The are run by a pyscho man child execptitng competence from them is unwarranted
Separated at Birth: America and Drakia
- Thread starter Ephraim Ben Raphael
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The are run by a pyscho man child execptitng competence from them is unwarranted
Kobold was plenty competent, and so were his subordinates, at least as much as his country allowed. Dart has neither the time nor the inclination to roll back everything he's done.
Anzû
Gone Fishin'
You're gonna get burnt if you're building up an expectation for the Draka to score own-goals and make big operational mistakes. The whole war is a blunder in some senses and everyone will make mistakes, but you'll calibrate your expectations wrong if you expect the Draka to win the war for the AfD and China.
Are you sure he had few years in power the great purge lasted only two years. And he does have motive he and his ilk are radical to the point the old guard thought them insane. They would love to purge they old soft hearted fools of the pervious government.
As I read chapter 38, then AfD has a similar number of "close to 2.000". So AfD has 10 megatons worth of ready-to-use kinetic orbitals, the ability to launch x megatons more and then 1,5 megatons of Chinese 如意金箍棒, and a host of chemical and biological weapons. Again, nuclear becomes one WMD out of many.
Speaking against a "doomsday / "Stars & Stripes forever" scenario is that ITTL the different countries have been actively preparing for WMD assaults much much more than OTL countries and also that frankly it seems like they have less. "Doomsday" involves a nuclear exchange of some 2 Gigatons, and Stars and Stripes forever had some 800 megaton hit the USA alone (EBR may correct me, if I am wrong on this estimate). Also, the 3 eagles timeline does a great job of describing how very, very different a Draka-ish world is from OTL in terms of diplomacy.
I would expect military doctrines ITTL to be very close to Soviet 1950-styles, i.e. spread out formations ready for an ABC wars (which ITTL probably would known as OBC with Orbital standing in for Atomic) and offensive to the tilt based on the assessment that war will cause the most damage, where it is being fought.
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Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
Essentially. They don't really like being part of Scandinavia, but they know what the risks of not being part of Scandinavia might entail.
Socialism's stance on social policy includes an explicit rejection of that sort of thing.
I that's a very insightful assessment, and I largely share that way of thinking.
La Mexicanidad and Iya Nacauaa rejected Fascism in favor of an explicitly multicultural approach.
I have plans for him to show up in an interlude.
I'd tell you, but I actually still hope to use a couple of them for another character.
There's a fair amount of pollution wrecking what are in OTL pristine areas.
Dude, I would play that.
He is. Drakia has adopted a tradition of its de facto head of state taking on a new title when he assumes power, because when his predecessor will have kept the previous title in death.
Alright;
In America you had two parties; the Whigs and the Republicans. The Whigs were a Hamiltonian federalist party, the Republicans were a Jeffersonian small-government party descended from the Democratic-Republicans (similar to the OTL Democrats). Initially the Whigs were the party of urban interests while the Republicans were the party of rural interests, until the debate over slavery resulted in northern Republicans joining the Whigs and southern Whigs joining the Republicans. The aftermath of the ACW saw the Republicans reduced to a regional party in the south- think the same platform as the OTL Southern Democrats but as their own party rather than the wing of a larger party- while the Whigs dominated politics elsewhere in America. This was the point at which the Fasicsts emerged as a wing of the Whig party, arguing for an America defined by shared institutions and elements of shared culture,blind to questions of race, religion (to a point), and eventually physical disability or gender. The National Party eventually emerged as the main opposition to the Whigs, they supported cultural autonomy, an American identity that was white or Native American (and eventually Hispanic), and included Christian Populists, moderate Geoists, and organized labor in their big tent. They were mildly racist, but never as racist as the Republicans (who the Nationalists co-operated with on the federal level). The Great Pacific War resulted in the Fascist wing of the Whigs becoming the party rather than just a wing of it, and the general collapse of the National Party when they got hit with the lion's share of the blame for America's defeat and Iya Nacuaa cannablized most of their base when he ran for president as an independent. Nacuaa eventually formalized his coalition into the People's Party aka the "Populists" who included Geoists, Socialists, Native Americans, Hispanics, Christian Populists, organized labor, and Francophone-Americans in their big tent. The 'racism was the point' Nationalists mostly joined the Republicans, making the Republicans a national party again, albeit one that is only competitive on the state level in the south and occasionally the local level outside the south.
