Anyone following the "Third World War 1987" alt-history site?

[Athelstane]

Something I accidentally stumbled across several weeks ago - but it's been underway since 2017. So far as I can tell, no one has ever brought it up here.

Link to home: Third World War 1987

It looks to be a wargammed (old school table!) effort to plot out a WW3 scenario in 1987. The premise is, roughly, that hardliners depose Gorbachev in a coup in April, 1987: "Grigory Romanov, a former Politburo member, launches a coup aimed at toppling Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev from power. The Romanov coup is successful. He spends the next forty-eight hours consolidating his position, and purging pro-Gorbachev elements from the government, military, and security services." What follows is a rapidly deteriorating relationship between Moscow and the Reagan Administration, concomittant with a escalating number of military incidents, with war finally erupting with a Soviet attack on NATO on 9 July, 1987.

The upside is that the author seems to know his hardware and history, and the outline of the war to date seems plausibly plotted. The downsides are, that the timeline of posts are not easily accessed, and that so far as I can make out, he does not provide tactical maps of operations. Still, for what it is, it's a fairly rewarding exercise, using a scenario (1987) that I've never seen done before.

Pre-War Background and Timeline
Pre-War Posts
D+0 Posts
(The remaining days can be seen on the sidebar - but be wary, they don't show up in order. Sorry, this is the best I can do, for now.)

At any rate, this week the war (now at D+22) has reached its critical phase - i.e., the Soviet offensives into West Germany and Norway have crumbled under NATO counterattacks, and Moscow seems ready to start employing nukes to salvage its situation.

 

[MaxGerke01]

Perhaps the 1987 date is an homage to Amerika (1987)although the plot here is different with a standard NATO vs Warsaw Pact battle which didnt happen in Amerika and is much more likely to lead to a nuclear conflict as in The Day After(1983),Threads(1984) , Red Dawn(1984) and By Dawns Early Light(1990).

 

[Athelstane]

Perhaps the 1987 date is an homage to Amerika (1987)although the plot here is different with a standard NATO vs Warsaw Pact battle which didnt happen in Amerika and is much more likely to lead to a nuclear conflict as in The Day After(1983),Threads(1984) , Red Dawn(1984) and By Dawns Early Light(1990).

I'm not sure, to be honest, but reading some of Mike's (the author's name) combox replies, I think the date is picked because it represents a point where NATO has the fruits of its new wave of weapon acquisitions in hand . . . but maybe also because it has special meaning for the moment where he first started wargamming with these 80's tabletop strategy games. A moment he has a personal strong memory of? (I think he's a young end Boomer.)

That said, maybe he was inspired by World War III, too?

 

[MaxGerke01]

I'm not sure, to be honest, but reading some of Mike's (the author's name) combox replies, I think the date is picked because it represents a point where NATO has the fruits of its new wave of weapon acquisitions in hand . . . but maybe also because it has special meaning for the moment where he first started wargamming with these 80's tabletop strategy games. A moment he has a personal strong memory of? (I think he's a young end Boomer.)

That said, maybe he was inspired by World War III, too?

It was definitely the war that was expected and feared at the time.The one that was the most likely to escalate quickly and be out of control and the most destructive. Also out of all those global thermonuclear war scenarios that flash by on the screen in Wargames (1983) it was by far the most likely to happen as Able Archer came perilously close to showing us all in 1983.

 

[Athelstane]

It was definitely the war that was expected and feared at the time.The one that was the most likely to escalate quickly and be out of control and the most destructive. Also out of all those global thermonuclear war scenarios that flash by on the screen in Wargames (1983) it was by far the most likely to happen as Able Archer came perilously close to showing us all in 1983.

The 1980's WW3 scenarios do seem to pick a date in the early 80's - 1983, most often - for their starting point. No doubt because that's when we actually came closest to war.

This one picks a point two years into Gorbachev's tenure, which is a scenario I do not recall seeing before. Red Storm Rising and Team Yankee are closer, but I think they're both set in 1985.

 

[MaxGerke01]

The 1980's WW3 scenarios do seem to pick a date in the early 80's - 1983, most often - for their starting point. No doubt because that's when we actually came closest to war.

This one picks a point two years into Gorbachev's tenure, which is a scenario I do not recall seeing before. Red Storm Rising and Team Yankee are closer, but I think they're both set in 1985.

Gorbachevs rise to power and tenure could have served as trigger to whatever malign forces remained in the Soviet Union. As we saw in OTL 1991 when they tried to take over.I was 17 at the time and I remember personally feeling at the time it might lead to a nuclear war-very scary as was most of my childhood when it came to thinking nuclear war was both a real and likely possibility.

 

[Athelstane]

Gorbachevs rise to power and tenure could have served as trigger to whatever malign forces remained in the Soviet Union. As we saw in OTL 1991 when they tried to take over.I was 17 at the time and I remember personally feeling at the time it might lead to a nuclear war-very scary as was most of my childhood when it came to thinking nuclear war was both a real and likely possibility.

That's the point, though: If you pick a post-spring 1985 POD, you pretty much need to start out with some kind of coup to overthrow Gorbi in favor of some hardliner(s), because it's just a lot harder to conjure up a satisfying war causing crisis with Gorbachev at the helm. So you have to work harder to get to the point where bullets start flying. Whereas, if you pick a pre-spring 1985 point, you can skip that step, because you've already got a hardliner regime to begin with.

It's not to say it's implausible or inconceivable. As you say, we have the real life example of the failed August 1991 coup to look to! And there are one or two notable exercises we know of that have played with this scenario, like that German World War III alt-documentary I mentioned earlier, which works from the premise of a coup deposing Gorbachev in October 1989, as the crisis in East Germany is just starting to reach a critical stage.

1987 is a less obvious POD, though, since Gorbachev's reforms had yet to really reach an impactful stage (he only introduced Perestroika formally until the June 1987 plenary session of the Central Committee, and the really critical legislation didn't hit until the following year), and what we know of the dynamics of Soviet leadership at that point does not point to any really serious resistance maneuvering against Gorbachev yet. It's interesting to think about, because I have never thought about it before.