United States

"The truth is much more complicated than you think."

This article is written from a Lore perspective. It contains spoilers and different reference materials might be contradictory.

The United States of America is a country of North America, which secured a globally important position in the world balance in the modern era. They are historical opponents of the Soviet Union, and were significantly weakened with them and the rest of the world's nation-states during World War Three. After World War Two, they had engaged in an arm race with the Soviets over the control of powerful relics technology, often to devastating results.

Technological tardiness

During the last year of World War Two, the US deployed Alsos teams to plunder the war secrets of the Nazi and the Japanese, especially their research on nuclear, rocket and aircraft technology. On the surface, Alsos teams managed to grab most of the important materiel and personnel before the competing Soviet Trade Federation could, but only after the start of the Cold War did they realize that it was only because the Trade Federation was focusing on relics technology. When the US forces captured Wernher Von Braun at Bleicherode, the understaffed Alsos team prioritized the rocketry equipment and personnel and ignored the local Urkunde-01 relics site, yielding 10 years worth of research to the advancing Red Army's vanguards.

When the Cold War started, the US advantage in the field of nuclear weaponry held only until 1949, when the Soviets matched their capabilities thanks to their own research. When the Soviets finished the “Starfish” installation at the Tabasar-B Proving Grounds, the US had no mean to know if it was an offensive system, and they kept over two bases' worth of strategic nuclear weapons pointed at the site as soon as they developed the necessary intercontinental ballistic missile capability. The West only realized the extent of the technological gap with the Soviets in 1955, during their last deep intelligence mission in Eastern Europe, conducted with Marshall Plan assets before the Warsaw Pact would close the region behind the Iron Curtain.

Relics experiments

The US sought to rapidly regain a technological advantage with more experiments on relics site. In 1955, the US established the McMurdo Antarctic surveillance station 1.1km from the recently discovered relics site D1 on the shores of Lake Vostok in the Antarctic Ice Shelf, later nicknamed “Door”. The black budget governmental organization “Big Sieve” was also founded to study relics technology on a tactical level. Between 1955 and 1980, Big Sieve would scramble for relics site in US-controlled territory and discover three more: D2 at Los Alamos in New Mexico, D51 in the Lake Central region of California and D9 at Warren, Wyoming. Big Sieve would collaborate with the military in the relics research and excavation matter. They worked with the Army to hide a research institute in the Redstone Arsenal, and would found Skunk Works with the Air Force and Lockheed-Martin. The mechanical finds at D1 would be transported to the US and Skunk Works would derive the U-2, SR-71, F-117, F-22 and F/A-00 from the research and retroengineering of these relics.

In 1957, when the Soviets launched the first man-made satellite, the US decided to refocus its research structure and Big Sieve's responsibilities became purely governmental, in charge of discovering and protecting US relics, and scouting and destroying enemy relics. Research responsibilities fell in the hands of a new organization proposed by President Eisenhower to Congress: the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), managed by the Secretary of Defence. ARPA was accepted the day it was proposed and had received 5.2 million US dollars in startup funds five day later, totaling 200 million dollars in investment by the time it was officially founded in 1958. ARPA was of great military strategic importance for the US to take back the technological advantage, and all projects had to be completed with no delay. If not, it was handed to a new team and restarted.

At D9, ARPA experimented an anti-organic matter gas found in relics on live subjects. This gas is only known by ARPA's nickname “accelerant”, and of the 130 tons recovered and stored in D9, 3 were deployed to Vietnam for live combat trial in 1968 on orders of President Johnson. Modified F-4 known as Thundercats deployed the gas under direct order of Big Sieve, and by the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, all 3 tons had been used up, sometimes creating 500 meters-wide clearings of burnt earth and vehicles without leaving a bone or a leaf behind. The US were the first to use relics technology in warfare. The “Lady Liberty” experiments conducted at the “Door” studied a teleportation phenomenon between relics D1 and D2 by way of manned and unmanned pocket submarines. Success and survivability of the experiments were erratic, with pilots contracting ELID infection. The infection rate was growing rapidly with the intensity of relics research, and by 1981 the growth rate was deemed dangerous both by the West and the East.

Détente

With mediation from the Vatican and World Health Organization, the Dresden Accords took place in 1981 and were signed on November 3rd. Both parties agreed to stop relics research effort for the time being and work toward a vaccine for ELID, with research debuting on 1983. Relics information were also shared during the Accords, and the Soviet Union had to trade their data on Pikes for the ARPA to recognize the use of relics technology in Vietnam.

The Accords would later be expanded into the Dresden Convention, paving the way to international collaboration on relics technology and GAVIRUL Reproduction Projects.

The United States lost most of their power during World War Three, between 2045 and 2051. Their exact status is unknown, though the Soviet Union still referred to “The West” as enemies in 2063.