Defcon One
Prologue
The location: Planet Earth in the year 1998.
The Defense Condition declared to be one. The armies were at peak readiness and nuclear war had broken out. Solutions deemed diplomatic to the world's crisis succumbed to failure and war erupts as madmen press onward with their dreams of further mayhem. High concentrations of radioactivity produce random storms and leave people and animals mutated. Somehow, life continues in the Wasteland.
Tensions between The USSR and The USA escalated with the coming year. The Citadel Starstation was said to be completely functional by the third month. The Soviet allegation that the space station was that of a launching platform poured consternation into the hearts of the non-aligned nations. More conservative governments based in the South and Central Americas, much of them set up in the duration of the Drug Wars spanning from 1987 to 1993, pledged their support to The United States. The NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] Nations, including the newly joined members from Africa, also declared their alliance with the U.S. That move was the driving point which compelled the nations that were once considered neutral to side with the Soviet protest. In the 6 short weeks following, Switzerland, Sweden, and Ireland were the only nations left with neutrality. A fortnight before Citadel was due for full operation, the Station transmitted a signal expressing distress.
Instantaneously after the signal was sent out, nearly all the satellites orbiting the planet had been disintegrated entirely from the sky, leaving the great powers without guidance. In great dismay, each military launched 90% of their nuclear arsenals skyward. Although the annihilation was tremendous, it did not kill off all life. Pockets of civilization remained intact, some totally oblivious any Holocaust occurred at all. On the same day The US and Soviet Union were attempting to extinguish each other, company of US Army engineers inhabited the southwestern deserts constructing bridges for transport over riverbeds long since dried. The engineers worked deeply into the inhospitable desert valleys, encased by several communities on the mission for survival. To the location directly south of the building sites that day, was a newly erected federal prison. With the penitentiary housing the criminals condemned to death, it also contained facilities to manufacture industrial lighting. Not long after the nuclear exchange that the engineers seeking shelter overran the prison and expelled the convicts to the barren Wasteland to carry out their sentences. As ongoing weeks came and went, local bands of survivalists were recruited to join the newfound shelter and construct an improved society. Because of each community having suspicions about one another, times were arduous in the beginning. But, as time passed, trust nurtured in this settlement, which became known by the name of Ranger Center, proved to be worthy of repelling even the most rancorous of criminals from reclaiming what was rightfully theirs once.
The residents of Ranger Center, after first believing they were the only survivors after the nuclear maelstrom, soon stumbled upon the realization that communities beyond the desert's grip had also survived. Because such success was to be had in the construction of a brand new community, many felt obligated to lend help to other survivalists and maintain a sense of peace. Toward this end, the Desert Rangers, in the great tradition of the Texas and Arizona Rangers a century before, were born.