New Deal Coalition Retained Pt II: World on Fire

I'm guessing this is going to be the counterpart to the 1919 influenza epidemic.

Oh frak, if he hit place like the USA, Europe and Japan people will found the idea of nuclear war the lesser evil, more advanced tech or not, modern first world nation can't cope phisically and logistically with this kind of epidemic, for this reason the standard procedure it's to contain them on the origin zone
 
I imagine the early to mid 90s ITTL are going to be very, very tumultuous.

Largely because the global economy is not going to be doing very well, for two reasons.

1. The ebola epidemic

Disease itself is not dangerous: the ability for disease to spread like wildfire relies on certain conditions.

A world wrecked by conflict, the interlinking of various soldiers from multiple nations, and the devastation of medical infrastructure could create a breeding ground for disease.

The death of millions of people itself can weaken nations, but if the epidemic is bad enough, it could weaken global trade and travel.

2. The shift to a peacetime economy.

After three years of war, nations built around a war economy will have trouble adapting to peace.

I imagine 1992 being the year of political revolution, at least in America, because Rummy is not likely to be able to resolve it. After being the second FDR, Rummy and the Republicans will lose a ton of popularity, and go from being the party that smashed the Commies, to the party that can't solve the economic crisis. Maybe Progressives, with the Commie threat destroyed, might do extremely well come 1992.
 
It was called Project Excalibur. Conceived by Edward Teller in the late 1960s, as Defense Secretary the physicist had used the ample funding given to him by President Reagan and the Republican congress to test and refine the theory - assistance was requested and provided by French Premier Jacques Cousteau, who shared Reagan's fascination with missile defense technology. Top secret testing was conducted throughout the mid and late eighties, and by 1990 a prototype Excalibur satellite was put into orbit.

It's no shame admitting you don't know the first thing about the man.
 
I imagine the early to mid 90s ITTL are going to be very, very tumultuous.

Largely because the global economy is not going to be doing very well, for two reasons.

1. The ebola epidemic

Disease itself is not dangerous: the ability for disease to spread like wildfire relies on certain conditions.

A world wrecked by conflict, the interlinking of various soldiers from multiple nations, and the devastation of medical infrastructure could create a breeding ground for disease.

The death of millions of people itself can weaken nations, but if the epidemic is bad enough, it could weaken global trade and travel.

2. The shift to a peacetime economy.

After three years of war, nations built around a war economy will have trouble adapting to peace.

I imagine 1992 being the year of political revolution, at least in America, because Rummy is not likely to be able to resolve it. After being the second FDR, Rummy and the Republicans will lose a ton of popularity, and go from being the party that smashed the Commies, to the party that can't solve the economic crisis. Maybe Progressives, with the Commie threat destroyed, might do extremely well come 1992.
The United States being relatively intact, them, India, and China (and to a lesser extent Japan, South Africa, Australia, and the Asian Tigers) will have the benefit of being the only industrial powers in a world devastated. That will serve to temper any economic distress
 
The United States being relatively intact, them, India, and China (and to a lesser extent Japan, South Africa, Australia, and the Asian Tigers) will have the benefit of being the only industrial powers in a world devastated. That will serve to temper any economic distress

But still, the transition could make the prospects of the GOP somewhat shaky, especially if Rummy doesn't get some kind of stimulus.

Rummy could be Churchill, a successful wartime leader who is replaced by a progressive leader in the postwar era.
 
But still, the transition could make the prospects of the GOP somewhat shaky, especially if Rummy doesn't get some kind of stimulus.

Rummy could be Churchill, a successful wartime leader who is replaced by a progressive leader in the postwar era.
I don't think the progs would get it in 92, They simply dont have the momentum to build for it. My bet is the Dems manage to nominate someone who suprisingly manages to beat the Republicans who were confident that they would win the election simply due to being the people who won the war, along with the smug "natural party of Goverment" attitude which must have taken hold after 4 terms of controlling the white house.
 
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But still, the transition could make the prospects of the GOP somewhat shaky, especially if Rummy doesn't get some kind of stimulus.

