The World of 6-Commando, Part III
Hey, everyone! I’m still on the road, here, but just to keep everyone interested, here’s some more about the World of 6-Commando. You know, because contemplating an international arms race is fun on New Year’s.
And the text, as always:
UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA
DIPLOMATIC APPELLATION: Federal Union of South Africa
CONVENTIONAL SHORT FORM: South Africa
CAPITAL: Pretoria
LARGEST CITY: Cape Town
AREA: 794,817 sq. mi. (not including Unincorporated Antarctic Territory)
POPULATION: 67.3 Million (1996 est.)
FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Federal Parliamentary Democratic Republic
HEAD OF STATE: President
HEAD OF GOVERNMENT: President (President is both Head of State and Head of Government)
INDEPENDENCE: 1852 (from the United Kingdom)
ESTABLISHMENT: 1902 (Treaty of Vereeniging)
South Africa did not develop its own atomic capability until very recently, detonating their first weapon at Point Vela in the South Indian Ocean 1994. Detonating the weapon, however, made South Africa the first major power from that continent to join the Atomic Club, and the nation took a place as a permanent member of the UNA Security Council later that year. South Africa has a small but productive Uranium mining industry, and several agreements with Nigeria to fill out their supply of fissionable material. As the first African seat on the Security Council, South Africa has been aggressive in its advocacy of a stronger UNA deterrent force. This is understandable, given the state of the African continent, with three Disrecognized Zones harboring a number of Non-State Actors known or suspected to be seeking to acquire atomic weapons of their own, especially UNITA, which has increased activity along the Caprivi Strip in northern Namibia. Moreover, Communist insurgents and FSR agents have long sought to destabilize the area, and the addition of atomic weapons would constitute a serious existential threat to South Africa and its interests throughout the continent.
EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS-IN-EXILE
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
ESTABLISHED: 1922 (Weimar Constitution)
DEFUNCT: 1980 (Scarlet Revolution)
UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND
ESTABLISHED: 1066 (Norman Conquest)
DEFUNCT: 1981 (Communist Coup d’État)
REPUBLIC OF FRANCE
ESTABLISHED: 1793 (Declaration of the Rights of Man)
DEFUNCT: 1977 (Fall of Paris)
ITALIAN REPUBLIC
ESTABLISHED: 1867 (Risorgimento)
DEFUNCT: 1978 (Fall of Rome)
Atomic weapons were pioneered in Europe, and prior to the Scarlet Revolution of the mid and late 1970’s, there were four major atomic-armed nations in Europe: Germany, Britain, France and Italy. Germany was the originator of the design of modern fission weaponry, and detonated the first atomic weapon in 1969 in New Caledonia, with assistance from the French government. From there, atomic weapons development accelerated rapidly. Britain developed atomic weapons in cooperation with Canada and the United States, detonating their first weapon in the Yukon Territory in 1970; Italy developed weapons independently, detonating its first weapon under the Mediterranean seabed in 1972. Before the Scarlet Revolution, the four European powers collectively held an arsenal exceeding 5000 warheads and 3000 delivery vehicles. When the Western European governments fell, major efforts to evacuate these weapons managed to keep them largely out of FSR hands, placing them under Canadian and US control, where they remain.
RUSSIAN P.F.S.R.
DIPLOMATIC APPELLATION: Rossiskaya Proletaritskaya Federativnaya Sotisailisticheskaya Respublika
CONVENTIONAL SHORT FORM: Russia
CAPITAL: Moscow
LARGEST CITY: Moscow
AREA: 6,592,800 sq. mi.
POPULATION: 174.3 Million (1996 est.)
FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Oligarchical-Collectivist Dictatorship
HEAD OF STATE: Premier
HEAD OF GOVERNMENT: Chairman of the All-Federation Communist Party
INDEPENDNECE: 1922 (Russian Empire Abolished)
ESTABLISHMENT: 1924 (current Constitution)
Russia is the sole possessor, in the FSR, of the atomic bomb. For a brief period in the mid-1970s, both Poland and Austria had atomic programs based largely upon designs provided from Italy and France via the extensive FSR espionage network. When the massive destructive potential of atomics became universally evident, Russia acted to divest its allies of atomic capability, cementing the policy in the Fifth Odessa Compact in 1988, which formally provided the Russian Proletarian Federative Socialist Republic with the sole legal atomic arsenal in the FSR alliance. Since the Russian P.F.S.R. also holds a near monopoly on Uranium production in the FSR, this gives Russia very tight control over the atomic arms industry, and practically no fissile material of any sort, even for research or industry, finds its way out to the satellite nations. A notable exception is the Chinese P.F.S.R., which has been experiencing a major industrial expansion since the early 1980s and has been pushing for its own segment of the atomic deterrent to be stationed under Chinese control. This may be due to the Japanese nuclear force, which the Chinese P.F.S.R. views as a major potential wartime threat.
Curiouser and curiouser…and no, that’s not a reference.
Quicknote: Is this South Africa still in the Apartheid stage? Also, it looks like the Republic of China managed to hold onto Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hong Kong, Hainan, and most of the coastal cities.
South Africa is not in the Apartheid stage.
And the Republic of China continues to hold a thin sliver of coastal territory and many major cities, but counter-insurrection is more or less continuous throughout the country.
Russia has the boom, and they make no bones about showing it! Yikes!
They have the largest single arsenal on Earth. However, the collective deterrent of the UNA outnumbers them significantly. Everyone involved has reason to be paranoid – it’s just like a nice arms race ought to be.
Ah, good ‘ol MAD. So, at the end of the day, who survives?
Who survives? Well, that’s why there’s a comic, of course!
Wow, that is really impressive.
Just two questions here: Is there a reason why Spain is not labeled as a government in exile?
And second, shouldn’t Crimea in this scenario be part of the Russian P.F.S.R. , since I guess there was no Khrushchev here…or was he? ^^
Also, interesting to see that Germany was able to hold for years, while all other major powers around him fell to the communists. Also, is the German governemtn in exile in Quebec or some place else, like a former German colony?
These are only the European governments which had atomic weapons before they went into exile. The full list of exiled governments includes Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Andorra, Leichtenstein, Switzerland, Malta, and Greece.
Germany’s government is in the United States. Italy’s is in Nigeria, France’s is in Quebec, and Britain’s is in Canada.
It’s interesting that you’ve included both the ANC and the modern South African flag within your flag, vexillology is a hobby of mine, so I was wondering if you are aware of the symbolism in the various flags? Since you’ve based the flag on the Russian SFSR flag I assume there is an overall flag for the FSR?
There is a Federal flag for the FSR – It looks like the flag of the USSR, but with the Cogwheel-and-Spanner device, which is this universe’s equivalent of the hammer-and-sickle. Personally, I have serious problems with both fascism and communism as symbol-laden ideologies, and have difficulty drawing the hammer-and-sickle symbol, myself; it feels too much like a swastika. I think I used it once in Chapter 1. And given the risk of touching off a debate on the merits and intents of various social systems, I hasten to add that the point of this comic is human drama, not the rightness or wrongness of one’s chosen political alignment.
I admit I’m not totally aware of the vexillological significance of all the flags and their elements, but I do think that the RSA flag (which is the Union Flag in my version above, at the center), has colors representing the British, Dutch and Boer colonies and the split stripe at the center is for the ANC.
I assumed as much, it’s easy to get trapped into an ideological argument when it comes to symbolism, luckily in most cases with flags the symbolism tends to have more practical realities than purely ideological ones.
In our timeline the Union flag of South Africa symbolised the four nations/colonies which were unified within it. The overall orange white an blue represents the founding Dutch colony, the Cape Colony, and recognises it’s heritage over the later constituents of the union. The striped orange miniature flag is that of the Boer republic of the Orange Freestate. The Union Jack symbolises the British founded Natal colony. The last miniature flag is that of the last Boer Republic, Transvaal.
In the new South African flag the colours were chosen to try and match those of both the old flag and that of the ANC, with red replacing orange. The converging green segment is intended to represent the joining together of the two dominant groups with the abolition of Apartheid. So it might be a bit odd for you to include the new flag in your variant of it. Though stranger things have been done in reality.