One last piece of BREAKING NEWS! ("And if you broke it, you've gotta pay.")
And now, the conclusion (2053-2083).
https://archiveofourown.org/works/558394.../142381318
Last Time on Reconstructing the Crisis of the 21st Century (1992-2083), EmperorNorton150 Wrote:The Third World War ended on August 10th, 2053. The final peace treaty, the Cape Town Agreements, would not be signed until 2055, but the war was essentially over by the time the last mushroom clouds bloomed. General Le Kuan was dead, as was President Lucas, and most of the European Parliament. Dozens of major cities had been vaporized, and the danger from radioactive fallout and ecological catastrophe was only increasing. Only the most fanatical partisan could still believe that “victory” of any sort could still be achieved. In those fateful days, Earth stood closer to the brink of total extinction than it ever had before—and pulled back. Across the world, ordinary human beings made the choice to step away from the edge of catastrophe.
In both Eastern Europe and Mexico, local commanders unilaterally chose to cease fighting. Unable to receive orders from home, and unsure of how or where they’d receive supplies, Field Marshals Philippe Vaxès and Yury Doroshenko, as well as People’s Marshal Zhao Qinghua and General Sarah Susan Eckert simply signed their own ceasefire agreements. It was a manifestly logical decision, but one that took extraordinary courage in the political climate of the time. One by one, governments and nations began to pull themselves back together. The Eastern Coalition simply disintegrated, but a Soviet government in Leningrad soon reached out to Europe to attempt cooperation in restoring stability. In Europe, the government of the Hegemony was gone, but already new circles of statesmen were gathering in Paris under the guidance of Emperor Jean-Paul II, planning to rebuild. In China, Le Kuan’s son, Le Yu, proved surprisingly adroit at reestablishing leadership in a nation still reeling from the coup d’etat of 2050. In the United States, a rump Congress convened in Harrisburg, and appointed Colonel Philip Green, the senior surviving commander of the Capital Defense District, as interim president. Meanwhile, General Eckert marched her surviving troops back into US territory, and encamped near Phoenix, refusing to commit to any immediate course of action.
These men and women were very different from one another, but they shared one thing in common: none of them cared about world domination, or winning the world war that had convulsed the planet for decades. The struggle to determine Earth’s destiny was over.
Now, it was time to fight for survival.
And now, the conclusion (2053-2083).
Professor Edward Lile Wrote:Modern historians increasingly dislike the term “Post-Atomic Horror”, as used to describe the period immediately following the Third World War. Prejudicial and sensationalist, it was popularized during the early decades of the United Earth government, in order to emphasize the stability and safety provided by the new global confederation. Even today, centuries later, to most humans it instantly conjures up images of techno-barbarian warlords, mobs of mutants putting scientists and intellectuals on trial, messianic cults, and howling anarchy. The reality was, as always, more nuanced. In some parts of the world—most notably, New Zealand and the South African Federated Republics, life continued without much interruption. Disruption in global trade patterns and climactic shifts affected the economy, but continuity of government was never broken. In other regions, the old United States, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, Eastern China, there were period of chaos and civil breakdown, but a measure of order and civilization had been restored even before First Contact. Meanwhile, there were districts in Central and East Asia that remined fully isolated from the rest of the world into the 2080s and even 2090s.
This period witnessed extraordinary acts of cultural and economic achievement, as human beings began the long and difficult process of pulling their world back from the edge of the abyss. It also witnessed mass murder, genocide, cannibalism, and atrocities on a global scale. What our fate would have been, if not for Zefram Cochrane’s meeting with the Vulcans in 2063, is impossible to say for sure. But whichever path we would have followed, it was being determined during this pivotal decade.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/558394.../142381318