Jump 112: East vs West

Jump 112: East vs West

Location: Israel, 1946
Age: 52
Identity: [-150] Head Of State
Drawbacks: [+800] Import Save Game, Missile Gap, The Third World War

[200/1650]  Local Customs
[800/1650]  Non-Consensual Utilization
[Free]      Suck-Up Subordinates
[900/1650]  National Foci
[1200/1650] Opposition In Name Only
[1300/1650] Slush Fund
[1600/1650] Star Wars

In 1946, General Patton gave the go-ahead for atomic war against Soviet Russia, shortly after my nation had joined NATO with the aim of helping Europe rebuild and to contain future communist aggression. The USSR responded in a predictable fashion, and atomic war was not merely an inevitability, but a fact; the only two saving graces for my nation is that atomic bombs were not yet small enough to be carried by anything short of a bomber, and due to not being involved in Europe's war we had jet interceptors intact that could take out those bombers. The other allies' defenses were more spotty, and the USSR bombed everything around it while being bombed itself. The massive missiles that had only just begun to be built were, luckily, intercepted by space-based defenses.

"Right, fuck this shit," I said, and called in every contingency plan that could be called in. The space-based defenses were tuned to a wider deployment to stop all missiles in the region from flying, and more were launched in very rapid succession to spread this protective blanket around the globe. Heavy, clunky-lookingturboprop planes soon crisscrossed the skies of every nation, shooting down every strategic bomber and hostile aircraft that took to the skies, based upon truly massive flying wings that acted as carriers.

"No man shall any longer be forced to watch the world destroy itself," I announced over global radio and television, in leaflets dropped on every nation, on the dawn of New Year's Day, 1947. "The leadership of existing nations cannot be trusted not to make suicidal decisions, and as a result millions upon millions of lives have been snuffed out, permanent shadows on the walls of half-destroyed buildings. As of now, all nations will be unified under a single world government. Every people will be represented in that assembly. This is the dawn of a new era, an era in which humanity will no longer be allowed to annihilate itself and shall instead look to the stars as it finds itself living truly at peace for the first time in recorded history."

Bold words, certainly. But when your nation has atomic-powered aircraft that can patrol the skies beyond anti-aircraft artillery range, and satellites that can detect and destroy ICBMs before they even hit the upper atmosphere... you have control over the high ground.

Let's just not consider how it is that this was all built so rapidly, shall we?

Honestly, I feel like this entire experience was meant to tell me something about trying to stick to a single 'true' timeline. Every time I did, things went horribly, horribly wrong.

No point holding back after unifying Earth, is there? At least I had the technology to purify irradiated land - and frankly, distributing Rad-X and RadAway worldwide was enough to earn us all the points with the people of the world that they were willing to do anything that we said. Should have broke those out when the second world war went hot instead of waiting for the third, but frankly there wasn't even time to do that.