So America has the Whigs as a "centre-right" (pro-business, anti-racist, "immigrants must assimilate", African-American, and upper-class Hispanic interests) party, the Populists as a "left-wing" (multicultural, multiracial, moderate socialist/geoist economics, Native American, lower-class Hispanic, non-Anglophone American, and Asian-American interests) party, and the Republicans as a far-right party of racists, for a 2.5+ party system. Otherwise you have some tiny fourth parties including Utopians, Rodinists, Situationists, Rex, etc, who aren't very important.
I'm simplifying.
In terms of global ideologies;
The Red Movement that emerged from the populist reactionary response to Napoleon's France and the the ideas of the French revolution eventually gave rise to Christian Populism (OTL Christian Democracts) and the Rex (purify society-type reactionaries, with some similarities to fascism with things like racism or eugenics either non-existant or only playing a peripheral role in the ideology). Socialism and Geoism (like OTL Georgism) emerged from the enlightenment etc. Most forms of Socialism ITTL are strongly similar to OTL, except they retained some similarities to OTL utopian socialism and have a monofocus on the urban proletariat to the general exclusion of rural interests. Socialist parties have been elected to power in a lot of places including most of Europe, and are still influential in the electoral politics of many countries. Geoism OTOH became the part of farmers and rural interests to the general exclusion of city-dwellers and urban interests- they also tend towards social conservatism, while being economically Georgian progressives and internationalists. Rodinism is the totalitarianist form of Geoism that took power in Russia, a similar type of Geoism took power in Spain. Utopianism is communism but with a different set of thinkers (no Marx or Lenin), and as it's never succesfully governed any countries ITTL is seen as somewhat of a fringe ideology a la OTL anarchism. Societism emerged from a mix of influences- some stuff from the Red Movement, some stuff from British rationalizations for imperialism, some stuff from the "Loyalist ideology" of the original American Loyalists, some stuff from generic reactionism, some stuff from the Eugenics movement, Christian fundamentalism, etc- and are the most similar to OTL Fascism. Situationism was a reaction to both Societism and the alienating nature of modern industrialized society, calling for the creation of governments dedicated to the happiness and well-being of their citizens and the celebration of the individual.
Once again, simplifying.
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Clarify?
Kobold has had twenty years to prepare Drakia for the inevitable, and if he could spare the time to set up this:
Then he had time to set up a designated survivor system or something similar, and draw up the war plans which Drakia will be using, all of which Dart has neither the reason nor the time to roll back on the very eve of the war he just set off.
Chapter 39
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
Chapter 39
Securing important military and government sites is a challenge for the counterintelligence forces of any state. It is, however, an achievable challenge and a necessary task. This is particularly the case for the members of a global democratic block locked in a cold war with brutal, authoritarian rivals. On the whole, the Alliance for Democracy was successful at realizing this goal. But while it’s one thing to secure airbases or state office buildings from enemy agents, it’s another thing to secure busy locations open to the general public- major airports, train stations, megachurches, and athletic stadiums- from civilian diplomats or journalists or businessmen whose only weapon would not show up on any metal detector, and whose behavior was no more sinister than loitering.
Most didn’t even know that they had been infected.
The actual deployment of the Stone Dogs took place over a period of ten days and involved close to three hundred human “vectors” who ranged from high-ranking ambassadors to Bondsmen who were permitted to “escape”. Deployment followed a mass vaccination project across the Pact of Blood that occurred under the cover of the annual vaccinations. In theory, this would ensure herd immunity and prevent the Stone Dogs from spreading to the populations of the Societist counties. In practice because the governments of the non-Drakian members of the Pact were not briefed on the Stone Dogs Project or the significance of the new vaccines (which were presented as protection against more common, less noteworthy diseases), the only countries that took the Stone Dogs vaccinations seriously were Drakia, its puppets in Portugal and Sardinia, and Russia, with Rhomania and Japan being significantly more lackadaisical in their implementation (distance and a shortage of doses also meant that Japan was provided with fewer vaccines to begin with). Covert preparations for conventional and “conventional” military strikes began at the same time deployment did, alongside the relocation of officials and government records to prepared sites outside of major cities, the activation of secondary headquarters, and the dispersal of war machines and personnel. That something “might” be in the offing was communicated to the other Societist governments who began their own just-in-case arrangements. This was impossible to keep entirely secret, and the Alliance put its own forces on alert and began emergency preparations of its own within days.
