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Description
The US had a “fourth great awakening” in the 1920s, leading to a theocratic takeover of the US in the 1930s Depression. The US (Renamed the Holy North American States) is a one-party Christian state, combining the worst nastiness of Jim Crow racial legislation with a level of imposed morality that John Calvin would have found “sufficient” (Pat Robertson would be considered a “liberal” in this world’s US). The US dominates Mexico and Central America, maintains puppet regimes in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, and is allied with Australia (white, racist and with their own fundies, if still nominally multi-party), a larger and almost Muslim-free Israel, Apartheid South Africa, and has recently become fairly friendly with the current right-wing Hindu government of India, which although heathens share a strong dislike of Muslims.

Massive drives to support evangelical Christianity throughout Latin America in combination with heavy-handed meddling and dollar diplomacy has backfired, leading to a ferocious Catholic revival movement and anti-American violence (currently US forces are occupying several Latin American states). The juntas of Brazil and Argentina and Chile are allied to the right-wing Catholic dictatorships of Iberia, France and Italy, in a “Latin Block” with nuclear weapons of their own.

(The US stayed out of WWII thanks to the internal political violence of the 30’s, although it eventually got into a war with Japan when they grabbed the Philippines. The European conflict dragged on till 1948, when the UK started dropping nukes on Germany every 2 weeks. The area was much more devastated than OTL, and there was no Marshall Plan: most post-war efforts to restore democracy failed, and Italy had a Red-White civil war where the Right won with French help. The exhausted USSR only occupied Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Eastern 1/3 of Germany).

Europe is divided into the Balkans, the USSR territories, the Catholic juntas, and the UK-led North European Federation. The Balkans is divided between the Communist dictatorships of Yugoslavia and Albania, propped up by the USSR and several right-wing, Very Orthodox dictatorships. The Soviets have absorbed their conquests into a single integrated state, and have survived through a combination of heavy repression, slow economic reform, and looking good compared to the nasty regimes ruling so much of the world.

The Catholic states are increasingly internally troubled thanks to serious economic problems, and decades of ultimately counterproductive efforts to maintain control of half of Africa in spite of Soviet meddling. The NEF is a small light in the darkness: consisting of rump Germany, Austria, Western Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Low Countries and the UK, its 170-odd million inhabitants are the last bastion of democracy and liberalism in this world (since HAS became the HNAS with the invasion of Canada), although by our standards, with their 1950s public morality, they look pretty regressive.

The Middle East is a mess: there is hardly a country that hasn’t been bombed by the US or Israel at one point, the Palestinian Government-in-Exile makes trouble, and Mecca and Medina have been under Egyptian protection since the Saudi Civil War and the US-Israeli occupation (and later ethnic cleansing) of the oil fields. Currently much of the area huddles under the protection of the Soviet nuclear umbrella, not because they like the USSR, but because it’s the only enemy the US is genuinely a bit fearful of (the NEF could be a contender, but they stick with armed (heavily) neutrality). Africa is also a mess after decades of three-way proxy wars between the Latin block, the USSR, and the US, although there are a few islands of more-or-less stability propped up by the NEF, which is considered an “honest broker” by most Third-Worlders.

China, which has stuck with old-fashioned Stalinism, is currently reaching a crisis due to pollution-related crop damage and fuel shortages: there have been peasant uprisings, and even rumors of cannibalism. The USSR can’t do much to help, exporting little food and being short of fuel itself (the 10-year plan to change over from oil to nuclear and hydrogen-cell is still in its early stages) can help but little, although with some 12 million Chinese immigrants already, the tens or even hundreds of millions of refugees a collapsed China might produce are truly terrifying. The latest right-wing Vietnamese junta recently collapsed, and this time it looks like neither the US nor the Latins are going to worry about it. Indonesia’s government struggles against an Islamic insurgency with US help, which of course only inflames the insurgency.

Pretty much everyone is poorer than OTL, and there is no internet or computer tech ahead of the OTL mid-80s. There are satellites, for communication and spying, but no space travel. And there are no less than 14 known nuclear powers.

