Post by redsycorax on Dec 2, 2019 4:13:47 GMT
Many alternate Earths were devastated by nuclear war in the mid-twentieth century. They had a variety of points of divergence. In the case of Earths 150, 153 and 156, the effects were not as cataclysmic, given that their nuclear exchanges occurred in what would otherwise have been the Korean War and at the time of the East German Worker's Uprising in 1953 and in the context of a confused aftermath to a successful anti-communist Hungarian Revolution. However, as the Cold War began in earnest, the outcomes became more devastating and darker. On Earth-109, the outbreak of nuclear war cost the lives of the Justice Guild of America, bravely trying to mitigate the devastation in their former base of operations, Seaboard City, after miscalculation turned the Cuban Missile Crisis into a fully fledged apocalyptic showdown between the superpowers. On Earth-283, the effects were more chilling still, as Operation Able Archer and the absence of Stanislav Petrov from a Soviet early warning post led to the obliteration of billions of people due to a mainframe malfunction. And on Earth-189, not even the presence of metahumans could halt the inexorable onset of armageddon itself...
As I write this, memories flood my mind and I have to stop typing this out, before I start crying again. As you'll see, I have a personal connection to one of the protagonists of the story ahead. He could have stopped it all if paranoia and groupthink hadn't poisoned the quagmire that we were all trying to extricate ourselves from. In October 1989, it seemed as if the world were coming out of a long nightmare. In Moscow, a reformist premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, had put an end to the Soviet side of the arms race, willingly entering nuclear arms limitation talks with President Reagan. From Moscow, the overtures of liberalisation were welcome, as glacial censorship slowly ebbed and dissidents were released from distant Siberia. As dissent began to ramp up in the Warsaw Pact, Gorbachev visited East Berlin and seemed to suggest that the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact was the next logical step to take. We will never know if that was his ambition. Shortly after he returned to Moscow, Mr Gorbachev "disappeared', to be replaced by a chilling, brutal Red Army hardliner, General Nikolai Sorokin. Sorokin was personally well known to Kremlinologists, who did not welcome the arrival of that figure on the far side of the Iron Curtain. He was associated with atrocities in Czechoslovkia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1988. The first taste of renewed repression came when Sorokin authorised his satellite, Erich Honeker, to crush the peaceful aspirations for change within East Berlin by force if necessary. Amidst thousands of deaths, nothing was resolved and the slaughter only seemed to inflame tensions elsewhere in the Warsaw Pact. Poland was adjacent to the behemoth and Solidarnosc was crushed by it, but violent reprisals spiralled out of control in Czechoslovakia and Hungary as well as East Germany.
22,300 miles above, the Justice League of America debated what to do. Superman was seriously considering breaching his ethical prohibition against excessive interference in human affairs, flying into the Warsaw Pact and disabling the Soviet troops and their allies. At that point, visibly panicking, US President George H. Bush, galvanised by his hawkish ally British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in London, who may have been hoping to resurrect the "Falklands Factor" as her opinion poll ratings started to dive after over a decade in power, authorised air lifts of supplies to West Berlin. However, the paranoid new hardline Moscow regime misinterpreted the resupply actions and Honecker ordered East German airspace closed. A couple of days later, the Red Army closed the approaches to the encircled city. At that point, from what I can reconstruct, the US Army placed its tactical nuclear forces in West Germany on high alert. At the same time, troops and more supplies were being prepared on the Eastern Coast of the United States. The Flash, idealistic as ever, promised to help escort them there. At the time, no-one knew that was the last anyone would ever see of Wally West.
On our side of the bearpit, everyone was disturbed at the increasingly sinister behaviour of the incumbent administration as time went on. Outspoken liberal critics of Republican policy quietly disappeared. And then, one day, I had to report that Oliver Queen had gone missing, which sent rumours aplenty through the meta community and their social networks and friends and families. What we didn't know at the time was that Bush had been seeking suspect counsel, given the then-current paranoia about the ethics and morality of metahumans. Perhaps that could explain the escalation of disappearances and disturbing accounts that began to surface. Explosions were seen at the hill which Wayne Manor stood astride and then the whole edifice went up in flames. Was Bruce Wayne Batman? If so, the technological prowess within the Batcave might have proven a lucrative temptation for covert operatives as the threat of war drew closer.
