The Verne cannon.

By 1968, quite a few nations had joined what was sarcastically refereed to as the "fat man club".  While fusion boosted weapons were still a monopoly of the big two (USA/USSR, despite what they say about their allies and fellow countries), it had proven fairly easy to obtain the informtion and infrastructure to jumpstart a basic Fat-man plutonium bomb, or, if refining was the issue, a uranium little-boy or a Debner tactical nuke. In many cases, they were purchased whole on the black arms market, or even successfully salvaged from battlefields or wrecks.

Some minor unaligned clashes had already involved battlefield atomics and in three cases, larger fat-man size weapons used on cities, generally against non-armed neighbors to terminate conflicts (Montevideo, Kampala and  and Falan).  It was clear that for the smaller or non-aligned countries, an A-bomb, any A-bomb, was vital to ensure national sovereignty, much as a dreadnaught was in 1910.

As a result, no-one was suprized when Brazil and India announced that they would be holding a series of collaborative underground nuclear tests in both countries.  many regarded this as a propaganda ploy, showing the collaboration of the two major non-aligned nations. Additionally, adding UN observers was seen as little more than a publicity ploy, as was the insistence on the testing being underground; both countries and the UN had been pushing for a moratorium on above ground tests due to the already major biosphere damage from the nuclear conflicts of the past twenty years.

The suprise came when the test shots, six of them, occurred early, and almost simultaneously; more surprising was the realization that they were in fact, massive cannons using 150kt nuclear charges to loft over 15,000 tons of equipment and self deploying structures into orbit.  Three major Orbital command stations were quickly manned and finished off by crews waiting in orbit under cover of the UN orbital clearance forces which had been clearing wreckage and debris in orbit since 1963.  Within twenty four hours, the heavily armored and armed stations were weapons operational, and with the existing clearance craft had captured and deactivated or destroyed all non-UN orbital assets.  While the crews were small and initially had to live in their spacesuits (crew quarters were a lower priority than weapons) , they were invulnerable.

As the blindsided superpower alliances attempted to respond, conventional/kinetic weapons impacted in the near vicinity of all the NATO/PACT nearside lunar bases, and within uninhabited areas of the superpower homelands. With minimal casualties, and near total surprise, the UN and Non-aligned nations had seized the high ground.

The UN peacekeeping directorate, aka PAX, took command and declared all cislunar space and lunar nearside to be a demilitarized disarmed area under its jurisdiction, backed by an estimated 200 orbital nuclear weapons, some claimed to be as large as the 1953 Moscow busters.  Both superpowers blustered, and both learned that the threat was real when military groundside assets were hit by nuclear weapons; a brief attempt to destroy the stations failed partly due to lack of cooperation, and partly due to the fact that a 5000 ton armored and heavily defended station was a much tougher nut to crack than the earlier platforms proven so vulnerable in the previous wars.  Finally, too, when station two was critically damaged by one of the few joint strikes, the Nuclear Cannons (aka Verne Guns) lofted a cloud of simple but deadly unmanned ageis hunter killers (aka killer crowbars); soon after, a fourth station was also was lofted and deployed.  East and West were forced to the negotiating table, much as Burma and Urugay had been, and with equal humiliation and desire for revenge.

The terms PAX imposed by the  treaty of the Azores were simple.  Cislunar space was declared a demilitarized exclusion; military craft and platforms were forbidden, and all other assets in orbit were open to inspection at any time.  Military craft were similarly forbidden, except for transit through the exclusion zone.  Use of nuclear weapons Earthside were forbidden on pain of massive reprisal, initially nuclear, but later from the lunar mass cannons that PAX constructed.   It was also noted that the Verne cannons did not have to deliver their payloads to orbit.

By 1970, kicking an screaming, the superpowers had been dragged into a cold, conventional standoff Earthside and in orbit, although arsenals for deterrence began growing at a prodigious rate.  While far from safe, the immediate threat of nuclear holocaust was at least delayed, and local space made free for all.  Unfortunately, the solar system would be the next area of conflict. 


