[CHAR] Twilight Struggle: A Cold Affair

WIP (Need to put a description of Geography)
Flag: 
Basic information: United States of America (USA), English, Minorities with Spanish and French, Washington DC, American, Anglo, Yankee (Northerners), Southerner (People in the South), African Americans (Darker Skinned Americans)
History (Just Early Cold War Era, Cause We know the rest):

Following World War II, the United States emerged as one of the two dominant superpowers, the USSR being the other. The U.S. Senate on a bipartisan vote approved U.S. participation in the United Nations (UN), which marked a turn away from the traditional isolationism of the U.S. and toward increased international involvement.

The primary American goal of 1945–48 was to rescue Europe from the devastation of World War II and to contain the expansion of Communism, represented by the Soviet Union. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 provided military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey to counteract the threat of Communist expansion in the Balkans. In 1948, the United States replaced piecemeal financial aid programs with a comprehensive Marshall Plan, which pumped money into the economy of Western Europe, and removed trade barriers, while modernizing the managerial practices of businesses and governments.

The Plan's $13 billion budget was in the context of a US GDP of $258 billion in 1948 and was in addition to the $12 billion in American aid given to Europe between the end of the war and the start of the Marshall Plan. Soviet head of state Joseph Stalin prevented his satellite states from participating, and from that point on, Eastern Europe, with inefficient centralized economies, fell further and further behind Western Europe in terms of economic development and prosperity. In 1949, the United States, rejecting the long-standing policy of no military alliances in peacetime, formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which continues into the 21st century. In response the Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact of communist states.

In August 1949 the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon, thereby escalating the risk of warfare. Indeed, the threat of mutually assured destruction prevented both powers from going too far, and resulted in proxy wars, especially in Korea and Vietnam, in which the two sides did not directly confront each other. Within the United States, the Cold War prompted concerns about Communist influence. The unexpected leapfrogging of American technology by the Soviets in 1957 with Sputnik, the first Earth satellite, began the Space Race, won by the Americans as Apollo 11 landed astronauts on the moon in 1969. The angst about the weaknesses of American education led to large-scale federal support for science education and research.

In the decades after World War II, the United States became a global influence in economic, political, military, cultural, and technological affairs. Beginning in the 1950s, middle-class culture became obsessed with consumer goods. White Americans made up nearly 90% of the population in 1950.

In 1960, the charismatic politician John F. Kennedy was elected as the first and – thus far – only Roman Catholic President of the United States. The Kennedy family brought a new life and vigor to the atmosphere of the White House. His time in office was marked by such notable events as the acceleration of the United States' role in the Space Race, escalation of the American role in the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the jailing of Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Birmingham campaign, and the appointment of his brother Robert F. Kennedy to his Cabinet as Attorney General. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, leaving the nation in profound shock.


Politics and Government: Federal Republic, the Current President is Richard Nixon of the Republican Party.
Military:
The US has around 27k Nuclear Bombs in its Arsenal, which in turn gives them one of if not the largest stockpile of Nuclear weapons on Earth. (That is about all of the Information I have for it)
Geography: 
Economy: 
The energy shortage occurred because of a worldwide oil shortage. Nations around the world started to conserve their non-renewable oil supplies in hopes to have some still available in the near future. Nations started to depend on the Middle East for oil because of their sheer abundance of it. During this oil shortage, the Arab and Israel states had a war called the Yom Kippur War. The Arabs would lose because the west had helped out the Israelis. Due to this, out of frustration, the Arabs put and oil embargo on the west called the "Arab Oil Embargo." Of the participants were the world were the largest oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait. The gas prices would sky rocket, quadruple even. This devastated the western economy including the Americans economy. This would lead to the Americas having stagflation. Stagflation is a portmanteau word used to describe a period with a high rate of inflation combined with an economic recession. This would bring the U.S. gas prices to go from 35 cents a gallon in the beginning of 1970 to around 90 cents near the end of the 70s. The embargo would end less than a year later in March of 1974 but the effects would stay till the end of the century.
 The inflation of the 1970s was terrible. There was a mix of a high demand and a low supply of things such as jobs, houses, cars etc. The reason for this high inflation was because no one wanted to take office as the Federal Reserve chairman. Also many people under estimated the effects of the inflation problems. No one really had a mandate to stop the inflation either. So what happened was that the prices kept on rising and rising. Another thing that caused inflation was that the investors and creditors had no confidence in the bank system. The lack of credibility and commitment cause inflation to rise. The three main reasons toward inflation are as follows.


Culture: 
One change that made a huge impact on 70s culture was the growth of women’s rights. As the 60s became the 70s, women were making their way out of the kitchen and into the workplace.