With Batman and Green Arrow gone, the JLA quickly polarised. Aquaman walked out early on, stating that the security of Atlantis was his primary concern as its head of state, as one might logically expect. Atlantis declared neutrality and sternly warned NATO and the Warsaw Pact alike about the consequences of violating the sanctity and environment of the Atlantic Ocean. Then Ivy Town was destroyed- at a guess, it may have had something to do with the Atom's scalar reduction technologies and the white dwarf neutronium matter that was said to drive it. Again, the Atom's secret identity seems to have been betrayed. Again, a covert operations anti-metahuman tried to confiscate technology that they were not prepared, or responsible enough, to handle safely. In the skies above, Green Lantern found that a transparent yellow inertron barrier had engulfed the Earth, in order to prevent any intervention from any of the assigned Green Lanterns of Earth or the central command of the Guardians of the Universe on Oa. Superman and Power Girl evacuated those they loved to the Fortress of Solitude and then out to the Justice League satellite to await what would happen next.
As for the USSR, we can only guess at the fate of its metahuman community. Christina Alexandrova ("Lady Flash") used her superspeed to desert to the West and no-one was either able or willing to stop her. Not all of the former Red Trinity, Blue Trinity or Peoples Hero rosters were that fortunate. Cossack is believed to have perished in a Soviet putsch following a failed Ukrainian nationalist secession attempt. KGBeast, Red Star, Stalnovolk, Hammer and Sickle all sided with Sorokin's regime. There is some evidence that Leonid Kovar (Red Star) was being coerced, given that fragmentary confirmation exists that his family was being held captive. The others were older individuals and conservatives who disapproved of Gorbachev's reformism and disarmament measures.
On February 15, 1990, the Red Navy opened fire on the inbound NATO convoy and in the turmoil, Red Star accidentally presided over the death of the Flash. Aquaman and the Atlantean armed forces carried out their promised intervention when they became aware and confiscated survivors from both NATO and the Red Navy, leaving only humanitarian supplies. At the memorial service for the Flash, Superman, Power Girl and Wonder Woman walked out when President Bush used inflammatory rhetoric. Shortly afterward, Superman and Power Girl made the announcement that in the event of a nuclear exchange that targeted any inhabited facility anywhere on Earth would not be tolerated. I have a photograph, taken by a former colleague, of who else was at the service. Lex Luthor was plainly visible, whispering to President Bush. Perhaps that explains what happened next. I will never forgive him for that, whatever happened to him in the aftermath. It seems that he was playing on Bush's insecurities and anxieties, convincing him that the Kryptonians held 'too much power' to be trusted. Aquaman left the remainder of the convoy en route for West Germany. In the meantime, Canada, Britain and France were already engaged in arms shipments and humanitarian supplies to their potentially embattled ally.
On March 12, 1990, Soviet and Warsaw Pact armed forces tore through West Germany's Fulda Gap and the Third World War had begun. Initially, with the apperance of Katar Hol (now known as "American Eagle") fighting alongside the NATO armed forces, the mood was one of patriotic heroism. It soured quickly, when American Eagle was seen bloodily decapitating Stalnovolk, only to be incinerated himself by KGBeast. Luthor had made a reputation for himself (however spuriously) as a 'patriot', and it seems he did mastermind a highly effective strategic raid on the Red Army's forward headquarters in Warsaw, paralysing the command and control facilities within the Warsaw Pact. The tide began to turn, amidst heavy Soviet air force casualties. On the ground below, the decapitated behemoth also faltered, buckled and then collapsed altogether. West Berlin was liberated on March 21 and the Red Army deserted its erstwhile East German ally to its fate, withdrawing to Poland. We held our breath. Could this, would this all end without the ultimate nightmare?
Little did we know how insane Sorokin really was. The United States made overtures to its Moscow counterparts, promising that it would go no further than the East German border and would respect the territorial security of the remaining Warsaw Pact nations. However, with the Honecker regime overthrown, rioting and hostilities broke out in Budapest, Prague, Sofia, Warsaw, and then, in a matter of hours, the southeastern Islamic republics of the USSR, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia all seceded, and the Ukraine surged back into rebellion. On March 31, Sorokin ordered a nuclear strike above the North Sea. In response, the United States went to DefCon 1, full nuclear alert. At that fateful moment, a Soviet early warning mainframe once again went awry, but with heightened insecurities, this time, Sorokin panicked and launched the entire complement of Soviet nuclear weapons at the United States and NATO.
