Spoilers Off applies here. All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
If you thought The New '20s have been bad in our timeline, The Fire Rises manages to make things even worse. Way worse.
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General
- The entire setting of the mod. Even in OTL, the 2020s were marked by a crippling global pandemic which led to a global economic crisis followed by a sluggish recovery, several major wars across the world which greatly disrupted global supply chains, and the rise of far-right populism and rampant extremism in many Western democracies. Now add a far worse COVID-19 Pandemic, overshadowed by the Second American Civil War which will see extremists on both ends committing horrific atrocities against other Americans, leading to two guaranteed wars across much of Europe and Asia fueled by revanchism, which will witness the use of WMDs such as chemical weapons and thermonuclear bombs. Add that with anarchy in multiple countries with sizable global influence (Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Thailand etc.), and that's not even to mention the darker paths which countries such as Russia, France, Germany, and the warring American factions could fall to. Even a "wholesome" ending will come off as bittersweet as the world will be left far worse off in the 2030s, and will struggle to recover from the world-spanning conflicts for decades to come.
- With the 1.0.7 update, it is possible to plunge all playable nations into a state of unending violence and anarchy, creating an endless state of war and lawlessness for at least three continents. These include:
- Joe Biden's Eternal Republic collapsing, leading to the United States plunging into a third civil war.
- Klaus Schwab's World Government falling to the Catharsis, resulting in all of Europe falling into anarchy and endless bloodshed. As the Catharsis revolt can only happen after the Second European War, this also meant Russia would have collapsed into its own civil war as well.
- China defeating India first before succumbing to the PDTO, throwing the two most populous nations into anarchy. And to top it all off, Japan and Korea can be attacked with thermonuclear weapons during the Great Asian War, which will throw both into societal and economic chaos as well.
- There's also the terrifying prospect that the destruction and suffering seen in The Fire Rises timeline could have happened in our timeline. Just imagine that we were only a worse COVID outbreak and an even more disruptive economic crash away from causing tens of millions of deaths in the subsequent wars in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
- Want some free nightmare fuel? Try imagining what you and your family and friends would end up going through in this timeline. At least in many other Hearts of Iron 4 mods, their settings either take place in alternate histories either far enough in the past or are so divergent from OTL that you have the comfort of not being able to imagine your immediate situation, to say nothing of the ones set in completely fictional worlds. Here? The divergence point is just four years prior to TFR's release, which is also the mod's only starting date.
United States of America
- The Second American Civil War in general. Even in our timeline, the United States in the 2020s, even without a Civil War, saw a major decline in its global status, with worsening wealth inequality and unchecked political polarization that started from the 2010s, which became known to the world with the Black Lives Matter protests and the January 6th Capitol Attack in our timeline, and this was all before the Second Presidency of Donald Trump resulting in persecution of ethnic and sexual minorities, as well as rapid democratic backsliding and illiberalism. Now add in an even worse COVID-19 pandemic, the Oil Crisis, and the protests that erupt following the murder of an unarmed African American protestor. You get TFR’s version of the United States of America, a nation that is extremely divided, moreso compared to The New '10s. This only worsens following the 2020 election, where both Trump and Biden refuse to concede to the other, getting themselves sworn into office in Denver and Washington respectively, all while gangs, insurgencies, and other militia groups start taking over cities throughout the United States. What follows is an extremely brutal and devastating multi-civil war, that eclipses not only the first civil war, but also the Syrian Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Russian Civil War. Not only that, but the conflict also sees the rise of several political movements and militias, including very unsavory ones like the Atomwaffen Division. Even if America is unified by a benevolent unifier, the country is still devastated from the war and will likely take decades to recover.
