Crowdsourcing the Timeline

[Shepherd]

If we had an ultra-powerful super with ecologically-based superpowers . . . they'd be able to stop the war pretty quickly.

Yeah, because someone willing to die to fix catastrophic environmental damage which potentially threatens the lives of tens of millions of innocent people is obviously the exact sort of person you'd expect to use those same abilities to stop the war by slaughtering untold millions of soldiers.

But, more importantly, who is this super? Why haven’t we heard of them before? Sure, we could just “make one up” but that would be intellectually dishonest. This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Why didn’t they show up to miraculously repair the Exxon Valdez oil spill eleven years ago? Why haven’t they repaired the damage to Iraq and Iran? Jerusalem? There are plenty of ecological catastrophes in the IST world that they would be needed for. Spontaneously creating one to keep the war from being too devastating is GM Fiat and reduces any act that an adventuring party does to nil—we don’t have to keep that reactor from melting down, Dr. Fixaflat will be here soon to clean up the radiation and lead everyone in a rousing chorus of Kumbaya.

Why didn't we hear from the meta with the godlike environmental powers before? Because the Chinese war will be ending around 2005, while the old GURPS IST timeline only went to 1990. Why didn't they intervene in any previous ecological disaster? Maybe they did; they just did it after 1990. By your logic, no NPC who didn't appear in the original material can have any positive effect on the world whatsoever without being some sort of 'GM Fiat' character. PCs are apparently the only ones who can accomplish anything, anywhere.
Fact: A major war will have a significant effect on the region's environment. Fact: After the war is over, someone will have to deal with that problem. Fact: Your average gaming group isn't going to want to spend six months roleplaying a team of ecologists rehabilitating a damaged habitat. Thus, I posited some theoretical NPC who fixed the worst of the environmental destruction at the cost of their life. Did all the people who died in the war still die? Yes. Were any of the buildings destroyed during the war magically fixed? No. Are there fields full of crops just waiting to feed hungry and homeless refugees? Nope. The PCs did their Big Damn Hero thing throughout the entire war, and the unknown NPC had a single heroic moment before leaving the stage forever, assuring that they won't be overshadowing the PCs in the future.

[sarcasm]Sure, China would have a problem with breeding kids.[/sarcasm] 15 is adult enough. Their plan was to be done in 30 years, not have the first phase of the plan done. And there’s no doubt that they’re less concerned about human rights now, than they were before Tiananmen Square. And keep in mind it was 1989 when we learned about the project . . . how long had they been working on it before then? Discovering the genes in 1985 may have simply sped up their process. It may have allowed them to focus on select lines and prune others.

Yeah, 15 is adult enough. Which is why I was using that age in my personal mental calculations. Assuming that the 30 year plan was a plan that had been active for 30 years at the time it was revealed, that means that the plan has been active for up to 41 years as of the start of the war (as I specifically noted in my original post). 1959: The original subjects are selected and start having kids. 1960: The first kids are born. Some of them will likely develop powers. 1975: The kids in the program are now 15 and start having kids of their own. 1976: The first members of the second generation are born. Many of them are likely to have powers. 1991: The first members of the second generation are now old enough to have kids. 1992: The first members of the third generation are born. Since genetic tests are now available, all of them will likely have the potential to someday develop powers. 2000: The war starts, but the oldest members of the third generation are only eight years old. 2005: The war ends, and the third generation children are still no older than 13. Few if any of them will have seen frontline combat.
Note that the discovery of metagenes is almost entirely irrelevant to the start of the war. Since those genes were not positively identified until 1986, any kids produced through genetic identification of superhuman potential within their parents would have been no more than 13 at the start of the war. They may have begun entering military service towards the latter half of the war (perhaps giving China a much needed boost in troop strength). I also find your suggestion that the Chinese are using genetic tests for metagenes to identify the potential for specific powers to be unlikely. There is no evidence whatsoever that those tests have that sort of specificity.
I also have to wonder precisely how large the purported breeding program actually was. I can't see China successfully hiding training academies for tens of thousands of metahuman children without spy satellites and HumInt resources finding out about them.

China’s basic soldier will have to be able to stand up against U.N. Powered Armor Infantry. That should be our base-line for them. Powered Armor Infantry would be the main target that China has been planning to battle since the start.

