World War III anyone?

[Rick]

I just viewed, and responded to, the WWII threads. We already have a wild west source and soon to have the pirate era. I realized another project would be continuing military timelines with a new and revised Twilight 2000 bridging the historical with the What If future of WWIII and filling the gap to 2300AD series.

You might need to leave it for a little while, the pot is still simmering away. :twisted:

 

[Reynard]

Oh, I know Mongoose has many pots on the stove but it's a thought. I so wish my copy of Twilight 2000 didn't grow legs. I'd love to reread the whole premise of the game's background.

In many ways, there could be alternatives to the reason The War happened other than nukes but the underlying idea is a war around world wide disaster so humanity takes a great step back (but not the stone age) and the face of the world has changed immensely. It's an era of shattered nations reorganizing and reestablishing their role in the world and most often we focus on the grunts in a broken landscape enforcing those goals. The nukes are gone or irreparably disabled as are electronic hunter-killing machines such as drones. You're back to fighting with the robust and simpler tech of decades earlier, conventional guns and radio and vehicles without extensive electronics.

 

[Rick]

Oh, I know Mongoose has many pots on the stove but it's a thought. I so wish my copy of Twilight 2000 didn't grow legs. I'd love to reread the whole premise of the game's background.

In many ways, there could be alternatives to the reason The War happened other than nukes but the underlying idea is a war around world wide disaster so humanity takes a great step back (but not the stone age) and the face of the world has changed immensely. It's an era of shattered nations reorganizing and reestablishing their role in the world and most often we focus on the grunts in a broken landscape enforcing those goals. The nukes are gone or irreparably disabled as are electronic hunter-killing machines such as drones. You're back to fighting with the robust and simpler tech of decades earlier, conventional guns and radio and vehicles without extensive electronics.

If you take total nuclear war out of the equation, you are still left with one or two possibilities. I would take Man-made Global Warming out of the equation as it's a bit of a non-starter.

Natural climate change - a possible 'minimum' event pushes us into an Ice Age, large-scale conflict over dwindling resources.
Global Pandemic - use of military to seal borders and control quarantine zones.
Carrington Event - solar 'super-flare' wipes out telecommunications, power grids and most electrical items (EMP shielding would be ineffective) are rendered useless.
War on Terror - Tom's scenario where the war on terror escalates into a limited nuclear conflict and an increased conventional one.

Just a few ideas.

 

[Reynard]

Sounds all good. Something that pushes society into Panic Mode big time with the remnants of power centers taking the opportunity for grabbing land, people and resources.

 

[Rick]

Of all the variant scenarios above, the War on Terror (or some variation of it) might give more scope for playability.
The Carrington Event and Ice Age scenarios are very extreme (although the Carrington Event scenario is frighteningly likely!), and the pandemic scenario gives less chances for Tom to shoot something (apparently). :?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Been reading the thread, I have saved up Cr.02 .

Getting back to the original post:
This article talks about the USS Ponce in the Gulf with the first Laser Weapon system installed. The issue is still power generation.

US Army is still doing research into power armor, but it is still a cost vs. benefit issue.

 

[Rick]

Well, the US and other Western nations were experimenting using lasers to blind pilots until they were banned in 1998 - you notice that the article is VERY careful to mention that the lowest setting is as a warning 'powerful flash' , no mention of it being able to blind anyone, honest!

This is basically an extended sea trial for the weapon system, to see how it functions. All they have to do now is pick a fight with someone.

 

[AndrewW]

We already have a wild west source and soon to have the pirate era.

The upcoming Pirate book focus's on spaceships and the like, it isn't a new era.

 

[Reynard]

Wait... I originally said that it was Traveller pirates in space and was corrected to it is actually for the 'historical' era. Which way is it?

 

[Rick]

Matt has mentioned that there is a historical Pirates setting coming out, no idea about any Pirates in space book.

 

[AndrewW]

Book 11: Pirate is space based.

 

[Reynard]

I am so confused.....

Weird because they already have space pirates in the Scoundrel book.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Ok - then get rid of the whole 'Nostradamus' thing, and let's see.

Your scenario is that WW3 starts in 2001, goes on until 2028, and some time before the end, a terrorist bomb nukes New York city. Following that, the USA nukes every Muslim city on the planet in order to wipe out potential threats once and for all. Oh, and hunts down and kills Muslim's at will, in essence wiping out entire races and an entire religion, about 1.7 billion people.

That anywhere close?

I'll put you in the Oval Office and ask what you would do if you were President of the United States? There is a middle position, internment camps, similar to what Japanese-Americans were put in. Think that's unfair? Well 8 million Americans are dead in this scenario because of uncheck movements of muslims in the country with a nuclear bomb. Though the TV scenario suggested the bomb arrived by ICBM, with an ABM system shooting down most of them.

The other scenario is George Friedman's this one occurring in the 2050s with a war between the US and Japan, Turkey is aligned with Japan, and Poland is aligned with the US, and France and Germany are neutrals.

