[hider=The Endurance Cooperative]
[b]Legal Nation Name:[/b] The Endurance Cooperative

[b]What Areas Do You Control (Territories):[/b]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/u211ZYG.png[/img]
Territory is shown in the light purplish colors situated in the area around Bhutan and in China

[b]Flag or Banner (National and Political):[/b] 
[img]http://i.imgur.com/RfoVbYj.png[/img]

[b]Political Party:[/b] The Reclamation Society heads the Endurance Cooperative, which is essentially a single-party state.

[b]Type of Government:[/b] The Endurance Cooperative is, in its most basic form, a benevolent military dictatorship. The Commander In Chief of the armed forces has absolute power over the state as well, though their power is checked not by elected officials, but by the population itself. Due to the fact that the population in all nations is significantly lower than it was before the war, the Endurance Cooperative has chosen to allow citizens to put forward and object to decisions made by the Commander In Chief in a system rather similar to a direct democracy. However, the Commander In Chief still holds absolute power and can veto any decision that can be linked to the survival of the state.
Date Out of Bunker: N/A, the people of the Endurance Cooperative never entered a bunker

[b]Productions:[/b] Advanced information technology (computers and the like), various foodstuffs including potatoes, rice, and seafood, dirigible aircraft, planes, advanced ocean vessels, power armor, armored vehicles, various ferro-alloys, and natural gas.

[b]History of the Nation:[/b] The Endurance Cooperative never had the luxury of retreating to underground bunkers to escape the devastation that occurred on the surface, and was founded the day the bombs dropped by UTA military personnel aboard the aircraft carrier UTS John C. Stennis and her support fleet. The world already having ended, they convinced naval remnants of the United Free Peoples of True Asia that further conflict would only serve to doom humanity to extinction. With the remaining power of both the UFPTA and UTA navies, the newly formed group (known simply as "The Cooperative" at the time) sent out expeditions to the rest of the world in an attempt to find and rescue others who survived the apocalypse.

For months on end their aircraft scoured the planet, searching for other survivors. All those they could find were brought back to the fleet, which was now acting as a refugee camp (something which the massive decks of the two aircraft carriers excelled at). After nine full months, the search was called off. They had found all whom they could and taken on all they could handle. Food supplies aboard the fleet were running low, so a final flight was made to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to retrieve plant seeds untouched by the disaster. Impromptu greenhouses were constructed on even more impromptu additions to the carrier decks, which allowed them to stabilize the food situation. For about a week.

Then the twilight came.

The countless tons of ash, dust, and fallout kicked up by the nuclear detonations rose into the sky and refused to come down, plunging the planet into a never-ending twilight. On the worst days, one couldn't tell if it was day or night. The crops started dying, and the food situation got worse and worse. In desperation, more expeditions were sent out in an effort to find anything that would help them survive the nuclear winter. Back at the fleet, everyone pitched in by trying to gather the food they needed from the ocean. Seaweed was collected in massive quantities, while smaller ships were sent out to hunt whales (for many years after the crisis had passed, it was feared that the one-two punch of the nuclear winter combined with the excessive hunting had finally finished the creatures off).

Before the fleet could slip down into anarchy, the expeditions returned. They brought with them countless packaged foods scavenged from markets that the survivors couldn't get to before they succumbed to the elements. More importantly, however, they brought with them material with which to build grow lights (as well as more than a few intact ones). These supplies were immediately put to use, and once again, the Cooperative was able to stabilize a food source.

The radio signal that came next had perfect timing. Just as the possibility of a settlement on land was being considered, the Cooperative picked up a desperate radio signal asking for food, coming from Bhutan of all places. Apparently, its sheer remoteness had spared it from the war... and also left it in a confusing world that seemed to be changing with the sole purpose of killing them. In fact, they didn't even know what had happened until the Cooperative managed to reach them. However, all they did was confirm the already prevalent idea that a nuclear war had occurred.

Refusing to turn away an entire country, the Cooperative immediately offered aid to the nation with the clause that they allow them to operate any facilities they wished to within the nation wherever and whenever they saw fit. The government obliged, and Cooperative forces rolled in. They stripped buildings of anything that could be useful, and put it to use in constructing indoor farms. All the while, fallout came down upon them like rain. Having finally secured a food supply to feed the Cooperative and its new ally, the fleet moved to the remnants of Yulin naval base in China. It had been a submarine base, with underground pens being constructed to hold the vessels. This made it the perfect candidate for habitation, as the concrete and dirt above the sub pens would provide at least some amount of protection.

