Quote:
Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic
A lot of what happens to the USA during the Twilight War comes down to GDW wanting to recreate the chaos of Europe so that the Players can have the same sort of adventures when their characters arrive back in the US.
If the USA was left in the kind of "almost untouched/more realistic" state that some people in past forums have wanted, the characters would return to the US, get reintegrated into the military and "realistically" end up doing garrison duty or worse, they'd be discharged from the military and have to find a civilian job - boring! Who the hell wants to play that for a game?
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To be sure, even a US where someone in the line of succession became president after the nuclear strike and the government and military remained united would not be "almost untouched".
There's an excellent timeline at the alternatehistory.com site called "
The Cuban Missile War Timeline" where, as the name implies, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 goes nuclear. To make a long story short, the US utterly curb-stomps the Soviets due to the vast disparity in the number of nuclear weapons between the two. Even so, the US also suffers heavy losses, as well as disruption in communications and transportation, with mass rioting and unrest that is only quelled with martial law and thousands being summarily shot.
And all this was the result of the far paltrier Soviet armament of 1962. One can only imagine how America would look like after a total exchange in 1997. Even a limited exchange would be more destructive than the one in 1962. I imagine that in the aftermath the government would be forced to concentrate troops and resources in key strategic areas and routes, leaving more remote places to more or less fend for themselves for an undetermined amount of time. Such areas would come to resemble the Wild West, I think. Therefore I think that any soldiers returning from Europe would still have plenty to do before they'd be discharged: the government will need every able-bodied person they can find. And a small group could definitely move out into the more remote, lawless areas and become like the Seven Samurai or Magnificent Seven.