Fallout The Eagle And The Bear [Fallout AU]

[ForeverShogo]

It's nice that one guy isn't comfortable throwing the Brotherhood under the bus, but if it makes him feel better he just has to remember the Brotherhood played its own role in fucking over the NCR's offensive when they pulled a bunch of their power armored forces out of the fight to launch those ill-fated raids.

It'd also be really funny if the rebellions the NCR kept hoping would happen took place not in US territory but instead took place in Brotherhood territory. Very much a be careful what you wish for situation. "Oh sure. You'll get rebellions. But it'll be one of your allies facing rebellion."

The people living in Brotherhood territory tried to rebel against them once before. They even almost succeeded. It was the survivors of the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood fleeing west after the Enclave defeated them that gave the Midwestern Brotherhood the strength to put down the rebellion.

NCR: The Brotherhood's fortress cities will surely ruin the Enclave's offensives!

Fortress Cities: We're going to openly rebel as the US Army approaches.

 

[KnightTemplar]

New California sort of reminds of the British Empire with their divide and rule foreign policy and their tendency to backstab everyone they've ever worked with. That's not always a bad policy but it can come back to bite you. California has made a lot of enemies at home and abroad who would love to see them bleed and only stay with them because they're currently strong and fear of the E-USA. If that ever changes then they're going to be in trouble.

 

[Crow gotta eat]

Well, the Courier got them their evidence. Though like what was mentioned in the NCR top brass conversation, I doubt it will lead to what House is hoping for, as most of current NCR leadership will still view it as a duel to the end.

With them believing that the E-USA will just walk about on any treaty in the future when they outnumber them and their allies against the E-USA are basically walking corpses or will be easily knocked over in the next conflict, it is not exactly an unfounded fear with the realpolitik thinking that the E-USA embraces at least in the upper-levels of their government. Plus all the levels of hatred the E-USA has for the NCR just as the NCR has for the E-USA making this probably easily justifiable to the citizenry.

 

[SuperHeavy]

Fortress Cities: We're going to openly rebel as the US Army approaches.

Well when your options are dying en-mass in a flash of plasma from a mini-nuke or fighting to death for your feudal overlord that takes your children for indoctrination things get messy. Because if they fort up the US army is going to pry them out even if it means razing the city to the ground.

 

[Navarro]

when they outnumber them and their allies against the E-USA are basically walking corpses or will be easily knocked over in the next conflict

The big issue with this is the higher level the NCR, BOS and USA are over practically else on the continent. When the other factions are unable to make the sci-fi levels of tech they're playing with or even to fully understand how it does what it does on a theoretical basis ...

 

[Crow gotta eat]

The big issue with this is the higher level the NCR, BOS and USA are over practically else on the continent. When the other factions are unable to make the sci-fi levels of tech they're playing with or even to fully understand how it does what it does on a theoretical basis ...

Exactly. The NCR's allies are either walking corpses or easily knocked out due to the whole Sci-fi tech the E-USA has and problems within their own nations. Thus the NCR feels the need to knock the E-USA out now to make sure the E-USA won't be able to develop any future advantages like a bigger population, because the longer the E-USA exists to develop itself further the more it looks like the NCR will either lose what advantages they do have or have them be not enough.

 

[Pantegral]

I really hope that there'll be epilogue chapters taking place years and decades after the war, exploring the post-war landscape. Especially how arduous reintegrating ex-NCR territories into the US is going to be; it will be the work of two to three generations, at an absolute minimum.

The NCR has been independent for one and a half centuries, and its entire identity is centered on opposition to the Enclave - and by extension, old America itself. The closest fictional equivalent would be Turtledove's TL-191, where the US annexed the Confederacy wholesale after winning the Second Great War - and in that scenario, the Population Reductions (i.e. Black genocide) meant that the CSA could be delegitimised wholesale as a regime utterly beyond the pale; the NCR hasn't done anything nearly as evil...not yet, anyway. As US troops inexorably advance towards the Californian heartland, it's entirely possible for something similar to the Battle of Okinawa to reoccur: terrified civilians, fully convinced that the monstrously evil Enclave will rape their wives and enslave their children, will commit mass suicide while US troops beg them not to with loudspeakers.

