"A Massive Grave"; Nuclear Options

The state of TIAH

September 5th, 2006

in 1571, Spanish and Aztec soldiers clash with a small mob of Londoners in Piccadilly when an Aztec warrior's insult to a shopkeeper turns violent. Although the invaders win the contest, 14 Aztecs and 23 Spaniards are killed in the fight, encouraging the resistance movement. Aztec Emperor Mectezuma is furious when word reaches him, and he orders a hundred English children to be rounded up and sacrificed in retaliation. The Spanish general in charge of his country's invasion force, Juan Del Castillo, begs the Emperor to change his mind, but the next morning sees blood flowing freely from Buckingham Palace again. The Emperor is impatient to be done with this war; England is too cold for him, and he longs to be back in his homeland. “We will crush these English barbarians brutally, so that this may be done quickly,” he told his advisors and the Spanish leaders. “Resistance will be dealt with in the harshest measures possible. I do not care if we leave London as a massive grave.”

in 1975, President Gerald Ford is fatally wounded by a follower of cult leader Charles Manson as he visits Sacramento, California. Lynette Fromme, known as “Squeaky” in the cult, shot Ford just before a Secret Service agent could wrestle her to the ground. The president was rushed to a Sacramento hospital immediately, but died on the operating table as doctors attempted to repair the damage to his heart. Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller, in his home state of New York doing a fundraiser, was notified of the President's death and given the oath of office in the kitchen off of the banquet hall he had been speaking in. His first speech as president was given in the hall, informing the gathered businessmen and the few reporters who had been attending that President Ford was dead, “but the ideals of America go on. This little woman killed a man hoping she could bring down a country, but a single bullet cannot fell the United States.” President Rockefeller pushed for strict regulation of cults when he got back to Washington, and Congress readily complied. The Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon challenged the new legislation as an attack on the first amendment, but it took years before the Supreme Court finally struck it down. By then, many small religions in America had been eradicated.

in 1980, French and West German armored divisions clash with Soviet forces just outside of Berlin as British planes battle East Germans in dogfights above the city. The Soviet Union places its nuclear forces on high alert, and the British and French do likewise. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim, makes a desperate call to America's president, Charles Evans, but Evans is steadfast in his refusal to intercede in the war. He does make one concession to the Austrian – he publicly announces, “If this conflict on the other side of the world should happen to spill over to ours, America will have no choice but to exercise its nuclear options.” Soviet Premier Brezhnev, who had been considering lobbing a few nukes into the fray in Germany, decided to hold them in reserve for now, and see how conventional combat would go.

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