PS - I'll try to put up some less...depressing maps in the future. ()

Description
The US had a “fourth great awakening” in the 1920s, leading to a theocratic takeover of the US in the 1930s Depression. The US (Renamed the Holy North American States) is a one-party Christian state, combining the worst nastiness of Jim Crow racial legislation with a level of imposed morality that John Calvin would have found “sufficient” (Pat Robertson would be considered a “liberal” in this world’s US). The US dominates Mexico and Central America, maintains puppet regimes in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, and is allied with Australia (white, racist and with their own fundies, if still nominally multi-party), a larger and almost Muslim-free Israel, Apartheid South Africa, and has recently become fairly friendly with the current right-wing Hindu government of India, which although heathens share a strong dislike of Muslims.

Massive drives to support evangelical Christianity throughout Latin America in combination with heavy-handed meddling and dollar diplomacy has backfired, leading to a ferocious Catholic revival movement and anti-American violence (currently US forces are occupying several Latin American states). The juntas of Brazil and Argentina and Chile are allied to the right-wing Catholic dictatorships of Iberia, France and Italy, in a “Latin Block” with nuclear weapons of their own.

(The US stayed out of WWII thanks to the internal political violence of the 30’s, although it eventually got into a war with Japan when they grabbed the Philippines. The European conflict dragged on till 1948, when the UK started dropping nukes on Germany every 2 weeks. The area was much more devastated than OTL, and there was no Marshall Plan: most post-war efforts to restore democracy failed, and Italy had a Red-White civil war where the Right won with French help. The exhausted USSR only occupied Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Eastern 1/3 of Germany).

Europe is divided into the Balkans, the USSR territories, the Catholic juntas, and the UK-led North European Federation. The Balkans is divided between the Communist dictatorships of Yugoslavia and Albania, propped up by the USSR and several right-wing, Very Orthodox dictatorships. The Soviets have absorbed their conquests into a single integrated state, and have survived through a combination of heavy repression, slow economic reform, and looking good compared to the nasty regimes ruling so much of the world.

The Catholic states are increasingly internally troubled thanks to serious economic problems, and decades of ultimately counterproductive efforts to maintain control of half of Africa in spite of Soviet meddling. The NEF is a small light in the darkness: consisting of rump Germany, Austria, Western Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Low Countries and the UK, its 170-odd million inhabitants are the last bastion of democracy and liberalism in this world (since HAS became the HNAS with the invasion of Canada), although by our standards, with their 1950s public morality, they look pretty regressive.

The Middle East is a mess: there is hardly a country that hasn’t been bombed by the US or Israel at one point, the Palestinian Government-in-Exile makes trouble, and Mecca and Medina have been under Egyptian protection since the Saudi Civil War and the US-Israeli occupation (and later ethnic cleansing) of the oil fields. Currently much of the area huddles under the protection of the Soviet nuclear umbrella, not because they like the USSR, but because it’s the only enemy the US is genuinely a bit fearful of (the NEF could be a contender, but they stick with armed (heavily) neutrality). Africa is also a mess after decades of three-way proxy wars between the Latin block, the USSR, and the US, although there are a few islands of more-or-less stability propped up by the NEF, which is considered an “honest broker” by most Third-Worlders.

China, which has stuck with old-fashioned Stalinism, is currently reaching a crisis due to pollution-related crop damage and fuel shortages: there have been peasant uprisings, and even rumors of cannibalism. The USSR can’t do much to help, exporting little food and being short of fuel itself (the 10-year plan to change over from oil to nuclear and hydrogen-cell is still in its early stages) can help but little, although with some 12 million Chinese immigrants already, the tens or even hundreds of millions of refugees a collapsed China might produce are truly terrifying. The latest right-wing Vietnamese junta recently collapsed, and this time it looks like neither the US nor the Latins are going to worry about it. Indonesia’s government struggles against an Islamic insurgency with US help, which of course only inflames the insurgency.

Pretty much everyone is poorer than OTL, and there is no internet or computer tech ahead of the OTL mid-80s. There are satellites, for communication and spying, but no space travel. And there are no less than 14 known nuclear powers.

PS - I'll try to put up some less...depressing maps in the future. ()