AHC: Dystopic 1990's

For me, nuclear war in a dystopia TL always feels like a cheat...

I think that 'sub-nuclear' terrorism is an interesting option. Not the cliche of someone getting and detonating a functional nuclear warhead (usually from an ex-Soviet state), but the idea of a dirty bomb, using conventional explosives to contaminate an area with highly radioactive materials
 

Thande

Donor
Communists win the 1996 Presidential Election in Russia?

Or there's the 1993 coup attempt. Or the NATO intervention in Serbia leading to clashes with the Russians (which happened to some extent OTL, the whole 'James Blunt saves the world' thing).

It would be very ironic if there managed to be a nuclear war between Russia and the west after the fall of the Soviet Union.
 
Communists win the 1996 Presidential Election in Russia?

Really, Zhirinovsky and the Liberal Democrats are much more interesting, because they are legit fascist, and actually had huge electoral success in the early years of the Federation.
 
Heh, looks like I'll put my own nascent Awful 90s TL on the backburner.

I'm doing the same for now, despite the ideas popularity in this thread.

Anyone interested in a dystopic 90's can feel free to ask me anything, so long as you don't steal my Kurt Cobain's POV idea. I'm totally claiming that.
 
The Liberal Democrats (HA!) in Russia keep their momentum, and Zhirinovsky narrowly wins in 1996. Heavy reprisals begin against the Chechens and other minorities that make OTL look positively rosy. Al-Qaeda decides that Russia had become a bigger threat to Islam than the United States, and launch a 9/11-style attack on Russia.

Russians in Afghanistan 2: This Time It's Personal, coming soon to a theater near you!
The scum wanted/wants to kick Chinese out of Siberia as well:mad:. So, war between China and Russia? If it stays conventional China probably wins, if it goes nuclear Russia wins(unless America enters as well).

Either way one of the two is basically destroyed, and the other seriously weakened.
 
Well, if the POD was just a BIT earlier, taking Hurricane Andrew right into Miami AND New Orleans would make for a pretty nasty event.

Also, had that Ryder van of Ramzi Yousef's been a BIT closer to the WTC's foundation and packed with just a bit more explosives, we could've easily had 9/11 in 1993.
 
I think a good part of any dystopia is tapping into the Dystopia in the culture. Because yeah, there can be a nuclear war, but it's how that nuclear war effects people. And yeah, there can be a borderline fascist state, but its how that fascist state could be allowed to come into being and be supported by the people or how the people react to it.

Looking back on some of the culture and media from my formative years (the 90's), that decade, or at least the earlier years (and stretching back into the late 80's), was scummy and nasty and stupid as fuck in a lot of places. I think a lot of it has to do with the Generation X'ers; a generation thinking everything needed to be "Xtreme!!!!!!!", which was raised on pop culture, and thought everything needed to have multiple giant super guns. It was like a generation raised on nothing but Cheetos and Coca-Cola. And Generation X, and everything presented to Generation X, which tried to be deep or artistic failed miserably because it was done by idiots.

The 90's saw the Dark Age of Comics where comic characters were characterized by self doubt (which, due to poor characterization, just made them whiny babies), or Xtreeeeme willingness to use violence and guns to be hardcore, and where Rob Liefeld was considered the greatest artist of a generation thus making for giant and unnatural muscles, muscles which don't exist, unrealistic proportions, and women without spines given how much their backs arch. The 90's also gave us an unsustainable collectors market, the main elements being Baseball cards and Comics; things are only valuable if they're rare, but manufacturers sold comics and baseball cards telling customers they were going to be worth something someday, made multiple special editions, comics made multiple "1st Issues" which were said to be worth something someday but no one cared about the characters other than them being collectible. And since everyone bought these, they weren't worth anything, leading to a major market collapse from which neither comics or baseball cards has ever fully recovered. Baseball cards as a business has especially been not worth a damn. Marvel comics almost went out of business.

Shortly before the 90's started, there was also the beginning of Trash TV. Springer, Geraldo, and (the one I think is the worst) Morton Downey, Jr. Geraldo, I think, also started a moral panic with the whole scare over Satanists where people were scared out of their minds that there were millions of secret Satanists who were sexually abusing their children in day cares and involving them in secret rituals and stuff, which was due to a bunch of dumb therapists, lawyers and social workers, and children who were were goaded into giving false memories by these people. And media overall hopped on that dysfunctional bandwagon, and became all about boobs and guns and appealing to the lowest common denominator in a lot of places. And there was the rise of Right Wing radio and all that stuff.

Media overall just became really dysfunctional and scummy in a lot of places, and all about appealing to the lowest denominator and basest instincts like the Roman arena of a modern age. If you take these and balloon them up even more, then you have better dystopia.
 
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1. Have a general mutiny in the PLA over the Tiananmen Square massacre plunge China into a protracted civil war that lasts well into the 1990's.

2. The hardliners get significant armed popular support and military support during the constitutional crisis in Russia in 1993.

3. The UN attempts to intervene in either situation.

This would not necessarily mean a war between major powers but the UN missions would be rough, possibly disastrous if the wrong people are in charge...and where the UN is concerned, the people in charge, especially in the 1990's, are ALWAYS the wrong people.

In the U.S., the massive disruption such events would cause in international commerce, would probably prolong (or exacerbate) the recession.

Basically, you could see an even worse version of what's happening right now, as the world would be in major recession, only it would be compounded by one, perhaps two major powers embroiled in immensely destructive civil wars.

It presents the possibility of nuclear exchange, but doesn't necessarily guarantee one.

Maybe a colossal fuckup by the UN in a chinese will cause a loss of faith in the UN, this could lead to it dissolving just like the League of Nations.
 

