The Cold War

"After the end of World War II, the world was split into two -- East and West. This marked the beginning of the era called the Cold War"

– Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

The European theater of World War II ended with a race by the western allies (mostly the United States) and the Soviet Union to reach central Germany and take over. A result of this was that while the Soviets took the capital and most Germany captures to the east, the west actually held the western half of Germany. During this the United States developed nuclear weapons. While too late to drop on Germany (as originally planned) they wound up using two of them to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Poor security on nuclear development led to the Soviet Union learning of these before the vice president did. Using their spies they promptly stole how to make these weapons themselves.

This wouldn't be much of an issue, as the Soviet Union was an unstable entity trusted by no one (their refusal to honor Russian debts and contracts meant nobody would trade with them) on the brink of financial ruin that wasn't even considered a legitimate government internationally. Unfortunately allied World War II strategy was propping them up with money, arms and tech so they could to throw bodies at the Germans. A similiar strategy was followed in China (with the added bonus of the communists using these assets to murder their rivals as well) to throw bodies at the Japanese, which created another large and (eventually, after realizing sparrows ate locust far more than grain and that peasants aren't good steelmakers) powerful communist nation. Now communists controlled a large chunk of the globe and were eager to see their ideology spread further, and they weren't exactly peaceful people.

To counter this massive, nuclear armed force the nations of the North Atlantic signed a Treaty to create the Organization known as NATO in 1949. This military alliance held that any attack against one of them would be an attack against all of them and lead to STANdardization AGreements to ensure compatibility standards all members would meet. These included various steps to ensure compatibility of items like ammo and gas mask filters, but also communications and general conduct like how prisoners are treated. In practice this was mostly a threat of "you attack us, the US nukes you". Due to the whole "North Atlantic" thing Australia, New Zealand and Japan weren't included, though they followed many of the STANAGs and were on the list of places the US would respond with nukes if attacked. The United Kingdom and France would develop nukes of their own within a few year, but most of the threat was still from the American nuclear stockpile.

The two sides realized that any attack would result in Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) due to how many nukes they both had and avoided doing that directly. Instead conflict was conducted through spies and proxy conflicts where, using their newfound power, the communists would prop up other communist revolts across the globe. In response the United States would prop up their opposition, regardless of how blatantly evil they were. At least twice this went as far as outright military action by both sides during the Korean War and Vietnam War. In response to these proxy wars and people simply leaving their shithole by the millions, the Soviets built a large wall across their western border known as the Berlin Wall. They also had a falling out with the Chinese, which split the two.

MAD would take a new level with the development of InterContinental Ballistic Missiles. Developed from the V-2 rocket of Nazi Germany these rockets and their nuclear armed warheads could strike almost anywhere in the globe and ensured even perfect anti-air defense wouldn't stop MAD. Development was facilitated by a "space race" between the Soviet Union and United States. Allegedly a peaceful contest to reach space and put man on the moon first, it was an open secret this was mostly an excuse to develop better rocketry and rocketry guidance while the main point of getting to space was to put spy satellites and weapons there. This interest in space and the demonstration of the awesome power of technology by nuclear bombs would fuel the creation of modern science fiction.

Eventually this era ended from the Soviet Union imploding than anything else. In the late 1980s a series of revolutions in Soviet states would lead to East Germany giving up, opening the border and reunifying with West Germany within a year. This caused further turmoil in Russia by a failed coup that lead to the end of the Communist Party and fall of the Soviet Union. With generations that expected the cold war to end in some world sundering conflict, many westerners found "your enemy implodes politically without much direct provocation by you" to be an extremely underwhelming ending. Those on the east of the wall are often a bit annoyed that decades of communism has left their economies severely stunted compared to the west (to this day, decades latter, eastern Germany is still far behind the west economically), and within Russia proper there is nostalgia for the Soviet Union (communism itself less so).

Techwise, the main advances of this era for civilians were plastics, aluminum, computers, air flight, satellite (which played a huge role in navigation and communications), and eventually the cellphone. Most of these spawned off military development from the Cold War and/or proceeding World War II.

Plastics existed since the Industrial Revolution, and by The World Wars had uses in clothing (Nylon) and small, non-moving, components had serious use, but now they had now matured enough they were considered a major construction material. Lightweight, cheap, relatively sturdy for its weight, non-conductive, immune to rust (and other forms of corrosion) and able to be made into a wide variety of shapes plastics were a wonder material. In 1956 Eugune Stoner of Armalite invented the AR10, which used plastics and aluminum for large portions of its components and allowed it to be a full pound lighter than other contemporary rifles. Despite early success, military hardware that made extensive use of plastics was derided as "toys" (with persistent and baseless rumors the components really were made by the toy company Mattel) plastics would not see widespread acceptance for serious applications till after the 1960s. This was not helped by a series of bureaucrats screwing the M16 (a scaled down AR10) over repeatedly, giving it ammo that wad deliberately made wrong, a sub-standard barrel, telling people it didn't need to be cleaned and to reuse the disposable magazines.

Similiarly aluminum had become mass refinable late World War II due to increased demand for military applications (it's great for making aircraft out of), and falling cost of electricity. While aluminum is really common on Earth, without the Hall–Héroult process (and the high amounts of electricity required) and Bayer process for refining it, it's near impossible to get pure and previously more precious than gold (hence why the Washington Monument is topped with it). By the 1960s people were making disposable cans out of it.

The advancements of computers is obvious: You're reading this on one (or were a smart ass and printed it out with one). While early computers were used in World War II to break encryption, their use would become standard during this era. Computers made large scale data computation simple and fast while allowing vast amounts of information to be stored with tiny physical space. Linking together computers in a network for data sharing led to the internet you obtained this text from. By the end of the Cold War and beyond, computers had become so important to life that the late Cold War and beyond are often dubbed the "Information Age" where, like stone and bronze before it, information was the big deal of the day.

The appeal of the Cold War

The appeal of the Cold War in fiction comes mostly from the spy game. Since the end of the Cold War, the role of espionage has greatly fallen. If you want to do a work of fiction about spies and don't have a specific setting, it will generally involve the Cold War or at least former Cold War spies.

More generally there's a bit of nostalgia for the west having a clear enemy to stand against and one that, if you weren't a spy, you'd generally see coming. The CIA director after the end of the Cold War told Congress "We have slain a large dragon. But we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes. And in many ways, the dragon was easier to keep track of." Now the main enemy is one half of politicians and most entrainment production try to prevent being demonized (regardless of what it does) or being fought seriously. This enemy can kill thousands of civilians in a night and, not being a state, you can't send an army after them in response. You might not even know who did it, even after lengthy and costly investigations, if they don't take credit for it.

There's also appeal in the general military conflict of the era, but this is mostly appeal of the Vietnam War as a setting and appeal of "what if all those cool toys NATO and the Soviet made actually saw use?".

Cold War inspired Games, Factions and Settings

• Anything set in the modern world that was made after 1945 and before 1991.
  • Call of Cthulhu
  • Ghostbusters RPG

Cold War Gone Hot

"Critics might quibble with this depiction of the climatic battle of the Cold War because, while awesome, in real life there was no climatic battle, there was no battle with or without Velociraptors. The Cold War was won without firing a shot."

– Senator Mike Lee

• A nuclear and devastating "World War 3" is in the background of most post-apocalyptic works and and a few sci-fi ones.
• Team Yankee

Historical Time Periods
Deep Time:	Prehistory
Premodern:	Stone Age - Bronze Age - Classical Period - Dark Age - High Middle Ages - Renaissance
Modern:	Age of Enlightenment - Industrial Revolution - The World Wars - The Cold War - Post-Cold War