"Welcome to Moscow kid."
On March 30, 1981 at 2:27 PM, John Hinckley, Jr. successfully kills United States President Ronald Reagan a mere 69 days into his presidency. As John Hinckley, Jr. is killed before he can be questioned, a media blitz occurs portraying Hinckley as a Soviet Spy. The Death of President Reagan leads to a massive surge in American patriotism and Nationalism leads to the subsequent rise in Cold War tensions as Regan's planned doctrine of no compromise with the USSR is put into full effect. The destruction of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983 by the Russian Military when it ventured into Russian airspace only serves to further increase these tensions and eventually leads to full blown war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact on December 24th, 1983. The Russians soon after launch Операция: Славный молот (Operation Glorious Hammer), a plan to deploy an EMP capable nuclear weapon above the US with the resulting Nuclear electromagnetic pulse knocking out all telecommunications and electronics on the mainland US preventing a counterattack.
Operation Glorious Hammer succeeds actually too well on Christmas Day 1983. Following a series miscalculations the resulting EMP wave did not just wipe out all electronics in America but across Earth in an event known as Silent Christmas. While power would not be restored to full functionality for 60 days after the blast, the world was plunged into anarchy. In the aftermath of Silent Christmas, the world is a changed place. With the failure of governments to maintain order in the chaos, it was the big corporations with their own private security forces that were able to maintain order. In the aftermath of this many world government's collapse including the United States and most of mainland europe, fragmented into city state holdings run by the corporations that consolidated their power into Plutocratict governments.
While technology and industry flourished in these new "corporation states", oppression and corruption ran rampant. Having no government to regulate these corporations whoever had the most power and most money got to run the show and trample over everybody else. The world was entirely split between the The Haves and the Have Nots with the common people suppressed and tossed aside in the gutter as they were no longer able to keep up with the rich and powerful with their new body augmentations and increasing technological power.
Our story would take place in one of these Corporation States known as the Expanse. The Expanse stretches from Moscow in the east to Lisbon in the west, as far north as Oslo, and as far south as Athens making up most of Europe. Once Europe was fragmented by hundreds of different corporations but over time as smaller corporations were swallowed up along with their land, the Expanse was consolidated. The Expanse is of course a dark place where gang leaders and corporate CEOs all plot against one another and where getting stab in a dark alley is just a part of your day to day commute.