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Arwyn:
Here is one I recently setup, still tinkering with it before I kick it off, I haven't decided if I am going to run with this as conventional or not, and the two scenarios I ran produced some interesting setups.

My apologies for formatting weirdness. This didn't come over particularly well from the source document.

New Beginnings
The state of Earth in 2050 is vastly different from the beginning of the 21st century. Polictally, culturally, and economically, the world is a very different place in the wake of the terrorist attacks that culminated in the Red Plague of 2016, and the subsequent retaliatory attacks in 2016-2017.
Following the events of the Arab Spring in 2011, and the subsequent upheaval throughout the Middle East, further destabilization of autocratic regimes followed in Africa and Asia. While most of the popular uprisings toppled autocratic regimes, the counterpoint was the Pakistan Collapse at the end of 2013, and subsequent civil war, followed shortly thereafter by the re-emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan.  Both regimes were hard line Islamist, and incredibly hostile to the West, India, and the new progressive regimes in the Middle East.

The new regime in Pakistan immediately began purging the government, business leaders, and most importantly, the Pakistani military of “heretics, blasphemers, and apostates” immediately after seizing control. The purge of the officer corps particularly decimated the Pakistani Air Force,  and caused chaos in the Army, as the new Islamist regime went after any all of the Army officer corps that had been involved in suppressing the militants during the early 2000’s. A large number of Pakistani military officers fled to the United States and Britain as the purges continued, and brought frightening tales about the state of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.  Over the next several months, they were followed by a majority of educated Pakistanis, particularly educated women, who were afraid of the Taliban style rule that the Islamists were enacting. The flight of the educated classes sent Pakistan’s financial, healthcare, and communication infrastructure into a spiral that it never recovered from.
The nuclear situation in Pakistan provoked immediate retaliation from India, with the Indian Army launching a massive attack on the disputed Jammu/Kashmir border as well as air and naval strikes against Pakistani air, sea, and suspected nuclear facilities. Intelligence provided by the US, and UK by way the refugee Pakistani officers provided excellent information to the Indian military, but intense fighting in the Kashmir region bogged down the Indian Army within a month. Indian air and naval strikes on the other hand were incredibly successful, with the result of the destruction of what remained of Pakistan’s Air Force and naval assets. Strikes against Pakistani C3 facilities brought organized Pakistani responses to the attack to a standstill. Despite remarkable success, the Indian Army was unable to stabilize the gains it had made, and faced a constant stream of attacks from a remarkable number of uncoordinated militant groups.

As international concern continued to build over the situation, the US and UK intervened with targeted strikes by air assets and surgical insertions of special forces assets in an attempt to eliminate Pakistani nuclear capability, including existing weapons and the capability to manufacture them. By and large, the operations, backed by UN security council resolution, were spectacularly successful. Within three months, the Pakistani nuclear arsenal had been seized or destroyed, and Pakistan’s capability to produce further weapons had been eliminated.

However, there was no ground commitment by either the US, or the UK, and no commitment by NATO or ASEAN of any further troops. The public in the west was almost universally unwilling to commit to another military campaign in South Asia after the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Instead, Pakistan was allowed to slide into chaos, with a Taliban style government presiding over a scattered tribal hinterland. Fighting was endemic.

By 2015 the area had become a haven for terrorist and extremist groups, and constant streams of radicals were queuing up to serve in the increasingly bloody guerilla war against India. The hard line government was angered at their humiliation by the West and India over their former nuclear arsenal, and several groups, both governmental and other affiliated radical groups began working on rebuilding or replacing their nuclear capability.

Iran had been serving as a supply conduit to the radicals in Pakistan and they in turn went back to Iran to request aid in rebuilding their nuclear stockpile. Word of this leaked out, and the Iranian government, which was still struggling to control its increasingly restive populace, was afraid of Western intervention and declined the Pakistani request. The Pakistani government was infuriated and looked to find another way to rebuild its WMD capability.

By the beginning of 2016, guerilla and terrorist attacks had prompted the Indian Army to dig in and erect massive fortifications and entrenchments to keep the guerrillas out of India. Kashmir began to resemble the Western Front in World War 1, with massive trenchworks, mine fields and wire obstacles. Increasingly frustrated by the increased difficulty in penetrating India, the radicals turned toward an easier target, the former Soviet Central Asian Republics.

