Complete ASB story that hasn't had much work put into it but meh
In 1982 the world changed forever. An Argentinian ship that had been carrying supplies to the occupying force in the Falklands was blown off course massively towards Antarctica. Both the Argentinian military and the ship lost radio contact with each-other soon after but an investigation of the disappearance didn’t being until after the war had ended. The Argentinians sent a destroyer down south to look for this boat and came across its wreckage instead. The Argentinians thought it to have been a British sub that had hit the ship but the UK government denied any military action taking place near Antarctica. The Argentinians were confused but decided to leave it be and towed the remains of the ship back to South America.
Once back in Argentina investigators entered the ship to find out what had happened and came across the remains off the crew that had been there, the investigators were shocked at the damage and devastation and wondered what could have possible done this, after all, polar bears only lived in the Arctic. The investigators followed a trail of bloody footsteps towards the meat locker, they opened the meat locker and found much of the meat missing entirely as well as the remaining cuts having had chunks torn out of it, then a noise was heard and the men moved over to look into it. Thats when all hell broke loose. The investigators found themselves faced with a hodgepodge creature with the legs of one of the men but with the entire upper torso being dominated by large never blinking eyes and clawed tentacles. The creature attacked and the soldiers lounging about outside jumped in shock as they heard the terrified screams of the men in the ship. The men waited outside the ship to fire at whatever came out and were soon confronted by three of those same horrors. The men fought the creatures and the creatures won and quickly the battle in the port was reported to the government. The government quickly found themselves reacting to the total occupation of the town of Viedma as the monsters ran rampant. The Argentines seemed to be at war once again.
The Argentinians having been recently on a war footing were prepared to an extent and managed to hold the line for a few months against the inhuman order while the rest of the world reacted with disbelief as pictures and videos showing the enemy entered the tv screens and newspapers of the people of Earth. Chile, although rivals of Argentina, quickly sent military aid to the embattled Argentineans. Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia all sent monetary and moral aid as they themselves prepared to defend themselves. Brazil moved troops southwards to prepare their own defence of their most important cities such as Sao Paolo and Rio. Reagan quickly used this as a rallying cry for his country and framed the conflict as one for the future of humanity and thus was allowed to begin sending huge amounts of equipment to both Argentina and its bordering nations. The west reacted much the same with the Thatcher government especially being frightful of having to fight for the Falklands again and permanently stationed a task force in the area. The Eastern bloc gave their sympathies while secretly attempting to make contact with these beings, though that plan was shelved after a KGB agent was eaten whole.
The creatures, codenamed HARPIES by NATO, overran the Argentinians in January of 1983, by March 30% of Argentinians had been ‘turned’ according to CIA observers and Pinochet’s government was preparing to enter a form of exile in Peru to the north as southern Chile was lost. Uruguay was lost in April and when it was confirmed that the creatures numbers had exceeded a million all the nations of South America officials declared war on the HARPIES. South America turned into a massive war zone as the Argentinian remnants and the Brazilians desperately defended Sao Paolo from being overrun and as the Peruvians and Bolivians attempted to keep them from getting through the Andes. In July coups had put military governments in charge of every nation in South America to better defend their nations but this wouldn’t prove to be enough. The Brazilians were falling back by September, completely ignoring the defence of Rio in favour of Brasilia, which lowered moral greatly when the troops heard the panicked radio reports coming out of the besieged city about cannibalism and the horrific process of turning a human into one of those abominations.
By 1986 the entire world was well aware of the HARPIES and the mass destruction they had caused in South America. Brazil had been pushed all the way back to the city of Salvador, the military junta having started a nuclear program to cleanse the occupied territories. The HARPIES had pushed well beyond Paraguay and Peru but were being held at Lima in the west and by the rainforest in the east. By now the USSR and USA had been sending ships down to Antarctica to investigate the origins of the creatures but every ship they sent never came back and after the debacle at Viedma 4 years earlier neither nation was willing to risk an invasion by actively searching for the lost ships.
The year now is 1989, the conflict in South America looks to be a never-ending war with the Brazilians, Peruvians and now the Ecuadorians, Venezuelans and Colombians entering a total-war system as they attempt to cleanse South America, backed by US arms and NATO advisors against a force compromising well over 15 million ex-people meaning they have no shortage of bodies to throw at the defences of Salvador or those of Lima. Brazil has constantly requested for the Americans to use their nuclear arsenal to wipe out concentrations of HARPIES but both the State Department refuses to do so out of fear of Soviet retaliation while both Pinochet and the governments of the occupied nations refuse to see their homes bathed in nuclear fire.
This world is much more militarised than our 1989 ever was, the Soviets, using the HARPIES as an excuse have gone down a hardline, Stalinist route and control the Warsaw Pact nations with an iron fist, and the West is happy to ignore the renewed gulag program and other human rights abuses as all interest is focused on South America’s fight for survival. The Soviets have succeeded in Afghanistan after the USA stopped supplying weapons to the Mujahideen to better supply their embattled allies to the south. The USA might as well be on a war footing as Reagan has put in massive contracts for tanks, planes and guns, all to arm the South American nations in the fight for their lives. The Brazilians have the fourth largest airforce in the world right now to show the quantities of equipment being shipped to them. The UK has also been caught up in the conflict after the Falklands was attacked by those creatures, resulting in the island being completely abandoned by the UK, though a patrol does occur to sink any ships leaving or exerting the new exclusion zone surrounding the area. Crime has lowered massively in South America as it becomes the most militarised continent on earth, with every nation not afraid to attack any elements not fully cooperative to the ‘war effort’.
In Asia, Deng’s reforms are working well, but the economic boom time in China is less impressive than in OTL as the world economy has been shattered by the conflict in South America, one thing Deng can be sure of is that any crackdown on the growing democratic movement will be fully ignored by the west, the same way the Berlin Wall Massacre of June 1989 was when Stasi and GDR troops fired upon crowds of East Berliners attempting to get through the wall while the Western troops sat by and watched, NATO command being more focused on the likelihood of having to deploy to French Guyana should the worst come to pass. The Iraq-Iran war ended prematurely after both the USA and USSR forced both sides to the negotiating table as now the East and the West both agree that nothing is more important than making sure the HARPIES do not go beyond the current lines set up at Salvador, for if they do, they’ll inevitably reach the Panama Canal and effectively shut down the world economy when every cargo ship going through the canal is assaulted by the creatures, and that isn’t even counting on the fact that they’ll spread to the ship’s destination, extending the war to other parts of the world.