Archibald

Banned
Dystopian 90's hmmm ? Bojinka has been mentionned. It was supposed to happen in mid January 1995 - John Paul II, the airliners, and the CIA all blown away.
Now what I did not realised was this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969

On December 22, 1994 an Airbus was hijacked in Algiers. Four days later it landed in Marseille where the GIGN stormed it, killing the hijackers. Revealed much later was the aircraft real target: Paris, 9/11 style.
The plane spend four days on the ground, and in the process the APU burned enough fuel that it could no longer reach Paris. Negociations between the French and Algerian government were tense.

Now if the hijacking goes awry, and Bojinka works a month later... yaw :eek:

The GIA had nothing in common with AQ (at the time). Thus it would be as if there was two Al Quaeda instead of one - an even more diffuse menace...
 
The scum wanted/wants to kick Chinese out of Siberia as well:mad:. So, war between China and Russia? If it stays conventional China probably wins, if it goes nuclear Russia wins(unless America enters as well).

Either way one of the two is basically destroyed, and the other seriously weakened.

That is actually the premise of the Finnish version of the Twilight 2000 RPG. It is based on Version 2.2, GDW's final version of the game, but with a twist. Instead of the POD being the coup attempt of August 1991, it is the 1993 coup attempt. Yeltsin still prevails, but is forced to rely on the army more and more. Russia and the former Soviet republics are rocked by political instability and ethnic violence, while China also experiences unrest due to the provinces demanding greater autonomy from Beijing. In early 1995 the CCP orders the PLA to crush anti-government demonstrations. The CCP ends up being overthrown by the military, however, and China is split in two, with the south under a new government, and the north split between a dozen different warlords as a low-scale civil war erupts that lasts until June, when the country is reunified. The new government makes demands for China's old far eastern territory, which leads to increasing tension between Russia and China. During this time Zhirinovsky gains more and more power, becoming a minister in the government, until finally in January 1996 Yeltsin is overthrown in a coup and Zhirinosky becomes the new President, dissolving the Duma in the process. When he angrily dismisses the Chinese delegation that has arrived to negotiate about the border, the Chinese decide to solve the issue by force of arms, crossing the Ussuri River into Russian territory. And the rest, as any T2K afficionado knows, is history.

I posted a full timeline about this on the Twilight 2000 Forum. If anyone is interested, I could post it here.
 
My thoughts on crapsack 90's:

In no particular order:
  • US goes in hardcore to intervene in Bosnia 1993, 50K ground troops plus full air/naval bombardment extravaganza but does so with all the diplomatic finesse of a rampaging bull elephant, calling their NATO allies a bunch of useless,spineless jerks and managing to escalate tensions with Russia by bitchslapping Serbia so bad the Russians accuse the US of counter-genocide. NATO implodes messily, EU derails spectacularly, hard-right LD coalition takes over in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Czech Rep all somewhat marooned without any real diplomatic or economic help from West. US gets pissed and sucks its thumb.
  • US goes into Somalia and greenlights follow-on armored and full-Spooky air attack in Bokhara market and slaughtering 5K of Aidid's bully-boys and random bystanders leaving absolutely nobody in charge anywhere in Somalia. Hilarity ensues. Western press goes ballistic over piles and piles of bodies and Mogadishou becoming moonscape. Horn of Africa goes tilt as Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Kenya get sucked into a dirty war that never ends, casues massive suffering and thoroughly disgusts Westerners to ever try interveining in African issues ever again. Rwanda, Congo, and Sudan go rancid until 2010 before anyone bothers trying to even put in UN observers to guess what happened 20 years before.
  • I second the thought of an Indo-Pak shooting war over Kashmir. India has more resources and IMO better force quality pounds Paki ground forces into dog food. Air war a little more even, but eventually Islamabad orders nuclear strike on New Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai as Indian forces push more than 20 km into Pakistan. Indian retaliation erases Islamabad and Paki general staff at Abbotabad. Sad fact of Indian retaliation is that they nuked anyone who could order a general surrender and it takes six weeks for all Paki forces to ceasefire in confused hairball of factional infighting causing another 30,000 military casualties (25K Paki, 5K Indian troops) and 50K civilian casualties caught in the crossfire plus a monster refugee crisis involving 25-30 million people in Pakistan alone. India also has massive disruptions of its own. The Pakistani nuke strikes killed roughly 5 million initially, but follow-on effects (not just radiation/burn casualties, but also power failures knocking out water treatment, sewage treatment, and hospitals' power and resupply in the affected cities mean more dead and dying due to unsanitary conditions in the following weeks, despite desperate attempts by emergency workers to restore services and help survivors.
Those are the nightmare scenarios for me. For more forces of grayness dystopia, there's a lot of possibilities.

Japan economically implodes worse after the real estate bubble pops. Kobe earthquake causes a Fukushima-level meltdown and thorough collapse of public confidence of government to get anything right, causing a bellicose far-right coalition to take over after multiple governments form and collapse to no-confdence votes in the Diet. Trade wars and general panic in East Asia ensue as Japan vows to rearm, quit being prostrate to foreign opinion, etc. North Korea threatens Japan and Japan dumps NPT and vows to develop offensive nuclear deterrent.
More nationalistic wienie-wagging but NO Korean War part II.

Butterflying NAFTA and the electoral defeat of the PRI in Mexico might result in a grim La Violencia that's more overtly political. PRD and PAN get banned and go underground, sniping at PRI and each other. Economy goes flush as American and Canadian investors flee screaming. Forget the Zapatistas, they'd never get anywhere in that atmosphere.
 
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