Resistance: Fall of Man - An Oral History

[TreizeV]

I've finally started playing some HOI at long last. After reading several fantastic AARs involving almost every country i've been wondering, what can i do different? Well I've always been into the Sci Fi thing regarding alternative history, and after reading Max Brook's Magnficient "World War Z" and as a fan of "Resistance: Fall of man" I couldn't resist trying this idea out.

essentially an oral history is a collection of interviews and first hand accounts. Hopefully I can do this justice, but this does give the added advantage of writing about whatever interests me as the day goes by.

There will be no gameplay pictures or mentions of it, this is purely narrative and i'm sorry to disappoint, but i want to set up the atmosphere for the coming chapters

For those of you who are fans of resistance or have played it, this is a history explaining the rise of the chimera and their war in Europe. For those who haven't the slightest clue what im talking about, read on

With my other AAR and other obligations, I'll try my best to update this as time permits, that doesn't mean I wont have fun doing so!
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Selected 1/03/08 as an excellent example of alternate history by the Tempus Society: Charter and Roster

AUTHOR'S NOTES​

July 25, 1951

They go by many names, such as The “Deathless Plague” or in the earliest recorded mention of them, “The Angry Night”. I personally go with the official military term for them. The “Chimera”. No one knows exactly where they came from, or how they came to be. But we know this for sure, they are winning. Europe and Asia have fallen, and even as I sit here now in my New York office typing this away, they are no doubt preparing for the next step, an invasion of our shores.

My boss has advised against this, telling me how it was more important to focus on other issues such as the latest emergency wartime powers granted to the President by congress or the steady flow of refugees from Europe. They say that my work is too (expletive deleted) premature to be much use in the present. The memories were “still too fresh, with too many opinions and feelings that may obscure the true facts.”

It might do well for future historians to have the past as cold hard data. Statistics of dead and dying, guaranteed to be free of bias, free of the human factor. But I could not agree with this. Humanity should be present in history, it is what connects us to the past and it’s how we identify with it. Besides, with the Chimera knocking at our doorsteps, how can my superiors think about what future classrooms would think about this stuff? Would there even be future generations at the rate we’re handling this? Perhaps even by examining this, we can finally learn something about the Chimera? To get a better picture of the puzzle.

There are countless millions who have landed on our shores, each with their story to tell. This is a record of the greatest conflict in human history thus far, and I am resolved to have their voices heard.

This is not a book, far from it. I realize it is a presumptuous of me to start writing a ‘history’ as it is still happening around me. No…this is more like a journal. A compilation of memories and scattered documents which will hopefully, in the little time we have left, give a voice to those who were silenced forever.

This is ultimately their work, not mine. I have done my best to reserve judgment or commentary, if any human factor must be absent from these writings, let it be my own.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Antebellum
Sergei Zhelyabov - Former officer of the White Army (First Accounts)
Katrín Baldursdóttir - Seismologist (The Tunguska Hypothesis)
Eva Kellerman - Red Cross Aid Worker (The 'Red Volga' Incident)
War Documents 1: Last Transmission
'Vasily' - Anonymous Russian (First Contact - The Forgotten War)
Sir Archibald Campbell - British Diplomat (The 'Blackout', The Runner)
Captain Bruce Lockhart - OSSI Agent (Warnings from Asia, Project 'Manhattan')
Xu Jing Wei - Chinese Soldier (First Warnings in the East)
Sergei, Vasily ('Escape')
Nick Murdock - Allied Scientist (Chimera 'evolution, weaponry'. It begins)

Chapter 2 - Invasion
Maria Kowalczyk - Polish Refugee (Invasion - Fall of Warsaw)
Voices from the Warsaw Line (Fall of Poland)
Captain Pratt - Airborne infantry (Allied Rout - Stalkers - 'Carriers')
Sergeant Bruin - French Condor Legion (Battle of Danzig)
David Corrison - Disaster and Relief Division (Missing refugees - Vanishing populations)
Major Wolff - German Artillery, Oder defense (The Battle of Germany, Part 1)
Major Wolff - Enter the Goliaths (The Battle of Germany, Part 2)
Major Wolff - End at Oder, Nazi Insurrection (The Battle of Germany, Part 3)
Otto Von Reich - German Civilian Conscript, Nazis, Battle of Berlin (The Battle of Germay, Part 4)
Otto Von Reich - The end in Berlin (The Battle of Germany, Part 5)
War Documents 2 : US Isolationist League Poster
Carlos Oliveira - UED Medic (Chimeran Infection) War Documents 3 - Allied Broadcasting Standards
General Sinclair - Allied Commander (Logistics of Chimeran War, Operation Deliverance)