Rummy could be Churchill, a successful wartime leader who is replaced by a progressive leader in the postwar era.
This is true. The economy would be doing decently but there would be a lot of uncertainty and shakiness
 
1991 Marburg Virus Epidemic
The Red Death

It was called many things. The Red Death, the Wrath of God, Atahualpa’s Revenge, el Aniquilador, o Pastor da Morte, Hucha, and the Scourge. Utter horror had already plagued the world for the over two years of World War III, and it seemed incomprehensible to many that God would reign His wrath upon humanity yet again. What happened would fall in the annals of the great evils of its kind: The Black Death, Smallpox in the Americas, and the Spanish Influenza.

The official scientific name for the organism was a filovirus. Containing a single strand of Ribonucleic acid (RNA) within a grouping of helical proteins, the pseudo-living organism anywhere from 750-1000 nanometers in length. Each strand of proteins was formed in a long staff, oftentimes with a loop at the end that gave the famous name “Shepherd’s Crook.” Its original host was unknown, most virologists feeling that it began in one or more species of central/east African bat, but it hopped into primates and humans.

The first ever recorded filovirus outbreak occurred in a warehouse for a primate wholesaler in 1967 West Germany. It presented with flu-like symptoms, but quickly morphed into lethargy, internal bleeding, and full onset hemorrhagic fever that resulted in blood pouring out of every orifice. The outbreak was in the town of Marburg, Hesse, and doctors dubbed it the Marburg Virus. Additional outbreaks in Europe and Kenya proved this strain to have a one in four mortality rate.

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The unique shape of the Marburg Virus earned its nickname “Shepherd’s Crook.”
Further, isolated outbreaks occurred across Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, but the Entebbe Pact managed to prevent the virus from spreading outside the specific communities. It was in the devastation of World War III and the focus on fighting left many communities without adequate quarantine protection. Residents of several small villages in the Rwanda province of Uganda began to fall ill with flu-like symptoms in late spring 1991. By the time Ugandan authorities discovered the problem, it had already spread into the slums and hospitals of Kigali. Internal Security Bureau commander Paul Kagame ordered a full quarantine of the city, but sick travelers began to flock across southern and central Africa carrying the disease.

Doctors of the World Health Organization flew into Africa by the hundreds, and in May 1991 declared there was an epidemic of the Marburg virus in a dozen countries in southern Africa. Since the only areas with significantly destroyed infrastructure were the former Zambia and Zaire’s Katanga province (heavily-armed troops of the Ugandan military preventing the infection from spreading north of Rwanda Province), the virus could easily be isolated in the localities it came into. However, what authorities did not expect was that this was a new strain different from Marburg Hesse. Marburg Rwanda was both aerosol transmitted and had a 50% mortality rate. Outbreaks spread like wildfire, South Africa, Zaire, Uganda, and Rhodesia equipping their military with full MOPP gear to take the lead in stopping it. One large outbreak was in the Cape Town slums where over 21,000 people would die from the disease (Prime Minister Treurnicht earning widespread adoration from black and white alike for personally visiting the infected).

By the time the WHO declared the epidemic in Africa over in August 1991, Marburg Rwanda had claimed 2,500,000 lives, mostly in central Africa and a massive outbreak in Cameroon and Nigeria. But this would be a picnic compared to what happened next.

After the defeat of the South American communists – officially declared with the installation of Ernesto Geisel as President of Brazil – immense foreign aid poured into the continent. All of it had been battered and bombed, lacking the structural infrastructure of Europe or the large undamaged portions of Africa. A lot of that aid came from the Entebbe Pact, and with it an unwanted invader. To this day no one knows who the original patient zero was or where he came from, or if there was more than one. But it is undisputed that the first known case popped up in the bombed-out ruin of Sao Paulo. She was a local soup kitchen employee, one of the many shiftless locals made homeless by American and Chilean strategic bombing runs. He entered the massive aid tents with a mild flu and was proscribed bed rest and fluids. She did not get better and suffered from a full body hemorrhage on July 21, 1991. Conditions being shitty – patients often having to sleep on bare grass or shit-lined concrete floors, the infection quickly spread.