This is a false presumption. As the saying goes, 'quantity has a quality all its own.' A single Chinese soldier does not have to stand up to a single UN trooper if the Chinese can field 20 soldiers for every one the UN can outfit. China just has to give their people with bigger guns so that they actually have a chance to kill guys in power armor. Since big guns are cheaper than power armor, the Chinese come out way ahead.
This is another reason I'm against the widescale success of a Chinese breeding program. It is unnecessary. China was already the most populous nation in the world in the year 2000, with 1.2 billion people. Twenty percent of the global population lived in China at that point in history. Thus, twenty percent of all metahumans in the world should also be Chinese citizens. Charges of metahuman breeding may be a great propaganda tool for China's enemies, but I doubt it would play too big a role in the war itself.

And the US may have destroyed its arsenal in 1987. Buchanan went off U.N. power in ‘98 and could have begun building a new, anti-U.N. arsenal any time before that. The technology and the infrastructure still exist, and, the US has proven that it can do some pretty amazing things with its manufacturing capability in the past.

Where'd you get your info for 1998? The GURPS IST Timeline ends in 1990. Also, did America still have active fission plants left after converting to fusion power? You need fission plants to make a large amount of bomb quality nuclear material, and if America suddenly started to refurbish large numbers of mothballed fission plants, China going on the warpath two years later seems kind of obvious.

Idea: The Chinese have a way of destabilizing the U.N. Catalyzed-Fusion Reactors. Either making them unstable and shutting down, or to over-load and have them melt-down. All member-nations would have to come off of fusion power a.s.a.p. or risk a major catastrophe in any of their cities. They could also insist that all Embassy’s shut their reactors down (doubt they’d get much of an argument from the U.N.) to prevent the same.

And you accuse me of GM Fiat. 'Let us give the bad guys magical fairy powers.' The very first mission the PCs undertake will obviously be to learn how the Chinese are doing this, and to use this knowledge to either block the technique or turn it against the Chinese. Failure equals instant total loss and the Chinese win the war.

2000-
The Chinese attack South Korea and Hong Kong with fully-metahuman brigades. Further, successful attacks are made against India, Japan and Russia.

Multiple metahuman brigades? Isn't this a case of putting all of your eggs in one basket? A brigade is up to 1,000 people. While China certainly has enough metas to use this tactic, the wide range of metahuman powers and the strategic value of individual metas makes this a poor tactical choice. Metas would work much better as elite squad level groups (like PCs). One bunker buster bomb on your battalion and 90 percent of your metas are jelly. Small, agile groups are simply too hard to reliably target with artillery/missiles/etc.
Also, India, Japan and Russia? WTF? China could easily claim that their attack against Hong Kong is simply a matter of them reclaiming territory which was historically part of their country and was illegally kept from them. A North Korean push into South Korea with the aid of Chinese 'military observers' would be a matter of assisting an allied nation in its perfectly understandable reunification efforts. Blitzkrieging their way into India, Japan and Russia is a sure way to put a stop to any sort of diplomatic doublespeak and go right to TOTAL WAR with the rest of the planet. What the hell would push them to do something that fantastically dumb? This plan only makes sense if the Chinese leadership are being mind controlled or have been replaced, which would be utterly  cliché.

Using a refined jugo the Colombian drug cartels launch a relentless attack on the southern United States.

Yeah, because if I was a South American drug lord, I'd just love the idea of attacking my customers with an army of berserk metahuman thugs, thereby assuring both that I'll have many fewer customers and that I'll have many fewer thugs guarding my interests at home.
If they're going to attack anyone, how about the reinforced IST branch in Bogota or the UN offices in New York? This plan only makes sense if the drug lords are being mind controlled or have been replaced (still a cliché).

All Palestinians within Israel are rounded up and deported to Saudi Arabia.

No. First, there are close to 4 million people living in the Palestinian territories. Unless Israel can magically teleport all of them at once, I don't see them getting deported. If Israel can teleport them all at once, we've just solved the Chinese war: Go to Beijing and teleport the entire population into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Repeat until the country surrenders.
Second, Israel and Saudi Arabia don't seem to share a border, so they'd better be using mass teleportation for the deportations.
Third, the reason there are Palestinians in the first place is because every other Middle Eastern country refused to allow them entry back when Israel originally formed and tried to kick them out after WWII. I doubt they've changed their minds since then, as the issue gives them a constant source of anti-Israeli propaganda.
Fourth, instant shrieking denunciations from the rest of the word. There are real world precedents for this; terrorists can launch hundreds of rocket attacks against Israel for months and nobody says anything, but the moment Israel launches a handful of retaliatory strikes against specific targets, there is international outrage. This pattern has been going on for decades.