Next: Yes, at last we come to one of the two eras for an RPG campaign !

One very small, secretive step......

it will probably never be clearly know who the first successful lunar explorers were, nor for which side they served.  In a more peaceful world, perhaps, the moon landing would have been a public display of national will, or technology- essentially a piece of dramatic propaganda to humiliate the opposition.   In reality, the moon landings were  military missions to gain and map  the new high ground, and as such, as secret as possible.

It is known that across 1965 and 66 both east and west used nuclear propelled heavy lifters to orbit and then land materials on the moon to build the national bases, redoubts and missile silos.  What is also clear is that crews were already present on the moon, and had been for some time. 

While theoretically at peace, or at least ceasefire, both sides actively attempted to sabotage or impede the other sides construction once on the moon.  While only partly successful (both sides successfully installed military bases by 1967), this set the tone for the constant low level skirmishing on the Lunar surface.

While only a few missiles were installed by either side, they were uniformly armed with the massive new fusion boosted warheads that had been developed by the end of the orbit wars, making them potent final strike weapons.   Initially intended as deterrence weapons, their potential as first strike weapons had the actual effect of drastically destabilizing the shaky ceasefire between East and West.

By 1968, tensions were rising once again, and the lunar skirmishing was spreading once again to earth's orbitals.  Given that both sides had deployed ICBMs earthside with fusion warheads it seemed fated that the next outbreak of war would be conclusive, if not survivable.

However, in October of 1968, everything changed.

As above, so below.

The second orbital war was carried out both in space and on land.  The large demilitarized zones of Germany and Northern China became battlegrounds once again; but unlike the first conflict, the forces were small, highly mobile, and nuclear capable.  As with the Orbit war, the clashes earth showed that offense had greatly outstripped defense, and both sides rapidly depleted their available first line forces and came to use tactical nuclear bombardment to respond to enemy breakthroughs.  Due to the highly dispersed and small uit organization, the actual military casualties were quite small, but they represented the elite of both sides forces.

While the battlegrounds, still unrecovered from 1953, were much less densely inhabited than beforehand, the civilian casualties were enormous, and the collateral environmental damage was extreme. Both the superpowers homelands were largely safe from direct attack, but the overall damage and radiological contamination began to effect even the safest of homeland havens. By 1963, both sides were forced to institute food rationing, and a second world-wide famine was already spreading.  Most of the Third estate (as the nonaligned powers were known as to the media) were able to feed their populations, but only in the core countries, and even then at similarly rationed levels.  Nonetheless, the growing reliance of the superpowers on food imports from the Non-aligned powers gave the UN and PAX forces the leverage needed to broker a ceasefire.  The second orbital war ended with no political or territorial advantages gained by either side, and a bitter extended winter was to make 1964 one of the bleakest years in history.

Socially, nations that survived the post war years tended to become highly centralized, tightly controlled planned economies and societies.  Despite the vulnerabilities of such, metropolitan areas expanded in population, if not in size, with military installations moving as far as possible from the refugee choked cities.  With all sides populations becoming highly concentrated, and critical climate damage, a tacit understanding between the powers limited strike to military targets wherever possible.  Protracted nuclear war had come to stay.

In space, both sides had little to show that could be considered successful.  The willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons as a standard element proved that offense had again trumped defense. Orbital missle installations were spectacularly unsuccessful after the first hour of the war, and orbit denial strategies insured that no new stations could be deployed.  Use of indiscriminate orbital mines and simple debris fields insured that NEO would likely never again have permanent military stations.

While the rational solution would have been detente, and possibly a final negotiated end to the war, neither side was able to make the political and social sacrifices needed to do so.  As a result, as the war ended,  both sides reached for the moon to gain the high ground and impose a final peace on their enemies.