Central Asia was having an increasingly difficult time maintaining stability. As the revolutions spawned by the Arab Spring spread outside of the Middle East, the autocratic regimes in Central Asia became increasingly heavy handed in suppressing any dissent or political reform movement in their respective countries. While it was done under the auspices of suppressing radical Islam, and while it was blessed by Russian and Chinese authorities, it was clearly aimed at keeping the existing regimes in place.

The first to fall was Tajikistan. Tajikistan was a resource poor country, and in an effort to build energy resources via hydroelectric power, had run afoul of their larger neighbor, Uzbekistan. With their economy in a crisis, and with a restive and increasingly discontent population, the radicals were able to easily cross the open border from Afghanistan into Tajikistan and they found an audience for their message in the disaffected rural population.  The government fell in a matter of two months.
Radical incursions into Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan followed, and produced bloody retaliation by the governments there, with assistance from Russia and China, who were becoming increasingly alarmed. The situation in Central Asia continued to decline, with large sections of the rural areas of both countries becoming no-go zones for government forces in fairly short time frames, as foreign radicals began pouring into the countries. Caught between a restive population clamoring for democracy and civil rights, and a radical Islamist insurgency in the rural areas, the Uzbek and Kyrgyz governments began to disintegrate. Bloody purges and widespread murder, rape, looting, and mutilation followed.

As the situation continued to decline, the same scenario began to play out in the largest of the Central Asian Republics, Kazakhstan.  At this point, Russia decided that they were no longer going to act in a support role and Russian military forces began rolling across the border and engaging radical guerillas. A general roundup of suspected radicals ensued, and the Russian army began to make substantial gains in liberating large portions of the countryside from the radicals. Widespread allegations of torture and summary execution that followed the detaining of suspects drew little international condemnation, as the world was far more horrified by the graphic pictures coming out of Central Asia from the new “Central Asian Caliphate”. Russia was also just as horrified, and that fear gave the hard men in government all the leeway they needed to “deal with the emergency at hand”.

Russian and China reached an agreement by late 2015, and the Chinese Army crossed the border into Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in an attempt to cut off radical fighters from their supply lines to Afghanistan. Reports of the Chinese troops being even more brutal than the Russians were unable to be verified, as the Chinese applied a total press blackout of the areas and moved quickly to arrest and detain all reporters and foreign nationals left in the area as a “safety measure”.
Despite the success of Russian and Chinese action, the damaged proved to be done. Radicals discovered sites in the republics that gave them access to the WMD’s they so fervently desired, former biological weapons facilities of the former Soviet Union. While one of the locations gave them limited weapons, mainly Anthrax, the knowledge and production capabilities did set them on the course to develop far worse. More importantly, they gained access to technical sources that were willing to help them develop the weapons.

The Russian and Chinese continued to push the radicals out of their “Central Asian Caliphate” and had almost entirely cleared the territory when the first biological attacks occurred in early 2016. Russian and Chinese troops on leave behind the lines in the area reported a series of illnesses. Anthrax was quickly identified, but Russian and Chinese sources were initially reluctant to believe that it was the radicals responsible. Within a month, there was no doubt, as a massive outbreak of smallpox erupted first in the Russian troops, and within a week, the Chinese. The infection was rapid, and spread incredibly quickly from the military occupation zones back into Russia and China. Within weeks, both countries were gripped in the midst of a massive infectious outbreak of a disease that was all but extinct.

Despite the best efforts of the rest of the world to limit access and prevent infection, they had not moved fast enough. Business travelers and tourists to both countries brought back the disease with them and outbreaks began appearing. Massive civilian casualties began, as the smallpox outbreak quickly began overloading healthcare systems. Even that did not seem to be enough for the radicals, as another bio weapon release followed. Carried by infected “martyrs”, this release proved to be even more horrifying that the smallpox nightmare. The Red Plague was a genetically engineered super bug. The incubation period was three to five days, followed by the rapid onset of systems. Fever, muscle pain, sweating, and cramping were the initial symptoms, then victims started to experience hallucinations, paranoia, and aggression as capillaries started to rupture, given victims a flushed or blotchy appearance before they succumbed to massive hemorrhagic collapse and bled out. The Red Plague was highly infectious, aerosol or contact spread, and survived for weeks on clothing and possessions touched by the infected. In the huge dense urban areas of China, and the compact cities of Europe, it was unbelievably lethal.