Once the sub pens had been sealed, drained, and filled with makeshift buildings to house refugees and more greenhouses, the fleet moved on once again. The people of the Cooperative proper lived as seafaring nomads for years, scavenging wreckage from the ocean floor and the remains of cities to expand their own ships. The two aircraft carriers, the Liaoning and John C. Stennis, became gigantic floating cities. The Liaoning was even converted to nuclear power after a while in order to combat fuel shortages and its own increasing mass. A few new survivors were also found, usually in other stranded ships and submarines.

After nearly five decades of scraping by on the few foods that were taken from the seed vault and fish, the depressing hell that drove thousands into madness ended. For the first time in longer than anyone could remember, the sun shone fully in a blue sky. The fleet returned to its two allies, Yulin settlement and Bhutan to discuss the course the three would take. Everyone was somehow affected by the radiation, and the population of Bhutan had been reduced to under a tenth of what it once had been by famine and simple sterility caused by the fallout. After a three day conference between the leaders of each, it was decided that they would merge to form a single nation. The first that would be formed after the war.

They chose to simply name it "The Cooperative" at first, essentially just merging the two settlements under the control of the fleet. However, when the subject of a capital city came up, two proposals were put forward. The first was that the most populous city be chosen, while the second was that the nation should be named after it. Both were agreed upon before a capital was actually chosen, to ensure that all parties remained impartial. As luck would have it, the UTS John C. Stennis happened to be the largest "city". Which, of course, started a debate over whether or not a warship named after an American senator had any right to be the capital of a nation based in Asia and populated by people from around the world. By the end of it all, they just decided to rename the ship. The former UTS John C. Stennis became the ECS Endurance. And that's how the Endurance Cooperative got its name.

Now united, the Endurance Cooperative began to take on a massive effort to redevelop various areas within their territory that had fallen into disrepair during the nuclear winter. Yulin naval base's above-ground facilities were reconstructed, and many Bhutanese cities that had been lost to the elements after their inhabitants had died were rebuilt to accommodate the slowly expanding population of the newborn nation. Outdoor farms were cleared of the massive piles of dead plants that now covered much of the Earth, then reopened using the pure seeds that had been recovered from the vault.

Life once again returned to the land, the brown mass of dead trees and plants replaced with splotches of green as the Cooperative restarted the tradition of farming. As they continued to expand their food supply, they also expanded their infrastructure. A railroad was laid down, stretching from Bhutan to an old port city on the coast to allow for easier transport of supplies between the fleet, Bhutan, and Yulin. After that had been completed, another expedition was sent to the seed vault to make a massive withdrawal. Every last type of seed they could find was taken out, then dropped across the land using all the aircraft they had at their disposal. Over the course of many decades, the Cooperative restored the Earth.

By the end of their massive effort, they had created substantial industry in many of their territories-the largest concentration being at the Yulin settlement. In order to support the effort, many airships had been constructed in the form of hard-shell, dirigible aircraft. More naval ships (including a small aircraft carrier) were also built in order to allow an expanded military, for while they were all alone at that point, they knew there would be others who survived. And there was no guarantee that they too had put the war behind them.

While they still operate many prewar jet aircraft, the fact of the matter is that they are actually near-useless in post-apocalyptic air combat. Their stalling speed is faster than the top speed of many "new" planes. As a result of this (and the fact that their escort carrier couldn't possibly accommodate a jet), they have begun to build natural gas-powered propeller planes based off of WWII aircraft from the USA and Japanese Empire. After all, both were very much meant to be carrier-based. With a few design modifications, it was possible to use them with natural gas fuel and on smaller ships.

The Navy is mostly prewar designs, with a few new ones (such as the single escort carrier and production models of hypothetical UTA "Montana-Class" railgun artillery cruisers). All the armored vehicles of the Army (which uses mostly prewar Indian weaponry, with a rail arquebus design slowly phasing out the older gunpowder-based weapons) are new designs, almost always equipped with railgun weaponry. Power armor is highly advanced, and sometimes variations can be seen on the streets in civilian use due to the ever-abundant malicious mutations making it a necessity for many. Generally, the military is only used to fight against mutated animals, but everyone is prepared for the possibility of armed conflict with other survivors. 

[b]Main Race:[/b] The Endurance Cooperative has citizens from every major ethnicity, though those of African descent are notably common. However, these characteristics can easily be shoved aside by other groups of survivors due to the fact that there is barely a single citizen without some kind of mutation.

[b]Main Religion:[/b] Buddhism is rather popular in the Endurance Cooperative, due to the fact that it was both the most common religion inside its territory before the war, and the fact that after the war the Christian majority in the UTN fleet turned away from their faith.
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