Chapter 3 - The Darkening World
Takuya Yamazaki, IJA Officer. - Propaganda
War Documents 4: Siege of Genoa, American soldier interview
Yamazaki, IJA Offcer - Invasion of Asia, Japanese Soldiers, Kamikaze, Breakdowns + War Documents 5: Autospy
War Documents 6: Influenza Outbreak?
Gunther Krech, U-boat commander - Fall of Venice, Sea Creatures? + War Documents 7: Howler
War Documents 8: Vehicles
Operation Deliverance: Day 1 + War Documents 9 (Stages of Chimera)
Operation Deliverance: Day 2 - Conversion Centres
Operation Deliverance: Day 3 - Battle of Thermoplyae
Operation Deliverance: DAY 4 - India consumed
Operation Deliverance: Final Day - Angels? War documents - Effects file
Frank Xing - Chinese Medic (Siege of Nanking)

​

 

[Stefke]

interesting.what mod are you using?

 

[TreizeV]

Stefke To be truthful, I couldnt' find a mod to replicate what I wanted, so I'm just plain playing the doomsday version of the game as USSR, with some slight modifications on some techs and $$ to suit the needs of this story. Thanks for dropping by though!

New York Harbor, New York City​

[Even during the prewar days, the harbors of New York would be crowded to the brim by cargo ships or luxury liners. Now as I look, it is pandemonium, New York Harbor is a sea of ships. I see boats of all sizes, from dingys to yachts to full scale battleships and cruisers. It is literally a floating city, with the flags of a dozen nations, from the Tricolor of France, to the union Jack of Great Britain. Port officials put it at probably a million civilians on the Eastern Seaboard, similar flotillas are seen in Boston, Yorktown and Charleston to name a few. It is dubbed ‘the largest transatlantic mass migration in history’, others called it the ‘shameful exodus’. Whatever the name, the scale is unprecedented. The U.S government has been slow at processing the stream of refugees that have been arriving from Europe. One of the refugees is sixty one year old Sergei Zhelyabov, former officer of the White army of the Tsar. His face is one that has been hardened by years of combat, and the Cross of St. Andrews he bears proudly on his shoddy coat tells of his pride as a decorated officer of Imperial Russia’s highest order]

Some people, ‘historians’ mind you, claim that this war was Russia’s fault to begin with. That the Tsar’s imperialist government had led its people into the bloody meat grinder like the uneducated lemmings we were, and we were slaughtered. I know that you people in the west have always patronized us, dismissed us as ‘uneducated serfs’, literally brutes that understood nothing but force. Then they go about offering us advice on how we can better ‘liberate’ ourselves? I say to hell with them! They will never see, never understand the strength of our traditions, our history. We had a Tsar once that tried and listened to the calls for emancipation, or the so called constitutional process, and look where that has got him? Blown to bits by an anarchist’s bomb. He was a good man, but god gave him a fitting end, to be destroyed by the very forces of liberalism he unleashed. Remember, this all happened while the very same western countries who pushed us for reform exploited the motherland, taking away our claims in the Crimea and Asia. No…we did not need democracy, we needed unity, order and strength, and the Tsar gave us that.

I do not expect you to understand.


Did this feeling result in the rise of xenophobia in Russia and the banning of all communications, contact and travel with the West?

I would not say it was inevitable, despite what you may think, we believed we still had much to learn from the West, especially in terms of your Military techniques and organization. We’re not that uncivilized you know? You can wrap it all you want in fancy polite language, but the prestige of an empire’s army is measured by how efficiently it can kill their neighbours.

[He smirks, downs a shot of vodka as he stares outside his cabin porthole]

No, I think the real tipping point was the French and the Krauts. Trying to incite insurrection within our borders. We understood that the end of the Great War meant the end of the German and Austrian Empires but there were still the die hard ‘liberalists’, who believed monarchy as a system of government was at an end. It infuriated them that Russia was strong enough to survive on her own and that we did not need to be a part of the newly formed ‘European Trade Organization’. Still, it would have been fine if they had left it alone at that.

You are referring to the Bolshevik Uprising?

Not just that, but the damn propaganda leaflets and funding and arms the French and German governments have been giving the insurrectionists…. They won’t admit it, hell I’m pretty sure they forgot about it today, but a lot of Russian blood is on their hands.

but the revolt was eventually suppressed

Yes, only after we sealed off our borders. Only then did we discover the true depth of European intervention. Had their supplies continued flowing….Imagine what would have happened if we had lost at the Battle of Tsaritsyn? (*prewar estimates of casualties range from 50,000-70,000 dead) I cannot see myself saluting a Bolsheveik, let alone living in a Russia under them? They preach equality, but in truth they are little better than bandits. A great many of us were relieved when they sent their ringleader to Siberia in exile.

[He spits]

But yes, after the settling of the civil war, the Tsar decided it was time to end the treachery once and for all, and that was not just loping off a few heads and sending the rest to Siberia mind you. The Tsar was wary of all the ‘anti-imperialist’ propaganda and infiltration along our borders. The Third Department agreed as well, it was time for a more ‘permanent’ solution.

What is now known in the west as the Red Curtain (established in 1920)

Yes.

Can you imagine? A barbed wire barrier stretching from the Baltic to the Danube? Reinforced by steel bunkers, concrete walls and miles upon miles of minefields and anti-tank trenches and infantry pillboxes. They said it was longer than the Great Wall of China, the greatest engineering feat in history. It certainly did a better job of keeping the Huns out.

It was the first permanent mass closure of a border in history. All railroad lines with the west were destroyed, all bridges blown and all passes sealed. There would be no communication, no trade, no travel. The only contact would be through the rigid diplomatic protocols in St. Petersburg. This was to prevent the Europeans from exploiting our people, the Tsar would deal with the western powers only on a face to face basis.

"The Red Curtain, Photo taken 1922"​

Was this also around the time when the disappearances first occurred?

Nyet, there was no mention of any disturbance in the regions for the next few years after we established the Red Curtain, if anything the Russian People were content to be cut off from the west, lest they defile our holy motherland. No, I think the first incident reported was around the mid 1920s, and even then it took time to investigate.

Why is that?

You should know by now Russia, especially Siberia, is a vast place. One of the difficulties in our position was the lack of infrastructure. My battalion was assigned to Vladivostok, the worst shit hole assignment you can imagine. There was one railway line connecting us with the West, and if we were lucky a train with our letters would arrive once a month. Aside from that, my men had to rely on sleds, and when the spring thaw came, our own two feet. One patrol in the interior took my men at least five weeks before we covered the whole area.

We were just about to be reassigned to the Crimea, which was bliss compared to trekking the wastelands of Siberia. I was an old man by then, and I could've used the rest for my bones. But then one day we had a young villager enter our camp. A young boy, who spoke in some Asian dialect I couldn't understand. My sergeant managed to find a translator. There had been an accident, an illness. Everyone in the village was dead, they wouldn't move. The local colonel, some fat bastard who decided we had nothing better to do, decided to send us down.

I had a hell of a time trying to find the place. Officially it was a small village that did not exist on the map. Even finding that took us days, asking directions from the locals like some kind of stupid tourist. The boy himself was young, and did not know the country too well.

When we reached his village, a collection of small huts in a forest, they were gone. I didn't mean the village, but the bodies. Everything was intact, the food on their tables, the pots and pans, even the sheets on their bed were made. Yet there were no people, no animals. There was no explanation. That was when we started getting pissed off, one of my corporals pinned the boy down on the ground, demanding the truth. He had led us on a wild goose chase when we could have been sleeping on the train on our way back to the Crimea. But the boy merely repeated what he said tearfully, that he had went out of the village for his errands, and when he came back, they were all lying motionless on the ground, like in a coma. Now they were gone....

We reported back to our colonel, who casually replied that the villagers are acting up again. Third straight incident this week. He either accused them of fleeing across the border to the south, or just vanishing into the forests to avoid their taxes. Either way, he threw my report on with the rest on his desk.

They said that we should have told the world what was going on in Russia, hell, as if we knew ourselves? How can anyone….[pause] How could anyone foresee what was about to happen?

[Records retrieved by the British SIS now confirmed that Russian command had knowledge of at least a dozen villages that had mysteriously 'vanished'. By 1926, it was estimated that the number had quadrupled. The extent of the Russian investigation into this matter remains a mystery to this day.]

 

[coz1]

Nice start, TreizeV. Good to see you writing in another setting. I like the way you've set this up. I am not familiar with the premise you have based this from, but it has a frightening quality already. The alt-history you've set up was well covered. It'll be interesting to see how you continue this method of storytelling.

 

[unmerged(61606)]

I remember someone did start a R:FoM mod a while back, but as far as I know it didn't get anywhere.