- One of the most terrifying things about the civil war is that it will inevitably happen regardless of what the player does. Even if the country successfully beats COVID-19 and quells the Movement, it will still inevitably break out as the nation at this point is far too divided and unstable to experience a peaceful resolution. Millions of people are going to die, even more will be displaced and there is nothing you can do to stop it. The only thing the player can control is when the civil war happens, which hardly makes a difference considering it happens in early 2022 at the latest. As the in-game tip reminds you:IT IS INEVITABLE
- One of the most terrifying things about the civil war is that it will inevitably happen regardless of what the player does. Even if the country successfully beats COVID-19 and quells the Movement, it will still inevitably break out as the nation at this point is far too divided and unstable to experience a peaceful resolution. Millions of people are going to die, even more will be displaced and there is nothing you can do to stop it. The only thing the player can control is when the civil war happens, which hardly makes a difference considering it happens in early 2022 at the latest. As the in-game tip reminds you:
- Ending the world as the Atomwaffen Division. The end screen literally lays out the agonizing death of civilization from nuclear war and later from the horrific fallout, as well as the initial death toll and the eventual death toll. It gets even more bleaker in that while a certain other mod also deals with themes of nuclear war and the possibility of a nuclear instigated genocide by an extremist wing of the Nazis seeking to "purify" the worldnote , said mod implies that human civilization rebuilds from the ashes, and in some post-apocalyptic endings, imply that some of the remnants of the Burgundian-SS abandon their ideology in practice and embrace everyone in the wasteland as Aryan. Here? It's heavily implied with the last few words of the end screen that all of humanity becomes extinct in ten years.
- War, famine, plague, and death will become a certainty.
- Special mention to the superevents accompanying them winning the Civil War. Their Accelerationist path under James Mason displays burning buildings and silhouettes superimposed over a picture of Atomwaffen Members. Their victory song starts muddled beneath sounds of shouting and terrified screams followed by distorted gunfire, which it then plays the final chord loud and clear. It's very upfront in reflecting the state of America now under their now undisputed reign of terror.
- Winning with their Christian route will display an otherworldly almost-heavenly picture of various beams of light piercing the clouds, until you look closer and find out that they're actually missiles firing into the sky. Their victory fanfare comprises of an Ethereal Choir singing the last verses of Adagio for Strings alongside ominous quakes and distant nuclear sirens. The end is nigh indeed.
- The Satanic faction of the Atomwaffen by far have the most nightmarish super event in the mod, delivering an outright sensory abuse of war crimes and satanic rituals flashing across the screen. The "music" is nothing but hellish noise and frenzied chanting. This superevent especially comes across as a Jump Scare if you're playing as any other country not focused on the state of America.
- Reuniting the United States as the National Socialist Movement will see the establishment of a Fourth Reich on American soil, dooming everyone who isn't considered an "Aryan" to a life of discrimination and brutal oppression, completely undoing all the social progress America has made in the last several decades, ending democracy, and ultimately rendering America's triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945 All for Nothing. To make matters worse, if the fanatical Hitlerists are dominant in the NSM's balance of power, they will mimic Nazi Germany to the letter, expelling and exterminating the "untermensch" in what’s all but stated to be an America-wide Holocaust.
- As upsetting and disturbing a Holocaust on American soil is for very obvious reasons, one can take comfort in the fact that the Hitlerists will almost certainly crash and burn after a short period of time. A Hitlerist NSM rejects both long-term stability and population appeal in favor of copying every single facet of Nazi Germany, which won’t mesh well with reconstruction efforts and force the NSM to spread their troops thin in order to deal with the many people marked for death or expulsion. One can imagine a popular revolt quickly gaining momentum and overthrowing the regime, especially when taking into account the fact that the NSM is already not a Villain with Good Publicity. Meanwhile, the Rockwellians do focus on long-term stability and population appeal, seeking to fully Americanize Nazism and "peacefully" deal with the non-Aryans. This reformist mindset, aside from leading to less bloodshed, gives the NSM-controlled America a shot at lasting for a longer period of time along with the ability to further cement its ideals among its followers.
- Reuniting the United States as the Patriot Front will, at best, see the establishment of a neo-segregationist sham democracy in which only far-right political parties are allowed to exist, only White Americans are allowed to vote, and minorities are subjected to a new series of Jim Crow laws. This outcome occurs if the Jacksonians are empowered. The Hamiltonians will also establish a sham democracy, but with a class of elite aristocrats lording over the populace. The Front's two other paths are even more oppressive.
- If the Blueshirts are empowered, the Patriot Front transforms America into an overtly and openly Fascist society that resembles Benito Mussolini’s Italy. Here, Thomas Rousseau functions as the nation’s unquestionable dictator and through his "imperial presidency", ensures that heterosexual White Americans are the only ones to receive rights and freedoms while continuing to oppress minorities.
- If the National Justice Party is empowered, the Patriot Front adopts the National Socialist Movement's ideals and descends fully into Neo-Nazism, establishing an American-based Fourth Reich in the same matter as the latter.
