. The pressure goes oop. Someone gets an itchty trigger finger somewhere near the Berlin Wall/Brandenburg Gate.
- Early August, 1987: Let's just say it's a very unseasonally hot August across much of the Northern Hemisphere.
- September, 1987: Society, Government, Technology, pretty much everything has collapsed in Britain. Life operates no higher than at the level of local communes in much of the isle. People start to begin to feel distinctly peckish after a time and start to look at the body of Mr Davidson from two doors down in a slightly different way, especially after the first wisps of Winter (Nuclear or not, no-one's quite sure) begin to be felt. The Isle of Mann is now the dominant super-power of the Isles; marrying your sister/brother is made compulsory, strictly for natalist reasons, you understand. A small party of Goths have the good sense to flee Leeds before it goes up in a nuclear fireball, and establish themselves at Ripon, quickly overcoming the gawping and depelted natives. The resources of the local area are devoted to finding a way of crimping hair without the use of electricity, together with finding a natural substitute for hairspray. Progress is reportedly recorded as "slow". Nevertheless, the leader of the party begins to ponder if they'll have the strength to add Whitby to their little commune in twenty years' time. They might even celebrate their entry with a festival of some sort. The Goth 'leader' also begins considering how they'll acquire silk and velvet for her resplendent triumphal dress.
A week later, an only partially-willing fishing wallah is poked into a motor boat outside Bridlington harbour with instructions to sail to China and establish a trading relationship.
Along the South coast a military junta has taken charge of what remains of the British central government and the chaps with short back and sides and fuck-off naval uniforms are quite decisively in control, presided over by an ageing but commanding Sir Archie David Stirling. The fact that most of the country is a green and pleasant luminous irradiated post-nuclear holocaust shithole doesn't seem to bother him that much. What does bother him is that there's no grouse season this year. Alas!
The immediate Royal Family is gone, of course, apart from, miraculously, the Princess of Wales and tiny Prince Harry. But Stirling has no wish to be one-upped by a trolope with a possibly subversive taste in politics, and proclaims the Prince illegitimate, and Diana a whore; in typically grandiose style, it's consolidated as a charge of 'High Treason.' It's a nasty little scene in the government bunker outside Winchester. Much tugging at forelocks. The Lady Sarah Chatto, being the next in line who is both identifiable and certfiably still alive, is produced and proclaimed Elizabeth III. The reign of the Windsor-Armstrong-Jones 'dynasty' begins. Stirling is proclaimed regent. (Regent of what?! - but no-one dares ask him that, of course.)
On a nasty, horrible, really quite chilly Winter's day in November, Diana is lead out to the front of the rather tatty semi-ruins of Winchester Guildhall, and her head is struck from her body. The assembled mob of partially diseased louts and canibalistic multiple murderers and rapists cheers. Prince Harry is handed over to them for 'Pudding.'
274 Years Later...
Whitaga Gothia and Mannina are at odds again. Will the problems associated with Whitaga's occupation of Pluto's inner surface mould never cease? The Manninan surface media is filled with much self-righteous carping about the so-called 'Unfilial' Whitagans. The Whitagans in turn lambast Mannina for allowing the sale of the only-known extant copy of Alice by 'the Sisters' [of Mercy] (Who are regarded as almost semi-divine in some quarters - Andrew Eldritch is mythologised as a Woman) to a private Nu Yaeschburg dealership. The Manninans are uncultured, barbaric, incestuous, short-haired savages. You just can't trust any society run by men. Anyway, back in the Silver Period Goths were rightly seen as being of the superior culture. And so on.
Britanwia is, of course, as always, playing it cool. Tut-tut. Perfidious Britanwia...
(Okay, so a little ASB.)
