Iran, Iraq and the Middle East

[Last Free Human]

So, exactly how wrecked is the Middle East by 2013? Is it still habitable? Do any of the aforementioned nation states even exist? How limited was the nuclear exchange?
Thanks,

M
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
GURPS IST Aleph Wordpress (http://istaleph.wordpress.com/)
GURPS IST Aleph Twitter (http://twitter.com/IstAleph/)
Trek This! Wordpress (http://dthiller.wordpress.com/)
My Blog (http://lastfreehuman.wordpress.com/)

[Mamorien]

The timeline says the final spasm "devastat[ed] both nations' capital cities as well as hundreds of square miles of land on either side" (the reason my IST placement list includes neither Baghdad nor Tehran), but within a year, "interim governments finally beg[a]n to coalesce out of the two nations' remains." They've probably recovered mostly-to-fully by relative-now. Whether neighboring countries were affected would depend on how many hundreds of square miles Bob (or whoever wrote that item) had in mind.

[Bob Schroeck]

I wrote it, and given that a hundred square miles is only 10 miles by 10 miles, it's actually a lot smaller than it seems at first glance -- call it a couple counties' worth of land surrounding each of the old capitals. Or, to make it easy -- say a radius of 10-15 miles (314-707 sq. miles) from an arbitrary downtown point in each capital. Along with isolated "dead zones" here and there where a military target was wiped out.

And yes, there are functional governments, being run by very cautious moderates. And the populations of both states are a lot less eager to follow demagogues and extremists -- who still exist, and press agendas that include such goals as "who cares if we nearly killed everyone, let's finish killing the other guy!" to "Get the West for not stopping us from nuking our own people, and hell, for inventing nukes in the first place!"
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Mamorien]

I was envisaging something like that, although the radius could dip as low as 8 miles (for an area of 201 mi²) or as high as 25 (1963.5 mi², above which it's into multiple thousands). I'd actually fed the cities themselves, with 10-mile radii, into what I'm pretty sure is the same radius-tracker that Prince Charon uses to generate visual aids for "Five Earths, All in a Row" (it delivers similar-looking output at the very least).

[Last Free Human]

So did the Ayatollah (sp) and any of his army of superhumans survive? Also, did Israel take it on the chin as Israael is wont to do anytime anyone starts swinging weapons at each other in the Middle East or did they manage to escape relatively unscathed this time?

M
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
GURPS IST Aleph Wordpress (http://istaleph.wordpress.com/)
GURPS IST Aleph Twitter (http://twitter.com/IstAleph/)
Trek This! Wordpress (http://dthiller.wordpress.com/)
My Blog (http://lastfreehuman.wordpress.com/)

[Bob Schroeck]

On the first question, I haven't decided yet. On the second, nope -- if I can justify it with prevailing winds, Israel didn't even get any fallout. Of course, Israel is having its own more local problems then and in the decade following. (And I'm beginning to think that maybe my Palestinian solution is too simple and need to complicate it, to boot.)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Mamorien]

If I had to guess, Khomeini discovered the limits of his emortality; whether any of his metahuman inner circle survived depends on whether they heeded the Eye's warnings. And Bob, please check the first item under "1999" on the timeline before you start worrying that you're making things too simple.

BELATED EDIT to remove things redundant with Bob's post, and to reply to him.