- Regardless of which internal faction comes out on top (barring the NJP), compared to the NSM, the Patriot Front's far more professional attitude and appearance, Villain with Good Publicity status, and emphasis on segregating minorities instead of extermination makes them the far-right American government most likely to truly cement their position and last for many years to come. Rousseau, using heavy euphemisms, will have an infinitely easier time convincing people both within his borders and abroad that the Front is America's legitimate government than a Hitlerist NSM, which is simply too brazen for most people to stomach. Such efforts will not only allow the Front to truly cement their immediate position, but also truly cement their far-right ideals among the American populace, ultimately ensuring they last well beyond Rousseau himself. The end result is the United States being left in a perverted, far-right state indefinitely.
- Joe Biden's American Caligula path is one of the wackiest and darkest paths to come out of the Second American Civil War. It consists of him becoming a crazed tyrant, transforming the Union of America into a totalitarian dictatorship hellbent on reclaiming and "purifying" the United States. Continuing down this path will see Biden establish the Eternal Republic and descend even further into insanity, subjecting the American populace to a wide variety of horrors. Political opponents (including former allies of Biden) are rounded up and executed, the American people are placed under constant surveillance and subjected to indiscriminate violence and death, slavery is practiced, regime-loyal "Operation Zones" are established across the country, whole towns are wiped from the face of existence, and the internet as well as any other connections to the rest of the world are cut off from within. Even if the Eternal Republic, after reunifying America, fails to put down the Trumpist revolt and collapses, its lands are forever scarred and the people are forced to live through a third, unwinnable civil war, ultimately leaving America stuck in a perpetual nightmare.
- Forming the Eternal Republic triggers a corresponding Superevent, accompanied by the horrifying sound of the Hell Sirens from Everywhere at the End of Time.
There, where I have passed, the grass will never grow again.—Attila the Hun - As tyrannical as the Eternal Republic is, at the very least its too out there to be in our world. The Cognoscenti is nightmare fuel of a different variety. If the Countryside Insurgency reaches severity level 10, then a chemical attack perpetrated by the Atomwaffen Division in Washington DC will occur, as well as several uprisings loyal to different factions of the civil war. After this happens, a shadow government consisting of the three letter agencies, the Megacorporations, and the Military Industrial Complex take over the union. On the surface, they seem to have noble goals of saving America from radicalism and wish to return to stability. However, a playthrough of their path shows how utterly nightmarish they truly are.
- One of the first events of the Cognoscenti shows the CIA SAC kill-team raid an apartment housing members of the Atomwaffen Division. Sounds normal right? Except before the raid itself, the team was given an order to kill everyone on sight. Yes, you heard that right. Once the kill team reaches the final room, they find a neo-Nazi pleading for his life and saying that it wasn't a part of the deal, giving a strong implication that the attack on DC was a False Flag Operation orchestrated by the Cognoscenti. This one event shows how much the Cognoscenti is willing to do to further their agendas and how they will go through any lengths to hide its very existence.
- Another event also shows a neo-Nazi named Earl Turner who took over Nassau Hall in Princeton University after fleeing from DC, using students and teachers alike as meat shields. The SAC's response? Pump the entire building with sarin gas, killing not only the terrorist, but all of the hostages present. After the operation's conclusion, they sent a cleanup crew to the building, and they already began circulating a narrative that the terrorists killed everyone with sarin gas instead. This shows the sheer depravity that the Cognoscenti will do to not only eliminate any witnesses, but also manufacture tragedies.
- How do the Cognoscenti get away with mass surveillance and laying the groundwork for what comes after? By having the three-letter agencies bait mentally unstable youths into committing acts of terror (before subsequently killing them in the act), effectively manufacturing enough "Lone Wolf" attacks that the American public near-unanimously gives up their liberty for security. And unlike the Davos System, this is all done voluntarily.
- If they win, the Superevent is simply a soundclip of various news clips speaking about misinformation, all of them synchronize the words "This is extremely dangerous to our democracy" at the end. All while a Dark Reprise of the Star Spangled Banner plays over a memorial to members of the CIA.
