Prologue

Narrator: The Strategic Arms Reduction Talks were being held in Geneva and the United States had taken a hard-line against the Soviet invasion in the Crimean Peninsula. It meant that the United States President was going in hard-line to the talks with the intent on making the Soviet President back down from his actions in the Ukraine. It wasn't about to go very well at all.

The Russian President had always maintained that naval access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean was non-negotiable and that the Sea of Azov was Russian territorial waters. With the Ukraine complaining about Russian Naval assets transiting the Kerch Strait and making threats to block it off. It appeared that Russia had no choice but to threaten military action, but the Russian President had always maintained that they would resort to annexing Ukraine if they had to do so in order to secure the strait.

Well, when the Ukrainians had started placing missile emplacements along the coastline pointed at Kerch Strait on the pretext of sovereignty, the Russian president acted with ruthless force and aggression: he sent troops into Ukraine. Under no circumstances was he going to allow the Ukrainians to choke-point naval access through the Kerch Strait into the Black Sea and to points beyond in the Mediterranean.

Most only give a passing notion to the thought of nuclear annihilation and that was what the START talks were aiming to prevent. SALT II built upon the foundation that Nixon and Brezhnev had signed in 1972. Carter and Brezhnev were the two that were in power at the time, in '79 when further talks limited the number of MIRV missiles and nuclear weapons were limited to 1320 a side. The START I talks were held by Bush Sr. and Gorbachev in 1991. Upon its expiry, a New START agreement was signed by Barack Obama and then-President Medvedev, however the new US administration considered the New START a bad deal.

In Sunset Valley, it was quiet, not much was happening other than the usual day to day activities that most of the sims did, whether shopping at the market, eating at either the diner or the restaurant, going to school or to their work. Other than the fact that Sunset Valley had a big target on their town, it was like any other little town in North America and all over North America, sims were doing whatever it was that they intended to do at the time, with no thought about what was happening in Geneva and how it would affect their every day lives. When it was said that the START III talks were not going well, it was an understatement of epic proportions. There were threats made at Geneva (within the borders of the nation of neutrality).

Eight sets of parents had to give up their young adults...to go into the bunker...so that Sunset Valley could survive and the government gave those eight young adults §95M to ensure that they would be able to rebuild Sunset Valley after the apocalypse. It wasn't certain as to when the group would be able to come out of their bunker, but they knew that when the air-raid sirens went off, it would be too late. So their goal was to outfit the bunker before anything did happen.

Should it be that the mushroom clouds billowed into the air, at least there were eight people who could contribute to genetic continuity.