Fria Ligans forum

What fictional books would you recommend to get in the Twilight 2000 mood and to be used as sources of inspiration?

I think Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy should be a no-brainer choice. Delving into this game finally got me around to reading it!

RSR is a definite recommendation.
Red Army by Ralph Peters looks at a WW3 scenario from the Soviet side.
Team Yankee and Sword Point by Harold Coyle are similar to RSR and quite enjoyable.
Many novels by Larry Bond (who helped Tom Clancy with many of his books, especially RSR and Hunt for Red October) deal with future (well, when they were written) conflicts such as Korea and South Africa.

Non-fiction, video: Gwynne Dyer, "War," part 5: "Keeping the Old Game Alive."

This is part of an 8-part documentary series on the problem of large-scale war with modern weapons. This segment focuses on how NATO officers attempt to "keep the old game alive" by pretending they can fight a conventional war in Europe (setting aside Soviet doctrine, which didn't attempt to do so). It's a really good look IMO at how we prepared to fight a war in Europe in the mid-1980s when this game first came out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJU5DDh0DEc&t=5s

With Team Yankee buy older prints second hand and avoid the new "updated" version as the new version is full of errors as they couldn't be bothered to hire an editor or proof-reader.

The Defense of Hill 871 is another 80s book focusing on mechanised combat.

Also the film Afghan: The Soviet Experience https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3608008/ is a good source for the Soviet side.

I'm a bit surprised no one mentioned 'The Third World War' or 'The Third World War: the untold story' by Hackett, yet.

For the military war phase rather than the game environment 'after-the-war' phase, consider 'First Clash' by Macksey (particularly for the Canadians amongst us), and the Harvey Black trilogy 'The Blue effect', 'The Black effect' and 'The Red effect'.

Also, consider 'Chieftains' by Bob Forrest-Webb.

Lots of excellent recommendations, thank you. I've already started Red Storm Rising.

Back in the days, this series gave a quick post-wwIII fix https://mcsmith187.wordpress.com/2017/0 ... rd-austin/

You might check out “Lucifer’s Hammer” it was written in the 70s so some things, particularly the social issues certain technology, are rather dated and it involves a comet hitting the earth rather than a world war but it nails the atmosphere of living through the apocalypse rather well.

I strongly suggest Arc Light by Eric L. Harry. It's set in the immediate time after the Cold War, published in September 1994 and written in 1991 and 1992. So it's far closer to the Twilight War than Red Storm Rising. It is also a "come as you are" war and not a tactical surprise setting such as Clancy's novel. It should have been an inspiration for T2K authors since 1994, actually.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_Light_(novel)