Since the early Cold War, The Powers That Be have planned a nuclear armageddon. In the following century they arranged the world according to their design, arranging borders, alliances and tensions like a cruel gamemaster. All of Europe as far east as Russia, and with the exceptions of Great Britain, Ireland & Iceland, is an ashen wasteland. South & East Asia suffered a similar fate, with the exception of Hindustan. The Levant & Middle East were the center of the conflict, and in some places literally formed Glass Deserts that fully sanitized the biospheres of affected areas. The coalescence of these plans came in 2024, when tensions in Israel/Palestine, Russia/Ukraine, China/Taiwan were stoked to the point of nearly global conflagration. South America and Africa devolved into proxy conflicts but mostly escaped nuclear destruction. These regions formed the Outside to the citizens of the American Empire, separated by the Wall of the Americas.