Crowdsourcing the Timeline

[Mark Skarr]

In fact, much of what I see Mark doing with South Africa in his tentative timeline looks like stuff that should have been happening in the 90's, unless something else happened to prevent it.

I took that "something else" to be that they were marshalling their forces for a moment when the U.N. was weak or distracted. . ..  Beyond their wildest dreams!

Nuclear weapons have been used before.... that doesn't mean people are going to be in a hurry to use them again. Especially not aimless "I hate you, have a mushroom cloud" spam. Might make a decent leadup to a post apocalyptic scenario.

I meant to comment on this, but forgot to (me so stupid!).  This is actually addressed:

Many nations, both in the U.N. and out, have built arsenals of tactical nuclear weapons. Many forces hostile to the IST, primarily the PLO and those who buy from it, have tacnukes and are more than willing to use them.

So, with Armageddon sulking on the horizon, many groups are in the "use 'em or lose 'em" mode.

With the exception of the Chinese, the only groups using nuclear weapons thus far have been terrorist organizations or rogue nations.  Everyone else has remained "conventional" no matter how unconventional that might have been.