The one-two punch of smallpox followed by the Red Plague shattered all semblance of organized society in Russian and China, with Europe following quickly behind them. No continent or country was unscathed. Even in more remote areas from the initial outbreak, the damage was severe. The death rate was so high that bodies began piling up in the cities faster than they could be eliminated or buried, adding further disease and despair. Nowhere was this more evident than in Shanghai, which earned the grisly nickname of “city of bones”.

The radicals had little time to celebrate their so called success. Facing massive civilian deaths and collapse of their societies, both Russia and China retaliated with their own arsenals of WMD’s. Chinese attacks remained strictly nuclear, but the Russian response was to empty their entire arsenal of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Afghanistan and Pakistan were rendered uninhabitable wastelands, and despite suffering from the very plagues they had released, the Russians added to it with their own biological and chemical agents. The response did not stop there, as the Russians targeted Iran for its support of the radicals in Pakistan. Iran had maintained supply chains into Pakistan and Afghanistan the same way it had supplied radicals in Iraq during the second Gulf War, and Hezbollah in Lebanon even earlier. Russian nuclear weapons scoured Iran’s major cities, and Iranian society, already fatally weakened by the Red Plague, collapsed. The last Russian strikes targeted Saudi Arabia, although by this point in history, it is unclear as to why. By this point, the entire region was being targeted in an outpouring of wrath, as nuclear strikes raged.

By 2017 it was all over. The Middle East and South Asia were irradiated wastelands, and the rest of the world was not in much better shape. Earths global population had dropped from seven billion to just one and a half billion in a space of two horrifying years. Entire countries had been depopulated. Africa had a simply collapsed going from over a billion to a tenth of that, as their health care systems failed under the weight of the epidemics, and organized society collapsed.

South America suffered heavily; Brazil in particular was hard hit. Chile and Peru were the least affected; as many of the more remote communities in the Andes simply walled themselves off successfully. The United States and Canada, despite their geographic size and advanced health care, still lost roughly two thirds of their previous populations, particularly in the densely urbanized east coast and great lakes areas.

Europe was not much better off than Russia. Britain managed somewhat better than the continent did, but not by much, as did the Scandinavian countries, with communities in the Arctic north fairing much better due to their isolation. Finland fared the best, as its government had reacted with great speed to arrest the epidemics and was largely successful in areas outside of Helsinki.  Generally, the further east you went in Europe, the worse it was, with some exceptions, Romania managed to come through better than most of Europe, despite the collapse of its health care system, as many of the mountain villages simply cut off outside contact. Bulgaria, on the other hand, saw large numbers of refugees fleeing Russia and the Ukraine and collapsed under the waves of disease those refugees brought with them.

In Asia, the flood of refugees from China had brought with them the Red Plague, and with it, destruction to most of continental Asia. Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Island states weathered the storm somewhat better than most, although some areas saw destruction as bad as China. Tokyo was a wasteland, losing almost ninety percent of its pre-war population.

2017 saw the world diminished. There simply wasn’t a functioning economy, health care and social services were almost entirely non-existent in most locations. Lack of power, sanitation, and transportation left most major cities as charnel houses. The world slid into a Second Dark Age.

2050- New beginnings.
By 2050, the world had stabilized; in fact it had done so faster than projected by many experts. Most claimed that this was done by cannibalizing large portions of legacy infrastructure from depopulated areas, and was in fact by and large correct.
Several large power blocs had established themselves, and were working rebuilding and expansion.