Even after Old Glory has been raised atop Shady Sands, I can easily see Werwolf-style guerilla/terror forces harassing US troops for years to come, while the population's near-universal hostility to the "Enclave" will take decades of interaction and propaganda to wear down. If the NCR's clone soldiers have free will and could therefore be deprogrammed, they might become more loyal to America than any Californian native; the US could then employ them as occupation troops, reducing the political blowback that would otherwise occur back home from occupation troops being wounded or killed.

 

[Navarro]

I really hope that there'll be epilogue chapters taking place years and decades after the war, exploring the post-war landscape. Especially how arduous reintegrating ex-NCR territories into the US is going to be; it will be the work of two to three generations, at an absolute minimum.

There will be an epilogue taking place some time later.

The NCR has been independent for one and a half centuries, and its entire identity is centered on opposition to the Enclave - and by extension, old America itself.

The NCR's self-identity is more ... confused. Are they the legitimate successor to America, the continuation of the Old World? A spiritual successor, picking up the torch that the USA dropped? Something new and unrelated to the USA? Or indeed, anti-America? They themselves don't know, and the continued existence of the USA throws that into stark relief.

The closest fictional equivalent would be Turtledove's TL-191, where the US annexed the Confederacy wholesale after winning the Second Great War -

TL-191 is an influence on this fanfic, for sure.

and in that scenario, the Population Reductions (i.e. Black genocide) meant that the CSA could be delegitimised wholesale as a regime utterly beyond the pale; the NCR hasn't done anything nearly as evil...not yet, anyway.

Indeed, which is why the war itself is so grim and morally confused.

As US troops inexorably advance towards the Californian heartland, it's entirely possible for something similar to the Battle of Okinawa to reoccur: terrified civilians, fully convinced that the monstrously evil Enclave will rape their wives and enslave their children, will commit mass suicide while US troops beg them not to with loudspeakers.

Heheheh.

Even after Old Glory has been raised atop Shady Sands, I can easily see Werwolf-style guerilla/terror forces harassing US troops for years to come, while the population's near-universal hostility to the "Enclave" will take decades of interaction and propaganda to wear down.

In some places, yes.

 

[TyrantTriumphant]

I don't know why everyone assumes that the war will end with the Enclave conquering the NCR. While there is no chance of the NCR conquering the Enclave that doesn't mean that the NCR won't be able to secure their independence.

After all, the NCR has some pretty nasty cards of their own to play. If it comes down to a mutually assured destruction scenario then the Enclave might have no choice but to go to the negotiating table.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Finally finished catching up to the latest chapter & just wanted to say this has been a stellar read from the beginning. Thanks for your entertaining work, please do keep it up!

 

[AspblastUSA]

I don't know why everyone assumes that the war will end with the Enclave conquering the NCR. While there is no chance of the NCR conquering the Enclave that doesn't mean that the NCR won't be able to secure their independence.

After all, the NCR has some pretty nasty cards of their own to play. If it comes down to a mutually assured destruction scenario then the Enclave might have no choice but to go to the negotiating table.

Had to go digging for what I remembered, but I found it way back on page 8. Navarro posted a map of defense lines the NCR put up and commented on the E!USA finding them difficult to overcome.

Won't be relevant for quite a long while but here's a map of the NCR's three main defence lines:

In Arizona we have the Cassandra Line, then on the Colorado the Kimball Line and finally the Tandi Line protecting Shady Sands. To go into any more details would be spoilerrific but suffice to say even E-USA will find them formidable.

Now maybe I'm reading too much into it but I read that as the E!USA at least reaching the Tandi line by the end, and when the enemy is bearing down on your capital it's basically over. That's why I've been assuming this ends with occupation/reintegration, for my part.

 

[SuperHeavy]

After all, the NCR has some pretty nasty cards of their own to play. If it comes down to a mutually assured destruction scenario then the Enclave might have no choice but to go to the negotiating table.

I am quite certain that after an invasion and who knows what else being done to civilians behind enemy lines that the US populace will not accept "Well we tried but it was too hard." If nothing else the government has beaten it into their heads that they have basically a holy mission to reclaim all of America. I would put money on the US launching their strategic stockpile before they stop trying to secure the continent.

 

[ForeverShogo]

The thing is, I'm not sure if MAD is even truly viable anymore. The defense systems that would intercept, say, a nuclear exchange have been significantly developed and improved upon such that I don't think there's really a risk of shattering America again.

If it came down to it I think the US has a pretty one sided advantage in what could be done with strategic weapons. They've already re-established their presence in space and have been developing space infrastructure. I don't think the NCR has been able to do the same.