 

[Rick]

And because it was supposed to be Book 10!
Seriously, though - Mongoose will (apparently) be bringing out a Traveller historical pirate book akin to Cowboys vs Xenomorphs at some point, I just can't find the thread where Matt Sprange confirmed it.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

As for Britain's war against the IRA, that was a local conflict, not a World War. The IRA did not fight all over the world. The IRA was specific to Ireland only, it wasn't an international organization like Al Qaeda or ISIS. Arabs identify by religion, Europeans identify by nation, that is the rule I believe. There is very little difference between an Arab living in Egypt, an Arab living in Syria, or an Arab living in Jordan, they speak the same language, and they move across borders hardly caring what their nation is called, that is why Al Qaeda was able to recruit so many people. the IRA by contrast has only been able to recruit Irish, there are very few French or Germans who are IRA members if any at all. The French don't really care about Irish independence, it doesn't concern them.

Northern Ireland was a religious sectarian conflict; the IRA identified with the Catholic minority, the loyalists with the Protestant majority. The IRA recruited mainly Irish, had links to world-wide terrorist groups, was funded, in part, by American-Irish and had training camps in Libya.

The Middle East is a religious sectarian conflict, Al-Qaeda and IS identify with the Sunni fundamental orthodox majority (albeit a radical group), whilst the current govt. in Iraq are fundamental orthodox Shia minority, as is Iran.
The Baathist party in Iraq was an inclusive progressive moderate government, as is the government of Assad's Syria (the uprising against Assad was started by an Al-Qaeda splinter group).
The governments of all of the other Middle Eastern states are fundamental orthodox Sunni (although Saudi Arabia and Jordan are a bit more progressive). To put it in perspective, the Taliban were also fundamental orthodox Sunni.
The USA has got itself firmly mired in the middle of a sectarian feud that has gone on since the death of Mohammad, between the Sunni majority and the Shia minority.
The reason that IS has been so successful at recruiting fighters from other parts of the world is that they are also Sunni's and can plainly see that their enemies, the Shia, have allied themselves with the USA.
The Kurds, like the Sufi's, see themselves as a separate group than either the Sunni or Shia. Saladin, who successfully fought against the crusading armies in the 12th century, was himself Kurdish.

Too bad our President doesn't like Kurds, he doesn't want to help them, he wants to help the Shiite government in Iraq instead. I myself think, if Iraqis weren't willing to fight for their country when we gave them so much training and equipment, then Iraq doesn't deserve to exist, they had their chance, thanks to the sacrifice of our soldiers, and the Iraqis blew it.

The best thing we could do policy wise is make the Middle East irrelevant, reduce the value of the oil they're fighting over, by first creating more of it ourselves and by building cars that ru on alternate energy sources.

 

[Reynard]

So.... do we start WWIII with nukes or religious pamphlets?

 

[Rick]

I'll put you in the Oval Office and ask what you would do if you were President of the United States? There is a middle position, internment camps, similar to what Japanese-Americans were put in. Think that's unfair? Well 8 million Americans are dead in this scenario because of uncheck movements of muslims in the country with a nuclear bomb. Though the TV scenario suggested the bomb arrived by ICBM, with an ABM system shooting down most of them.

If you haven't looked at the previous comments, I'm just trying to refine the original idea a bit. The TV scenario has Muslim Terrorists forging an alliance (based on a mistranslation of 'Angol' as 'Mongol') with Russia, and it is Russian ICBM's that hit New York. Russia has been fighting it's own wars against Muslims since the late 70's (Afghan invasion and Chechnya were part of that), as it sees a 'Muslim super-state' as a massive threat, so it might play off some of the Middle Eastern states against each other, but it would never align itself with them in that manner.
A suitcase bomb is the most likely threat to New York - the USA has lost over 5 tonnes of weapons-grade nuclear material since the 60's, as well as being unable to account for the whereabouts of a further 17 tonnes sold in overseas trade, Russia/USSR has lost around 4-5 tonnes of nuclear material and may also have lost several nuclear warheads. All you need for a dirty suitcase nuke is around 5 kilo's of weapons grade nuclear material which would give a probable yield in the 0.05-0.1 kT range; with fallout downwind being an additional problem.

 

[Rick]

Too bad our President doesn't like Kurds, he doesn't want to help them, he wants to help the Shiite government in Iraq instead. I myself think, if Iraqis weren't willing to fight for their country when we gave them so much training and equipment, then Iraq doesn't deserve to exist, they had their chance, thanks to the sacrifice of our soldiers, and the Iraqis blew it.

He's not allowed to like Kurds - Turkey would quit NATO if he did. He's not allowed to like Syria or Iran either, or he'll lose Israel.

 

[Rick]

The best thing we could do policy wise is make the Middle East irrelevant, reduce the value of the oil they're fighting over, by first creating more of it ourselves and by building cars that run on alternate energy sources.

No, won't work - they're not fighting over oil, they are using it as revenue to fight over the differences between themselves. Stop the IS from profiting from oil exports, either by blowing up the well-heads or destroying IS trucks leaving the area would be a start. Doing a deal with Iran would add stability (no, I'm not kidding), and do a deal with Syria. Follow that through and there is a chance of stability in the region.

 

[AndrewW]

I am so confused.....

Weird because they already have space pirates in the Scoundrel book.

The new one is more in depth and covers some other illicit activity.