- Should the player finish an entire Cognoscenti playthrough and unlock the Renovatio Imperii achievement, the New Game Plus content will be added. It adds a new project known as Project Babel, with the end result being a Neuro-Linguistic Plague that robs people of the ability to speak and comprehend their own language. Not only is this similar to the vocal cord parasite in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, but the utter chaos that ensues as its victims are reduced to near-feral wrecks
calls to mind the societal collapse seen in the Planet of the Apes (Chernin Series). If the weapon is used against a Loji-run China, the results prove so destructive that it brings the AI to rage-filled tears. - Compared to the Davos System's endgame as espoused by the World Government, the Cognoscenti's Pax Americana is at once a total corruption of and antithesis to the American Dream, even while proudly wearing its trappings. A vision of Order built upon blood and excessive control so thorough that the average American citizen is utterly unaware they're in a dystopia at all, and it's kept that way in perpetuity.
- The American Constitutional Government's upcoming Dark Mandate path paints a bleak picture for the American populace. Accessible if Donald Trump Jr. is assassinated, Trump himself is consumed by rage and embarks on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Focuses, events, and descriptions featured in the latest Reddit teaser show that Dark Mandate Trump cares only about two things: exterminating his enemies and ensuring his government is overwhelmingly loyal to him. Going down this path sees Trump seizing total control of the state apparatus, reestablishing the House Un-American Activities Committee to weed out those who defy him, having the military adopt a "shoot first and inquire afterwards" policy, making use of loyal enforcers while also deputizing paramilitary forces to squash dissent, directing the economy towards waging total war, waging relentless propaganda campaigns, and more.
- Two events, one set before and one set after the fall of Biden's government, depict the gruesome fate of Mike Pence in this path: Pence hosting a live press conference in which Trump's rhetoric is said to have contributed to Jr.'s death and claiming that Jr. would’ve wanted to see Pence herald a return to "commonsense politics" sends the initially despondent Trump into a state of pure fury, beginning the Dark Mandate in earnest. Later on, upon intercepting a convoy headed for Canada, Trump has his troops take Pence to an abandoned zoo in order to feed him to a group of starving lions.
- When the Caligula-led Bidenist Administration inevitably collapses after the death of Biden himself, one would hope that the resulting warlords that spring up from the ashes of the Wards and the Eternal Republic itself would bring some semblance of sanity and stability. One would be...somewhat mistaken. Some governments are democracies or, at the very least, non-Bidenist military governments. However...
- In addition to the rump state of the Eternal Republic, some wards and military districts hold out after the Bidenist collapse. The wards themselves are simply attempting to hold onto their territory and continue the nightmare anew. However, two governments known only as Project: Fortitude and Project: Endurance hold out in New England and the Nevadan desert, respectively; Fortitude is led by Anthony Fauci, who in OTL was accused of injecting microchips into humans to bring about a New World Order (and is presumably up to such conspiracy-laden shenanigans in TFRTL), while Endurance is led by the same AI Biden seen in the "God in the Machine" path. And, given how little flavor there is for these two countries, no information on the quality of life there is given.
- Both the Knights of Aztlan and the Final Order emerge from the American South, which are already not the best-sounding names; what makes matters worse, however, is that both are Accelerationist. Imagine the horrors of Florida under the Atomwaffen Division, and now place those horrors in two separate locations in an environment that will likely fail to stomp them out quickly. These two are also joined by the Cascadian Insurrection Zone, whose particular strain of Nazism is labeled as Apocalypticism. Brrr...
- Even putting aside the forces actively attempting to bring about the end of the world, fascism still prospers in a post-Caligula United States. From the National Purification Army in Southern Texas to the White Cross Movement in the South and the Realm of New Albion in upper New England, fascism is here to stay in the remnants of the Eternal Republic and, barring campaigns from the Army of Perpetual Resistance or the American Reclamation Government, likely candidates to survive the inevitable Third American Civil War thanks to their fortified positions and their drawing upon the nationalism and rage of the abused American people.
- A small state in Boise, Idaho is named the Heavenly American Dominion. Its ruler? No one, really, just the Westboro Baptist Church, an IRL church that has been classified as a genuine hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. What in God's name could prompt them, of all people, to form a state of their own? (These worries are, of course, completely alleviated by their flag which reads "THANK GOD FOR DEAD GAY DEMOCRATS".)
- The states that joined Donald Trump in the beginning of the Second American Civil War? Gone. No country name, no government, no national spirits, and no flag. Just a jet-black stain on the ruined North American continent.