Very few people actually knew that the Final War was about to begin- most assumed on both sides that they were simply witnessing another round of heightened tensions. Such things had happened before, usually in the context of major military drills sparking war fears.
In a world where biological warfare is an accepted component of mainstream military strategy, public health and pandemic response are major state priorities. Most biological weapons tend to be either not contagious (like Anthrax), non-lethal (like Q fever), or less lethal due to the potential dangers of releasing something highly lethal that could backfire.
Archon Jeremy Dart allowed two weeks following deployment for the Stone Dogs to spread before taking action. This wasn’t long enough for the virus to saturate itself through the entire Allied population, but having hundreds of vectors introduce it to major international transportation hubs in the world’s largest cities on every continent other than Africa and Antarctica simultaneously, meant that the viruses propagated extensively during that time period. By the time the two weeks were up the Alliance’s public health systems had just started to notice that something happening - in particular the Platinean Ministry of Health had already begun to implement its epidemic contingency plans in response to a cluster of illnesses among immunocompromised persons in Buenos Aires.
The Final War began on November 13, 1981.
It opened with a massive orbital kinetic strike against foreign space guns, spaceports, and major airbases capable of launching and receiving spaceplanes. This was followed almost simultaneously by flights of Societist space bombers striking at military and civil targets outside of the Pact. While Drakia prioritized hitting the Alliance for Democracy, it (and its allies) also attacked the major neutrals that its war planners estimated would join the war anyway once the extent of the Stone Dogs outbreak became apparent. A handful of minor neutrals- Afghanistan, Tibet, Peru- and the pro-Societist neutrals- Centroamerica and Colombia- were spared. While the orbital bombardment was kinetic, the bombers carried a diverse variety of payloads that included chemical, incendiary, and biological weapons.
The Alliance’s retaliation began the moment their radar stations reported Drakian projectiles were beginning deorbit burns. Allied space guns began firing and Allied orbital strikes commenced, prioritizing the same sort of targets that the Societist bombardment did (but not including the neutrals). A rotating portion of the Allied space bomber fleet had been kept aloft since the AfD had placed its forces on alert weeks earlier, these were dispatched immediately while every other space bomber and space fighter the Alliance had desperately tried to lift off before they came under attack. Like their enemies, they carried chemical, incendiary, and biological payloads, in addition to conventional explosives.
An Alliance space gun kinetic projectile deorbiting to strike at a military base near the Drakian city of New London with roughly three kilotons of force.
The opening act of the Final War was characterized by a massive global “aerospace war” for military control of the majority of the Earth’s airspace and Near-Earth Orbit. Space fighters confronted each other in a desperate struggle to shoot down the other side’s bombers while protecting their own as they escorted them to their targets. Purely atmospheric aircraft played a secondary but still quite important role in the battle, ground-based anti-air and anti-space weapons played a more minor role, conventional land and sea played very little role at all. The Aerospace War occurred against the background of a devastating mutual orbital kinetic bombardment that first relied on projectiles already in orbit, and then on projectiles either fired from space guns or carried into space by spaceplanes. While there was some skirmishing by armies and navies, Societist ground forces were digging in defensively- keeping with the plan to hold out until the Stone Dogs had devastated their enemies before going on the offensive- and Allied ground forces behaved similarly with the exception of the American invasion of Centroamerica. Fighting outside of Near-Earth Orbit was extremely limited as the combatants concentrated most of their spaceborne assets for the fighting close to Earth.
The emphasis was on attacking with, and defending against, long-range warfare, with resources prioritized for the Aerospace War and damage mitigation.
