Volatile Disposition 2088: The Updated Guide

Foreword by Kuro
Volatile Disposition is an accident.

I never actually planned for it to go this long or for it to be this big. It's an accident, a very happy accident; as Bob Ross would say.

I'm surprised that it's lasted this long. But if there's anything to say, I've got a few people I want to thank first before we get into the nitty-gritty of what's happened in VD: With that, let's get into the updated world of Volatile Disposition.
 * Eledec, for his maps;
 * Sidewinder and Derp, for filling in the mod responses when I couldn't do so,
 * Every past and current player of Volatile Disposition. You're what's made the map game work so far; I can't say that it would have made it past 2079 that way. We're approaching 30 years in the map game, and that's amazing for me.

2059 - 2066: The North African Conflict
The North African War was a conflict fought in and around the former Lower Islamic Union in North Africa. Its belligerents included the United States, Northwest Africa (now Maghreb), Tunisia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Nigeria, the Lower Islamic Union, the Holy State of Sarahwi and Morocco. Other supporting nations included Japan, China, Australia, and the Federation of South America.

The North African War's prelude was marked by the Nigerian exit of the Islamic State in Algeria and West Africa, having liberalised in previous years and become more open to international trade. This was followed by the Northwest African-Tunisian ceasefire (eventually a peace), which brought a brief end to conflict in the region. At the same time, ISAWA backers in Saudi Arabia lost power during the Arabian Revolution, cutting off access to Moscow Defence Pact funding, putting a squeeze on the resources of ISAWA.

This came to a head over suicide bombings in the United States, allegedly committed by Lower Islamic Union agents. The ISAWA Council, headquartered in the LIU and fearing for loss of power, declared war on multiple nations, including ISAWA members, which brought the LIU into a four-front war: between British and American landings on its coasts, as well as a Tunisian-Nigerian push from the East and a Northwest African offensive from the Northeast. This put a large strain on LIU resources, and culminated in a deadly scorched earth policy; thousands of captured soldiers would commit suicide before being taken as Prisoners of War, and civilians were encouraged to resort to similar measures in captured cities. The mass suicides of captured cities resulted in roughly 340,000 deaths in total.

In 2064 this resulted in the first use of nuclear weapons since 1945 in an actual military conflict: the detonation of a nuclear device near the city of Dodi (in present-day Ghana), killing 40,000, a majority of which were Tunisian forces from the Tunisian 9th Infantry Division. International outcry was followed by a huge boost in funding for military forces in the region, the Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as the East African Defence Pact formally entering the conflict. This was the final straw; and only two years later, the Lower Islamic Union and its ally, Sarahwi and Morocco, capitulated.

The collapse of the Lower Islamic Union allowed Northwest Africa to begin a lengthy process of slow liberalisation, annexing Sarahwi and Morocco, while the U.S and U.K set up occupation zones in the former LIU. This is largely responsible for the ensuing rise of Northwest Africa, which then renamed itself Maghreb. North Africa experienced a post-war economic boom, fuelled by Western dollars and international interest, and as of 2088, Maghreb, Tunisia and Nigeria are all middle powers in their own right, Maghreb inching towards Superpower status.

The economic consequences of the North African War are still prominent today. The war catapulted Nigeria and Maghreb into the Western Hemisphere, opening both countries up for trade, and allowing both to become developing countries on the higher end of the developing-developed spectrum. Internationally, the North African War is remembered and recollected through numerous works of media and entertainment, such as the Tunisian  'iinqadh alearif hazim (Saving Corporal Hazim), loosely inspired by Saving Private Ryan, and the American-Japanese manga collaboration Bokuragaita, based off the experiences of the Japanese Special Forces Team in North Africa.

East Asian Nanobotlia Crisis: 2064 - 2075
The East Asian Nanobotlia Crisis was a large outbreak of what is now known as Malfunctioning Nanobotlia Infection (MNI) in East Asia. It resulted in the collapse of the Union of East Asian Socialist Republics, or China, and had wide-ranging ramifications for international disease worldwide.

The Crisis' background began in the 2030s, where a Japanese Scientific Association team and a Chinese Scientific Association team began work on a cure for cancer using nanorobots, which they hoped to scale down to the point that it could combat cancer cells in the human body. This was helped by improved Early Detection methods developed in South Africa. However, the teams' research abruptly ended with the US Evacuation from China in 2043, causing the research to be thus abandoned and the unfinished device, termed as 'nanobotlia', to be left unfinished.

However, after the 2051 Japanese-Chinese ceasefire, as a gesture of goodwill between both nations, the Japanese and Chinese governments forced the teams to restart their work as a method of reviving dead corpses, which, while receiving heavy criticism within the Japanese government, was pushed so as to maintain the peace. This proved to be futile, however, and after achieving no results for a decade, in 2061, China recalled all personnel and abandoned the project. In the meantime, the Japanese government itself abandoned the project, but rogue personnel from the project attempted to restart the original goal of the nanobotlia project, which resulted in the first Tomamu Outbreak.

The malfunctioning nanobotlia came from a systematic error in their coding, which resulted in nanobotlia occupying areas of the hosts' brains and forcing them to act against their own will by using hosts' nervous systems to induce near-complete control. Thus, it resulted in 'zombie'-like behaviour and faster infection. While fears of airborne nanobotlia spread, it never occurred due to Japanese actions against airborne introduction.

The disease spread quickly, and by 2067, the JSDF was forced to defend major Hokkaido cities from being infected. This was followed by several Chinese vessels, which had been illegally trespassing into Japanese waters as to provoke the Japanese government, being infected, and returning to port in Tianjin. This caused the infection to spread into Northeast China, causing another outbreak in Beijing and Tianjin. Political tensions between differing factions in the Chinese Communist Party resulted in no definitive action being taken against nanobots, and thus allowing the infection to go unabated.

The infection easily spread through Hebei and Beijing with police and army forces confused as to the nature of the infection, many mistaking it for a mass rebellion. The misaligned and mismatched response caused millions more to be infected; one of the most iconic photos of the disaster, the Against Her Will photo of a teenage girl infected by the nanobotlia virus originating from the Beijing infections. This caused the total collapse of the UEASR, splitting it up into several different countries and leaving the original Beijing-led government stranded in Northeast China.

The Northeast Chinese government fared no better as British air raids, prematurely judging infected persons as 'zombies', flew over the country and Hokkaido in a misguided attempt to destroy the virus. At the same time, the U.S government placed the last publicly known member of the JSA, Taichi Kudo, under Federal Custody following his refusal to cooperate (which in itself was caused by Eastern Russia blocking refugees from entering).

However, the tide started to turn following the escape of Kudo from the FBI Headquarters in Seattle, whereupon he left detailed blueprints for an Electromagnetic Pulse device designed to kill the nanobots and leave the host person relatively unharmed. This caused the Japanese government, in 2073, to begin utilisation of their own short-range EMP weapon, and the JSDF to begin pushing into Hokkaido, coinciding with better weather following the end of the abnormal Global Cooling phenomenon.

The Indian government launched a large-scale EMP weapon at infected Northeast China around the same time the virus crossed into Mongolia and Zabaykalsky Krai in 2074. The EMP, while inducing large collateral damage in Northern Korea, was extremely successful, and essentially neutralised the entire virus altogether. In the same period, in 2074, the JSDF declared Hokkaido virus-free, with over 168,500 Japanese citizens dead thanks to the virus, but 5.76 million Hokkaido residents saved from death by the usage of EMPs. The former two countries had similar declarations in 2076 and 2078 respectively.