The attempts to reach the moon were both hasty, and desperate.  Of the four missions from both sides that attempted to establish a foothold, some were initially successful, but none survived to return.  The 1962 moon orbit missions resulted in a twin Soyuz missing return insertion and being lost; the newly deployed Apollo succeeded in achieving a return trajectory but suffered a series of failures culminating in a non-survivable re-entry failure.  The three Gemini landing mission racing the Soviet attempt resulted in one crashed lander, and a mutually destructive combat in lunar orbit between the orbital elements.  The single surviving two man USAF lander and the two single man soviet landers, as planned, touched down within five miles of each other.  The Lunar Gemini had the potential for earth return, whereas the Soviet LK landers did not.  Once the orbital assets had been mutually destroyed, contact was lost with both teams, and never regained. Limited observation  from earth  (orbital observatories being eliminated) suggested that both engaged in a long range duel with light mortars before a cross-lunar attempt was made by the marooned Soviet team to destroy (or possibly capture) the Gemini lander. At some point, at least one small tactical nuclear weapon was detonated, destroying the site and killing any surviving crew.

 If both sides managed to learn any lesson from the Lunar and Orbital debacles, it was this: Chemical rockets and small, fragile capsule-based craft were no longer viable weapons or long range systems; nor was orbit a viable environment for long term military assets.  Relentlessly, the quest for the high ground now turned to the moon.

Back to the cold war: Red Stars and Rockets

The second orbital war flared in 1961 and dragged on, continuing in fits and starts until ending in 1963, with the treaty of New Dehli.

While generally regarded as an accidental war, it was nonetheless inevitable in retrospect, given the continuing militarization of earth orbital (and, after 1959, the lunar surface).  A second, and less well understood cause was the fact that in reality, both sides were operating beyond the bounds of their current technology and resources.  In truth, many of the craft used thru this period would have(at best) qualified as testbed or prototypes; due to the press of the cold war they were tested in active missions, direct confrontation, or, post 1961, front line operations.  Accidents are a natural result of experimentation, and under the pressure of the east-west confrontation, easily become disasters. 

The 1961 catastrophic deorbiting of the newly deployed USAF Manned orbiting labratory#4 during a confrontation/provocation with Vostok 17  was the spark that started the second war. Both sides faced what seemed to be a sudden, unexpected  attack, followed by a sudden cascading  failure  of communication and observation capacity, possibly by hostile action, and escalated accordingly. 

It was little consolation that post war examination of blackbox data and operational telemetry concluded that the explosion of Aug 16, 1961 was due to an electrical failure in the reserve LOX tanks when the new station was brought up to full emergency power due to the approach of the Vostok Interceptor.  That the explosion/collision  destroyed the Soviet craft simply increased the uncertainty of what happened;  the disruption of both sides’ overloaded communication and orbital C3 infrastructure by secondary debris guaranteed that a tragedy became a war.

A break from the cold war......

So, I've run up against the current limits of what I enjoy doing on this blog - and am into areas of the story that I haven't thought thru all that well.  So, I need to take a break fro the ponderous faux history writing, and see what happens.

The game development itself seems to have hit a plateau; one day a couple of weeks ago I realized somthing: unless this is just an Alt.history blog exercise, I need to figure out where the players can fit in.

The biggest problem with the setting so far is that there really only is room (thus far) for adventurers who are still part of the space forces -in the military, in other words, since the world I'm designing certainly doesn't have room or resources for private enterprise (or corporate enterprise) in space. Regan/Bush capitalism isn't going to flourish in the world of retrospace -both sides have tightly planned, militarized economies. And while a WWII or cold war game on earth has lots of room for espionage, clandestine ops, semi-private adventurers and maverick warbands, the space war requires serious resources and official cooperation from the governments or you can't get there; plus, up to the time of the first orbit war, things are pretty obvious, and the goals are pretty circumscribed.  Blast off in single-seat rockets, shoot down satellite or enemy interceptor.  Infiltrate the three-man saluyt station ?  Ummmm.  No ?  Especially as the entire orbital battlefield has, on both sides, maybe twelve soldiers in it at any one time ?