Drakia experienced a brief period- measured in hours- during which it held the advantage due to striking first, this was followed by a longer period- measured in days- during which aerospace control was contested. From November 21st on the Alliance experienced at first a marginal and then a moderate, and then a major advantage in space and in the air. As the Societist aerospace defense withered Chinese bombers began appearing over Japanese cities to deploy “the Cruelest Situation” in anger for the first time against Kyoto, Edo, Taihoku, Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, Yokohama, and three dozen major military and industrial targets. A lesser Chinese nuclear offensive also occurred against important Russian cities, military bases, and troop concentrations in East Turkestan and Siberia involving nineteen warheads. All of the combatants witnessed rapid degradation of their fighting capabilities. Most of the world’s space guns- large, visible, and unable to be effectively moved or defended- had been rendered nonfunctional by that point, although a couple of hidden guns (constructed in secret and never fired prior to the Final War) that had been held in reserve still existed. Most spaceports and major airports were also in ruins, limiting the number of runways that spaceplanes and atmospheric craft could operate from. Much of the planet’s industry and vital infrastructure had been critically damaged, many of its great capitols had been pounded into toxic rubble, and the complex webs of transportation, communication, and supply needed to maintain modern civilization were severely disrupted. A modern, industrial nation dies hard however, and a surprising degree of manufacturing survived in deliberately distributed production sites and small scale “factories” with a few dozen workers that were integrated into the general population. Rural areas were relatively well off, and at least in the short-term transporting food would be a bigger challenge than growing it (in the long term the disruption to trade and access to modern fertilizer and agricultural equipment would become an issue). Larger, wealthier, more industrialized, and more powerful than the Pact, the Alliance was able to utilize its remaining war machine to continuously launch strikes via space bomber against the Empire of Drakia and its allies, steadily eroding what capabilities the Societists had managed to preserve.
The war had been deeply painful for the AfD, with the number of dead into eight digits, but it appeared that they were going to win regardless.
Space bombers making attack runs. The Final War was bad all over.
The Lunar Theatre of the Final War saw a little bit of fighting in orbit as armed spacecraft in the vicinity withdrew, and a single jerry-rigged kinetic attack against Empyrean (the capital of Drakian Luna) and its spaceport by an unarmed Alliance transport escorted by a pair of Alliance space fighters who would continue to operate out of Port Liberty for the remainder of the war. Of the three locations where Democratic and Societist stations were close enough for ground combat to be possible, one saw a Drakian assault against an Alliance station defeated, one saw Alliance personnel destroy their own station when it became clear that the Noble Race was about to capture it, and one saw the commander of a Drakian station (who had not been briefed on the Stone Dogs) surrender without fighting in exchange for the promise that he and his men would be taken prisoner and treated well. Within a few days of the start of hostilities the Moon was under the firm control of Chief of Lunar Operations Annette Dufour, excepting a few Drakian stations that were withering on the vine. A handful of surviving unarmed spacecraft incapable of landing on Earth- most Alliance, a few Drakian- fled to the relative safety of Lunar Orbit, including the AIS-1184, the AfD Mars expedition’s half-built ship that cannibalized a trio of shuttles as makeshift thrusters to push it from terrestrial to lunar orbit. They would be the last visitors to Earth’s satellite for some time to come.
Back on Earth conventional offensives began in earnest in mid-December once the Alliance was confident that it could effectively protect its ground troops from long-range strikes. Weather naturally limited genuine invasions- Allied forces began pressing into Rhomania and occupied-Rumania, and there were seaborne invasions of Corsica and Hainan- but the winter of 1981-82 was dominated by naval combat. The fleets of the Free World swept Societism from the Pacific (or at least from the surface of the Pacific, ha ha) and forced the Imperial Navy in the Atlantic to take refuge in friendly ports or flee to the Mediterranean where it regrouped for the intense struggle to control the old Mare Nostrum of the Romans. The Alliance was aided by Drakian efforts to preserve elements of its fleet by hiding them or sending them away from combat, part of the Archon’s continuing program of seeking to preserve as much as he could of his military while he waited for the Stone Dogs to take effect. The Alliance’s military leadership put together plans for a major ground offensive to begin in the spring of 1982.
By this point the Alliance for Democracy had a pretty good picture of what was going on.
This is our moon, snake! Find your own!
Even under conditions of strategic bombing and orbital bombardment, the Allied public health networks were able to put together that some kind of biological weapon with a long incubation period had been released prior to the war based on the pattern of deaths among immunocompromised persons. They recommended extreme measures to limit its spread on top of the biowarfare countermeasures that had been put in place automatically when hostilities began.
Unfortunately, this was easier said than done.
