Sorry I’m a touch late with this one, but this was a three-day weekend in the United States so I decided to cut myself a little slack. This is going to be a bit talky, but, well… Briefings are talky. This happens to be the first time we’ve seen Captain Santelli out of his battle suit! I was of two minds whether to do this, but really, he needed to be in this one, and walking into a conference room in a suit of combat armor was just ridiculous.
Anyhow, this has been an extraordinarily busy couple of weeks for me, I have to say, and really just… I don’t know. Burdensome. I’m an anxious and emotional guy, as many people know, but I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve in my day-to-day life. That kind of split in the way I feel and the way I feel like I have to behave can sometimes really make me feel overmatched. Things that some people feel perfectly justified doing and saying don’t come easily to me, and so I’ve found myself snapping at a lot of people and being a little bit harsh in ways I don’t like. I’m told that is one of the things that helps me “get things done,” but I still don’t like it. Also, not everyone around me knows not to provoke me when I’m like this, and that can make matters worse. I won’t even go into the insane mess of politics and slow-motion global destruction that’s consuming my country and the world.
And I’m also an insomniac. Although I’m currently following a regimen that has been very effective, it doesn’t really completely stop the process, it just compresses it from a stretch of weeks to a matter of days. That’s far better than it used to be (in college, I’d go for months at a time without full nights of sleep), but it still makes those few days really long and really difficult.
Wellp. Etz chaim he, as the ex used to say. The sun will keep rising, whether we’re here to see it or not.
See you next week, folks.
Santelli looks bad ass
😀
In his suit he already towers over people, I thought it’d be in keeping with his character for him to be the same in real life.
Epic
Like the gun-nut from Police Academy.
David Graf was the actor. I just found out he died in 2001. What a bummer.
Wait? Santelli has a face? He has a body? I was convinced he was just a brain implanted into a suit of armour, since that pesky, squishy human body was just holding him back.
Also, the gun nut was called Tackleberry.
I thought he was Hightower. Either way, I tried to give Santelli that kind of square-headed career marine look.
Those red stripes on Santelli’s sleeves…?
U.S. Continental Marine Corps designators. He’s a Marine, while Maj. Rucker is in the Continental Army. American services are more weirdly structured than other nations’ armed forces because of the fact that the country’s states and commonwealths are all nominally independent. The vast majority of Amdericans seen so far are Army troops wearing basic drab BDUs.
Strictly speaking Col. Haulley should be wearing black Canadian epaulettes, but he took them off at the end of chapter one in favor of collar pins.
Nice way to start things off, and Santelli is definitely a bad-ass looking dude.
Yeah, I was debating making him seem small outside his armor, but it sort of started becoming a joke. So I made more intimidating which, oddly, was the LESS disruptive thing.
Continental scale!? Considering Africa is the second largest continent on the planet, that more or less doom unless they are using the term very loosely.
We’ll get to it. 😉
We can be sure that nothing GOOD has happened to the African landmass as a whole. Implications for adjacent areas (eg. the Middle East and Europe) are worrying even if not directly attacked. And, going by some of what I’ve read about this world, even relatively minor powers can have ridiculously large nuclear arsenals. So, all too easy for things to go totally nuts.
But …. it doesn’t necessarily follow that the ENTIRE African landmass (and possibly the rest of the world) has been glassed over. Many areas will be relatively untouched (except perhaps via fallout, so just how ‘clean’ are those nukes?). Even combatants with a superabundance of nukes will pick specific targets, not just drop them in apparently empty areas on mere suspicion. Those things are expensive, after all.
So that means known military bases and large concentrations of military forces, certainly; probably most largish cities, because they are loci of industry, communications and transport; possibly many lesser cities / towns for similar reasons; very possibly some other ‘key’ locales on general principles, such as major transport chokepoints (several bridges close together) or dams (think of the extra havoc a breached dam would cause).
If you’re in a place with none of the above, you’re in luck. Just watch out for fallout. And refugees / survivors. And a lack of supplies / support.
Yeah, not good at all. Other than any remnant units, other ‘secret’ bunkers, and maybe a few free-roaming bombers still looking for something to nuke, our guys could be the only ‘organized’ military left. In Africa, at least.
That sounds like quite a big nuclear exchange then.
And I see in the background…no independent Panama? Still greater Colombia here? So the US did not intervene here to make the Panama canal? And is this the Federal Republic of Central America? Wow, history truly took really quite a different path here.
Panama is independent, it’s just mart of the Southern Coalition. The canal is in Nicaragua, though. And yes, that’s the United Provinces of Central America there. There have been several UPCA soldiers in 6-Commando so far. See if you can spot them! 😉
Screeeeeeeeeeeech Santelli in the flesh! I thought this day would never come!
😀
I love it when we get glimpses of these Alternate-History maps!
What is that region to the north of Syria? Seems a bit large and far north to be “Kurdistan”, but clearly something major happened to the Turkish Republic in the last century.
Did it get broken up after communist revolutions?
Did the Turkish Republic even form at all? Was the Ottoman Empire successfully occupied and divided by Entente forces?
Or, even more mind-boggling, are we looking at a “Kurdish-Armernian Commonwealth” and a significantly less genocidy history?
That is the Turko-Arabian Disrecognized Zone, a remnant of the chaos that preceded, and followed, Operation Scimitar, of which Major Rucker is a veteran.
Wow, being able to dis-recognize territories sounds like a really cool power! I bet I would never ever abuse that if I were in charge of the UNA.
But…the Turko-Arabian disrecognized zone? Ain’t no arabs up that far north…
Maybe in the Hatay region, but Syria would have annexed that first chance they got.
Looking at maps how far north the Kurdish populations go, I think calling it the Turko-Kurdish disrecognized zone would be a more apt name. Or Kurdo-Turkish. I think the second one sounds better.
Kurdo-Turkish disrecognized zone. It is decided. Of course you ARE the author, so maybe you have some input on this matter…
What’s the status of Cyprus? I can’t make out if there are any colors other than green there.
Cyprus is the last pro-UNA stronghold in Europe. Heavily fortified and home to the last remaining major military bases of the British Army and the RAF.
And the Turko-Arabian DRZ was originally larger, but much of what became Iraq, Kuwait and northern Syria was pacified during Operation Scimitar and appended to those respective Arab League countries.