In theory, all the US needs to do is deploy some Rods from God while keeping the NCR from obtaining space assets. At least if things reached the point of deploying strategic weapons.

 

[Crow gotta eat]

He saw the sound of chopper engines overhead – ours or theirs – then saw brilliant green beams smash out from his own lines to illuminate the helicopters. They fell in mid-air, smashing into the tarmac of the enemy airfield. Then he heard artillery fire from behind his lines, followed shortly by explosions amongst the rear – where the laser AA is. They’re sacrificing their own men to get the co-ordinates. Guess

I just noticed this back in chapter 21 after deciding to reread things to see if I missed anything or if anything stand out more with any new information the latest chapters gave out, but it cuts off right here with "Guess", which I assume was going to say something about how the Enclave appears to be desperate to be sacrificing their aircraft to get coordinates for artillery fire.

 

[Navarro]

Well, stuff like this is what comes of not having a beta reader.

 

[Navarro]

I don't know what sort of state the USSR was in by the 2050s, but taking on both of the other two nuclear superpowers simultaneously was a... bold choice for the PRC. I can't imagine how terribly the Chinese must've been pasted if they faced the full brunt of both the American and Russian nuclear arsenals in 2077.

The Capital Wasteland and the Boneyard were reduced to ruins. Central China's large cities (Wuhan, Chengdu, Nanchang, Changsha, Chongqing, Hefei, Zhengzhou) were turned into lakes of glass and molten rock, and even the coastal areas under American or Russian occupation took a fair few hits. There's literally nothing there in that area for the most part but tiny neolithic farming villages in areas that weren't contaminated by Project Pluto-style missiles, regular fallout, wanamingo and molerat infestations, etc. Oh, and literally tens of millions of feral ghouls across the countryside and in the ruins of the small cities and large towns that also got nuked, wandering the land in search of food in between multi-decade cycles of hibernation.

 

[Navarro]

Related:

The PRC in September-October 2077, six years after it had reached its apogee. For all intents and purposes, by this point the conventional Chinese military was in the process of collapsing. Chinese war industry was non-functional and famine and disease rife throughout the PRC's territories. On 11:00 AM, October 23 local time (23 PM October 22 EST), US Marine Corps forces in Beijing put Old Glory up over the ruins of Beijing in a display televised for all America and a radio request was sent by the ROC government in Taipei (which was in the middle of its preparations to move to Nanjing) demanding Premier Cheng's unconditional surrender, as a combat engineer team prepared to fight its way to the entrance of his command bunker. In ten hours the Sino-American War would enter its briefest and most destructive phase.

 

[Navarro]

The M42B Enola

The M42B micro-nuclear weapons system, as formally designated, is an improvement on the M42 'Fat Man' which saw deployment through the closing two years of the Sino-American War on an experimental basis. The Enola represents an improvement on the 'Fat Man' nuclear catapult primarily in terms of range and accuracy; the yield of the micro-nuclear shells it fires (pure-fusion devices, as all US nuclear weapon in the present era) has not increased above the M42's 100kg of TNT. The most important alteration is the replacement of the compressed-air launching system of the M42 by a coilgun system and the new laser targeting system, which functions along with the new shells' plasma thrusters to allow for limited guided use. The M42 fires a generic micro-nuclear shell, a "canister round" containing multiple nuclear-grenade equivalents with a yield of some 30kg of TNT, and an experimental shaped micro-nuclear charge.

 

[SuperHeavy]

Oh, and literally tens of millions of feral ghouls across the countryside and in the ruins of the small cities and large towns that also got nuked, wandering the land in search of food in between multi-decade cycles of hibernation.

Well that's a horrifying glimpse into the world of a radioactive zombie apocalypse that has lasted centuries. At least they don't have Super Mutants.

 

[Navarro]

Well that's a horrifying glimpse into the world of a radioactive zombie apocalypse that has lasted centuries. At least they don't have Super Mutants.

They travel across the countryside in swarms tens of thousands strong, ripping apart and eating every form of animal life that gets in their way. Whole villages flee or are consumed, lacking numbers or equipment to stand in their way. Then when the horde has eaten every moving thing in their local vicinity, they fall into a state of hibernation until people go in seeking new farmland ... inevitably some unlucky fool will awaken the jiangshi, and the cycle starts over again.

Super mutants are small fry.