By the time the Last War began the Stone Dogs hadn’t spread deeply but they had dispersed widely, and had at least a token presence in most major Alliance cities. In many places countermeasures were a case of closing the barn door after the horse was already gone. Preventing the viruses from spreading from places where they were already present to places where they were not- particularly rural areas and more isolated cities- was a much more achievable goal, but even that was made challenging by the conditions of the war. Over 250 million persons had been displaced by the strikes against major cities in the first stage of the war, most internally, and they flooded into the countryside and relatively untouched cities in search of safety. The nature of total war on a global scale also necessitated long-distance transportation of war materials, soldiers, and essential workers in a way that made full quarantine very, very hard. In Europe, where the Alliance was attempting to actively prosecute conventional warfare and countries like France and Germany had been prioritized for strategic strikes, public health was very badly compromised. In the United States you had a partial quarantine- very strict in regions like Old Mexico, Ixcanha, and Guatemala that were in proximity to Centroamerica and had known outbreaks, and in states with major transportation hubs like New York, but more mixed elsewhere. In general, it was just very hard to halt the spread of multiple diseases with incubations measured in months, a high rate of asymptomatic carries, and diverse presentations. Still, policies advocated for by medical experts and implemented by national governments- even if they were implemented poorly or just in part- would ultimately save hundreds of millions of lives. A team in formerly neutral Scandinavia worked out tests for two of the Stone Dogs in late February of ’82 and a team in La Plata announced a test for the third days later.
It was in late March that the dying began in earnest.
Eminently believable, and of course, you save the real story for last!
Did the Drakians managed infect the Lunar bases (either through inserting agents into Alliance places, or contaminating one of their own?)
Did the Drakians managed infect the Lunar bases (either through inserting agents into Alliance places, or contaminating one of their own?)
And so it begins.
But Jesus Christ, the Japanese really got glassed within the first few weeks of the war before they could even do anything. China ain't fucking around
But Jesus Christ, the Japanese really got glassed within the first few weeks of the war before they could even do anything. China ain't fucking around
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There goes War.
Famine to follow. Conquest for last.
1.Jerry-rigged...kamikaze or stone drop?
2.I'm a little surprised the Drakia didn't throw anything at Port Liberty. Were they that confident in Stone Dogs?
3.Does the AfD's space programs not have a tradition of naming spacecraft?
4.That's gonna suck balls down here and up there.
And here comes Plague.
Famine to follow. Conquest for last.
And now I want to know where you got this.
This is our moon, snake! Find your own!
1.Jerry-rigged...kamikaze or stone drop?
2.I'm a little surprised the Drakia didn't throw anything at Port Liberty. Were they that confident in Stone Dogs?
3.Does the AfD's space programs not have a tradition of naming spacecraft?
4.That's gonna suck balls down here and up there.
MaxGerke01
Banned
So Japan received a devastating nuclear attack for a country its size and then a pandemic it wasnt ready for-its going to be in horrible shape, Also Viva USA!!!
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God save the free world, because the casualties are about grow by hundreds of million.
On the flip side, it seems the societists' abilities to launch strategic attacks at this point have been utterly crippled (as have most of their naval assets and much of their airforces), so I'm guessing the next phase of the war will possibly be more ground centered?
On the flip side, it seems the societists' abilities to launch strategic attacks at this point have been utterly crippled (as have most of their naval assets and much of their airforces), so I'm guessing the next phase of the war will possibly be more ground centered?
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It's not so much the Drakian seriousness in their plans to announce the phoenix-like rebirth of the empire in the old world's ashes that I doubt. It's their chances of truly reckoning the immensely destructive forces they would have unleashed in planning their pre-war preparations. At heart the Drakians still cannot think of the AfD in anything outside their remit as "handicappers" and of themselves as anything outside mighty dragon-men. But, to paraphrase Oberyn Martell, they are not black dragons, they are just pink little men far too slow on the draw. How can the planned Drakian shadow-empire take off when the Party Captain of Tanganyika Province and Acting General Secretary of the Imperial Societist Party, the Assistant Vice-Minister of the Post Office and Acting Chief Minister, and the Deputy Chief of Staff of Antarctica Command and Acting General of the Drakian Armed Forces all lose contact with each other and declare themselves Strategos of the Empire at the same time? What happens when sheer grit and light infantry supplies can't physically get over to the relocated AfD command centers in Southeast Asia and South America? What happens when the Final War is not so final?
EDIT: severely preempted by the update!
EDIT: severely preempted by the update!
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Ground centered, and probably muted for at least a year, more probably two or three.
If we take the Spanish Flu as a model, there will probably be successive waves of fatalities spaced out every few months until either a vaccine or natural immunity is developed. That's going to put a massive crimp on that Spring offensive, or any other serious military action.
That's bloody, as the AfD are winning at this point I assume they've inflicted similar of greater levels of destruction on the Pact plus the Chinese nuclear attacks.
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