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Description
This was for a "screwed up apocalyptic world" contest, so don't call me emo.

A somewhat more intense Spanish Flu epidemic butterflies the leadership of the US and USSR from the 20s on, and a somewhat different WWII is fought, leading to Red Army on Rhine. China goes Communist as OTL, and a Cold War even more tense than OTL ensues. The balloon goes up in 1971.

The US suffered horrendous damage, especially in the mid-west, some areas of the east coast, and California. As a result of a government lopped off some ways down the chain of succession and conflict between the armed forces leadership and the left-ish (supposed) new President, two essentially independent successor governments emerged in the West and the North, and when the one took a turn to the left in its emergency measures, while the other took a turn to the right, the US essentially broke in two, although it took some years for it to become official. The Republic of America, going with the old "if you can't beat them..." chestnut, has become a left-wing dictatorship, although less ideological and more technocratic than their Chinese allies: indeed, they would be more natural allies with the Soviets, if it weren't for that little nuking thing.

The USSR, although suffering casualties even higher than the US, failed to collapse, instead its surviving leadership - and much of the surviving population- simply left the devastated regions, forcing at atomic gunpoint the less-damaged Mediterranean and Middle Eastern nations to extend them hospitality. Allying with the local Communist parties, they settled in and continued the Long Struggle to bring about lobal socialist success.

The less badly damaged east of the USSR broke away as a seperate regime, and allied itself with the Chinese, which having stayed out of the war only had to deal with fallout and thereby rather gained in relative power. The UAS consider themselves the _true_ successors to the old USSR and think of the new Soviet Union as dreafully bourgeois.

The Chinese, with UAS help, have modernized in an old-fashioned Stalinist-Kruschevite manner up to about OTL 1970s USSR standards of development (with loads of ICBMs).

Ideological confict between the Chinese/American block and the Soviets left space for the emergence of a third leftist movement, the third-world Agrarian Populists, which vary from West India, which is a respectable industrial power and allows from the Soviet or Chinese point of view an alarming amount of Capitalism, to the almost Pol-Potesque unpleasantness of Greater Ghana. The weakest of the three groupings, the APs attempt to maintain strict neutralism while maintaining an almost universal Nation at Arms to discourage invasion.

Aside from the Communists, there are the right-wing anti-Socialist states, the powerful military dictatorship of the USA [1], the authoritarian Confederation, the racially segregated South Africans, and the paranoid and Very Anti-Asian New Australians, plus a few dibs and dabs of territory here and there. Although capitalist, their economies suffer from limited trade, corruption, the burden of massive security states, and in the case of S. Africa, serious underuse of their human potential.

The world is probably doomed. There are more nuclear weapons than there were at the Cold War 1980s peak OTL, with no less than 14 atomic arsenals, six of them large. Pollution is terrible, and global warming marches forward while coal is burned in huge amounts. The Chinese and the People's republic of India are pressing against the limits of their systems, and if the Monsoon is interrupted by climate change, Bad Things will happen. The technocratic Soviets and the US are actually making some progress with computerized planning, mass food production in indoor greenhouses, etc. but things are overall a mess.

Apocalyptic Christianity is on the rise in the US. Glimmerings of hope exist, in the semi-civilized Socialism of central Africa and West India, in the democratic undercurrents that still flow in parts of Europe and North America, in the upcoming 2011 world Peace Conference, once again trying to find a formula to shrink nuclear arsenals. But will anything break the cycle of hatred and paranoia before environmental collapse, global nuclear war, or perhaps global nuclear war triggered by environmental collapse?

[1] It does have elections, but there is only one legal party - the fusion "American Party", which generally asks "how high?" when the military says "jump."

Description
This was for a "screwed up apocalyptic world" contest, so don't call me emo.

A somewhat more intense Spanish Flu epidemic butterflies the leadership of the US and USSR from the 20s on, and a somewhat different WWII is fought, leading to Red Army on Rhine. China goes Communist as OTL, and a Cold War even more tense than OTL ensues. The balloon goes up in 1971.

The US suffered horrendous damage, especially in the mid-west, some areas of the east coast, and California. As a result of a government lopped off some ways down the chain of succession and conflict between the armed forces leadership and the left-ish (supposed) new President, two essentially independent successor governments emerged in the West and the North, and when the one took a turn to the left in its emergency measures, while the other took a turn to the right, the US essentially broke in two, although it took some years for it to become official. The Republic of America, going with the old "if you can't beat them..." chestnut, has become a left-wing dictatorship, although less ideological and more technocratic than their Chinese allies: indeed, they would be more natural allies with the Soviets, if it weren't for that little nuking thing.

The USSR, although suffering casualties even higher than the US, failed to collapse, instead its surviving leadership - and much of the surviving population- simply left the devastated regions, forcing at atomic gunpoint the less-damaged Mediterranean and Middle Eastern nations to extend them hospitality. Allying with the local Communist parties, they settled in and continued the Long Struggle to bring about lobal socialist success.

The less badly damaged east of the USSR broke away as a seperate regime, and allied itself with the Chinese, which having stayed out of the war only had to deal with fallout and thereby rather gained in relative power. The UAS consider themselves the _true_ successors to the old USSR and think of the new Soviet Union as dreafully bourgeois.

The Chinese, with UAS help, have modernized in an old-fashioned Stalinist-Kruschevite manner up to about OTL 1970s USSR standards of development (with loads of ICBMs).

Ideological confict between the Chinese/American block and the Soviets left space for the emergence of a third leftist movement, the third-world Agrarian Populists, which vary from West India, which is a respectable industrial power and allows from the Soviet or Chinese point of view an alarming amount of Capitalism, to the almost Pol-Potesque unpleasantness of Greater Ghana. The weakest of the three groupings, the APs attempt to maintain strict neutralism while maintaining an almost universal Nation at Arms to discourage invasion.

Aside from the Communists, there are the right-wing anti-Socialist states, the powerful military dictatorship of the USA [1], the authoritarian Confederation, the racially segregated South Africans, and the paranoid and Very Anti-Asian New Australians, plus a few dibs and dabs of territory here and there. Although capitalist, their economies suffer from limited trade, corruption, the burden of massive security states, and in the case of S. Africa, serious underuse of their human potential.

The world is probably doomed. There are more nuclear weapons than there were at the Cold War 1980s peak OTL, with no less than 14 atomic arsenals, six of them large. Pollution is terrible, and global warming marches forward while coal is burned in huge amounts. The Chinese and the People's republic of India are pressing against the limits of their systems, and if the Monsoon is interrupted by climate change, Bad Things will happen. The technocratic Soviets and the US are actually making some progress with computerized planning, mass food production in indoor greenhouses, etc. but things are overall a mess.

Apocalyptic Christianity is on the rise in the US. Glimmerings of hope exist, in the semi-civilized Socialism of central Africa and West India, in the democratic undercurrents that still flow in parts of Europe and North America, in the upcoming 2011 world Peace Conference, once again trying to find a formula to shrink nuclear arsenals. But will anything break the cycle of hatred and paranoia before environmental collapse, global nuclear war, or perhaps global nuclear war triggered by environmental collapse?

[1] It does have elections, but there is only one legal party - the fusion "American Party", which generally asks "how high?" when the military says "jump."