//------------------------------//
// Prologue: How, what, and why? 
// Story: Escalation 84: A Post-Nuclear Story of Humans and Ponies 
// by dafid25 
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Summer of 1982, the cold war raged on as the Warsaw Pact, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization continued to try to expand their influence and hold on to their sphere of influence.  

However, during the summer of that year, when Pact soldiers would hold an exercise near the East German border, two NVA soldiers accidentally opened fire at the West German border, causing a border conflict. 

One that would prove to be fatal. 

It started as a simple border conflict, but when talks between the DDR and the BRD broke down without cooler heads prevailing, so did the talks between the USSR and the USA. Soviet Armed Forces personnel and US Army soldiers all mobilized their forces, and so did their allies. On September 1st, 1982, Soviet troops launched a full-on assault on West Berlin and an invasion of West Germany. After 37 years, war consumed the world once again. 

During the short months of conventional warfare, the Soviets managed to convince the Arabs to pick up arms and join the war, Yugoslavia opted to remain neutral, and most Pact members started to turn against the USSR, namely Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and even East Germany.

The details no longer mattered, as the Christmas of the same year saw no truces and soccer matches but rather nuclear warheads being fired; significant cities such as Moscow and Washington DC were the first ones to be wiped out, then Berlin, Warsaw, Belgrade, Bucharest, Paris, Stockholm, London, Rome and so on. The rest of the world was wiped out along with the powers. 

About 3.9 billion perished from nuclear weapons, more from its aftermath.

Even though there was no treaty and no declaration of surrender, the war ended as all sides unanimously agreed to a truce. Scientists on each side started working on their one-way portals, all linking to another world, perhaps far away, to escape the impending doom. All sides have scientists telling the sign of an imminent new ice age, or as some people would call it, a "Nuclear Winter", everyone decided they would not be one to build shelters or wait for death to take them. 

One by one, tests are conducted, portals are built, and before winter set in during 1984, the Soviets successfully fired up their first portal at the ruins of Moscow; two hours later, Washington DC also lit up its version. Later, so did the Europeans, the Arabs, and so on. The desperate people started to pack their bags and went to their nearest portals in big cities, one by one, they crossed the doorway, and accompanying them were depressed soldiers, either too young, too old, or too sick to be picking up a gun, politicians, who were just as covered in grime and dust as everyone else, and the scientists who tried to bring with them as many research data as possible and burying capsules for any future sentient life to dig up, hopefully never to repeat their mistakes.

As the people crossed to a new world with fresh air, green forests, and clear rivers that were very much non-existent after the nuclear war, what was left of the humans rejoiced, finally finding a new home. 

However, it would remain to be observed wherever they could co-exist with the natives...