Of course, there have always been women that work for a living, but in the 70s it began to be “okay” for wives and moms to distribute responsibility for their home and family to others while they went out and made some extra bucks, money that helped pay for the houses and cars that were growing in size and cost.

But even though mothers were heading out to work each morning, the family unit was still an essential element of 70s culture, though what the family looked like certainly began to change. The divorce rate began to skyrocket towards the end of the decade.

Technology entered the picture in the 1970s as well and affected the way people spent their leisure time. Americans of all ages were awed by new-fangled video games that first appeared at arcades and then invaded the house, hooked up to the family television. If you had an Atari game and/or one of those new home computers, like the TRS-80 from Radio Shack, you were cool!

Music was also a huge part of 70s culture. The Rock and Roll genre that took the 60s by storm continued to burgeon and had a great influence on the youth of the decade. All sorts of Rock sub-genres emerged and much of it had adults shaking their heads and wondering what would become of their kids if they kept listening to this loud music with the undistinguishable lyrics.

And at the end of the decade, young adults found a new kind of music and a new way to have fun. Disco music prompted the opening of hundreds of dance clubs around the country, even in small towns but especially in large U.S. cities. Though disco music would disappear by the end of the decade, it would have a huge impact on many aspects of life in the 70s including movies and fashion.


Infrastructure, Science, and Development:

A wireless local area network is the linking of two or more computers or devices using spread-spectrum or OFDM modulation technology based to enable communication between devices in a limited area. In 1970, the University of Hawaii, under the leadership of Norman Abramson, invented the world's first computer communication network using low-cost ham-like radios, named ALOHAnet. The bidirectional star topology of the system included seven computers deployed over four islands to communicate with the central computer on the Oahu Island without using phone lines.
1970 Surf leash
A surfboard leash or leg rope is the cord that attaches a surfboard to the surfer. It prevents the surfboard from being swept away by waves and keeps a runaway surfboard from hitting other surfers and swimmers. Modern leashes comprise a urethane cord where one end has a band with a velcro strap attached to the surfer's trailing foot, and the opposite has a velcro strap attached to the tail end of the surfboard. The surfboard leash was invented in 1970 by Santa Cruz, California resident Pat O'Neill, son of wetsuit innovator Jack O'Neill, who fastened surgical tubing to the nose of his surfboard with a suction cup looped to the end of his wrst in order to leverage turns and cutbacks in the water. However, modifications in 1971 by O'Neill made the surf leash attached to the ankle and to a surfboard's tail, a practice still in use today.
1971 Uno (card game)
Uno is a card game played with a specially printed deck. Using colored playing cards, he game involves playing the legal card with the highest point value. This is a simple way to minimize points held in the hand at the end of the round, but fails to account for the utility of holding wilds and draw fours near the end of the game. Uno was co-invented by father-son duo Merle and Ray Robbins in 1971 as a twist to the card game called Crazy Eights. The name of the game, "Uno", Spanish for one, was thought up by Merle's son Ray.
1971 Personal computer

An early personal computer
The personal computer (PC) is any computer whose original sales price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator. The Kenbak-1 is officially credited by the Computer History Museum to be the world's first personal computer which was invented in 1971 by John Blankenbaker. With a price tag of $750 and after selling only 40 machines, Kenbak Corporation closed its doors in 1973.
1971 Fuzzball router
Fuzzball routers were the first modern routers on the Internet. They were DEC LSI-11 computers loaded with router software. First conceptualized by its inventor, David L. Mills, fuzzball routers evolved as a virtual machine supporting the DEC RT-11 operating system and early developmental versions of the TCP/IP protocol and applications suite. Prototype versions of popular Internet tools, including Telnet, FTP, DNS, EGP and SMTP were first implemented and tested on fuzzball routers.
1971 Supercritical airfoil
A supercritical airfoil is an airfoil designed, primarily, to delay the onset of wave drag on aircraft in the transonic speed range. Supercritical airfoils are characterized by their flattened upper surface, highly cambered aft section, and greater leading edge radius as compared to traditional airfoil shapes. The supercritical airfoil was invented and designed by NASA aeronautical engineer Richard Whitcomb in the 1960s. Testing successfully commenced on a United States Navy Vought F-8U fighter through wind tunnel results in 1971.
1971 Microprocessor