Europe
- Combining this with Fridge Horror, defeating the Soviet Union as a Fascist Europe, while a massive achievement given Russia's size and manpower level, can be rather unsettling. The campaign's ending message straight up states that Europe has chosen to reject the lessons of the Second World War, once again embracing racial and ethnic hatred along with authoritarianism that is absolute monarchism at best (and even that's debatable considering the ideology of the Reichsburger movement), or outright totalitarian Fascism at worst, to purge Communism from European soil.
- The Rädelsführer transforms Germany into an ultranationalist and ultramilitarist dictatorship, but at least refrains from outright reviving Nazism and rehabilitating the likes of Hitler. This is not the case if Frank Franz comes to power. If he does, Nazi Germany, all of its principles, and all of its institutions (such as the Schutzstaffel) are revived, rendering the Allies' triumph over the original Nazis in 1945 All for Nothing as Franz's totalitarian regime cements its iron grip and sweeps across the continent. The revived Nazi Germany successfully defeating the Soviets fully legitimizes Nazism in the eyes of the now-radicalized populace, who will deem everything Europe did between Hitler’s death and Franz’s rise to be nothing more than a failed experiment, annihilating liberal democracy’s legacy and dooming everyone the Nazi regime considers undesirable. This is hammered home in an event Germany gets upon defeating France in the Third European War, which mentions that there are now no foes to stop the Nazis from carrying out a new Generalplan Ost.
- 1.0.6 introduces the Carolingian Fascists under the ironically-named Lafayettenote , whom take power after military secures power in France in the wake of NATO's defeat, and choose to legitimatize far-right ideals despite not inviting Fascists into government by pumping up Vichy apologetic rhetoric and French Israelism until the balance of power is fully under Pétainist control. Lafayette's path consists of him turning France into a massive death camp where anyone who isn't deemed a pure Frenchman is killed on sight, with all air travel and borders shut down just so Lafayette can wipe out the non-French population. Not even other Fascists are safe, with both Yvan Benedetti's ultranationalists and the Identitarian Movement being targets of his genocidal wrath. To make things worse, Lafayette views Germany, even if under the control of an equally vile Nazi-inspired regime, to be "degenerate" themselves and launches the Third European War in an attempt to recover Carolingian borders during the time of Charlemagne, with the implication that Germany's national identity will be wiped out to make way for Frankish lebensraum.
- The Rädelsführer transforms Germany into an ultranationalist and ultramilitarist dictatorship, but at least refrains from outright reviving Nazism and rehabilitating the likes of Hitler. This is not the case if Frank Franz comes to power. If he does, Nazi Germany, all of its principles, and all of its institutions (such as the Schutzstaffel) are revived, rendering the Allies' triumph over the original Nazis in 1945 All for Nothing as Franz's totalitarian regime cements its iron grip and sweeps across the continent. The revived Nazi Germany successfully defeating the Soviets fully legitimizes Nazism in the eyes of the now-radicalized populace, who will deem everything Europe did between Hitler’s death and Franz’s rise to be nothing more than a failed experiment, annihilating liberal democracy’s legacy and dooming everyone the Nazi regime considers undesirable. This is hammered home in an event Germany gets upon defeating France in the Third European War, which mentions that there are now no foes to stop the Nazis from carrying out a new Generalplan Ost
- Dugin's invasion of Europe is an extremely cheerful time all around. The superevent features an image of soldiers in gas masks preparing for war, harkening back to Dmitry Yazov's superevent from The New Order: Last Days of Europe. This is punctuated by the rather jarring audio of gunfire, orders being given over a radio, and loud air raid sirens, all on top of a distorted rendition of "Katyusha". It is made very clear that Dugin will stop at nothing to get revenge on the West, and that the Second European War is very likely to eclipse the first in terms of brutality and scale.
- Navalny's path after Russia loses the First European War isn't exactly nightmare fuel, as he genuinely wants a democratic Russia (or at least a democracy on paper in his quasi-Putinist path). The real horror starts when Navalny forms death brigades and gives the ultranationalist wing more power, changing his ideology to Ultranationalism in the process. Unlike the other Navalny paths however, this path shows him trying to win the Second European War by ALL MEANS NECESSARY, while treating the Geneva Conventions like a checklist. This includes the deployment of nukes, scorched earth policies, and he can even choose to deploy chemical weapons on major European Cities such as London, which will no doubt kill many civilians in the process.