...nuclear attacks...nuclear devices...nuclear terror attacks...terrorist bomb...

Apparently we now know what the Reality Quake of 2000 did; it retconed every single precog in the word into nonexistence. While I can possibly accept one side in this debacle having some sort of anti-precog defense to hide their actions, every bad guy in the world now seems to possess an immunity to precogs.

2001-
China deploys a division of metahuman soldiers to Cuba to reinforce them. Within days of arrival, the Cuban people are imprisoned, and China declares Cuba a holding of the PRC. Battles rage across Asia. China takes Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Vietnam.

There are 11 million people in Cuba. In what prison were they stuck by the Chinese?
Also: Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Vietnam? What exactly is everyone else doing while China is busy annexing the planet?

The US government mandates police troops to use their own derivative of jugo in battling the ongoing terror attacks from Colombia.

The government is ordering highly trained professionals to snort a type of cocaine that usually results in brain damage, horrific internal injury or death within a matter of hours? So American government officials have now been added to the list of brainwashed/replaced world leaders?

Several strategic bombers, loaded with environmentally unfriendly defoliants make numerous passes over Colombia.

A similar strategy was attempted in the real world and didn't work. It won't work here either. Especially not with jugo augmented flying, energy shooting metas intercepting the planes.

Chinese terrorists detonate three nuclear devices on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Is the Golden Gate Bridge made of some virtually indestructible super material in the IST world? Otherwise, this plot is absurd. Nuclear bombs are quite hard to make. Dropping three on a single unarmored target is dumb, especially as you'd have to synchronize them to blow within about a picosecond of each other to keep the first blast from destroying the other two bombs before they can detonate.

He mandates that all US citizens serving in the IST have one month to return to the US to be assigned to military forces or they will be tried, in absentia and convicted of High Treason.

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't count as high treason. You'd probably need to go with a different charge.

They round up and execute any blacks that exhibit any level of metahuman ability.

Unlikely to be particularly successful, although charges of such an attempt could go far as propaganda.

The United States begins carpet bombing northern Mexico.

I hope you don't mean this literally. First, carpet bombing was only used in the past because more effective technologies were still in their infancy. Second, carpet bombing a country is really back for the PR aspects of a war. Third, northern Mexico is freaking huge! If America is literally carpet bombing the entire area, I don't think there are enough munitions in the entire country to do so without resorting to nuclear strikes, and America really doesn't want massive amounts of fallout on its own border.

US supers begin pulling debris from orbit and smashing it into targets in Central and South America.

The debris, being small and light so it could be placed in orbit in the first place, burns up on entry and accomplishes nothing. China learns of what the idiotic Americans attempted and decides to play 'rods-from-god' with America on the receiving end.

US supers smash a 250-meter wide asteroid into Mexico City. The resulting impact devastates the entire city and hundreds of square kilometers surrounding it. The resulting 3.5 km wide crater continues to collapse. Similar strikes in Chihuahua and Hermosillo devastate the Mexican Army’s supply lines.

I'm pretty sure that a single strike of that magnitude is an extinction level event that causes a nuclear winter that kills pretty much everything. Why is America using attacks that are explicitly capable of killing EVERYONE as part of their war on drugs?

South Africa runs into their first major hurdle in their conquest of Africa. Equatorial Guinea meets them head on with a brigade of Chinese-created, black metahuman soldiers.

So now China is creating metahumans rather than breeding them? Why exactly are they doing so for soldiers from Equatorial Guinea instead of injecting all 1.2 billion of their citizens with this miracle serum. Not that China's leaders would be all that thrilled to try ruling over 1.2 billion super powered citizens. I doubt it would work very well.
Overall, you seem to have a poor grasp of scale and simply have various factions doing things without showing how other factions react to those actions.
Also, regarding DM Fiat, I notice that your NPC seems to have all the answers and that the entire plot for this war hinges upon on her work. That is very anti PC of you. If a grand plan is going to save the world, it should be as a result of PC discoveries and PC actions rather than NPC railroading. You're just hijacking the entire scenario with your pet character.
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"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV