Alternate History World War III: 1988, aka "The War of '88"

Tiamat

I've seen the future...
So,Cuba would support soviets,just like their afrocan puppets Angola and Ethiopia.North Korea,too.
But i do not see how commies in Africa could hurt USA/althought they surely would genocide a lot of people there/
Cuba and North Korea are another animals.
And China would of course do nothing to help soviets - in fact,i think they would attack soviets when they start loosing to reclaim "their" parts of Syberia.
Fun thing - all part of Syberia which was part of China did so when China was ruled by Emperors ,most during Tang dynasty,and it would be fun when China commies would reclaim something which belonged to China emperors.

I've actually got it all planned out. Without going into too many details, expect to see quite a bit of hijinx and shootouts from allies/friends/foes of both the Americans and Soviets.

Africa may get a bit busier than some expect, due to certain events. Keep an eye on Egypt and Libya, and then of course there's South Africa and it's neighbors.

The Korean peninsula revisiting the bad days of the Korean War is likely to happen. And this time both sides have better toys. Don't forget there was a communist coup in Indonesia and the Soviet Navy couldn't help themselves by making an appearance in Jakarta. After witnessing all this, At this stage the Australians and New Zealanders have already finished screaming and are now busy arming along with reactivating the ANZACs.

Tito has been dead for a while now in Yugoslavia, and in this verse it's starting to violently fragment a LOT earlier, and both the East and West are taking notice.

And then of course...there's the Persian Gulf. The Iran-Iraq War hasn't officially ceased yet due to an aging and paranoid Khomeini, and something VERY nasty is about to happen, soon...
 

Tiamat

I've seen the future...
Eh, given that some of the plans of the Soviets included slating a few SSBNs with one of their tubes with spy sats and with explicit orders to destroy any other spots of civilization just out of pure spite...

Not to mention, their bioweapons program Biopreparat that came up with all those lovely germ weapons they would have likely sown in crop fields and any remaining urban areas after the nukes had flown, just to ensure any said country that was targeted by nukes, never recovered.
 

gral

Well-known member
Eh, given that some of the plans of the Soviets included slating a few SSBNs with one of their tubes with spy sats and with explicit orders to destroy any other spots of civilization just out of pure spite...

Eh, I wouldn't say pure spite. It was more, IMO, a mix of spite and 'they can't dominate me if their country also is in shambles'.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
Not to mention, their bioweapons program Biopreparat that came up with all those lovely germ weapons they would have likely sown in crop fields and any remaining urban areas after the nukes had flown, just to ensure any said country that was targeted by nukes, never recovered.
Yeah, and that is out of pure and unadulterated spite.
Eh, I wouldn't say pure spite. It was more, IMO, a mix of spite and 'they can't dominate me if their country also is in shambles'.
No, it's pure spite in the vein of 'from hell's heart I stab at thee!' magnified to omnicidal levels.
 

gral

Well-known member
No, it's pure spite in the vein of 'from hell's heart I stab at thee!' magnified to omnicidal levels.

As I said, IMO, a lot of that was that kind of spite, yes. I do think you underestimate the heights of paranoia Russians have demonstrated to be capable of, though.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
As I said, IMO, a lot of that was that kind of spite, yes. I do think you underestimate the heights of paranoia Russians have demonstrated to be capable of, though.
The thing was, they were never Stalin levels of paranoid... which makes the USSR's paranoia actually scary.
 

Typhonis

Well-known member
Why not just target the world oil refineries and be done with it? Nuke those and civilization dies rather messily. Oil is used for a lot of things and with the refineries gone there's no quick way to refine huge amounts of it. Couple this with attacks on nuclear power facilities and Bobs your uncle.

Besides bio weapons have two weak points. They can cross borders to infect your people and they can mutate into a less lethal strain.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
Why not just target the world oil refineries and be done with it? Nuke those and civilization dies rather messily. Oil is used for a lot of things and with the refineries gone there's no quick way to refine huge amounts of it. Couple this with attacks on nuclear power facilities and Bobs your uncle.

Besides bio weapons have two weak points. They can cross borders to infect your people and they can mutate into a less lethal strain.
From what I understand, the bioweapons are to ensure that 1) the decon teams are too busy with a short-lived but particularly nasty plague to mind 2, and 2) spread across the breadbaskets that the USSR wouldn't be able to secure in the post-exchange world so no one will be above subsistence farming outside the USSR (which effectively stops industrialization of other powers cold).
 

Tiamat

I've seen the future...
Hey folks, want to apologize to everyone that was following the story for the delay in an update, as until recently I have been quite busy with the Covid situation at our hospital, that plus certain acrimony that's been going on the net as everyone knows. No fault of anyone here, mind you. But I want to say I am very grateful to those that have taken the time to read and like the story so far, and am working on the next chapter as we speak.
 

Tiamat

I've seen the future...
"Let the world burn."
-- Anonymous graffiti left scrawled on the side of a ruined Nike store on Freidrichstrasse, West Berlin during the Second Battle of Berlin, August 1988.


"One of my greatest regrets in retrospect? The War, or the ''88 War as you call it, itself. I feel we owe an apology to the generation that comes after us, our children. We did many terrible things in the last war, so perhaps the next generation wouldn't have to, or so we told ourselves. That we could have a peace, and for a while, we did. But history, as they say, not so much repeats, but sadly rhymes. There is a reason the Lord teaches forgiveness...if you invoke the passions of the moment unchecked, wrath will indeed unleash the Beast...and it did."
-- "Angels and Devils: The '88 War from the perspective of a Chaplain", by U.S. Army Chaplain Col. James Willoughby, Ret. Covenant Press, 1997
 
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Circle of Willis

Well-known member
Just went through the threadmarks today & yesterday. All in all, a very good read so far - the only discrepancy I can think of is that Indonesia is one of the least likely countries to have a Communist coup in the '80s, having completely destroyed its Communist Party (once the 3rd largest in the world behind only China's and the USSR's) in what was the world's most thorough, and certainly one of the bloodiest, anti-Communist purges (leaving all of the surviving Communist Indonesian leaders stranded in places like Albania and China) and made Communism such a dirty word in its politics that red-baiting is still a popular and somewhat effective tactic in Indonesian politics these days, 50-60 years after the purges. An Islamist coup would be much more likely than a Communist one in the Indonesia of the '80s - indeed, they had become the main opposition to Suharto's dictatorship by that time, and were subject to several arrest sprees & massacres.

That said, it's hardly the most significant detail in the story, so I'm not particularly fussed about it. And I can certainly understand that a Communist Indonesia would be one that's more involved with the plot of this story, since an Islamist one would be even less likely to work with the 'godless' Soviets than Suharto and thus be totally unimportant to a capitalist-communist WW3. Overall, I enjoyed the read and am looking forward to the next chapter. Keep up the good work!
 

ATP

Well-known member
Suworow belived that one soviet "sportsmen " /in fact elite GRU operator/ was fully capable of killing few normal Specnaz soldiers.
And they all - both mans and womans - loked harmless.
 

Tiamat

I've seen the future...
Just went through the threadmarks today & yesterday. All in all, a very good read so far - the only discrepancy I can think of is that Indonesia is one of the least likely countries to have a Communist coup in the '80s, having completely destroyed its Communist Party (once the 3rd largest in the world behind only China's and the USSR's) in what was the world's most thorough, and certainly one of the bloodiest, anti-Communist purges (leaving all of the surviving Communist Indonesian leaders stranded in places like Albania and China) and made Communism such a dirty word in its politics that red-baiting is still a popular and somewhat effective tactic in Indonesian politics these days, 50-60 years after the purges. An Islamist coup would be much more likely than a Communist one in the Indonesia of the '80s - indeed, they had become the main opposition to Suharto's dictatorship by that time, and were subject to several arrest sprees & massacres.

That said, it's hardly the most significant detail in the story, so I'm not particularly fussed about it. And I can certainly understand that a Communist Indonesia would be one that's more involved with the plot of this story, since an Islamist one would be even less likely to work with the 'godless' Soviets than Suharto and thus be totally unimportant to a capitalist-communist WW3. Overall, I enjoyed the read and am looking forward to the next chapter. Keep up the good work!

Thank you!

First, I do need to thank some readers for adding input and ideas to the work I've added thus far: CurtisLemay, hands down, and to be frank I probably wouldn't have written this without his help. Also, LordSunHawk, Kujo, TraceCoburn, UrabraskRevealed (for the German translations), and the lively debates with AaronFox. And of course, all the other readers who were willing to take their time to read, like and critique.

The Indonesian coup idea was, admittedly, a bit of a handwave. I wanted to make the Pacific theater a bit more interesting when the '88 War breaks out, and significantly raise the stakes for Australia and New Zealand. Having a shared mutual defense with the U.S. vs the Soviets is one thing....If Soviet-allied Communists took control of Indonesia right on Australia's doorstep? The Aussies and Kiwis might start hitting the panic button. Even more so when the Soviets brazenly and openly dock several warships in their ports alongside merchant vessels laden with weapons to sell to the new regime, probably have a few of their long range bombers fly into one of the airports, all as a form of intimidation against the Australia/New Zealand/U.S./UK defense pact, and it almost succeeds when New Zealand almost goes neutral only to have the UK rather sternly dissuade the NZ Prime Minister from doing so. Plus, it gives additional impetus to reform the ANZACs for WW3, with Aussies and Kiwis boosted with a considerable sum of American military hardware with some potentially interesting scenarios in Papau New Guineau and the Korean peninsula.

Suworow belived that one soviet "sportsmen " /in fact elite GRU operator/ was fully capable of killing few normal Specnaz soldiers.
And they all - both mans and womans - loked harmless.

Well, the idea for the Black Widows in this universe was to move them along with Natasha Romanoff away a bit from the Marvel cheeziness, toward an unorthodox Soviet program that combined the classic espionage "honey pot" seductress with the ruthless skills of KGB Spetsnaz, alongside some of the more infamous Soviet psychological experiments (both true and urban legend) that involved brainwashing/conditioning, along with good old political indoctrination to produce utterly fanatical agents willing to do anything the Kremlin orders at the drop of a hat, one of the ultimate "boogeymen" (boogeywomen? :p ) of the covert/espionage world. Thankfully, there's not many of them, or so it's assumed. There is however as we'll see, another smaller experimental offshootof the Black Widows as well, which are a bit more of the stranger variety, hint hint....

EDIT: The unorthodox methods of the Black Widows also partly works on what some might deem sexist, but in the eyes of others, works. Men tend to underestimate women, while often getting hopelessly distracted or becoming affectionate toward them. It causes men to lower their guard....which the Black Widows learn to ruthlessly manipulate, whether on the battlefield or in the boudoir.
 
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commanderkai

Establishing Battlefield Control...Standby
Moderator
Staff Member
I'm glad to see another update. Really makes me want to read Red Storm Rising again, or load up one of the Wargame scenarios.

Keep up the excellent work!
 

Tiamat

I've seen the future...
I'm glad to see another update. Really makes me want to read Red Storm Rising again, or load up one of the Wargame scenarios.

Keep up the excellent work!

Again, accept my apologies for this next update taking so bloody long. Got sidetracked working around COVID at the hospital, plus ran into a potential roadblock plotwise when I was writing the latest chapter but finally got it resolved.
 

Tiamat

I've seen the future...
Chapter finished! Well, at least for now....I may also add one more bit to it, but that'll be later this week.

As you can see....this chapter took a "Stranger Things" turn as next follow up chapters, probably 2 or 3 are going to be set in Hawkins, Indiana. Yes indeed, the Soviets are coming. They're pissed, they've got plans for Eleven....and someone else only known as "Anna"...who could that be, I wonder? :devilish: ....and, SPOILER ALERT: It's quite possible of the Hawkins characters, not everyone will survive.

Don't worry, I'm not losing focus of WW3, but this side foray was too good to pass up. Once done, I may continue the Hawkins storyline in another post under the Creative Writing so it doesn't derail from the WW3 storyline, hence a parallel tie-in. Anyway....next stop, HAWKINS! It only gets stranger...
 

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