In the Fortress of Solitude, Superman and Power Girl prepared to take flight when a solitary cruise missile was detected, heading for the Arctic and to the exact co-ordinates of the Fortress. Superman headed to confront the missile, which he interpreted as being mere conventional nuclear armament. However, it wasn't. It had a specialised payload, and as its motion sensors identified Kryptonian physiology, it detonated. It was filled with green kryptonite, killing Superman instantly. I could only watch, powerless, as the man I loved more than anything else in this world, vaporised before my eyes. A microsecond later, it engulfed the Fortress, obliterating Power Girl and countless millions of innocent Kandorians, therefore committing an act of genocide against the entire Kryptonian species. Due to paranoia, recklessness, stupidity and opportunism, the only alternative deterrent to the ensuing insanity was wiped from the board, leaving no-one to protect us from the threat of total obliteration and nuclear war.
And then, a miracle happened. A familiar flying saucer materialised and began to traverse the world beneath us, as city after city was bathed in unearthly light and scintillated into invisibility. We watched as the same fate ensued for Metropolis, Gotham, Coast City, Central City, New York, Minsk, Warsaw, Prague, Berlin, Paris, London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Madrid, Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, New Delhi, Karachi, Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin... all in all, millions of lives were saved as Brainiac's shrinking ray was used to miniaturise and condense the cities into bottle formats. But Brainiac wasn't the pilot. As it alighted, J'onn J'onnz stepped from it, weary but satisfied. He couldn't save them all. Moscow, Washington DC, Cheyenne, Istanbul, Leningrad, Lyons, Marseiles, Bristol, Miami, Atlanta, Little Rock, New Orleans, Dallas, Austin, Shanghai, Baton Rouge, Boston... countless other cities vanished beneath those roiling, murderous mushroom clouds.
That was a decade ago. Rann allowed us to resettle on one of their more sparsely populated continents and as a species, humanity has survived. I managed to reconstruct the above from the fragmentary database records from the period immediately before and during the war. I have never found Lex Luthor's body. Hopefully, he died somewhere amidst the ruins of a devastated city within the cataclysm that destroyed the world as we knew it. Why, Lex? Why did your psychotic hatred for Clark lead you to collaborate in the obliteration of almost everything we held dear and loved? At least, I hope your maggot-ridden corpse is rotting somewhere back on the gray, blasted irradiated sphere that was humanity's first home.
Because if you aren't, I'll finish the job myself.
From: Lois Lane: Superman and the Third World War: Sorokin, Bush, Luthor and The Fall of Icarus: Terran Affairs Department @ the University of Terra Nova: Rann: AW 15.
THE END.
As I write this, memories flood my mind and I have to stop typing this out, before I start crying again. As you'll see, I have a personal connection to one of the protagonists of the story ahead. He could have stopped it all if paranoia and groupthink hadn't poisoned the quagmire that we were all trying to extricate ourselves from. In October 1989, it seemed as if the world were coming out of a long nightmare. In Moscow, a reformist premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, had put an end to the Soviet side of the arms race, willingly entering nuclear arms limitation talks with President Reagan. From Moscow, the overtures of liberalisation were welcome, as glacial censorship slowly ebbed and dissidents were released from distant Siberia. As dissent began to ramp up in the Warsaw Pact, Gorbachev visited East Berlin and seemed to suggest that the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact was the next logical step to take. We will never know if that was his ambition. Shortly after he returned to Moscow, Mr Gorbachev "disappeared', to be replaced by a chilling, brutal Red Army hardliner, General Nikolai Sorokin. Sorokin was personally well known to Kremlinologists, who did not welcome the arrival of that figure on the far side of the Iron Curtain. He was associated with atrocities in Czechoslovkia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1988. The first taste of renewed repression came when Sorokin authorised his satellite, Erich Honeker, to crush the peaceful aspirations for change within East Berlin by force if necessary. Amidst thousands of deaths, nothing was resolved and the slaughter only seemed to inflame tensions elsewhere in the Warsaw Pact. Poland was adjacent to the behemoth and Solidarnosc was crushed by it, but violent reprisals spiralled out of control in Czechoslovakia and Hungary as well as East Germany.