So, where the players ?  The problem is, a "you are in the army here are your orders" campaign, while easy to run, isn't (in my experience) the most popular amongst the players, who do matter, somewhat.

It looks like there will need to be a couple of breakpoints for the backstory that can generate different campaigns. 

Lets see what I come up with.  In the meantime, I think I'll do some shilling for my current faddish RPG infatuations (six level D&D, Engines and Empires, Busiris, Epees and Sorcery), or post  some stupid game rants. (thieves, idiot fans, get off of my lawn).

The 1959 LEO treaty, and the evolution of the UN

If the first major consequence of the First orbital war  was speeding up long term and long range space operations by the superpowers, the second was clearly the initial LEO treaty that was negotiated as a result of the war.    

Before the war, the civilian benefits of satellite/orbital technology had been obvious, and exploitation of this potential was a major goal of both private industries and the non-aligned developing nations (Argentina, Brazil, India, South Africa).  While only a few private or Non-aligned powers had lofted satellites, the Orbit war destroyed them all by direct attack, or as a consequence of other attacks. 

Both the run up to the war and the result of the war was an almost complete degredation of orbital infrastructure: in short, no sooner was a satellite lofted than it was destroyed.   

As most space exploitation was military, anything in orbit was potentially a weapon.  Indeed, the main casus bellum for the war was the “neutralization” of a large scientific satellite that proved to be an nuclear platform (from debris analysis); that it was also manned was the stated issue, but both sides knew that the lesson of project Prometheus was that gaining nuclear high ground was decisive. Once nuclear weapons were potentially in orbit, no satellite could be trusted.  Unfortunately, as previously discussed the operations required to control LEO had exhausted both sides resources and personel and was unsustainable, and simultaneously unavoidable. 

The desire for both of the superpowers to disengage from active orbital fighting coupled with  the non-aligned powers desire to have an orbital infrastructure to create the the 1959 LEO treaty.  In its simplest form, the LEO treaty declared that non-military satellites and operations were off limits to attack, but were also completely open to inspection and verification.  Military operations were unaffected, but made responsible for collateral damage.  Secondarily, the UN was tasked to undertake enforcement, inspection and orbital cleanup, a duty vested in the UNPAX forces patrolling the Eurasian DMZ areas. 

Many historians mark the beginning of the estrangement of both the USA and the USSR from the UN, although the 1957 relocation  of the UN headquarters into the BENELUX Mandate  is also significant.  Regardless of the cause, the LEO treaty clearly showed that by unified pressure (economic and political) the non-aligned powers could dictate some terms to the superpowers; increasingly, the UN became the vehicle for such action.  A bipolar world was beginning to evolve into a tripartite world.

Orbit War One: Mercury, Vostok, and the triumph of cumulative risk.

The First Orbital war (1958),  while politically indecisive, was mainly a proof of concept for orbital conflict.  Both sides relied on single seat earth launch interceptors (Hermes/Mercury and Vostok series orbital craft); The initial USAF Hermes Orbit Interceptor relied on rail boost whereas the Vostok used direct rocket launch systems.   The USAF Mercury Interceptor, deployed mid war, was an uparmed Hermes designed for rocket boost, which had proven a more rapid, (if less reliable) deployment system for intercept missions responding to Soviet launches.

Both the Vostok and the Hermes/Mercury had minimal weapon capacity ,  limited maneuverability, endurance and apogee.  As a result mission duration was limited, as was actual engagement time and maneuverability. Craft in this period had much more capacity for evasion than controlled interception, but for both sides, actual maneuvering fuel and endurance was sharply limited, resulting in indecisive missions against manned targets.    The usual goal of an offensive mission was to knock out a particular unmanned and non-maneuvering satellites; typically, if such an attack was detected at launch, an interceptor was launched to engage the attacker.  The usual result of an engagement was for both craft being forced to maneuver to avoid attack, expending all discresionary maneuver fuel, and having to abort, leaving the target unharmed.  In several cases, either or both of the craft lost sufficient maneuver ability to successfully reenter, and if a rescue mission was impossible, were lost attempting to return, or became derelict.

