HISTORY | afterlands

HISTORY OF THE AFTERLANDS

The Union and Confederacy wage the Civil War from 1861-1868.
The war ends in a stalemate with the Confederacy seceding from the United States of America.
The Confederate States of America (CSA) is founded at the close of hostilities.
The USA and CSA engage in a cold war for the next 51 years.

World War I begins in 1914.
The Confederate States enter the war in defense of their allies, the British Empire.
The United States opts for isolation and neutrality, having more citizens of German heritage than any other.

The Germans torpedo the RMS Lusitania of the in 1915, killing 1,198 passengers and crew.
The Lusitania made 202 trips between New York and Liverpool over her short eight year career.
Briefly the world's largest passenger ship, her sinking brought an end to the United State's neutrality.
The US did not put boots on the ground, but became the manufacturing hub for the Allies' war effort.

World War 1 ends in 1919, along with the Cold War between the United and Confederate States.
Familial ties are strengthened by conflict in Europe, giving birth talks of reunification and a formidable US/CS Alliance.
Free from the destruction left in the wake of WWI, the alliance allows the US/CS to prosper during the years of the great depression.
The rest of the world is nowhere as fortunate.

World War II begins in 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland.
Great Britain and France respond by declaring war on Germany, causing Germany to invade France, Belgium and finally the Netherlands.
Allied with Germany, Japan and a handful of minor nations Italy enters the fray by declaring war on France and Great Britain.
France Surrenders to Germany, prompting the US/CS war-machine to kick into overdrive, in preparation for a potential invasion.
Worried about the growing strength of the US/CS, Russia avoids invasion by entering into an alliance with Hitler's Third Reich.
The alliance between Russia and Germany prevents Operation Barbosa, which should have resulted in a combined 20-million casualties.
Spared from the strategic miscalculation that would have lead his undoing, Hitler and Russia are able to secure Europe within 2-years.
There is no need for Japan to attack Pearl Harbor - nor time for the US/CS to assist its overwhelmed allies in Europe.
No one arrives to discover Hitler's Final Solution or liberate the prisoner's of his Concentration Camps.

World War 2 is brought to a close in 1947 with Europe, India, Russia, the Pacific and Middle-East all belonging to the Reich.
Africa and Australia are given to the Allied Powers in exchange for the US/CS keeping out of the conflict.
Thousands of Scientists flee the Reich to the US/CS, bringing tales of the unimaginable atrocities committed by the Reich.
Their defection gives rise to a wealth of technological advancement in the US/CS, benefiting the economy, the military and home.
Galvanized by their stories, Texas Senator Joe McCarthy rides a wave of isolationist sentiment to become president of the CS in 1948.
He quickly becomes the face of the US/CS, being a much better showman than his US counter-part, President Harry Truman.
McCarthy's accomplishments include the alliance's entry into the Atomic Age.
He also the built the 30-foot wall that bares his name, along the Confederate State's two-thousand mile border with neighbor Mexico.
McCarthy quickly becomes the FDR of the South - actively serving as President of the Confederate States until D-Day, 15 years later.

The US/CS was destroyed in 1960 at the hands of the Reich.
The Alliance's destruction did not come by air or sea, but from the inside.
The Reich's weapon - smuggled into the heart of the Alliance's 50 most populous cities was like an A-Bomb, only deeper and darker.
The blasts varied in size, leveling anything within a mile or two of the ignition point.
They destroyed all electronics and vaporized every plant and animal for miles beyond their destructive footprint.
The largest of the explosions went off in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Houston and Atlanta - or the Rift Cities.
The loss of life at these five cities was so monumental that they each opened a separate rift into the Netherverse.
The resulting tares in reality hang above the skeletal remains of the Alliances most populous cities, like nightmarish Northern Lights.

25 percent of the Alliance's population was vaporized on Doomsday. Another half died the following year - and another they year after that.
Scattered communities gather in the third and fourth tier cities of the now defunct US/CS with hopes of rebuilding.
The following years were lush with plague, disease and barbarity, as well as a spiritual plague.
Fallout from the bombs and rifts transformed both the survivors and land.
First came the storms, the mutations and then the demons that emerged from the Nether verse.
There were a couple periods where the dead rose from the grave, before being summarily put down - and finally the arrival of the Reich.

The Reich hovers on over to America in 1975, possessing unbelievably advanced technology including mechs, tanks and energy weapons.
They begin with a show of force, leveling what had been America's third and forth tier cities before allowing its citizens surrender.
Once in line, the Reich uses the citizens for research and as a work force.
They spend the next five years, building fortresses and bunkers in mountainsides an beneath the earth with massive tunnel boring machines.
Many of the tunnels and bases are built on the edge of the Rifts and larger blasts, allowing the Reich to research them.

The Reich grow increasingly erratic over the course of the occupation, eventually succumbing to insanity and turning on each other.
The Maddening allows the populous to rise up against the Reich, using many of their own war-machines against them.
The struggle was not without casualties, but in the end those occupiers not killed by the Americans (or each other) fled in madness.
About half the occupying force fled in total, inexplicably drawn toward the Rift Cities (estimated somewhere around 10,000.)
Most took what vehicles, personnel carries and mobile bases with them to hurry their travels,
The thousands of bunkers, tunnels and artifacts - built during the occupation - wait to be discovered.
The entire ordeal lasted 10 years in total, ending in 1975.

60 Years have passed since the occupation ended.
That is 3 times the time it took the original occupying force to come to the US/CS following Doomsday.
Nobody from the Reich - or the Larger World - has been heard from since.