Fallout

War. War never changes.

On December 1, 1909, a craft carrying an infant child landed on a farm owned by Ivan and Marfa Knyazev in Ukraine. The couple named the child Klavdii, and raised him like them. While the child had a normal life for around the first 12 years, it’s on December 12, 1921, that the child begins to develop powers. One year later, Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union, and Vladimir Lenin became interested in the child and took him under his wing to help him become a warrior for this young nation.

In 1924, Lenin died and Josef Stalin became the leader of the Soviet Union, and would go on to raise Klavdii. Around that time, he removed all records of Klavdii’s existence and bribed those who knew him to keep quiet about this existence.

Klavdii was studied and trained for years until 1938, where his existence was revealed to the entire world as Superman. This shocked the entire world, because even though there had been stories of people with miraculous abilities, no one had seen or heard anything like this. After World War II, America was incredibly afraid of communism, even worse than the one faced in the main timeline, due to the existence of the Man Of Steel.

One of the primary differences besides Superman landing in Soviet Russia was the invention of the transistor. In the main timeline, the transistor was invented at Bell Laboratories in 1947, which was a landmark in the history of computer science. In this timeline, the transistor was invented in 2067, 120 years later. This led to a focus on atomic and robotic technology, which in turn led to the technology being far different than the one in the main timeline, while computer technology remained mostly stagnant for decades.

On March 5, 1955, Stalin died and Superman was almost unanimously chosen to be the new leader. At first, Superman was reluctant, feeling like having him run the entire country would be contradictory to it's values, he decided to become leader so that he could help people.

On August 20, 1959, a young scientist named Jon Osterman was trapped inside of an intrinsic field generator and was vaporized completely. On November 22, he reappeared as a glowing blue skinned version of his former self  . He burst onto the scene as Dr. Manhattan, America’s Superman. The playing field was evened, and the United States finally had a defense in case Superman and the Soviets decided to attack.

In 1969, the United States merged the 50 states into 13 separate Commonwealths. However, even though they lived under Commonwealths, each states had it’s own degree of sovereignty.

In 1977, the Keene Act, named for senator John David Keene, was passed which rendered all non-government approved superheroes to quit and start normal lives. It was only ever the more well-known heroes and teams, such as the Avengers or the Justice League, that were government approved, while lesser street-levels were the ones forced to quit. Some did continue independently, but they were treated as criminals.

In 1985, America and the Soviets had almost reached nuclear war, due to Dr. Manhattan’s self-imposed exile. Suddenly, New York was attacked by a gigantic tentacled monster that appeared in the city and exploded. The two superpowers then decided to unite in order to defeat the new alien threat and signed accords forbidding nuclear exchange between the two.

Although the alien menace eventually stopped appearing, the peace was kept anyway. Besides, America had begun to focus on the People’s Republic Of China, while still holding somewhat of a grudge against the Soviet Union. Any other threat that the Soviets would’ve posed vanished in 2003, when Superman sacrificed himself to destroy his former robotic servant Brainiac. For a long time, the United States would end up using Superman’s story as propaganda, by saying that he realized the good of capitalism and saved the world. After Superman’s apparent death, his position as Soviet leader was given to an ex-KGB agent named Pyotr Chigorin.

In 2051, America invaded Mexico, which caused some tensions among other countries. The next year, these tensions would increase immensely with the Resource Wars, a series of conflicts that were all related to oil and resources which started in April 2052, with the war between the Middle East and the European Commonwealth, the Fallout world’s equivalent of the European Union. On July 26th of that year, the United Nations disbanded. In 2054, the US Government commissioned construction company Vault-Tec to create 122 underground “vaults” that could support hundreds of people in the event of a nuclear apocalypse. In 2059, America increased military presence in Alaska fearing that a rival nation would come for the oil there. In 2060, as a result of a lack of oil due to years of fighting, the European Commonwealth became reduced to nation states fighting a civil war. This would prove to be a wise decision, as China invaded Alaska in 2066, starting the Sino-American War.

For years after, America would take resources from Canada, which led to international riots, even resulting in the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline being sabotaged. On September 15, 2073, the Pan-Immunity Virion Project was formed as an attempt to protect Americans from Chinese bioweapons and other diseases. While testing it in 2075, the researchers noticed that test animals exposed to the Pan-Immunity Virion increased in muscle structure and brain activity, and the virus was renamed to the Forced Evolutionary Virus and was researched for military use. However, FEV worked best on untainted specimens, otherwise creating unpredictable mutations and sterility in the subject. On February 15th of that year, Canada, after being completely taken over by American soldiers, gave in and agreed to be annexed. The annexation would be finalized the following year.

On October 23, 2077, nukes were fired. It is unknown which country started it, if any of them started it at all, but these nukes started a two-hour long nuclear exchange between most nuclear-capable countries. By the time those two hours passed, the world was in ruin.

This was not the end of humanity. Many people survived through whatever means. Some were saved in vaults, some had their own bomb shelters to hide in, some were even turned into “ghouls”, irradiated humans with a long lifespan and immunity to the harmful effects of radiation.

While humanity may have survived, conflict was kept alive as well. New factions would go on to emerge from the ashes, all fighting among each other.

Belligerents will change. Technology will change. Reasons will change. The environment will change.

War. War never changes.