World Detail

Synopsis:

The version of Earth from which Raven hails is siginificantly different from both "Real" Earth and Cordelia's current Earth incarnation.

Where as on both the Real Earth and Cordelia's Earth the Cuban missile crisis was averted on Raven's Earth it wasn't and resulted in a limited nuclear exchange between the USA and Russia.

Background:

The first major change in history is that Nakita Khrushchev was not the leader of the Soviet Union during the crisis. He started to bring in his reforms to the country to move it away from Starlin Soviet. In 1959 he became ill with a strange wasting disease. There was nothing that could be done and he died. The cause of his death was never officially discovered but was Polonium 210 poisoning. Khrushchev was replaced by the hard-line Stalinist, Vladimir Siranazi. Siranazi hated the west and any kind of compromise or reform. He held Stalin to be a hero of the people. John F. Kennedy failed to gain the Democratic nomination in 1960. It going instead to Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey did not have the charisma to overcome the lead that Richard Nixon had. This lead to Nixon becoming president. So instead of Kennedy and Khrushchev the crisis was managed by Nixon and Siranazi.

The War:

In the Kennedy/Khrushchev crisis both sided compromised. The missiles in Cuba where removed by the Russians and the Americans removed their medium range missiles from Turkey. Nixon/Siranazi would not compromise in any way. The conflict continued past October 28th with both sides still staring each other down. During this time Nixon had ordered a strike force to be assembled to invade Cuba.

Instead of ex-Cuban nationals as in the Bay of Pigs disaster this was a full US strike.

Ships started to assemble in the area around the Florida Keys.On December 12th the fleet moved on Cuba. Nixon was gambling that the Soviets would not want to get involved in a war in Cuba due to the hugely long supply lines involved. While the American supply lines were very short and easy to maintain.

This would have been the case had things on Cuba not been significantly different to what USA intelligence determined. As the CIA had determine Siranazi would not have become involved directly in a war in Cuba although he would have provided supplies to Castro. Unknown to the Americans there were more than ICBMs on Cuba. The Soviets had deployed several short range, nuclear tipped, tactical missiles. These had the range of about 400 miles with a 10Kt war head. The command and control for these missiles and warheads lay with the Russian commanders in Cuba. Castro took advantage of this and ceased the missile batteries. He then gained the arming codes by the use of torture. Once he was in control of the weapons he launched them all. There were 12 missiles in total. Eight where launched at the American fleet which took huge damage. The last four where launched at Miami, North Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale. About 2 million people died at once.

Nixon’s military advisors recognised that this was an opportunity to do what they had wanted to do for years and launch a full nuclear strike on the USSR. They convinced Nixon that a strategic strike was the only way forwards. Nixon did not agree with his Generals but did order a strike on Cuba. Cuba was almost completely destroyed in the hail of nukes.

Siranazi’s advisers thought that the US was launching a full strike on the USSR. Siranazi authorised a limited strategic strike on the east coast of the US. This was followed by a similar strike by the US on Russian cities. During this limited exchange about 300 warheads made their targets. The damage was horrific. An estimated 20 million people died on the day with the death toll reaching about 50 million in total. Siranazi and Nixon where now ready to unleash all their remaining weapons most of which were on bombers flying to their targets.

Seeing the huge damage already wrought in Russia a group of generals realised that they could not win. They had expended most of their long range missiles and where now relying on bombers. They knew that the Americans still had long range missiles, subs and the short range missiles in Europe and Turkey in reserve. With this disparity in the number of nuclear missiles available they knew that the only outcome would be the total antihalation of the USSR. They issued the bomber call back codes in the hope of limiting the damage.

This was in direct contravention of the orders Siranazi who was prepared to run this war to the end. This lead to the military deposing Siranai taking over control of the USSR. Nixon, seeing the Russian bombers turning back issued orders for the American bombers to return to holding patterns. The Russian generals now in charge managed to open a line of communication via Europe to America where an end to hostilities was negotiated. During this whole event Europe had decided to keep neutral. Although American missiles where kept in the UK none were launched. Bombers where launched from Europe by the US. The Warsaw pact countries likewise took little part in the war as they saw no advantage in joining in.