While the popular press played up the image of raging space dogfights, only three actual combat kills occurred; most intercepts were resolved by one of the combatants aborting, or surrendering when unable to further maneuver without losing return capability.  This was known as a “gentleman’s kill”, and allowed the loser to return to earth after acknowledging defeat; while this procedure was officially discouraged, and then  banned by the command of both sides, it was almost universally accepted by both sides.

Despite the actions in orbit, most of the losses in both forces were the result of launch or reentry failures.  In particular the rate of launch failures increased dramatically in intercept missions due to the unwillingness to reschedule or abort a launch.

Wartime mission failures invariably resulted in a dead pilot , and ran  about 6% per launch/recovery cycle for both sides;  while this seems small, the cumulative  result was an ~50% death rate across 10 missions; the existing astro/cosmonaut corps could not sustain these losses, especially as the rate of mission launches increased in the final months to an average three day turnaround per pilot. As a result, unlike typical air combat, where loss rates are typically asymmetric, both sides faced an almost total loss of skilled pilots, and after approximately 11 months, decided on a cease fire.

The lesson learned for both sides was that ground based interceptor forces could not be relied on for long term conflict.  Accordingly, when the second orbit war broke out in 1961, both sides had larger and truly maneuverable craft (Gemini/Voskhod) operating from either long orbit missions (stretch Gemini,dual Voskhod fighter/tender) , space stations (the Soviet Almaz, USAF MOS), and the first larger fighter conveyors (The USAF Agena I and II FiCons,and the Soviet TKS tender).

1953-58 : Post Bellum, Ad Astra

After the armistice, it was clear to both sides that the key to the next war was orbital superiority.  For the Western Alliance, this was underlined by the destruction of the strategic air forces in the final raids; even after enduring a nuclear strike and command decapitation, Soviet air defense was able to stop conventional bombing attacks.  The Soviet Union had a devastated capital to counter the arguments of the Air Marshals.  Both sides had made it plain that extensive use of tactical nuclear weapons had changed the face of land and sea warfare forever.  Across the board, it was accepted that expensive and extensive military assets were easily countered by much cheaper nuclear weapons, and the lions’ share of what military spending was left went to development of space assets. 

The Western alliance had advanced rail based launch systems, whereas the Soviet bloc had developed advanced rocket capacity.  Both immediately rushed to grab superiority with their homegrown systems, and to simultaneously catch up in the opponents systems.  

For the next five years the soviet rocket forces and the newly reorganized United States Aerospace force were able to loft communication and spy satellites and frantically competed to develop survivable manned vehicles; By early 1956, both sides had developed maneuverable orbital fighters and, more critically, preliminary launch platforms for nuclear weapons. Still grudgingly at peace Earthside, both were involved in discreet campaigns to destroy the unmanned orbital assets of their opponents.  By 1958, however, it was clear to both sides that unmanned assets in orbit were ineffective due to the ease of their destruction; unsurprisingly, both sides finally deployed manned platforms which were attacked and destroyed by their opponents.

Next : The first Orbital War.

and then.....1953: Project Prometheus and Operation Fleaflicker

The war has been stalemated since the soviet thrust across the Rhine was cut off and destroyed in 1950. Vast air attacks on the UK have consistently kept it unusable as a base for long range strikes on the Soviet homeland.  Mass B-29/50 raids from south France or Iceland have been consistently unable to penetrate past Poland  or the east Baltic sea without destruction. Leningrad was damaged by Atomic weaponry at the cost of 70% of the strike aircraft in the most successful such raid. The Mig-15 has proven to be a terrifying air defense fighter against unescorted bombers, even the new B-36 - of which half were lost in the Leningrad raid. By 1952 the Soviet R-1 (the "super v-2") is deployed in a nuclear air defense variant effectively sealing off Pact airspace from large formation attacks.