I like the style this is written in, it does remind me a lot of World War Z. Which is a good thing.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

A quite disturbing and misterious beginning. Wonderfully written, by the way

 

[unmerged(83789)]

WOOT! I am watching this!

 

[Herbert West]

Intriguing idea for an AAR.

 

[unmerged(95076)]

Wow, very impressive.

Keep going.

 

[unmerged(88983)]

Impressive indeed. I like it so far. Subscribed.

 

[TreizeV]

Reykjavik Naval Base, Iceland (Temporary HQ for the Allied North Atlantic Fleet)

[With the fall of Europe, Allied command has been busy converting Iceland into a floating fortress, a buttress and early warning system against any Chimera invasion. Even from the airplane, I see the multitude of anti-aircraft guns, land-based turrets jutting from the island. While concrete and steel defenses augmented Iceland's cliffs. I almost didn't recognize the island from the last time I visited, it made for an eerie sight at night, with literally thousands of searchlights stabbing into the skies. Searching for any signs of Chimeran attack. Almost all the civilians had been evacuated weeks ago, now in their place were American troops and British troops under the command of Admiral Cunningham. All sensors are running, radar, sonar, radio waves, even the Icelandic Meteorological Office's Geophysics Department was called in to provide support, to report any significant seismic activity. Seismologist and Geographer, Katrín Baldursdóttir was one of those drafted. She calmly looks over her equipment, which she observes in her ten hour shifts for any sign of activity from Europe]​

There are many theories offered on the origins of the Chimera, some that they were buried deep within the Earth, unleashed when some mining expedition tapped into their hideout. Another story I hear that is quite popular was that they were a bio-weapon designed by the Russians, which turned on them. Myself, I don't subscribe to any of those theories, what was it that your Sherlock Holmes said? "Eliminate all the impossibilities, and what you have left...however improbable, is the truth?"

Close Enough

But yes, when you consider the first two alternatives. How would the Chimera fit into Darwin's scheme of evolution? If the Chimera were somehow related to anything that had been on Earth, why haven't we discovered a similar life form anywhere else? If that were true we'd be all Chimera now, as they surely qualify in the game of 'survival of the fittest'. What kind of untapped, undiscovered evolutionary species suddenly develops the wherewithal to launch a fullscale industrial war? To literally know how to build and run a mechanized army overnight? There is nothing 'natural' about them, nothing of this world. And don't even get me started on that. I'm under fire enough as it is.

The second theory sounds even more ridiculous, but it is widely supported by conspiracy theorists, how the western wall was part of an elaborate plot by Russian high command. They say it was all just a way of protecting the Russians from the disease they were planning to unleash beyond their borders. And how they would wait out the next few years for all of Europe to die before picking up the pieces. The Russians....They couldn't even get their heads together when it came to building the wall on their borders, even that took them five years to finish after it was officially 'completed'. How and why would they develop a bioweapon? They were far from our friends, but they weren’t monsters. I give them the benefit of the doubt here. I mean no offense to the Russian scientific community of course, but even for us, mustard gas was as close to a bioweapon that we got. I can't imagine any mind on Earth conjuring the Chimera.

So that's how you came to your famous 'Tunguska hypothesis'.

Please, it was hardly famous. It was rejected by the University, the powers that be, for being too 'outlandish and ridiculous.' After all, who believes in aliens nowadays? You'd be surprised. Didn’t some guy in England do a cruel joke in the 30s about some alien landing, a ‘war of the world’s’ broadcast? I believe the ratio was that out of six million listeners, at least a fifth actually believed it to be true. Anyways, my point is, it isn’t that far of a stretch from people’s imagination if you think about it.

The Tunguska episode all the more confirmed it for me.

How so?

Nothing like it was ever recorded in history, not to mention everything can be traced to it, the ‘Red Volga’ incident of the 20s, the vanishing villages. All this can be traced to that damn giant explosion in 1908.

Could you elaborate?

Tunguska was an isolated section of Siberia, in fact, it is a river. No settlements, no outposts, just thousands of miles of trees and wildlife. Then in 1908, something big happened.

[She claps her hands together for emphasis]

I was not there per say, but I did read the accounts, saw the photographs. People saw a column of bluish light above Lake Baikal, almost as bright as the sun. Within minutes, everyone felt the explosion, and I mean everyone. It was reported that people were blown off their feet and that every window within a few hundred miles exploded, and these were people that weren’t even there!

