Malinovsky-1

(Also referred to as “Alas, Babylon” and “Two Minutes Past Midnight”)

Current Year: 1971

Classifications: Hell World

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

-Albert Einstein

On October 24th, 1962, at 4:27 PM EST, the nations of NATO and the Warsaw Pact engage in a complete nuclear exchange. Following a rapidly degenerating version of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Defense Minister of the Soviet Union Rodion Malinovsky ultimately orders a preemptive nuclear strike on the United States and its NATO allies, which is granted clearance by Nikita Khrushchev. The members of NATO immediately respond once the incoming attack is detected with a full nuclear counterattack. Roughly 35 minutes pass between the first public alert issued by the nations of NATO and the first impact of an incoming enemy thermonuclear ICBM, and roughly 46 minutes pass between the first public alert issued by the nations of the Warsaw Pact the first received incoming attack. Over the course of less than two hours the entire planet is completely devastated. Three fifths of the planet’s entire population is killed in the initial exchange. The few centers of civilization that survive the initial exchange have their populations rapidly succumb to the utterly stifling amount of radioactive fallout that results from the apocalyptic war. Following the deaths of nearly any portion of humanity that was not sheltered at the time of the war or immediately afterward, Earth’s surface has become a desolate, uninhabitable wasteland.

The remaining survivors are primarily those that were sequestered in properly-built and heavily-stocked fallout shelters in various parts of the world. Enclaves of survivors have been trying to make contact with each other via methods like short-wave radio to try and organize a larger, better survival network and potentially move to the surface in the near future when the threat of radioactive contamination fully dies out.

Rumors circulate of radiation-resistant or even immune humans roving the surface of the dead planet as nomadic tribes, but the veracity of these rumors is still being investigated.