[ZombieLenin]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

I’m not sure if this is covered in any of the basic rule sets for T2K so apologies if I’m restating something you are already aware of (it definitely isn’t in the V1 initial material and I don’t think it is in the V2 Big Yellow Book, although I may be mistaken; the main reference to it is the V1 Survivor’s Guide to the United Kingdom) but in the original T2K timeline Ireland was a warzone. To cut a long story very short, after the 1997 nuclear exchanges the Republic of Ireland invaded Northern Ireland (I as a response to alleged British mistreatment of Northern Ireland’s nationalist minority, leading to two warring armies facing off against each other – on one side you had the armed forces of the Republic of Ireland (Irish Defence Forces, IDF) and on the other the British Army, primarily represented by the mainly reservist Ulster Defence Regiment, UDR . Whilst the likelihood of events transpiring as GDW wrote is debatable, I don’t think it is completely implausible, but it would need some serious reworking to fit a 2018 date (for one thing the UDR was disbanded years ago, and events in Northern Ireland have obviously moved on since the mid 1990’s) – just for starters you’d need the peace process to completely collapse in Northern Ireland and a return to the days of the Troubles.

When my players came up with Ireland, this is roughly what I did for my timeline. Essentially, I had the campaign setting's history deviate in 2013 with a worldwide economic collapse brought on by the failure of the US congress to pass an extention of the US debt ceiling (US Bond default). A bunch of other stuff happens (like Putin dying in a shirtless sky diving accident) and you end up with a bunch of regional conflicts that sort of merge together... presto! Nuclear war!

In Ireland specifically though, I used the economic collapse as an excuse to bolster the popularity of the RIRA and the CIRA in Northern Ireland. I mixed this with global depression's ability to turn populations towards more extremists governments into a suitably reactionary response from the UK and to place a nationalist "One Ireland" government in control of the Republic of Ireland.

So, to make a long story short, my actual story line for the game became pretty close to the original that you are describing.

That all seemed pretty reasonable to me, except:

1. When I started to do the research necessary to give a realistic portrayal of the military situation in 2018 I noticed that the Irish Defense Forces has a total number of active duty members, for all branches of service, less than 10,000. When the reserves are counted, around 15,000. The Irish Air Force is composed almost exclusively of helicopters, and the Irish Army has nothing bigger than armored cars as mechanized support.

While I am sure that members Irish Defense Forces are more than capable in a fight, it just seemed incredibly unlikely that they would be capable of "invading" Northern Ireland, let alone dealing with the inevitable response from Her Majesty's Armed Forces.

Being from the UK you're probably at least tacitly aware of this, but for those who aren't, the Royal Army has 130,000 active members with another 130,000-200,000 reserves. Compare that with the Irish Defense Forces where the Irish Army, Navy, and Air Forces have 15,000 personel AFTER the reserves have been called up.

2. I wanted to put two multinational forces facing off in Ireland. The UK, The Kingdom of France (related to my 'history'), and the United States versus The Irish Republic, The Republican (and nominaly Marxist) forces (RIRA, CIRA) and elements of the Slavic National Bolshevik Union (National Bolshevik Russia).

I’m British and I’m struggling to think of anything else which would have two opposed armies facing off in Ireland, although we do have a couple of Irish members who may be able to suggest something.

I thought of using the UK actually, as my timeline matches the T2013 timeline slightly, and you have post-nuclear exchange internal conflict between England, Wales, and Scotland; However, I could find even less reason to include anyone but British and, to a limited extent, American armed forces on the ground.

As to the second part of your question, I have two answers. If I wanted to stay within my comfort zone and work with something that I am familiar with and have knowledge of, I would set a campaign in my own country, the UK. If I wanted to push the comfort zone I would probably go for somewhere in Africa – possibly South Africa.

This was my thought. I really do want to have the mixing up of beligerent forces that you got in the original T2000's Poland though, which means that using the United States--with the exception of Alaska and the Canadian Northwest--is pretty difficult to do. At least in a way that doesn't offend common sense.

I mean all WW3 stories like this offend common sense, but having Russians in Chichago or LA--or North Korea anywhere (Red Dawn remake)--just makes suspension of disbelief impossible.