At the end of the day, it always seemed to come down to two men in a room.

Such was the fateful evening of May 11th, 1955, for millions the last they would ever see. Many had not slept through the previous night, the building tensions surrounding the Vienna Blockade bringing the leadership of NATO and the Warsaw Pact into endless debate over response, policy, and bluffs. Air defenses across the spheres of the two major blocs were set to highest alert, bombers were in the air, jet fighters scrambled, and ground divisions mobilized. Yet through it all, to those at the top, it never truly felt like the end of days. Most believed the other side was bluffing, that cooler heads would prevail and the sides would back down, or at worst a few light skirmishes would end in a bifurcated Austria, much as they had in Germany.

But these were not the two men who sat in a room, deciding that this would simply not be enough.

Curtis LeMay and Douglas MacArthur had seen the horrors of the last World War, start to finish. They knew what prolonged combat meant, the bloodied trenches, the countless dead, the world torn fully asunder. And they were convinced, totally and utterly, that no escalation with the Soviet Union, or any nation in the Communist sphere, would end with anything less than a repeat of the hell they had both barely survived. This time, however, they were the ones in charge, and this time, they could end all of it — all of them — before it even began.

The men had hoped that Disney would be the man to let the bombs fall. After all, he had done so in Vietnam, when the moment demanded it necessary. Surely this situation, at the heart of Europe no less, would demand at least a proportionate response. And yet, in the fateful hours, Disney would not do it, could not do it. The destruction of military formations of a Communist insurgency was one thing, but the annihilation of millions of people, millions of civilians, was simply not something he could go through with, not over Vienna. So when the radios blared with gunfire, and the tank cannons fired, and Disney did nothing, MacArthur and LeMay decided that if the President would not do what must be done, then they would do it for him. For America.

And all it took from them was a single sentence. A single lie to the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, one of treason and desperation and delusion, and the bombers were sent. By the time Disney learned of the deceit, a third of Eastern Europe was already hit. By the time he sent out the recall order, Paris and Berlin had already burned. By the time the order reached the air crews, blinding lights were already turning Leningrad and London to craters. And in the confusion of the night, before Moscow could see the retreat and call off their own men, two bombers had finished a one-way trip to California, and put San Francisco and Los Angeles to the torch. In the end, over six hundred atomic detonations roared across the Eurasian and American continents, turning cities that had stood for thousands of years into little more than piles of glowing rubble.

A death toll is simply that — a number. It can capture an objective scale, an absolute quantity of lives snuffed out over the course of a single 24-hour period of atomic fire. But no number, no chart, no real piece of written meaning could ever convey the profound and utter desolation that would take over so much of the globe. Some of the world’s greatest cities — London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, Moscow, Leningrad, Constantinople, Tokyo, Beijing, Los Angeles — were all reduced to the mere base elements of their former glory. Great clouds of dust would be thrown into the sky, darkening the globe in a haze of soot, ash, and earth that would see famines in even the most fertile of lands. The world order, so carefully constructed in Potsdam, London, and Union City, would be rendered null and void in an instant, as peoples in all corners of the globe would take advantage of such annihilation to bring back centuries-old grudges and generational feuds. The planet truly seemed to have entered the end times.

And yet, despite the predictions of so many, May 11th would not mark the end of life on Earth, nor even the end of civilization. Through the ashes and radiation and destruction, the people of this small blue marble among the stars would, in time, pick up the scattered pieces of what remained. For some who had not been scalded by the fires of atomic bombs, this would be a time of political and civil conflict, as the shattering of the world order allowed new political realities to emerge. For others, their land scarred beyond recognition, this would be a time of rebuilding, and finding a new image around which to base their society. Others still saw this as a time of liberation, as colonial overlords were now truly severed from them in a way that could not be reversed, and long-dormant cultures and societies could finally re-emerge from the generational traumas of colonization and imperialism. But for all it was a time of change, a time of rebirth, and a time of reckoning, one that would leave as lasting an impact as any before in history.

What the future had in store for these survivors of Atomic Armageddon was yet to be seen, how they would handle these unprecedented challenges was a story yet to be told. But it would be told, and the future would be seen. Because for however much war may change, humanity will always find a way to live on.

While this was not the ending that any of us had expected when the season began over three months ago, it was certainly a hell of a ride to get here. Thank you to everyone, mods and players alike, who helped to make this season into one of the most memorable in CWP history. It has been an absolute blast, pun intended, and I cannot wait to see how we try and top ourselves next season.

In the meantime, feel free to make any posts you would like to serve as an epilogue for your claim. How do you think the peoples of your nation would have responded to this complete overturning of the world order? What conflicts may have emerged, or even been solved, in the dust of the atomic hellfires? What new political realities may have been realized, what social structures may have formed? Feel free to be as creative with these stories as you like, and if you have any questions about how the actual event may have touched your nation, especially if you were currently in the middle of a conflict being resolved, there will be a thread on the Discord where you can reach out to the mods for answers, and coordinate with other players who you may wish to share in your stories.

Updates on the next season will be coming out as we make progress, and we are excited to share all the new ideas we have with you all. You, the community, are what make CWP such a fantastic xPowers sub, and we hope to have many more seasons ahead as incredible as this one.