- One event in this path has Navalny hearing a familiar voice, heavily implied to be Putin's ghost, congratulating him for doing what he couldn't, only to turn around to find no one there. Even after brushing it off as just a hallucination or work stress, the experience visibly disturbs him.
Putin: "You're doing well. I didn't even, um, expect it." - Should NATO lose the First European War to Dmitry Medvedev and United Russia, the European Union will attempt to federalize into a proper United Europe. All routes are strongly influenced by business interests, but Klaus Schwab and his associates in the World Economic Forum take it even further and establish a ultra-capitalist technocracy that calls itself the World Government. But mere corporate dictatorship is not enough for them. Believing the primary obstacle to human progress and their own profits is The Evils of Free Will, the World Government experiments with brain implants to regulate human emotions. While productivity and harmony increase in the short term, the long-term results are physically and mentally catastrophic for the populace.
- The facade cracks when a journalist discovers everyone with an emotional regulator has the exact same smile. People randomly space out and stare into space with a vacant yet focused smile. At one point, a girl stabs her own mother in the heart and is later found happily watching TV and eating popcorn like nothing happened. Doctors discover that her her implants had almost completely overridden her emotional judgement, and as more cases pile up, medical experts term the phenomenon "Mirror Smile Syndrome". The World Government sees nothing wrong with any of this and carries on regardless.
- If the World Government wins the Second European War, mind-broken citizens regress to a semi-tribal state and lash out against the World Government in a decentralized movement called Catharsis. Unlike most revolutions, Catharsis doesn't have a plan for what happens if it wins. Catharsis revolts just to feel anything. A World Government victory in the resulting war solidifies the "Davos System"'s control once and for all, while a Catharsis victory collapses European civilization into the foreseeable future with no upside other than collapsing on its own terms.(World Government Victory): Klaus Schwab has managed to tame Human Nature and establish total control.(Catharsis Victory): The Ultraglobalists lose their grip on power as Europe descends into chaos."But I like it; Because it is bitter/And because it is my heart."note
- One event directly addresses the reader to instill some nasty Paranoia Fuel:Just like now. You're reading this. Maybe you're thinking "Wow, that's creepy. That's disturbing." Your brows twitched, your lips tightened—or maybe just curled slightly. But that wasn't really your decision—you just *felt* like doing it.Do you have the chip too? Can't remember? Most people don't. They only remember that one day, they started feeling "better".The room's a bit cold, isn't it? Did you just hear something? It's fine, probably just the wind outside.Relax a little.
- Word of God says that those who rose up during Catharsis are committing the same atrocities as Crossed. Yes, people want to feel something so badly that they have turned into a crowd of insane sadists.
Asia
- Defeating China as a PDTO that never falls to authoritarianism (and assuming they win in Taiwan, never has to wrestle with authoritarianism in the first place) in the Great Asian War initially sounds like a good ending for Asia as a whole, given that it sees democracy and liberalism triumph over the autocratic and corrupt Communist Party of China. However, China (who will almost certainly be the world's largest economy in The Fire Rises even if they lost the Taiwan War) will implode into dozens of warlords, starting a chaotic civil war that makes the first Chinese Civil War and the 1920s warlord era look like a simple quarrel by comparison. Tens of millions of deaths are guaranteed, and given the areas annexed by the Republic of China will be several times larger than their actual population, as well as Japan's continued demographic decline being filled by a massive refugee crisis from the newly war-torn China, it is hard to imagine how the PDTO would be able to maintain stability without using some particularly underhanded methods.
- Even worse, albeit unlikely, is a pyrrhic PDTO victory where Japan defeats China, but India collapses to Pakistan and China first. The two most populous nations on Earth falls to a horrific humanitarian crisis and a multi-side civil war engulfing two of the most powerful nations in Asia, sending the death toll into the hundreds of millions. And as with China, there is no guarantee the victor will play nice with the PDTO in the region due to revanchism even if the liberal and democratic factions such as the Nanjing Provisional Government win, similar to Navalny's Russia in the mod. Obviously don't even consider the far more nationalist and autocratic unifiers like the Beijing-based PRC remnants or the National Collective Movement, along with the Naxalites and Akhand Bharat in India.