On the ground, Germany and Poland have absorbed dozens, perhaps a hundred nuclear strikes from small dirty tactical strikes up thru the 50kt Nagasaki busters. East and west line up on opposite sides of the Rhine, keeping dispersed and dug in against tactical strikes.  R-1 and the new R-2 rockets occasionally bombard eastern France and Southwest UK with Diebner bombs and radiological weapons. Both sides are locked into fortress economies, currently safe from attack, surrounded by devastated allies.

Nov 7, 1953, Cold Lake USAFB, Alberta, Canada: Project Prometheus.

Seven orbital Bombers designed by Eugene Sanger from his original Silbervogel Antipodal bomber scream into the air at the end of  10,000 foot long rail tracks. Launched in three waves, the bombers carry seven Atomic bombs, three of the now all-too-common fat man design, four carrying Super Oralloy Weapons estimated at a half megaton each - an order of magnitude more the the fat man bombs.

One of the rail boosters of the second wave explodes at separation, destroying Prometheus 5 and it's launch track; the remaining two rails launch the final bombers successfully.  Two of the remaining six break up and are destroyed as they begin skipping off of the atmosphere.  All will be destroyed during final re-entry, but four will deliver their bombs first: two superbombs on Moscow and two fat man bombs on command and control sites in the heartland of Russia. The capital and command bunkers are pulverized.  Amidst the hundreds of thousands of casualties, two key ones are included: Stalin and Beria; as well as Molotov, Malenkov,  Bulganin,  most of Presidium and Stavka command including Marshal Zhukov. The Soviet military and government is effectively decapitated; even more, news of Stalin and Beria's death creates an instant power struggle among the few survivors, paralyzing the response.

Operation Fleaflicker
As the strikes in Russia are confirmed, the remaining long-range bomber and Ficon squadrons launch from the newly built Frobishers bay AFB, passing over the ruins of Thule on their way to Russia.  However, Soviet air defense is hampered but not crippled; few bombers make it to targets past suicidal fighter attacks and massed air detonations of nuclear weapons.It is the effective destruction of both the NATO's  strategic air forces, and  the soviet fighter command.  The survivors will land, ditch or bail out across northern Canada, Greenland and Scandinavia.

That night, as the bombers and their fighters are attacking  soviet airspace, NATO  commits  all remaining ground force reserves in what is to be the last, desperate offensive of WWIII. Widely dispersed NATO forces cross the Rhine; winter slows down the attacking forces and burdens supply, but gives tactical surprise and removes the specter of nuclear air attacks from the equation.

Within three weeks, NATO forces are at the Wesser, Main, and Danube and the uneasy alliance that currently rules the USSR (Nikita Kruschev, and the only surviving Marshals Ivan Konev and Vasily Sokolosky) requests a cease-fire. With logistical support failing across the blasted German battlefield,  NATO, quite literally on its last legs desperately grabs the olive branch and accepts an indefinite armistice.  Germany between the Wesser and the Elbe becomes the northern region of a DMZ that will stretch to the Adriatic. The troops remain on the lines, and will for the next thirty years; at least the wounded will be home by Christmas.

Next....so how does this get us into space ?

 

Some thoughts on Stalin and his goals, by Lavrenti Beria's son.

 Some of the stuff I've been digging up for basic background stuff for the setting I'm working on - Cold war in Spaaaaace ! (intro here).

Lavrenti Beria was , by 1953, the number two man in the USSR, and had been in charge of the Soviet Atomic Bomb project.  Here is part of an interview  with his son on the subject of the beginning of the cold war and Stalin's goals (do visit the site, the whole interview is quite interesting).  As ever, it is just one mans report regarding two dead people, long after the fact, but.....jeeeeze.  That's some serious evil overlord stuff and it's real...

Q: Let us speak about the appearance of the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union, in connection with the Korean War.