22,300 miles above, the Justice League of America debated what to do. Superman was seriously considering breaching his ethical prohibition against excessive interference in human affairs, flying into the Warsaw Pact and disabling the Soviet troops and their allies. At that point, visibly panicking, US President George H. Bush, galvanised by his hawkish ally British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in London, who may have been hoping to resurrect the "Falklands Factor" as her opinion poll ratings started to dive after over a decade in power, authorised air lifts of supplies to West Berlin. However, the paranoid new hardline Moscow regime misinterpreted the resupply actions and Honecker ordered East German airspace closed. A couple of days later, the Red Army closed the approaches to the encircled city. At that point, from what I can reconstruct, the US Army placed its tactical nuclear forces in West Germany on high alert. At the same time, troops and more supplies were being prepared on the Eastern Coast of the United States. The Flash, idealistic as ever, promised to help escort them there. At the time, no-one knew that was the last anyone would ever see of Wally West.
On our side of the bearpit, everyone was disturbed at the increasingly sinister behaviour of the incumbent administration as time went on. Outspoken liberal critics of Republican policy quietly disappeared. And then, one day, I had to report that Oliver Queen had gone missing, which sent rumours aplenty through the meta community and their social networks and friends and families. What we didn't know at the time was that Bush had been seeking suspect counsel, given the then-current paranoia about the ethics and morality of metahumans. Perhaps that could explain the escalation of disappearances and disturbing accounts that began to surface. Explosions were seen at the hill which Wayne Manor stood astride and then the whole edifice went up in flames. Was Bruce Wayne Batman? If so, the technological prowess within the Batcave might have proven a lucrative temptation for covert operatives as the threat of war drew closer.
With Batman and Green Arrow gone, the JLA quickly polarised. Aquaman walked out early on, stating that the security of Atlantis was his primary concern as its head of state, as one might logically expect. Atlantis declared neutrality and sternly warned NATO and the Warsaw Pact alike about the consequences of violating the sanctity and environment of the Atlantic Ocean. Then Ivy Town was destroyed- at a guess, it may have had something to do with the Atom's scalar reduction technologies and the white dwarf neutronium matter that was said to drive it. Again, the Atom's secret identity seems to have been betrayed. Again, a covert operations anti-metahuman tried to confiscate technology that they were not prepared, or responsible enough, to handle safely. In the skies above, Green Lantern found that a transparent yellow inertron barrier had engulfed the Earth, in order to prevent any intervention from any of the assigned Green Lanterns of Earth or the central command of the Guardians of the Universe on Oa. Superman and Power Girl evacuated those they loved to the Fortress of Solitude and then out to the Justice League satellite to await what would happen next.
As for the USSR, we can only guess at the fate of its metahuman community. Christina Alexandrova ("Lady Flash") used her superspeed to desert to the West and no-one was either able or willing to stop her. Not all of the former Red Trinity, Blue Trinity or Peoples Hero rosters were that fortunate. Cossack is believed to have perished in a Soviet putsch following a failed Ukrainian nationalist secession attempt. KGBeast, Red Star, Stalnovolk, Hammer and Sickle all sided with Sorokin's regime. There is some evidence that Leonid Kovar (Red Star) was being coerced, given that fragmentary confirmation exists that his family was being held captive. The others were older individuals and conservatives who disapproved of Gorbachev's reformism and disarmament measures.
On February 15, 1990, the Red Navy opened fire on the inbound NATO convoy and in the turmoil, Red Star accidentally presided over the death of the Flash. Aquaman and the Atlantean armed forces carried out their promised intervention when they became aware and confiscated survivors from both NATO and the Red Navy, leaving only humanitarian supplies. At the memorial service for the Flash, Superman, Power Girl and Wonder Woman walked out when President Bush used inflammatory rhetoric. Shortly afterward, Superman and Power Girl made the announcement that in the event of a nuclear exchange that targeted any inhabited facility anywhere on Earth would not be tolerated. I have a photograph, taken by a former colleague, of who else was at the service. Lex Luthor was plainly visible, whispering to President Bush. Perhaps that explains what happened next. I will never forgive him for that, whatever happened to him in the aftermath. It seems that he was playing on Bush's insecurities and anxieties, convincing him that the Kryptonians held 'too much power' to be trusted. Aquaman left the remainder of the convoy en route for West Germany. In the meantime, Canada, Britain and France were already engaged in arms shipments and humanitarian supplies to their potentially embattled ally.