Skandinaviska Unionen: Formed originally by Sweden, Norway, and Finland, the SU expanded and began incorporating portions of the Baltic States, Denmark, and portions of northern Germany and Poland, the Kola Peninsula, and Karelia, Icleand, and most recently, Greenland. The SU is nominally socialist, with extensive social programs, but with a very vigorous capitalistic bent. The SU had functioning military industrial facilities after the Plague Years and made a considerable amount of money selling munitions to groups outside the Union. The SU military is one of the best equipped and best funded, and they The SU has glimmers of pre-war Scandinavia, but by and large they are a very practical and pragmatic group. The SU has been aggressive in perusing the new technologies that have been discovered and they are not backing down from the threats posed to them by their regional rivals. Unlike several of the other regional powers, they SU has generally been invited into areas by popular vote and concessions.

??????? ??????? (Russian Empire): Formed by remnants of the last Russian Federation armed forces units still intact after the collapse, the Empire is based out of the former St. Petersburg due to its proximity to the Baltic Sea, and the trade routes it brought. The New Russian Empire was ruled by a succession of autocratic military rules, and that changed into an Empire ruled by Tsar. The Empire has been largely successful selling themselves as a reincarnation of the old Russian Empire under the Tsars, and they are unabashedly nationalistic and militaristic. The Empire consisits of Russia, Belarus, portions of the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and its in the process of absorbing the Central Asian states and portions of China, Manchuria, and Mongolia. There is actually little dissent internally, as the survivors in Russia were glad to have a strong government in place after the Plague Years and the incessant fighting, raiding, and brutal winters that followed. The Russian Empire has cool relations with the other regional powers, but has been overwhelmingly brutal in its conquest of Central Asia. Islam is officially outlawed in the Empire, and Russian treatment of the Central Asian minorities in its territories has brutal and murderous. Large portions of the Imperial population blame Islam and the Central Asian populations for their sufferings during the Plague Years, right or wrong. The Empire has a somewhat cordial relationship with the FRS, and is their only major trading partner. The Empire has claims to territory currently under the control of the SU, and relations between the two are frosty at best. The Empire has some trade agreement in place with the ANA, and is currently squabbling with the NAU over the disposition of the Bering sea region.

Française République Socialiste : The FRS is neither Socialist or a Republic.  The FRS is a described as a return to the ideals of the Revolution, but it is fact a fascist junta. How the FRS was actually built up after the war is unknown. The official history is clearly a fabrication, but what is knows is that the FRS was quick to exploit the chaos after the collapse of the last French government and it began seizing surviving population centers. It did so peacefully where it could, but it was quick to resort to violence where its overtures were not met with cooperation. The FRS has been quick to seize territory outside of “historically French” areas that it claims to protect. Most of pre-war France, Belgium, Northern Italy, Northern Spain, Luxembourg, and Germany west of the Rhine have all been “liberated” by the FRS. They have “reclaimed” the former Algeria and Tunisa in the last ten years, despite there being no organized government in those two areas, the fighting was savage and the FRS is still recovering. They are aggressively expansionistic, and generally hostile to their regional neighbors, although they have a somewhat limited cooperation agreement in place with the Russian Empire. The FRS is somewhat lower tech than the other major power blocs and are seeking to hurriedly correct that imbalance.

Mitteleuropäischen Staaten or the Central European States: Formed directly as a consequence of the aggressive FRS, the MS/CES was an alliance orignally composed of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The CES lost the majority of Belgium to the FRS in their first conflict, and the areas west of the Rhine soon thereafter. The CES has since grown as other European stats joined to ward off larger neighbors. Currently the CES is comprised of the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and portions of Bulgaria. The CES is a democracy, and it is heavily militarized for its size. A large portion of its GDP goes to defense, as it sees itself surrounded by hostile powers. The western part of the CES is obsessed with the FRS, but the eastern states are alarmed by recent Russian expansionism. The CES has an uneasy trade relationship with the SU, more as a matter of seeing the SU has the least worst option. The CES is activly hostile twoards the FRS, having recently fought a war with them over the Rhine, and it is activley preparing defenses in case Russian attempts to expand at their expense. The CES has trading relationships with the ANA and NAU, but their trade routes are at risk of sea and air denial by the FRS in the advent of hostilites.

