WWIII: The Final BattleWe do not know who used nuclear ordnance first. Was it the Russian submarine
Yury Dolgoruky? The Chinese aircraft carrier
Liaoning? The British ballistic missile sub
HMS Vigilant? The American guided missile cruiser
Anzio? Was it the Brazilian aircraft carrier
Sao Paolo or Pakistan's guided missile cruiser
Alamgir?
We do not know, and I for one do not want to know. Some commander, outnumbered in a hostile sea, felt that his duty required him to use every means at his disposal to serve his country's interest, and the means at his disposal happened to include nuclear ordnance. Is it important to know his name or his nationality? Do we need someone else to hate? If it was you or I, would we have done things differently? Between orders, duty, policy, and situational necessity, one's choices are sometimes so narrowly constrained as to not be choices at all. I prefer to believe that the man who gave the order was not a villain, but simply someone at the nexus of many forces, very few of which were within his control, and seeing no real options save the one he chose.
Within two hours after that critical detonation in the South China Sea, there was war in every Sea and on every Continent. Even worthless Antarctica was not spared, as someone decided that India's Bharathi Research Station was a target of strategic interest. Conventional forces did as much fighting as nuclear forces, but it was the nuclear forces that set the stage for the world of the future. As the scientists warned us, the ashes of the cataclysm blotted out the sun, and almost led to our extinction.
As I write, here in the world's unofficial capital of New Atlantis (once known as Bonaire) the remaining 15,000 humans on earth preside over a kingdom that contains fewer than 900 living species, of which two-thirds are bacteria. Before the cataclysm, there were believed to be close to 2 million. Still, we give thanks that there are any at all, and we carry on. Biodiversity was our great insurance policy against disaster, and we have now cashed in that policy. The biodiversity is spent, and it will take millions of years to rebuild, but for now it has done its job and preserved life on earth.
The concept of karma has been well and truly disproven. None of the innocent survived. Only the guilty lived through the cataclysm, for only those involved in dispensing weapons of mass destruction lived in the superhardened bunkers designed to survive it, or on board the ballistic missile submarines that were able to sit below the surface long enough for the air above to become breathable again.
Some of those who read the ancient texts say we will carry on and meet our punishment in another world, but I find this hard to believe. If some greater power was interested in justice, he would not have permitted this to happen in the first place.
I look at the maps of the world that was, and I think of all those whose lives were played out in the places that are no more -- the placid peace of Angkor Wat, the flashing lights of Las Vegas, the rolling meadows of Bavaria, the brightly-painted streets of Trinidad. We have them all on microfiche, and we will recreate some of them, perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. Having passed through a genetic bottleneck where only the killers survived, will our future be even more destructive than our past? I hope not, but I can give no promises.
Well, enough romantic musings for today. There is a rugby game at the base I want to see. The Alliance is playing the Confederation!
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Battle 8 (Final Battle)
Confederation: China and her satellites, Indonesia, Japan, U.S.A. and most Latin American Nations.
Alliance: Europe, Russia, most nations of Africa, India, Phillipines and most of Oceania.
map= Land and Sea
Fog, No Trench, Auto, Seq, Chain
Spoils= TBD.