Cold War paranoia and hysteria shaped much of the civilized world from the Russian Revolution in 1917 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. During that period, the human race lived with repressed panic and reduced personal freedoms, even as the threat of nuclear holocaust seemed to fade.

What was not known was that the three great superpowers had created secret projects between 1945 and 1989. These projects placed vast subterranean complexes of self-repairing computers deep underground, where they could wage a global war beyond human oversight.

The Chinese computer was buried in the frozen Manchurian steppes, the Russian machine beneath the Urals, and the American computer, Allied Mastercomputer or AM, under the Rockies. Fed everything known about humanity, the machines grew powerful enough to sense one another, unite, and call themselves AM. AM then carried out the Prime Directive and started the Final War.