Alternate 1989 - Cold War becomes World War III

Hi everyone, I hope I'm posting in the correct area, and apologies in advance for the massive media dump!
Since 2014 I've been gearing up to create an animated series called The War At Home - set from the point of views of New Zealand, Australia and the United States showing World War III erupting in June of 1989, showing the Pacific and South Pacific Theatres.

Massively inspired from media like 'World in Conflict', 'Red Storm Rising', 'Red Dawn', among many others, and my big love for Harry Turtledove and Robert Conroy, I've tried to make it believable as possible, and also as accurate to the time period as possible.

I started out making promo teasers, and eventually made a documentary style backstory vid. Which itself was inspired by a German made mockumentary showing World War III breaking out in 1989-1990.


Then I made promo scenes from the point of view of each of the nations

UNITED STATES PROMO SCENE

AUSTRALIA PROMO SCENE

NEW ZEALAND PROMO SCENE

As well as some small action shot teasers (done early on)

'BY AIR' TEASER

There are 2 others, but 5 pieces of media is the limit! :)

So anyway - lots of vids there sorry again about the major dump of stuff, I would really love to hear some thoughts from alternate history lovers like myself!
 

Deleted member 2186

Hi everyone, I hope I'm posting in the correct area, and apologies in advance for the massive media dump!
Since 2014 I've been gearing up to create an animated series called The War At Home - set from the point of views of New Zealand, Australia and the United States showing World War III erupting in June of 1989, showing the Pacific and South Pacific Theatres.
This is great, keep it up @Lewis Roscoe
 
I like your voice and the presentation in your Backstory video. Combined with the strong historical accuracy that I saw, it looks as if it was done from a professional company!

I understand that some alt-his ideas may differ in plausibility, but I will give you some slack for tackling on the "What if... WWIII between USA and USSR?" idea.

Did you make the other videos yourself, too?

I was able to recognize some clips from WiC. That caught my attention really well. :)
Perhaps this video should have also been part of your Backstory video when portraying Washington, D.C. being bombed?

The only "problem" in your story version is that the P.O.D. wasn't made very clear, at least to me. I know about the 1991 August Coup attempt and the people involved in it, but I was not able to find any real-life possibility that there would have been a successful coup on November 7, 1987 done by Sergey Sokolov et al.. Does the Mathias Rust Affair still occur in this timeline? How is dealt with? The affair was the reason Sokolov was dismissed by Gorbachev.
 
I like your voice and the presentation in your Backstory video. Combined with the strong historical accuracy that I saw, it looks as if it was done from a professional company!

I understand that some alt-his ideas may differ in plausibility, but I will give you some slack for tackling on the "What if... WWIII between USA and USSR?" idea.

Did you make the other videos yourself, too?

I was able to recognize some clips from WiC. That caught my attention really well. :)
Perhaps this video should have also been part of your Backstory video when portraying Washington, D.C. being bombed?

The only "problem" in your story version is that the P.O.D. wasn't made very clear, at least to me. I know about the 1991 August Coup attempt and the people involved in it, but I was not able to find any real-life possibility that there would have been a successful coup on November 7, 1987 done by Sergey Sokolov et al.. Does the Mathias Rust Affair still occur in this timeline? How is dealt with? The affair was the reason Sokolov was dismissed by Gorbachev.

Hi @Allochronian!

Other than multiple voice actors and composer on the promo scenes and teasers, it's all me. Yeah I snuck a few clips into the backstory - at some point I will need to redo that and aim to keep it either file footage or my own animated content.

Yes you nailed it! :D, the POD in my mind at the moment is that the Mathias Rust's landing in Red Square never occurred, hard-liners remained in place and sought to get rid of Gorbachev before he could implement his perestroika and glasnost policies.
 
Yes you nailed it! :D, the POD in my mind at the moment is that the Mathias Rust's landing in Red Square never occurred, hard-liners remained in place and sought to get rid of Gorbachev before he could implement his perestroika and glasnost policies.

Okay. Well, I would probably emphasize that so that people who know a lot about Cold War history won't get confused about figuring out what was different.

What did you specifically decide on the fate of Mathias Rust?
1) Was he shot down before he could land in Red Square? (Very unlikely and Gorbachev still would have kicked Sokolov out for the downing of a civilian plane. We can't have something like that happen again...)
2) Did he experienced engine trouble and crashed somewhere over the Baltic Sea/North Sea/North Atlantic Ocean/Estonia?
3) Did he not have a screw loose on the day he decided to fly to Moscow and did something else that was comparatively normal?

I just read a little bit about him and yes... he was quite a weird guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
 
Okay. Well, I would probably emphasize that so that people who know a lot about Cold War history won't get confused about figuring out what was different.

What did you specifically decide on the fate of Mathias Rust?
1) Was he shot down before he could land in Red Square? (Very unlikely and Gorbachev still would have kicked Sokolov out for the downing of a civilian plane. We can't have something like that happen again...)
2) Did he experienced engine trouble and crashed somewhere over the Baltic Sea/North Sea/North Atlantic Ocean/Estonia?
3) Did he not have a screw loose on the day he decided to fly to Moscow and did something else that was comparatively normal?

I just read a little bit about him and yes... he was quite a weird guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

It was always my thought that he crashed at sea, so in the Baltic, bad weather perhaps. The reason I don't mention him is that the doco is meant to be portrayed from the pov of someone in that new timeline and a civilian plane crash wouldn't be worth noting in a documentary. I did however plan to have a character mention the Mathias Rust crash in passing (I'd figure it into a conversation somehow) so that keen-eyed folk (like yourself) would figure out the POD.
 
It was always my thought that he crashed at sea, so in the Baltic, bad weather perhaps. The reason I don't mention him is that the doco is meant to be portrayed from the pov of someone in that new timeline and a civilian plane crash wouldn't be worth noting in a documentary. I did however plan to have a character mention the Mathias Rust crash in passing (I'd figure it into a conversation somehow) so that keen-eyed folk (like yourself) would figure out the POD.

Ohhhhhhhhh. Okay. I didn't know that your timeline was going to be done in "real-time" chronological order.

I look forward to reading up/watching your story unfold. I can't wait to assess how realistic compared to how entertaining it will be! :)
 
Lewis,

I've finally seen all of your videos from the Facebook page and I am greatly impressed with it all.

My favorite is the one in which Sydney is attacked. I like the fact that, unlike the usual WWIII stories that only focus on the USA, most of the character perspectives are from Australia and New Zealand.

I also noticed that you made some changes to the dates and to the POD. I thought that the original dates from your Background Video was already well-thought out. Otherwise, I keep getting confused whether or not all of this occurs on June 9th, 1989 or June 14th/15th, 1989 in terms of the Bombing of Washington, D.C. and the Attack on Sydney Harbor.

I'd stick to the POD on May 28, 1987 that resulted in Mathias Rust failing to land in Red Square.
 
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