Editing Setting:The Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap

This is an ambitious project where posters will be called upon to provide "on the ground intel" of what their local area (town, county, up to a region within a state) is like three years from now after a tense situation involving NATO expansion in Eastern Europe allows a missile detection system error to trigger a nuclear war that spirals out of control as other nuclear powers strike out either out of fear or a sense of opportunity. If we can eventually get even just one account, even it's just a single town and how it's dealing with other towns and forces inside of it's county, for each state in the United States I'd consider the project a great success. Such a collection would allow gamemasters and players a unique opportunity in semi-realistic post-apocalyptic storytelling, painting a picture of connected points across the nation. Accounts of the situations, both regional and national, of other countries from non-American posters would be greatly appreciated as well and help provide a better view at reconstruction efforts the world over.

The basic premise has only a few conceits from reality other than perhaps a tone that's more "gritty action/drama show or movie" than actual reality. These are: A. that, since most of the top tier of the federal government have been wiped out or gone missing anyways, that no real politicians be referred to and it be assumed that those that have survived and play into the setting, whether in the basic premise or in the posts of contributors, are not any that we would recognize. And B. the assumption that certain Cold War era civil defense programs like the National Program Office never lost the majority of their funding nor were outed or at least called attention to in a major way or heavily dismantled after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

With that out of the way, here is the basic premise:

In the wake of a limited nuclear war triggered by an accident involving NATO expansion in Eastern Europe (an "oops" scenario where the state of high alert between NATO and the Russian Federation led to caution not prevailing when a detection error was made by one of the involved commands and subsequently China becoming involved defensively and possible opportunistic/reactionary exchanges such as North Korea targeting Japan, Iran and Israel targeting each other, and India and Pakistan having a similar exchange) the United States government has become split and is now in a state of civil war.

The Military Government of the United States (The New Pentagon)
In the continental United States two Unified Combat Commands remained operational despite being struck with strategic weapons - the alternate USSTRATCOM command center at the NORAD base in Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, and the alternate Pentagon site and home to Northern Command at the Raven Rock Underground Pentagon in Pennsylvania. These commands quickly reestablished communications following the attack, sorted out their chain of command, and called upon all of the few military bases left to mobilize regular military and reserve units. Using this smattering of surviving units they have established control areas in some parts of some states, and can also be assumed to control the regions of Colorado and Pennsylvania surrounding their main command centers. If any nuclear missile bases are still operational, they control them, but it can be assumed for now that they would not use nuclear weapons on US soil. In those areas under military control there may be a military governor over the central community in the area of control, the military presence may be the guests of a functional civilian government of some kind, or they may be maintaining a military base independently with some local support and supply lines with other military controlled areas. The New Pentagon government has different recruitment policies in different areas: some controlled communities may have a draft, others may be accepting volunteers, and still others may be authorizing the creation of local militia (that aren't to be transfered elsewhere) under the New Pentagon aegis.

The Civilian Government of the United States (Pegasus)
With D.C. and Camp David wiped off the map and Congress either dead or unaccounted for, the shadow government of the National Program Office quickly took effect. A new president was sworn in, Attorney General John Aberdine, according to the line of succession and a massive federal camp was opened in Virginia. This was all according to the contingency plans laid by the cabal of the Pegasus Committee consisting of the Attorney General, key Cabinet members, the heads of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and retired three-star Army general Bertram Wayne to name a few. Before the President's legitimacy was challenged by the military, he used his executive privilege to call upon National Guard units from all across the United States and reassigned them to regional projects, in effect allowing the last vestiges of those state governments that survived having their capitals destroyed to fall apart. In addition the Pegasus government has a good chance of controlling any surviving and operational federal outpost belonging to the FBI or under the broad aegis of Homeland Security (which controls Immigration and FEMA for starters); and, more disturbingly, Project: Pegasus involved the cooperation of certain lead captains of industry and private paramilitary facilities manned by contracted personnel, mainly former military men and civilian specialists, scattered all across the nation; all of which are now active. Their stronghold is the state of Virginia, where they control the undamaged Mount Pony facility (and thus the Federal Reserves and Treasury stockpiles for the entire nation East of the Mississippi), the FEMA bunker on Mount Weather, and use the few Congressmen that made their way to the secret alternate Congress site of the Greenbrier Hotel in nearby West Virginia (and were then extracted and brought back to Mount Pony) as propaganda tools to show that President Aberdine is not a dictator.

The civil war began officially 18 months after the nuclear exchange and as of now, three years after the exchange, their war is still primarily a cold one as they each try to reestablish control over areas in order to reform interstate supply lines and commerce. It should also be noted that in most cases both sides use the American flag and federal uniforms, so telling the difference between forces of the two on sight may be difficult. Both sides would be quick to try to order or recruit any loose military or National Guard units they encounter and to turn elements of State Defense Forces (which can't be controlled on the federal level legally and thus wouldn't of been called out by one of the two governments initially) in areas they are attempting to spread into to their side. In many cases what few military bases and National Guard headquarters' were left standing have been occupied since the departure of those units by State Defense Force units, local militias, or independent fighting forces such as marauders and petty warlords.


Inspirations-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(TV_series)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_2000 (For inspiration on how to note your local area three years into the apocalypse, check out the rapidshares for the supplement "Allegheny Uprising" which provides an example using their setting's take on the condition of Western Pennsylvania)