Hehe. Well, it's not really his fault here, it was someone much lower.Apparently President Spiro Agnew has at least nearly started the apocalypse TWICE! (The first time being in "Fear, Loathing and Gumbo on the Campaign Trail '72")...
The Ba'athist ruling party of Iraq decided to ditch some of it's secular trappings following the degradation of relations with the Soviets when it came to light that the Soviets were supporting the low-level Kurdish insurgency. The ruling party thus decided to side with the United Arabic Republic, who is solidly Sunni. Citing discontent among the Shia in southern Iraq, Persia, under the Pahlavi Dynasty, took the opportunity to demonstrate the strength of it's modernized, westernized army to grand effect. Notably, there are presently more American tanks in Iraq than anywhere else save the United States itself, by and large operated by Persia. Kuwait, an American and by extension Persian ally, was overwhelmed by Iraqi troops in the early stages of the war. It's government is now in Persia' pocket; even without the horrors that are now present, the 'freest press in the world' had gone silent.
It's not really known. Supposedly, it's a misfire from an American source headed for the silos known to exist in Taymyria in the far north of Russia. However, Operation Vechnaya (AH) came to fruition mere days earlier, detailing the completion of the hidden Д-6 railroad, as well as the City of Rozenovgorod deep underneath Moscow, in addition to dozens of other deep-shelter nuclear bunkers across the Soviet Union... an impartial external observer might call it a manufactured exchange akin to the 'Polish' incursion into Germany in 1939. The United States is completely and utterly gone as an legitimate entity within a decade, but the Soviet centre survives.
Here is the situation, roughly, seven days later. Every Nuclear Power except France has essentially depleted it's nuclear stock; the areas of radiation are somewhat exaggerated and accelerated, and people certainly still remain within them, but it should paint a vivid picture of how bad things have gotten. Several governments have de facto collapsed, but as of yet none have de jure.
Nuclear Winter is coming from such a massive exchange; the real die-off will be from the coming temperature drop, which will at it's worst kick the global temperature under Ice Age levels.
