An abridged history of the game

Note: This is an intentionally abridged history of the game. It is not intended to provide all the facts that happened. Instead, the purpose of this document is to touch on the major formative points of the game as it stands today, so you need not read thousands upon thousands of posts to 'catch up'.

Pre-game

The Coldest War works off an alternate history unraveling of the modern day Syrian Crisis. The Crisis turned hot, and there was an exchange of tactical class nuclear weapons in the middle east. While the situation stopped short of becoming a fully blown nuclear war, the oil infrastructure of much of the middle east was left in a smoking crater. The boiled over tensions caused geopolitical fracturing on the nominally post-geopolitical planet, along with the dominant American and European concerns in the UN, caused Russia, China, and India to splinter off and form the Federation of European and Asian Nations (FEAN) - many countries they influence left the UN to join the FEAN. Energy crises and recent war kept relations between the two powers frosty at best and perilous at worst. As the need for energy became more and more voracious, it seemed a resource war seemed inevitable.

And then, Trans-Newtonian Elements (TNEs) were discovered.

In 2024, a UN research team discovered a small battery of elements that defied normal Newtonian physics. The promise of the elements were enormous, and the incredible potential of the minerals to provide an increasing standard of living froze the immediate resource tensions.

So as 2025 dawned, the Federation had obtained the information regarding TNEs, and a new gold rush was on, between two bitter rivals that had been nuking each other just 10 years before.