The following is an excerpt from The History of the Desert Rangers, The Early Years, by Karl Allard,
2087, Allard Press, Ranger Center Hardbound pp. 293, $20 gold.
Tensions grew with the coming of 1998. The United States Citadel Starstation was slated to be fully
operational by March, Soviet charges that the space station was merely a military launching platform
alarmed a number of nonaligned nations. The right wing governments in the South and Central Americas,
many of them set up by the U.S. during the Drug Wars (1987-1993), pledged their support to the U.S. The
NATO nations, including the new African members also declared their alliance with the U.S. That move
forced most of the remaining neutral powers to join the Soviet protest. In six short weeks, only Switzer-
land, Sweden, and Ireland continued to declare themselves neutral nations.
Two weeks before Citadel was due for full operation, the station transmitted a distress signal. Immediately
after the message was sent, most of the satellites orbiting the planet were swept clean from the sky, leaving
the great powers blind. In military panic, each sent 90 percent of their nuclear arsenals skyward. Although
the destruction was tremendous, it was not complete. Pockets of civilization remained, some even oblivi-
ous to the military exchange.
On the same day that the U.S. and Soviet Union were attempting to extinguish each other, a company of
U.S. Army Engineers were in the southwestern deserts building transportation bridges over dry riverbeds.
They worked deep in the inhospitable desert valleys, surrounded by a number of survivalist communities.
Located directly south of their position on that day was a newly-constructed federal prison. In addition to
housing the nations criminals condemned to death, the prison contained light industrial manufacturing
facilities.
Shortly after the nuclear attack began, the Engineers, seeking shelter, took over the federal prison and
expelled the prisoners into the desolate desert to complete their sentences. As the weeks passed, they
invited the nearby survivalist communities to join them and to help them build a new society. Because of
each communities suspicions towards one another, times were difficult at first. But as time nurtured trust,
this settlement -- which came to be known as Ranger Center -- grew to be one of the strongest outposts.
Ranger Center even proved powerful enough to repel the hands of rancorous criminals who repeatedly
attached in attempts to reclaim what was once rightfully theirs.
The citizens of Ranger Center, after first believing that they were the only ones who survived the nuclear
malestrom, soon realized that communities beyond the deserts grip had also survived, Because they had
such success in constructing a new community, they felt compelled to help other survivors rebuild and live
in peace.
Toward this end, the Desert Rangers, in the great tradition of the Texas and Arizona Rangers a century
before, were born.
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