Welcome[]
Welcome to 1962: Aftermath. Ever wondered the time in that period that any moment during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 between October 16 to October 28th of 1962 would escalate into a Nuclear War? This timeline will dive through this alternate history divergence and see what would happen next after the Crisis.
This ongoing live timeline will take its Inspirations from several things from ALTHISTORY Pages such as '1983: Doomsday' and 'Great Nuclear War', Books & Movies like 'On the Beach' and 'The Day After'.
1962 Crisis was created by a single ALTHISTORY User under the name of 'JustBenDover' and he took this ALTHISTORY Wiki Site to create this fictional timeline.
I would love it if some members of the Alternate History Timeline were to contribute to this active timeline and someday hopefully would be shown in the featured timelines in this Wiki Fandom.
Looking for some contributors to help me out in this timeline, Discord username is CEASE IT#2639. DM me who you are and why you want to help in this timeline.
Introduction & Aftermath[]
The Point of Divergence in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis was the confrontation between the US Destroyer Beale and the Soviet Submarine B-59. Vasili Arkiphov at this moment was unable to calm down the exhausted and angered Russian captain of the Soviet Submarine 'Valentin Savitsky' which he ordered his crew to prepare and fire a single '15 kiloton nuclear torpedo' against the US Destroyer Beale since he believed that war had already begun.
This chaotic situation completely vaporized the USS Beale and Cony, all of its crew either killed or missing in action, its accompanying ships such as USS Murray were almost wrecked. The Soviet Submarine B-59 hull was destroyed by a massive underwater shock wave which caused it to sink. The majority of the submariners drowned as the ocean water flooded into the Soviet submarine while the ship escalated down deep into the ocean.
After the ensuing chaos, the United States had a legitimate reason to invade Cuba in order to dismantle the nuclear arsenals established there by the Soviet Union. Due to the US Invasion of Cuba, the world was ready to be engulfed in a nuclear war.
During the War, the United States lost major economic regions that devastated the US economy. The military regions and sites were also immediately destroyed by Soviet ICBMs (which were still new but unreliable, but somehow luckily were able to hit their targets. Some did miss when they targeted their target but created massive damage near the intended sites).
The Soviet Union, on the other hand, collapsed right after the war, many of its cities such as Moscow was fully covered in dust and flames, nuclear winter arrived which would cover the globe for a decade. NATO collapsed as soon the war ended, the Warsaw Pact being disbanded as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Much of the world north of the Hemisphere was devastated. The majority of European countries nearly collapsed - one, for example, was Great Britain when its capital was directly hit by Soviet SLBMs and bombers, France's capital hit multiple times, Germany as a whole was again embroiled in a massive war which killed off a majority of its population, East Berlin seemingly survived after the war, but West Berlin was in rubble.
Remarkably Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland survived the war for being neutral nations who didn't participate in the war but did send resources to both sides during the quick eight days of the Third World War, these countries gained a massive influx of refugees coming from the impacted nations such as France, Germany, Britain and Italy and much more.
Meanwhile in Asia, China suffered consequences in the war as well when it participated by assisting its Soviet ally (even though their relations were strained thanks to the Soviet-Sino split by Nikita Khrushchev) in the Third World War. China survived the war, while the Soviet Union left out a large landmass of terrestrial Siberian boreal forests which would soon be occupied and eventually annexed by China.
Countries below the northern hemisphere survived the war unscathed like Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. They were the biggest contributors to the affected nations of the Third World War after the nuclear holocaust by sending out humanitarian aid and military support.
Australia received a large influx of American refugees which arrived in Eastern Australia. Chinese who were escaping from the deadly winter arrived in Western Australia which increased the Australian population to the greatest extent since the Second World War. Countries in South America were also receiving refugees - primarily from Europe and North America, with the majority coming from Europe.
At the end of 1963, many of the nations north continue to recover from the Great Nuclear War which still haunts many countries to this day about the effects of the Nuclear Holocaust. Australia and Brazil would soon catch up to become the next major powers of this world.