The Scandinavian Co-Prosperity Sphere would not have all of Europe except for Spain and Italy as Protectorates. Probably Brazil, India, Iran and Nationalist China would not be the worlds powers.
(OOC:Figured the US still has power, becouse of the bomb, but is very isolationist, and that the PRC fell apart and Southern China is nationalist)
Bah, I laugh whenever I hear people say things like this. The power of these four is entirely relative to the third world because the important areas got wiped off the map for the most part.
Just think about Nationalist China, for example. Said to be the leading power of all Asia, and all the people and resources that involves. Except...
almost all of it third world even by today's standards. Taiwan survived well enough to pick up the pieces of the PRC because the Chinese nuclear program was a joke in the first place, and Russia's auto-fire system in conjunction with the US's broad strike patter completely wiped out the power of the PRC. There was a refugee crisis with no-one to oppose them, and even now without a massive source of foreign aid and investment on the scale of what Taiwan got, only the coast of China is anywhere near recovered. The US still invests more than any several countries combined, but that aid is spread across the planet.
It's similar in India: it's strong because there really isn't any credible rival per say. China's too far away, the Suez is one of the few strategic places the US cares about, and all of its neighbors except Pakistan are weak. But again, without a major source of investment to spur industry, India's refusal to throw away its Socialist Economic Model has crippled India in all but a few fields. Like China, 7/10ths of India's production is hand-made in cottage industries: little investment to put into factories means that post-nuclear Europe as a whole rivals Indian production, because the capital in the Scandinavian Sphere has rebuilt a fraction of the industry of Europe. India might have had a chance to snowball its industry into self-growth at one point, but their foolish invasion of Pakistan destroyed that hope for generations despite ultimate success in "pacifying" the region.
Iran is about the only one that can credibally be called an honest power even by pre-Fall standards, and that's as much as because it was the main power in the region that both didn't lose its patron, and was stable enough to whether the political hurricane that followed. While the other Arab states either fell into anarchy or foolishly tried to destroy Israel, which had remained unharmed during the exchange by a historical surprise, Iran pressed new deals with the US in exchange for insuring a near unlimited supply of energy. So when Iran picked up the scraps that Israel kindly left it, it had much room to move around in the ME, especially once the Shah declared that he wouldn't seek to destroy Israel. Iran has been blessed since, leading the world in Desert Industry/Ecology, as well as managing to keep oil plentiful, stable, and not rely entirely on it.
But Brazil I laugh at: Brazil is the US's de facto appointed representative in the Southern Continent, and most everyone with a degree in the field knows it. In exchange for a completely disproportionate amount of aid, Brazil became the enforcer of SA order. Brazil is the one cited when a new regime comes to power in Venezuela, or when the current Junta in Argentina has new members. All talk of the South American Union to the contrary, Brazil fell into the same position that the US did before having Brazil take the face of power: Brazil is the outsider of a different language in the continent, and the states there increasingly resent the meddling.