By August it was clear as outbreaks broke out in Peru, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, the Marburg Virus had spread to South America. On the ground observations and tests at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta proved that this was a new strain – a far deadlier strain. Dubbed Marburg Brazil, it was as contagious as influenza and had a 95% mortality rate. For Allied military forces and the UN, new orders were given and resources began flooding in to halt the tide before a global pandemic could happen – but it was too late.

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American doctors treating a Brazilian refugee in Bolivia before the United Nations quarantine.
Marburg Brazil slammed into South America like a scourge – a US Army chaplain would coin it that and the press ran with it. Since Allied focus had been with finishing off the USSR or fighting various communist insurgencies on behalf of weak provisional governments, the majority of South America hadn’t left the bombed-out ruin stage. Tens of millions still lived in vast tent cities and favelas, millions more wandering on foot for any food or shelter. For an aerosol virus, such was perfect transmission grounds. Supplies were slow in arriving and Allied military forces found themselves overwhelmed as every village, every town, every city found itself filled to the brim with infection. All non-screened air travel out of South America was grounded but boats filled with refugees tried to escape – many heading to Central America. Panic grew across the world, fears of nuclear holocaust replaced with one of a new Black Death.

As a result, the United Nations Security Council met on September 11, 1991 for the first time since before WWIII. A grim task was presented by the Chilean representative, the lone South American nation on the council. In coordination with the United States and Great Britain, Chile had concluded that most of the South American continent was doomed as Europe was during the Black Death. Weak governments, wrecked countries, and lack of border controls between the nations guaranteed the infection’s spread. President Pinochet had already given orders for a “shoot on sight” policy at the borders, and the medical experts stated that it was a virtual certainty that the infection would spread worldwide unless the same was done for the entirety of the continent. Such a humanitarian disaster was quite unpopular. France threatened to veto as each country squabbled over the morality of it all – what tipped the scale was reports of an outbreak in Chiapas, Mexico. On the council, Mexico authorized an internal “Shoot on sight” quarantine policy while the opposition to such collapsed. “God have mercy on our souls,” whispered UK ambassador John Major as the Council voted unanimously to institute a full UN quarantine on South America and withdraw all Allied occupation troops.

Mass evacuations began almost immediately. General Hal Moore was ordered back to the region to take command, instituting Dunkirk rules. Men came first, massive dumps of equipment left behind as “in kind” contributions to the various South American provisional governments or sold to the Chileans for pennies on the dollar. Every nation with troops in South America withdrew them and withdrew them quickly, often using live ammunition and air power to fight off mobs of civilians trying to storm bases. Chilean commanders ordered their forces to flee in massive convoys of tanks, APCs, and trucks, only stopping to refuel. President Pinochet ordered all forces to defend the national borders at all costs, which included the newly annexed Argentine Patagonia (seeing Chilean soldiers defending their frontiers would quell any rebellious intent among the natives). Many tried to flee with them, but warning shots from aircraft or ships enforcing the quarantine forced them back. With the departure of the Allies and the institution of the naval and air quarantine over non-Chilean/British/French South America and over the infected areas of Central America, the local governments were forced to fend for themselves.

Without foreign help, the militaries and quarantine forces were quickly overwhelmed. Even nations victorious in the war had dissolved their conscript armies and what professionals and militia were left suffered a deficiency in biological suits and medical equipment. Marburg devastated the militaries just as it did the civilian population, and streams of refugees fleeing infection-riddled cities – often compared to the Black Plague in sheer scope – spreading the disease to what safe zones were left. Quarantine efforts were made on highly-afflicted cities, but with manpower short it was a losing battle. Finally, on Christmas Eve, the Brazilian government found a new way to proceed with rooting out the infection when a flight of the Brazilian Air Force’s last remaining strike aircraft gutted the city of Natal with incendiary bombs.

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It wasn’t just Natal that was targeted. What armies were left after the end of the war being overwhelmed, governments from Colombia to Paraguay were forced to institute “quarantine liquidation” over large segments of the infected populace. Lessons of Natal were incorporated, and no other mass bombings occurred again. The goal was instead to “contain and burn out,” cities too heavily infected isolated through bombings of bridges, highways, and controlled burnings of suburban areas to hem people in while surrounding villages were merely wiped out. Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina instituted the two-bullet rule when dealing with Marburg victims, out of desperation rather than malice. Hate for the provisional governments skyrocketed, local warlords began assembling (In Uruguay, the death of the provisional president from Marburg caused the entire system to collapse into anarchy), and suicides skyrocketed. “What have we become?” lamented William F. Buckley, speaking for many in the world as they watched South America burn.

