(no subject)

[camwyn]

Oh, now I remember what I was going to put in my prior post. A question about the Fallout universe. Namely:

Was part of the Fallout universe's divergence from the real one the non-ratification or the eventual loss of the Geneva Conventions?

I ask mostly because of the bit in the opening cinematic of the first Fallout game where the very first thing we see that isn't cartoon footage is a newsreel clip of "our brave boys keeping the peace in recently annexed Canada". Two figures in power armor and full-face helmets have a man in basic body armor kneeling in the street in front of them. One of them pulls out a pistol and shoots the kneeling man in the head. Then he and his companion turn and wave to the camera.

It's that blithe, cheerful wave that has me wondering. That is not the same as the execution of the Cambodian general that was captured on film- and I understand that particular shot was a desperate measure with considerably more story behind it than most Americans ever know or see. The image in the Fallout opening vid is the act of a man happily waving to a news camera when he's just done something our world would never condone. If he were waving to a companion of his taking a picture it might be another thing, because God knows soldiers do that whether they should or not, but that was news footage. That's the mark of a world where either overwhelming public opinion is behind you... or there is absolutely nothing to punish you for what you just did.

So did Geneva ever get ratified in the Fallout universe, or did the Conventions get junked altogether, or what?

Comments

[duane-kc.livejournal.com]

The UN disbanded in June, 2052. Canada was annexed in 2076. I think it's possible, even likely, that the Geneva Conventions were repudiated by the US somewhere in that time period. The Third Geneva Convention, covering the treatment of prisoners of war, was ratified in 1929; I rather doubt that the divergence goes back that far, but I suppose it's possible.

[camwyn]

There are a few instances of divergence that date from before the 1940s, I know that much. The most notable ones crop up in Fallout 3- the construction of the Washington Monument is different from how it is in our world, and there's a physical recording of Abraham Lincoln's voice. But considering the way the rest of the timeline looks I'd probably say that yeah, Geneva got ratified and then repudiated like a bachelorette party bastard between 2052 and 2076. Okay, cool.

[antepathy.livejournal.com]

The scene you describe reminds me vividly of an old film reel (honestly, I'm not THIS old!) that shows a pair of Einsatzgruppen after shooting a peasant woman in, I think, Poland. They seem downright pleased with themselves, and served a country that allegedly signed and honored the GC.

Remember, though, 3GC really only covers treatment of 'Prisoners of War'. As we've learned from fairly recent events, categorizing someone as something *other* than a POW means they are not covered under GC rules.

[camwyn]

Yeeeah, I know. I'm partly asking because of my Fallout 3 pup recently having to shoot some people who surrendered (they were slavers and she has no way of keeping them prisoner, and no reason to trust them not to do horrible things if released), and partly because I need to get it straight in my head before I write the incident which explains why Roger Maxson was a captain when he got assigned to Colonel Spindel's unit... and was still a captain more than a year later. (Namely, he stopped someone from being a bastard to Canadian POWs and the someone deliberately borked his chances of promotion as a gesture of petty revenge.)

[caira.livejournal.com]

I'd add that the Geneva Convention had its own predecessors—a law historian with too much time on their hands might go back and figure out if the first point of diversion is the 1899 or the 1907 Hague Convention . . .

[camwyn]

Well, as I said in one of my other tags, Fallout 3 provides evidence of earlier divergences from our timeline than previously suspected. The Washington Monument in our world is largely solid construction, rather than the paneling-over-scaffolding construction we see in the Fallout universe- and it was built from 1848 to 1884. A recording exists of Abraham Lincoln's voice, which is not the case in our world. If you include the Mothership Zeta DLC, space aliens were abducting people as early as 1694. Those were probably relatively minor divergences, easily smoothed out by the passage of time without any other effects being seen- the Hague Conventions would've probably had a more noticeable effect if they were eradicated or never passed in that timeline. So it's possible there.

I suspect Geneva did exist, though, and got repudiated somewhere along the way. Most medical equipment in the Falloutverse is marked with a five-equal-squares cross. Several medical facilities including medic tents are marked with red five-equal-squares crosses. This implies, if nothing else, that Henri Dunant's influence was felt somewhere along the way. The American Red Cross owes its existence to Clara Barton's experience with the International Committee of the Red Cross, so it's unlikely that the crosses are Clara Barton's influence alone, and the treaties that first established the Red Cross and the basics of treatment of wounded and sick by a neutral agency were rolled out in 1864 and picked up by the States in 1882. #2, for dealing with armed forces wounded/sick at sea, came later. The Geneva provision for prisoners of war wasn't until '29 or '31 now that I'm looking at things... well, anyway, my guess is that if nothing else, the specific cross emblems and the red crosses in particular on hospitals and medic tents indicate at least the First Geneva Convention existed, so it's probably easier to assume at least the first two, maybe the first three, possibly all four were extant at some point in time and then just rejected when the world started descending into bastardry during the Resource Wars.