The Atlantic National Association: Led by Britain, the ANA was formed as defensive union to deter the threat of the FRS. The ANA is composed of Britain, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Portugal, Southern Spain, Morroco, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Greece, Southern Italy, Crete, Cyprus, Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, Belize, Mauritania, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, Rhodesia, South Africa, Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. The ANA has a great deal of natural resources at its disposal, but it is hampered by poor infrastructure and poor education levels. The ANA is ardently capitalistic and its economy is growing rapidly as it pushes forward with large mineral and infrastructure programs. The ANA and the FRS have several points of contention, the hottest being the ANA membership of Brittany, which the FRS claim as a part of “Greater France” along with former French colonies in Africa. The ANA military is larger than the FRS, but its hampered by poor training and discipline in the 2nd line formations from its African member states. The ANA has good relations with the SU and their North American Union trading partners.

North American Union: A fusion of the remnants of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. The NAU is surprising blend of its former elements. Due to the rampant violence and banditry carried out by former drug gangs in the Northern Mexico and Southwest United States at the end of the Plague Years, the NAU has been very aggressive in stamping out crime and promoting the rule of law. The blend of different cultures and systems has organically grown into a somewhat chaotic multi party political system, which has actually done a fairly good job of tempering out some of the political extremes seen in the former governments of its member states. The NAU is an economic powerhouse, but is somewhat mineral poor compared to the ANA, who has larger natural resource reserves, but less manufacturing capability that the NAU. This has led to a fairly profitable trade agreement between the two nations. The NAU has been in discussions with the ANA over containing expansion by the FRS. The NAU has also been contesting the Bering Sea region and its fisheries and natural resources with the Russian Empire.

Association of Asian Nations: The AAN was an outgrown of the former ASEAN. The ASEAN nations suffered heavily during the Plague Years and had some of the largest per capital rates of death in the world. The AAN became further alarmed as it watched the growing power of the Russian Empire, whose prescense in the Pacific has been growing, and the ANA, who has recently added Australia and New Zealand to their fold. In response, the AAN has added several members to its roster and changed its name. The AAN now includes Brunei, Camboidia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Canton, and most recently India. The AAN suffers from internal dissention and there is a significant amount corruption in several member states that has been a challenge for the government. Most of this turmoil reflects that this amalgamation has only been finalized in the last twenty years, but the economy is the strongest in world. The AAN is also the most populous major power and has a large pool of technology, but it is uneven distributed. This unequal distribution drives the majority of the political instability of the AAN, but the government is taking steps to see that more impoverished states are brought up to levels closer to their more advanced members.  If the AAN can weather their internal squabbles and social concerns, they could easily become the most powerful of the major nations. The government has been using the recent Russian expansion into the Pacific and portions of China as a rallying point, and it is one that has been eagerly seized upon by the public at large. With the exception of Russian, the AAN has neutral or better relations with the rest of the major power blocs.

Unión de Naciones Suramericanas: The UNS is the last of the major powers, and it is currently the weakest of the majors. Currently composed of the remaining nations of South and Central America, the UNS has a large population and ample mineral reserves. It is the least technologically advanced of the major power, and it resents that status bitterly. The UNS sees the NAU as a historical rival, and it has been squabbling with them over the status of Central America for years. Most recently, the UNS was humiliated over the status of Belize, which joined the ANA over the oppostion of the UNS. Elements of the UNS army crossed the border into Belize, and were repulsed with heavy losses by ANA Royal Marines backed by naval and air assets. Since that point, the relations between the ANA and the UNS have been hostile. The UNS has a profitable trade relationship with the AAN, and some trading occuring with the FRS. Recently, the UNS has being making overtures to the CES and that seems to be looking like a posible new market for them. The UNS is struggling to improve its infrastructure and technology, and has invested heavily in espionage against the ANA and NAU in an attempt to catch up quickly.

backstab:
Arwyn,

Love your set up ... reminds me of Full Thrust.  I was thinking something along those lines but with a few other nations thrown in.

Arwyn:
I would like to add more, but I have learned its best to start with a reasonable number and work up from there. Part of it depends on which, or how many of these countries you are going to run yourself and which get left as NPRs.

A fair amount of SM tinkering is generally a good idea as well, otherwise the nukes seem to fly in fairly short order. :)

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