A: The war in Korea broke out on Stalin's initiative. When the Soviet troops came back to this country, Stalin began the new policy. He was of the opinion that on the basis of the communist development, we must organise small local wars in different places of the world. It was begun in Greece, then in China, then in Vietnam, and finally in Korea. That is one of the examples of these local wars. In two weeks, the Soviet troops managed to fight; they were very good. And at that time, Stalin wanted the Soviet troops to fight with rockets; that was the rockets against the ships. They had two types of heads: atomic head and trotyl head. Stalin wanted the Soviet fleet to destroy three or four American military ships; and they told Stalin that after that, the American side would fight with the atomic bomb. Stalin wasn't afraid of this atomic bomb; he said, "Then we'll give our atomic bomb, too." At that time we had very good military aeroplanes; that's why Stalin was ready to begin a very big war. But our military specialists told him that we had no equipment which could catch the American aeroplanes, and Stalin gave the order to build such equipment. And later on, this task was fulfilled. During all the sittings of the Government, he said that the third world war would take place, and that this war had to take place during his life. That's why the military industry in the Soviet Union was very much developed at that time. We got a lot of tanks and rockets and ships, and I think that if Stalin had lived five years longer, we would have had this third world war. (emphasis mine)

Q: Was it planned to use the nuclear bomb in Korea from the Soviet side too?

A: Yes, Stalin had such plans, and my father was very much afraid of these plans. Such a fact(?) took place, and maybe it's not very good that I speak about this now. My father was even against the preparation of this bomb, and he understood that if the Soviet Union got this bomb, nothing would be able to stop Stalin in his wish to conquer the whole world.(emphasis mine)

Q: The last question: if nobody knew that Stalin was so dangerous, and if people had some plans to stop Stalin.

A: Yes, of course, a lot of people understood that Stalin had such dangerous plans and that they must do their best in order to stop him and his plans. But Stalin was very clever, and he understood everything. He felt all these spirits of people who surrounded him. When he felt that somebody was dangerous for him, he immediately killed them. He protected himself from the enemies, and it was very simple for him to do this. (emphasis mine) And if he hadn't died in 1953, it seems to me that he would have killed all the members of the Politburo. Bulganin, Malenkov, Khrushchev and my father would have been killed - I am sure of this fact. There are even some documents in which it's written that...

(No more recorded. End.)

So.....1949.

So, I'm thinking on the whole retro-rockets red glare setting (cold war in space) .  The main difference (or POD as the alternate history hipsters call it) is this:  Stalin had access to something that he felt was a useful counter to the Allied A-bomb much sooner than the actual 1949 date that the Soviet A-Bomb arrived on the scene.  My assumption is that given an earlier counter, his actions 1946-1949 would largely be similar, or at least similarly motivated as his actual actions before his death in 1953.

So, this opens the question, what was his action plan for the USSR post WW-II ?

But first, a digression.

Well, in all truth, we have nothing but speculation about alternates.  Particularly so in this case, as Stalin played his cards very close to his chest, tended to have multiple plans that would be modified by real world changes, and never told anyone what he was doing.  And he lied. And used threat and intimidation.  And lied.  Plus, if you looked cross-eyed at him, you died.

That said, I'm not a historian, so I can take the luxury of making decisions about questionable issues with input from the game setting I want to describe rather than relying entirely upon documented facts.  So, while all the following is at least,  as I see it, possible, it is not necessarily likely.  In fact, the most likely possibility, insofar as we have no idea at all what the actual quantifiable probabilities involved were has to be exactly what happened in the real world.   Which, due to a lamentable lack of nuclear torch fighters duking it out among Jupiter's moons doesn't work for the setting I want.  So, I'll go with some other outcomes.

However, the "and then Nikoli Tesla/Albert Einstein/unnamed Genius/alien benefactors invented/introduced grav. drive in 1929/1939/1949" has been done before (did you notice ?) and tends to create a future Alt universe with what we think of as the future as envisioned by us, now.  Make sense ?  I suppose I'm interested in "what did the future look like in the 50/60's to those in the 50/60's", and how do we get there in a game ?