Aftermath:

Millions of people were killed, infrastructure destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of acres of land poisoned by radiation. The fallout spread round the world raising the background radiation levels everywhere and to dangerous levels in some places. Cancer and birth defects skyrocketed. The destruction in the USSR lead to the complete breakdown of the country. It splintered into each of the smaller countries that had originally been absorbed during the Second World War.
The economy of the area collapsed completely in some cases to a medieval, subsistence farmer level. America suffered millions of dead and the destruction of cities that were central to the operation of the economics of the country.
Although Nixon had tried to limit the exchange of nuclear weapons by only matching the USSR’s attack and by rapidly agreeing to a cease fire he received little praise. His hard line during the Cuban crisis was seen as the catalyst that caused the war. He was forced to stand down shortly after the war ended. JFK stepped forward as the central figure organising the rebuilding of the country.
He took over control of the country in a way that has not really been explained. Once in power he worked hard to rebuild the damage done. The Warsaw Pact broke up due to the collapse of the USSR’s economy. The collapse was similar to the fall of the Berlin wall but 20 years earlier. Several wars where fought in the collapsing region.
 The rest of the world was affected by the huge economic changes. Large parts of the world had either been American facing or Russia Facing. There was a global depression that lasted 30 years. Western Europe did not get involved in the war but where badly affected by radiation, economic problems and the chaos from the collapse of eastern Europe. It took until the mid 1990s until the economy was really back on track. South America was not really affected by the war at all. The damage to the US allowed some of these countries to grow their economies a great deal. Israel lost the support of America. The surrounding Arab countries that had long hated Israel attacked it in 1974. A huge war in the area lasted for 10 years and killed thousands of people. The result was the destruction of Israel and most of the Jewish people in the area. Jerusalem was levelled to the ground. Australia was not directly involved but was damaged by the economic downturn. China ignored the whole affair and was not affected at all but they did take the opportunity to reclaim some territory in the area. Japan was similar to Australia in that the destruction damaged its economy badly. North Korea invaded and conquered South Korea. Africa was mostly unaffected.

World Changes:

The space race ended in 1962.

No one has yet walked on the Moon.Exploration of the solar system is 20 years behind the equivalent date on the Real Earth.

The Chinese have developed an interest in space and are in the process of developing a manned moon landing plan. They have the only space station presently in orbit.

The EU also has some space research but mostly in the form of probes launched to the planets.

Technology development stalled after the war for 10 years or so. Recently, computer technology has really started to move ahead due to the major tech areas in the UK, Germany and Italy. There is no Microsoft. Bill Gates died in the war aged 7 years. Unix does not exist either. Neither does Apple computers.

The main OS is EUOS. This is an OS developed in Europe between the major universities there. It is open sourced and similar in form to Linux.

Intel is a small chip manufacture. The main processors come from ARM and Sony. Sony developed its own line of high speed, multi core CPUs.

Hollywood was nuked during the war. This has led to a large number of regional film companies producing a variety of films. American culture although still prevalent is not as important as now. No Star Wars or Star Trek although Dr Who is going strong.

The internet was already in basic existence when the war happened. It continued to develop in a similar but less American centric way. All in all the main affects were that America is nowhere near as important as it is now.

Internet and Computer Software Changes

America has taken part in the development of the internet and software but not to the degree as before. Many other countries have developed software to fill the niches that were otherwise filled by companies such as Microsoft, Google and Apple.

As already mentioned the main operating system became EUOS which grew out of the need by the European Universities to have a single operating system. Up until this point there had been many different systems. Many written for a particular computer system. This created huge complexity with porting software between systems.

As the internet was started by the Americans with the UK coming in quickly and inventing the WWW, English has remained the main language of the internet.

The letter ‘I’ has become synonymous with ‘internet’ and ‘interactive’. In Raven’s world it is the letter ‘w’ for ‘web’.

