Hell Valley By RvBOMally Watch

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of course, I had to do this and wait until today to post it. I got a request for a BTTF 2 1985 map a while back, but I decided that 2015 would be better. Since BTTF's creators described their 2015 as a counter to cyberpunk trends of the time, I made the future of their dark 1985 very cyberpunk.



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It is 2015 (October 21, to be exact), and the future is not as bright as some may have hoped. Biff Tannen, the autocratic President of the United States, stands nearly alone after he and his predecessor, Richard Nixon, attempted to muscle NATO into doing their bidding. On the other hand, the Warsaw Pact has fallen apart, replaced by a European Union tired of the Cold War. Vietnam is a chemically-blasted hellhole, as the first act of the new President Tannen was to use the 17th Parallel as a dumping ground for his company’s toxic waste. The war was won by 1990, but at the cost of turning the United States into an international pariah - with one notable exception.



Under the economic and political mismanagement of Tannen, the United States has notably declined in prestige. Europe slipped from Tannen’s fingers, as the Warsaw Pact declined and European powers became disgusted with Nixon's bold autocracy and refusal to allow the two Germanies to reunite. The rise of Japan in the East continued unabated, and reduced America into little more than economic protectorate. To be sure, the United States remains a powerful military force, the only true challenge to China and the Soviet Union, but the Japanese have the power of the purse. This has turned the Japanese-American alliance, a pet project of Nixon’s that was continued by Tannen thanks to bribes from Japanese officials, into a mutual partnership of corporatocracies.



Both Japan and America are effectively run by their most powerful corporations, with significant overlap between the two. President Tannen, a thug with few moral qualms but a lot of personal power, is effectively a puppet for anyone who can pay for his hedonistic lifestyle. The Japanese government is filled with nationalists who deny the crimes of the Second World War, who are allowed to win elections and stay in power so long as their corporate masters allow them.



The Soviet Union remains, a corrupt military dictatorship run by the victors of the Coup of 1995. The Soviet bloc has been in constant decline since the 1980s, although the reforms of Gorbachev have prevented the entire Soviet system from collapsing. The modern Soviet Union is what they describe as a “market socialist economy,” with many all-but-private enterprises interacting with what’s left of Soviet state industry. With the advent of easy nuclear fusion, the Soviet Union’s petroleum industry tanked, but the Soviets have applied fusion en masse more quickly than any country except for the European Union. While the Soviets are richer than they were in the 1980s, make no mistake: the Soviet Army that has ruled the country since 1995 is still unchallenged. The Soviet military leadership is corrupt and inefficient, but it does recognize that riches bring stability and power, so they encourage liberalization and integration with the global economy. But even they prove far too conservative for the likes of younger generations of Soviets exposed to European and Japanese culture.



China has reformed its economy and is a rising power in the East, concerning both the Americans and Soviets as their spheres of influence shrink, and threatening to topple Japan’s dominance. Economic liberalization in the style of the Soviet Union, emulation of Japan’s pro-corporate attitude, and the promotion of foreign corporations outsourcing work to China has allowed the Chinese economy to skyrocket to new heights and transformed the country into the new rising star in the East. Political demonstrations in the 1990s, demanding political liberalization, were quickly suppressed, and foreigners cynically note that the interventions in both Mongolia and North Korea were conveniently timed.



The European Union, while still one of the richest countries of the world, faces its own problems. Crafted in a slapdash fashion over the years since the fall of the Warsaw Pact, the European Union’s political system is confusing and byzantine, even to its own leaders. Nobody is entirely sure who runs what and how, and even the sovereignty of individual European states is in question. Is the EU an alliance, a federation, or something in between? For the past decade or so, the EU has pursued a policy of becoming more and more economically independent from the Americans, who Europeans see as corrupt Japanese puppets.



Technological advances make life more convenient, but they have also placed it under even greater threat. Antigravity technology has made heavy lasers and railguns in orbit around the planet easy. American and Soviet special forces drop into warzones around the planet from hovering personnel carriers and efficiently eliminating any who oppose Washington or Moscow. Cold fusion technology has made nuclear weapons cleaner and increased their explosive power tenfold. Backpack-sized units have been recently developed for military use, and the possibility of infantrymen wielding lasers that can burn through tanks is very real. Computer technology has interconnected the world and become ubiquitous and necessary for just about everything. Computer literacy is just as important as traditional literacy, and some people in Japan spending most of their lives in virtual reality worlds.



But things would change forever on October 21, 2015. On this day, Hill Valley police arrested a deranged man claiming to be President Tannen. While his claims are eerily believable, given his physical (and, interrogators would admit to themselves, personality) resemblance to the President, an executive order quickly has "Biff Tannen" locked in a padded cell. Of greater interest to the President and the Department of Defense is the 80s sports car the man was driving, and the interesting modifications made to it...

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Published : Oct 21, 2015