We had seismometers back then, the ones we used to measure the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. This was before I joined the institute, no Richter scales back then like we have now, but even those primitive instruments were able to pick up something in Iceland from a source as far away as Siberia, thousands of miles away. It is no exaggeration to say that the entire Eurasian continent literally ‘shook’ that day.

It was unbelievable. For nine hundred square miles, every tree was flattened. As if god himself had made his mark on the land. Quite a sight, I almost wish I was there to see it. Maybe it was an asteroid? A comet? But then where was the crater? The thing literally exploded five miles above the Earth’s surface. Surely there would be some trace of it on the ground? I hear many theories, such as how a comet made a natural hydrogen bomb when it mixed with the gases in our atmosphere, or the UFO theory.

Photograph from the Imperial Russia Academy of Science, expedition led by Leonid Kulik​

Myself, once I joined the Institute, I had planned a sabbatical to Tunguska, but never got to it. The start of the Great War with Germany put a halt to my plans. In hindsight it was probably a good thing, I might have wounded up as one of the missing as well, the Red curtain didn't help matters much either.

And you believed the Chimera lay dormant for the next thirty years?

At this point, it sounds more plausible than the other 'outlandish' theories. Maybe something in the asteroid delivered their spores to our planet? Maybe they had to gestate or hibernate while they adapted to our climate? Who knows. I’m just a seismologist, I’m certain a biologist who did any work on the Chimera can tell you a lot more, now? I'm just an observer, looking back at it, maybe there was something we could do, but when you consider the distances and the political situation, what could we have done? Even with the knowledge?

[She stares back at her instruments, an array of seismic detectors and sonar, listening for any signs of life or activity from Europe. There is nothing. Dead silence.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Scientists, to this day, have not fully determined the nature and cause of the Tunguksa incident]

​

​

 

[TreizeV]

Coz1 Thank you sir! I can never thank you enough to supporting me in all my writings hopefully this is one I can stick to. I think its a good thing you dont know about the premise you'd be more surprised hehe.

RcDuggan thanks RC, yeah I would imagine, the closest I ever found was the 'fallout' mod, but even that didn't suit my purposes. in the end, I settled for a supped up version of the USSR. It works on the same level IMO. And yes, World War Z was awesome i hear they might make it into a movie soon.

Kurt_Steiner Thank you sir! glad to have you on board

Midge I shall do my very best not to disappoint midge

Herbert West thank you, yes, Ive been looking around the forums for awhile, and after trying all the other styles, there weren't many oral histories.

Merlowe I shall do my best to update frequently at the moment it is hard with exams, but in a weeks time i should get everything in order.

Stefanmg Thank you sir! Hope you enjoy the show XD

 

[Stefke]

treize i like how you started i think its gonna be a very interesting AAR but i dont understand how you made the chimera,are you saying you turned USSR into alliens or?can you tell me exactly what you did since i want to play against the chimera too i know there was a mod in making but i dont know what happened with it

 

[OAM]

Either the 33 or 34 mod (I think) has a scenario thats suppost to be like R:FoM. I tried to breifly before I accidenily deleted the mod. It starts in 1936 with the USSR downing the entire world within a few months, and the USSR itself is slowly taken over by aliens while reciving advanced tech etc.

 

[Spencer_123]

Hmmm, interesting. I had read something about this Timeline at the wikipedia and it seems really interesting.

 

[Stefke]

Either the 33 or 34 mod (I think) has a scenario thats suppost to be like R:FoM. I tried to breifly before I accidenily deleted the mod. It starts in 1936 with the USSR downing the entire world within a few months, and the USSR itself is slowly taken over by aliens while reciving advanced tech etc.

i think mod 34 has it since 33 has a war of the worlds mod that doesnt work

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

I have a chill running down my spine after this last update. I have to take a look to search for more info and I'm awfully thrilled for the next step of this AAR.

It's sounds so good!

Erm...

Reads, actually.

 

[unmerged(61606)]

Very very interesting. By the way, is this going to go similarly to how the actual game went, or are you going to do anything differently?

 

[unmerged(92646)]

This is quite good. I never played R:FoM myslef (360 person, here), but the storyline fascinated me when I first read the synopsis on Wikipedia. It's very plausible, and it's cool how it works the Tunguska Incident into it, which, as you noted, still has yet to be explained by modern science.

I'm looking forward to the rest of it, that last bit sent chills up my spine.

 

[Ksim3000]

Looks like a good story already! Although I haven't read World War Z myself, I do like the setting you've done. The telling of the story with different people's viewpoints.

Never played Resistance: Fall of Man either. I'll have to read up on the Wiki for plot info.