On March 12, 1990, Soviet and Warsaw Pact armed forces tore through West Germany's Fulda Gap and the Third World War had begun. Initially, with the apperance of Katar Hol (now known as "American Eagle") fighting alongside the NATO armed forces, the mood was one of patriotic heroism. It soured quickly, when American Eagle was seen bloodily decapitating Stalnovolk, only to be incinerated himself by KGBeast. Luthor had made a reputation for himself (however spuriously) as a 'patriot', and it seems he did mastermind a highly effective strategic raid on the Red Army's forward headquarters in Warsaw, paralysing the command and control facilities within the Warsaw Pact. The tide began to turn, amidst heavy Soviet air force casualties. On the ground below, the decapitated behemoth also faltered, buckled and then collapsed altogether. West Berlin was liberated on March 21 and the Red Army deserted its erstwhile East German ally to its fate, withdrawing to Poland. We held our breath. Could this, would this all end without the ultimate nightmare?
Little did we know how insane Sorokin really was. The United States made overtures to its Moscow counterparts, promising that it would go no further than the East German border and would respect the territorial security of the remaining Warsaw Pact nations. However, with the Honecker regime overthrown, rioting and hostilities broke out in Budapest, Prague, Sofia, Warsaw, and then, in a matter of hours, the southeastern Islamic republics of the USSR, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia all seceded, and the Ukraine surged back into rebellion. On March 31, Sorokin ordered a nuclear strike above the North Sea. In response, the United States went to DefCon 1, full nuclear alert. At that fateful moment, a Soviet early warning mainframe once again went awry, but with heightened insecurities, this time, Sorokin panicked and launched the entire complement of Soviet nuclear weapons at the United States and NATO.
In the Fortress of Solitude, Superman and Power Girl prepared to take flight when a solitary cruise missile was detected, heading for the Arctic and to the exact co-ordinates of the Fortress. Superman headed to confront the missile, which he interpreted as being mere conventional nuclear armament. However, it wasn't. It had a specialised payload, and as its motion sensors identified Kryptonian physiology, it detonated. It was filled with green kryptonite, killing Superman instantly. I could only watch, powerless, as the man I loved more than anything else in this world, vaporised before my eyes. A microsecond later, it engulfed the Fortress, obliterating Power Girl and countless millions of innocent Kandorians, therefore committing an act of genocide against the entire Kryptonian species. Due to paranoia, recklessness, stupidity and opportunism, the only alternative deterrent to the ensuing insanity was wiped from the board, leaving no-one to protect us from the threat of total obliteration and nuclear war.
And then, a miracle happened. A familiar flying saucer materialised and began to traverse the world beneath us, as city after city was bathed in unearthly light and scintillated into invisibility. We watched as the same fate ensued for Metropolis, Gotham, Coast City, Central City, New York, Minsk, Warsaw, Prague, Berlin, Paris, London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Madrid, Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, New Delhi, Karachi, Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin... all in all, millions of lives were saved as Brainiac's shrinking ray was used to miniaturise and condense the cities into bottle formats. But Brainiac wasn't the pilot. As it alighted, J'onn J'onnz stepped from it, weary but satisfied. He couldn't save them all. Moscow, Washington DC, Cheyenne, Istanbul, Leningrad, Lyons, Marseiles, Bristol, Miami, Atlanta, Little Rock, New Orleans, Dallas, Austin, Shanghai, Baton Rouge, Boston... countless other cities vanished beneath those roiling, murderous mushroom clouds.
That was a decade ago. Rann allowed us to resettle on one of their more sparsely populated continents and as a species, humanity has survived. I managed to reconstruct the above from the fragmentary database records from the period immediately before and during the war. I have never found Lex Luthor's body. Hopefully, he died somewhere amidst the ruins of a devastated city within the cataclysm that destroyed the world as we knew it. Why, Lex? Why did your psychotic hatred for Clark lead you to collaborate in the obliteration of almost everything we held dear and loved? At least, I hope your maggot-ridden corpse is rotting somewhere back on the gray, blasted irradiated sphere that was humanity's first home.
Because if you aren't, I'll finish the job myself.
From: Lois Lane: Superman and the Third World War: Sorokin, Bush, Luthor and The Fall of Icarus: Terran Affairs Department @ the University of Terra Nova: Rann: AW 15.
THE END.