Great War

From Wild Southwest Wiki

The Great War is the term in the Southwest for worldwide nuclear, chemical and biological war that destroyed the technological civilisations of the 20th and early 21st centuries, and plunged the earth into a 20 year nuclear winter.

Much information concerning the war was lost in the final holocaust, including dates, participants and causes. Even the exact year of the war is unknown - conventionally it is dated to 2020, although this is nothing more than a rough guess (particularly given the year problem plaguing the Southwest's calendars).

Some 'facts' have been passed down over the seventy odd years since the end of the conflict. It is wisely accepted for instance that the time between the deployment of nuclear weapons and the end of the war was less than fourteen days. Rome is said to have been destroyed early in the nuclear exchange, and the Pope to have escaped to North Africa. The American President is rumored to have traveled to Japan after the destruction of Washington. The validity of any of this information is highly open to question.

In Western Australia the cities of Perth, Fremantle, Mandurah and Bunbury were all hit by nuclear missiles. The naval base at Garden Island and the Pearce Air Force Base were also hit, although the Pearce missile was slightly off target. Many sites (including the Albany Windfarm) were attacked by conventional missile and bombing attacks.

Chemical and biological weapons were also widely used in the war (Rottnest Island - used as a military facility in the run up to the war - is particularly badly contaminated). While the effect of the chemical weapons was limited, the impact of contagious bio-plagues was devastating, killing more of the population than the nuclear strikes. Occasional outbreaks of engineered diseases are not unknown even in the present day, although most of the population are semi-immune through long exposure. A notable secondary effect of the bio-weapons was the near extinction of horses.