The microprocessor
The microprocessor is a computer chip that processes instructions and communicates with outside devices, controlling most of the operations of a computer through the central processing unit on a single integrated circuit. The first microprocessor was a silicon-based chip, the Intel 4004, co-invented in 1971 by Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin, and Stanley Mazor for a calculator company named Busicom, and produced by Intel.
1971 Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible "floppy" magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. In 1971 while working at IBM, David L. Noble invented the 8-inch floppy disk. Floppy disks in 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch formats enjoyed many years as a popular and ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange, from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s.
1971 String trimmer
A string trimmer is a powered handheld device that uses a flexible monofilament line instead of a blade for cutting grass and trimming other plants near objects. It consists of a cutting head at the end of a long shaft with a handle or handles and sometimes a shoulder strap. String trimmers powered by an internal combustion engine have the engine on the opposite end of the shaft from the cutting head while electric string trimmers typically have an electric motor in the cutting head. Used frequently in lawn and garden care, the string trimmer is more popularly known by the brandnames Weedeater or Weedwhacker. The string trimmer was invented in 1971 by George Ballas of Houston, Texas.
1971 Memristor
A memristor is a passive two-terminal electronic device that is built to express only the property of memristance. However, in practice it may be difficult to build a 'pure memristor,' since a real device may also have a small amount of some other property, such as capacitance. In 1971, American engineer and computer scientist Leon Chua first postulated the memristor that could be used to implement computer memory. Almost four decades after Chua's research, a team of engineers at Hewlett Packard under the direction of R. Stanley Williams constructed a working memristor using a thin film of titanium dioxide in April 2008.
1971 E-mail

The interface of an e-mail client
Electronic mail, often shortened to e-mail, is a method of creating, transmitting, or storing primarily text-based human communications with digital communications systems. Ray Tomlinson as a programmer while working on the United States Department of Defense's ARPANET, invented and sent the first electronic mail on a time-sharing computer in 1971. Previously, e-mail could only be sent to users on the same computer. Tomlinson is regarded as having sent the first e-mail on a network and for making the "@" sign the mainstream of e-mail communications.
1972 C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language originally invented in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in order to implement the Unix operating system. Although C was designed for writing architecturally independent system software, it is also widely used for developing application software.
1972 Video game console
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or electronic device that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device such as a television to display a video game. A joystick or control pad is often used to simulate and play the video game. It was not until 1972 that Magnavox released the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, invented by Ralph H. Baer.
1972 Global Positioning System

A GPS receiver for civilian use
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides reliable, three-dimensional positioning, navigation, and timing services to worldwide users on a continuous basis in all weather, day and night, anywhere on or near the Earth. 24 satellites orbit around the Earth twice a day, transmitting signaled information to GPS receivers that take this information and use triangulation to calculate the user's exact location. Ultimately, the GPS is the descendant of the United States Navy's Timation satellite program and the United States Air Force's 621-B satellite program. The invention of GPS was a collaborative and team effort. The basic architecture of GPS was devised in less than a month in 1972 by Colonel Bradford Parkinson, Mel Birnbaum, Bob Rennard, and Jim Spilker. However, Richard Easton, a son of Roger Easton who was the head of the U.S. Navy's Timation program, claims that his father invented GPS and filed U.S. patent #3,789,409 in 1974. Other names listed by Richard Easton are James Buisson, Thomas McCaskill, Don Lynch, Charles Bartholomew, Randolph Zwirn and, "an important outsider," Robert Kern. Ivan Getting, while working at Raytheon, envisioned a satellite system similar to MOSAIC, a railroad mobile ballistic missile guidance system, but working more like LORAN. The GPS program was approved in December 1973, the first GPS satellite was launched in 1978, and by August 1993, 24 GPS satellites were in orbit. Initial operational capability was established in December of that same year while in February 1994, the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) declared GPS ready for use.
1972 PET scanner
A PET scanner is a commonly used medical device which scans the whole human body for detecting diseases such cancer. The PET scanner was invented in 1972 by Edward J. Hoffman and fellow scientist Michael Phelps.
1972 Magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI), is primarily a medical imaging technique most commonly used in radiology to visualize the structure and function of the body. Dr. Raymond Damadian, an Armenian-American scientist, who while researching the analytical properties of magnetic resonance, created the world's first magnetic resonance imaging machine in 1972. Damadian filed the first patent for an MRI machine, U.S. patent #3,789,832 on March 17, 1972, which was later issued to him on February 5, 1974. Damadian along with Larry Minkoff and Michael Goldsmith, subsequently went on to perform the first MRI body scan of a human being on July 3, 1977. Reflecting the fundamental importance and applicability of MRI in medicine, Paul Lauterbur of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham were awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their "discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging." The award was vigorously protested by Damadian, founder of FONAR Corporation, who claimed that he invented the MRI and that Lauterbur and Mansfield had merely refined the technology

(Just As A quick note, I did use Wikipedia a lot for this App)
[CHAR] Twilight Struggle: A Cold Affair

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