To understand how the world works, we must first go back to July 20
th, 1944 in Prussia. Claus von Stauffenberg's plan to take out Adolf Hitler—Operation
Walküre—had succeeded. His bag containing the bomb was not moved and thus Hitler
was killed by this explosion. This sent the entire European front into disarray, leading to Germany's surrender. As no country had made it to Berlin yet, Germany was allowed to remain a free country—albeit with some minor oversight from NATO once it was formed. Though, the Allied and Soviet armies did also march onto Berlin, clearing out what little resistance remained. However, World War II was not changed just by that. Both Operation
Little Boy and Operation
Fat Man were not carried out. Yes, this means that Nagasaki and Hiroshima were never the site of a nuclear weapon detonation. Instead, the Allied Forces initiated Operation
Downfall, and Japan was invaded. With the American forces in Europe now finished, their resources were transferred to the Pacific. Operation
Downfall commenced on October 22, 1945. This was the invasion of Kyūshū (known as Operation
Olympic) and the largest naval armada assembled by the Allies—42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, and 400 destroyers and destroyer escorts. But even this was a feint for the real target. Operation
Coronet was the other half of
Downfall and would have the Allies invading Tokyo. November 6, 1945,
Coronet was put into play. The Allied forces, with 25 divisions, launched the largest amphibious assault of human history. The quick strike was enough to split the remaining Imperial troops and Tokyo was quickly taken before the Emperor could be evacuated. Japan was not put under any special rule and was allowed to keep the Imperial system to this day, resulting in the country still being called the "Empire of Japan" to this day.
The Cold War was on even higher tensions as no nuclear weapon had been used. The Soviet Union was ready to launch an invasion of Germany if it needed to, although that never happened. Japan was allowed to rebuild its military might and did not swear to a policy of self-defense. They proved a greater ally in ending the Korean War and put their own troops to monitor the DMZ instead of America's. In the 1990s, the Soviet Union collapsed. The Gulf Wars happened at the same time, as did the many terrorist attacks that took place before and after. In 2040, a paper was published in a now-defunct scientific journal that relayed a message—We are not alone. The paper was a lengthy (750 pages) theory on there being "spiritual beings" among us. Governments being governments decided that these could be useful as a weapon. And thus billions if not trillions of dollars were spent by just about every superpower was spent on research on these "spiritual beings." Well, this pissed some people off—namely ultra-radicals in the Middle East—due to religious reasons. Israel was the only nation in the region that tried to stay neutral, while other countries like Syria and Egypt—who were now both under the control of extremely radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood—denounced Israel's policies and declared war. The United States, being Israel's big brother (and to protect its oil interests in the region), stepped in. Russia, being Syria's big brother, stepped in. China allied itself with Russia, and Japan with the US. This trend continued until it could be called World War III.
The war was fought on many fronts. There were many land battles between infantry and armor. There were even naval battles in the Medeterranian and the Black Sea. But mainly the battles took place in the skies. Not just with the stealth fighters like the F-35G Block 50 and PAK-FA, but with what can be best described as flying warships. Powered by nuclear reactors, they hovered over cities by means of magnetic levitation. These massive things fought against other flying warships in aerial naval combat—a contradiction if there ever was one. This all accumulated into what would be known as the 10/22 Incident.
On October 22nd, 2050, a nuclear missile was launched from a Russian submarine. The United States and its allies retaliated by launching a nuclear missile aimed at the opposing countries' capitols. However, their targeting systems had been compromised by an unknown entity. This sent all of the ICBMs to the Middle East, wiping out many countries entirely. The reason behind the Russian missile launch was never discovered, although rumors of sabotage by a group are rampant. The resulting nuclear wasteland is called "De'ira Soder" which is Arabic for "Black Circle." This incident resulted in the peace talks that ended the war and the nuclear era. *
In early 2051, the world nations met again in the United Nations to discuss what the hell had happened. Although Russia was not present. At war's end, there was a major uprising and coup d'etat of the entire Russian government, leading to the founding of the New Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (NUSSR; cy: HCCCP) As the war was over, the UN was extremely fragile right now due to heated tensions, the fall and recreation of one of the superpower's governments, and sheer exhaustion from a six-year war. And in 2052, it collapsed. Immediately after, however, the superpowers and many smaller nations created the Earth Sphere Federation in an attempt to prevent World War IV. The Earth Sphere Federation was given much more power than the United Nations could ever hope for, although all countries did remain sovereign.
The ESF banned nuclear weapons to be owned by any country, but built up its own arsenal in case that there was ever a need for them to be used against a rogue nation. This worries many people as this one government having all of that power is scary. However, the ESF as a whole swears to never use them unless someone else uses a nuclear weapon first. And to prove their benevolence, the ESF created radiation scrubbers. This came out of technology from Japan and is currently cleaning, albeit slowly, the radiation from De'ira Soder. Radiation scrubbers need to be sent before a blast to be used effectively, which is why it's taking so long. Soon after, the ESF also learned of the atrocities committed in the name of science against humans with spiritual abilities. This led to the Spiritual Weapons Treaty of 2081, which completely bans the use of spiritual weapons—human or not. It does not, however, ban research on them. Many countries want to ban the research altogether, but the ESF says that the research is central to understand what is "human" and what is not. This forced spiritual organizations to contact the ESF in late 2098 to make sure that there was no abuse of their own members. As communications were only recently established, their relationship is still rocky with the ESF...
* The map for where De'ira Soder is
here with the red circle indicating where high radiation still remains. The outer circle is where the major radiation cloud's outer boundaries were in 2050.