While the hold of the Brazilian central government collapsed across most of the nation, the core population centers remained under the grip of the 150,000 regular troops – who by now were little more than President Geisel’s private security force kept loyal by protection from the virus. Sentiment burned bright against the government, but the cities were too chaotic and Marburg-ravaged to do anything about it. No, what brought about what would be known as the Anarchy was yet another example of a rage of nature. In the South Atlantic, the phenomena of hurricanes were almost never seen due to the unique meteorological conditions that created them north of the Equator. When one did emerge, as it did in January 1992, they were small. This one was a mere category 2. But with the country so ravaged, the tropical gales sliced through Brazil like a knife through butter. Half of Rio de Janiero was flooded, fever-ridden refugees in the favelas drowning by the tens of thousands since they were too weak to escape. Scarce resources were washed away, order collapsing (ironically, the floods trapped people within the cities, helping lower the spread of the virus). Top government officials and the wealthy elite holed themselves up in military bases or large estates with their military guards, citizens fleeing the cities and leaving the infected to die. Such chaos would be the underpinnings of the future Brazilian Civil War.

Society diving into the abyss, despair formed as hundreds of thousands across all nations would commit mass suicide to avoid the horrors of death by Marburg. Hopelessness brought a renewal of faith within the continent, all communist efforts to rollback religion were rendered moot. Cathedrals and churches were packed as millions prayed for salvation through the carnage. One Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, better known as Mother Theresa, had earned a name for herself caring for the poor in Brazil through the entire communist rule of the nation – so beloved, the government refused to touch her. After the provisional government had fled into the countryside she remained in Rio de Janerio, caring for the poor in the favelas. She would miraculously not contract Marburg and earn worldwide notoriety for her actions.

In Peru, half destroyed by war and half underdeveloped from decades of neglect by the dictatorial military government (not to mention the various bombing raids), the virus first entered through the ports and airfields, spreading with the help of streams of Bolivian and Brazilian refugees. With Chile’s borders closed and the massive tent cities virtual breeding grounds for the virus, any goodwill that President Francisco Morales-Bermudez gained from victory ended in the heavy-handed quarantine measures. Relying on UN and Allied aid, when it dried up he made protecting Lima and his own criolles class more important than the rest of the nation. Distraught, many sought salvation through other ways while the virus burned through their communities. The Defenders of Inti entered to fill this void. Across the mountainous nation, its zealous members used their popularity from the Battle of Manaus to gain access to the public and assist whatever doctors remained. In the thick of it all was their leader, Pachacuti, ever much the legend.

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Pachacuti beseeching the gods for reprieve from the pandemic.

In a ceremony televised from an unknown location, Pachacuti would care for the infected free of any mask. He would drink cups of infected blood, proclaiming that the old gods would protect him if they sought a new dawn in Peru. After a month, he emerged once more completely healthy, his thrall among the people of Peru growing exponentially (his diary told a different story, where the leader had contracted Marburg Brazil and was on death’s door for two weeks before he miraculously became one of the 5% that survived).

As the southern summer began to die, so too did the infection. Though Marburg Brazil was the easiest to transmit than its less deadly cousins, the death of their vectors, brutal quarantine methods by governments and private militias, and the collapsing society of South America allowed further transmissions to peter out – and rather rapidly at that. UN monitors would identify cases plummeting in February, and on April 1, 1992, the Chilean government declared the epidemic over. Cases of Marburg would still pop up for the rest of the year, but the worst had passed. However, the worst had been devastating to South America. On top of the losses of WWIII, the UN estimated that 81 million people had fallen victim to the Marburg virus or the resulting chaos worldwide - more than in the worldwide Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919.

South America’s population had been scythed, a third of its people killed in war, disease, or the chaos that followed both. Only Chile and the European controlled coastal regions in the northeast managed to escape hell. Many prayed that the daylight would bring salvation to the battered land, but time would tell that darkness had just begun to engulf the continent.
 
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