So, what defines that period for me ?
1. Cold war and global polarization
2. Inevitable apocalyptic conflict
3. Crap computers and the last generation of narrow access to information and communications.
4. Crew cuts, lantern chins: jocks and nerds, as opposed to slackers and geeks.
5. Less pesky information about the solar system.
6. BIG projects, engineering uber-alles. Skunk works.


More to come.

1984: Red Stars and Rockets, part II . A cold war solar system setting for Traveller.

It is 1984. Space travel is real, extensive and highly militarized. Nukes shove the big Orions between planets, Gemini and Soyuz duel in orbits across the solar system, and elite forces fight on mars and the moons of Jupiter. Space is the battlefield of the cold war where Nukes are allowed. What happened ?


A real atomic war happened. Sometime around 1950, with both sides tossing nasty little fission nukes and invading western Europe, China, the Mideast and etc.

In this timeline, in 1945, soviet forces captured SS Scientist Klaus Debner and much of his Nuclear weapons lab, research and prototypes. Stalin, already hard at work terrorizing Soviet science into replicating the Fat Man bomb, shoved this to the head of the queue and had a working micro nuke/dirty bomb by 1948. Accordingly, as the post war period began and the allies fell apart into east and west, Uncle Joe (having his own bomb, even if he misunderstood the American version) was much more aggressive and belligerent. Result: three to five years of ABC war in Europe ( spreading to China and Korea) with no clear winner, but several clear losers (Korea, China, Japan, Germany). Europe and SE Asia were essentially trashed, but the homelands of the two alliances ( USA and USSR) suffering significantly less damage (no ICBMs, and not too many ways to deliver bombs across intercontinental distances); both sides locked in a brutal stalemate, which has turned to space for resolution.

More hot clashes follow as the space race starts up in 1953, and is even more frenzied, makeshift, and armed. By 1984, the earthside damage from two orbital wars and a series of smaller orbital clashes across the 1960's has lead to demilitarization of CisLunar space, administered by a very different United Nations. Beyond that, as the sea dogs of Elizabetan England said, " no peace beyond the line !"

Meanwhile, at home
Earth is not a nice place to live; the situation is like the present day Koreas writ huge. The DMZ in this timeline is across central Germany down to the Adriatic, and across current Iraq and Iran and Afganistan, as far as what is now the Pakistani border. The USA has become a fortress state, with a permanent wartime economy, facing the fortress state of the Soviet Union across fortified continental demilitarized zones marking the last lines of the still unresolved war.

And that's not all....
The mid to late 1950’s were marked by massive third world crop failures and famines due to climate alteration from the wars. Relief, when offered, usually resulted in amalgamation with the helper – and even then was often unsuccessful. As a result, a lifeboat strategy adopted by both east and west. Nations worldwide collapsed in anarchy and rioting. Emigration, famine and war have combined to significantly reduce Europe’s population; in particular, the UK experienced a massive wave of emigration to the commonwealth countries, especially Australia) in addition to the mass evacuations of 1952-53

Another Big change
Due to the need to keep buffers between the East and the West, and to attempt to administer wrecked countries the United nations has essentially been absorbed by its own Peacekeeping Authority Directorate (UNPAD, or PD) (created in the early war years in aresponse to the 1949 Korean conflict).  It has become an aggressively neutral and extranational organization, initially responsible for policing the Asian and European Exclusion zones (the DMZ’s). It has moved all offices to the old Benelux region, and holds national jurisdiction over the refugee choked lands therein.
The First and second orbital wars resulted in the treaty of new Dehli (1963), demilitarizing and internationalizing cis lunar space adding it to the jurisdiction of the UNPAD. Post 1968, after the UNPAD concentrates on orbital policing, CisLunar space is off limits to any non UN craft or satellite except for transit. Yes, this means that they own all the satellites; the orbital "cleaning" of 1968 surprised all powers, and resulted in the UNPAD gaining complete control of LEO. However, extralunar space, and the rest of the Solar system is wide open. Ground and sub orbital combat is common on the moon, mars and in Jovian space. Skirmishes and suborbital clashes along the bamboo curtain, and Mitteleuropa are common.

More to come !