- Furthermore, In 1.0.6., China has the option to launch a thermonuclear attack on Japan when they are 30% to their surrender limit, on top of the initial tactical nuclear bombs that can be dropped. Should this happen, Japan will be decimated with death tolls most likely reaching 8-digits, with the Japanese Royal Family possibly killed in the nuclear strike on Tokyo. Even if Japan later wins, the decimation will leave the country in complete social and economic turmoil with no other major power coming to help them, putting their ability to lead the post-war PDTO in serious question. Combined with the previous scenario where India collapses first (potentially after the Indo-Pakistan War went nuclear), and what's left is a completely destroyed Asia with nobody truly "winning", as all of its major cities are flattened by nuclear strikes, with death tolls potentially reaching into the billions (give how highly populated cities like Tokyo, Beijing and Delhi can be nuked through decisions), both India and China collapsing into a civil war, while the "victorious" PDTO is left to recover for itself post-apocalypse without substantial aid from anyone, setting back the region for decades.
- The 1.0.7 update reworked the Revanchist faction in China, with all three of its subpaths being totalitarian and extremely nationalistic. The militarists under Li Zuocheng are already the tamest faction of the three, as Li simply consolidates power either around the People's Liberation Army, or crown himself as The Generalissimo, creating a stratocratic state that focuses primarily on the military. The MSS under Chen Wenqing creates a "Digital Leninist" society, which turns China into an extreme surveillance state not too dissimilar to Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the Technocrats will create a technocracy that completely ignores ethics, and aims chase progress and perfection at all costs, without any regards for safety or morality. The nationalists under Chen Quanguo (a man already infamous OTL for overseeing internment camps in Xinjiang) are the most extreme of the three, as they essentially either turn China into a National Communist state or outright remake China into a fascist state, which is eerily similar to Imperial Japan that they had once fought against. All three paths will commit to the extermination of Japan, and will balkanize while going under de-Japanification to destroy Japanese society completely.
- This is taken even further should the Confucian Nationalists lead China and defeat the PDTO in the Great Asian War. They will not only declare a “People’s Heavenly Empire/Republic across China, but they will outright set up PURIFICATION ZONES across Asia with the goal of exterminating the native populations so the Chinese people can settle in their land. Talk about Putting on the Reich! Even worse, China boasts the population to actually resettle people in the purification zones unlike Nazi Germany.
- Revanchist China also has the ability to unlock a secret part of its focus tree when they are losing the war, which will result in them having the capabilities to thermonuclear bomb not just Japan, but Korea, India and Australia. India can also retaliate by using their own nukes to destroy much of inland China should they be on the brink of capitulation. Combining with the scenario where India collapses first before the PDTO defeats China, and you have achieved the worst possible ending for the Great Asian War, where both the EADI and the PDTO destroys each other with thermonuclear warfare, with the scale of destruction no different than an actual world-ending apocalypse.
- The nightmarish hell that is the Chinese People's Empire is already extremely unsettling if you look from the outside, seeing the notifications of nuclear attacks and the purification zones, but if you play as them you get to see flavour text of the horrors they unleash, first upon their own people, making disappear those who aren't Han Chinese, with some flavor text pointing out that violence against foreigners is becoming commonplace, only for a later mention that there aren't many non-Chinese people left in the country, what heavily implies they have just been killed off. Then, as the war goes to your advantage, you get events of Chinese troops entering PDTO's cities, but this is not a jackboot march occupation, chemical weapons are used in mass against the population, so you get to see the despair of civilians trapped in their homes, watching how the smoke covers the cities and they die incapable of doing anything. And when the troops march over Tokyo, they decide to check the Yasukuni Shrine, only to find out the very ground has been vitrified, they cannot even get closer to it, and more importantly.... The city of Tokyo is lifeless.
- As if that wasn't enough, imagine that you're one of the lucky survivors of such indiscriminate use of war crimes, living in Australia, you're now in the middle of a purification zone, if the troops find you, they will just kill you or bring you to extermination camps, the nearest safe spot may be Sri Lanka, but chances are they would hand you over to the Chinese authorities, so your only way to survive is to somehow reach Africa or South America, avoiding what is no doubt a complete lockdown of the entire continent. And even if you do, when the purification is done, maybe in a few years, and the settlers are already in, who is to say that the Empire won't turn their eyes to the rest of Asia and the world?