Several search engines where created to map the web. The one that rose to prominence was written by two students at Oxford University. The University retained control of the system which became known as OXS, short for Oxford Search. This grew and became the biggest search engine on the web. Controversially the original designers who had been students did not get any financial reward for creating the system.

wSale is the equivalent of Ebay and Amazon. It is an online auction site with similar functionality. But in this case it was designed as an outlet for companies first and then added the personal (sW-Personal) auctions later. It uses wPay to handle payments. This is actually an online credit card company rather than a payment go between so you have to apply as you would a credit card. This system is based in Italy. They are now the largest retailers in the world.

The BBC built a huge repository of video to allow access to their film library. They started a small system for people to upload their own home videos. At first only for license fee payers. This service grew in size and was split from the BBC repository to make Beeb-Vids which functions much like YouTube.

Iceland has always seen itself as a community as well as a country. A computer student created a system that allowed people to keep track of friends and family and what they were doing. A French friend of the Icelandic student saw the system and between them then made an international version called ‘Friends-International’ or ‘FI’ for short. This application grew to fill the niche of FaceBook.

Tasword was a word processor written for the Spectrum computer (this version used the Sony TriTi-2 CPU). The company, Tasman Software continued to develop their word processor software for other platforms. They branched out into other office applications including TasCalc, TasDraw, TasPresent and TasPublish becoming the largest office productivity company in the world.

The war has left the tech business behind the real earth. The technology is about 10 years behind at the present time. Smartphones have not yet become a thing. Nokia exists and dominates the mobile market with its flip phones. Technology is nearly at the point where an iPhone like device could exist when someone designs it.

Character Background

Raven’s real name is Joanne. She was born in January 1995 in Cambridge. She has lived her life in the town of Waterbeach, just north of Cambridge.

Born to parents Margret Hemsworth (ne Gander) and James Hemsworth. James started out as a CPU designer, starting with two university friends a  a company called GridChips. When the company was brought out by the chip giant ARM it was worth nearly a billion pounds. This has made the family very rich. They live in a large house that they had built on the outskirts of the town.

As the daughter of an exceptionally wealthy family Raven, and now her younger sister, goes to Mayfield Catholic Girls school in Sussex. Raven was a normal girl until about the age of 15. She started to feel that she did not belong in normal culture. She had always been rather shy and as a bit of a nerd was bullied at school. She is very good at Maths, Science and Computers.

While browsing about the web she found a Neo-Pagan group. She became more interested in the neo-pagan movement finding and attending a local group. She has found that she feels like she belongs within the movement. This has caused a lot of problems with her parents who very much, as Catholics, disapprove of her choice. She has dyed her hair black and tends to dress in black adorned with silver, pagan jewellery. She has also obtained a set of red contact lenses although she has never worn them at home.

Raven does love her parents but just wishes they would accept her as herself. The school also does not like her change in behaviour. They do not allow makeup and that includes dyed hair. Recently the pagan coven did some experimentation in an attempt to rediscover the secrets of magic after they gained access to a copy of an ancient book.

Much to her surprise Raven found that the magic really did work for her. She has kept this fact secret not only from her family but also from the coven. She continues to experiment in private. Raven is at present a typical, sulky teen. She is trying to find a place in the world. She is intelligent and kind, skinny and rather short with a pretty rather than beautiful face.

The Rodian Wars

The world that Raven lives in is quite a long way from the base universe. Because of this the war had a more limited effect on the world.

The weather effects occurred and there was an infiltration of daemons. The daemon invasion was of a small size and was fought up by the UN. The attack occurred in the US. The breach occurring in meteor crater. The impact of the meteor had damaged the fabric of reality there. The crater erupted like a volcano and the daemons came out of the fire.

Due to the damage that had been done by the Great War America appealed to the UN for help. An international force was dispatched to the US to fight the invasion. China supplied the largest number of troops for the defence. After the war China left a large number of troops in America to ‘intercept future daemonic invasions’. This has given China a legal foothold in America.

The daemonic nature of the attack has been kept secret as much as possible. The official story is of a devastating volcanic eruption. But it is not possible to completely hide the true nature of such an event. The popular belief is that the event was an extra-terrestrial attack of some kind. World governments and the UN have subtly reinforced this belief.

The storms were called ‘The day of butterflies’ after the butterfly affect chaos theory. Raven was only 9 when it happened and collapsed. She was rushed into hospital but nothing was found to be wrong. After some hours she regained consciousness.