1983: Doomsday
From Alternative History
1983: Doomsday postulated the alternative outcome of the Sept. 26, 1983 event, when Colonel Stanislav Petrov was alerted, in error, to a possible US missile strike against the Soviet Union.
In OTL, Colonel Petrov believed the information to be false and did not alert the Kremlin to the data he was receiving. Given Cold War tensions at the time, such information would likely have convinced the Soviets that the US had launched a first strike attempting to "cut off the head" and launched their forces, in the belief it was a "counter-strike", not a first-strike.
The resulting nuclear exchange would have been close to the forecasts of almost complete destruction and "nuclear winter" predicted by many scientists of the day, resulting in as much as two billion people killed initially, possibly another two billion in the subsequent environmental disaster.
The 0,8 billion having survived desperately try to keep together what is left of human society and therewith face seemingly impossible challenge.
Over the next three decades, now southern-hemisphere-lead mankind is struggling to preserve a certain level of civilization. The culmination - the foundation of the New United Nations (NUN)-headed by Australia, Argentina and Brazil in 2013 awakens a small glance of a possibly more peacefully future for mankind.
