The Snake Plissken Timeline

 


Disclaimer: "Snake Plissken", related characters and stories were created by John Carpenter and Nick Castle. I don't own them, of course. This is just a fan fiction work and an homage to one of the coolest and greatest cinematic anti-heroes of all times.



Alternative Space-Time Continuum Nr. 74,81,96,03 .
Location: United States Of America, Earth.



1967:

March: Stephen Daniel Robert "Bob" Plissken is born.
1973:

September: Bob Plissken begins grade school.

1985:

War breaks out, the United States of America opposing Russia and China. The trouble starts in Middle East, small, and escalates into World War III. In this war, the big three discard the nuclear option by mutual agreement, but in addition to standard military armament, they all use biochemical weapons.

June: Robert Plissken, a gifted athlete, graduates from high school. **[The evidence in "Escape From L.A." is that Plissken must have praticised surfing, basket and some other unspecified sports a lot.]**

1986:

Plissken joins the Army. He quickly earns promotion, first to Sergeant, then to Lieutenant. **[According to the novelization, When Plissken got the Army call he was an "hot shot college boy." --- According to Carpenter, the Snake Plissken character was inspired by a college friend who went to Vietnam and came back home totally changed. The movies provide no details on Plissken’s transition from school to Army service, so the timeline does not cover it.]**

Between 1986 and 1988:

Russia invents a new type of gas, an aerial toxin that causes mental damage. Russia uses the gas in massive attacks on the U.S., and New York City is one of the first hit. Most inhabitants become 'gas crazies' who kill and cannibalize their victims.
The United States Police Force (USPF) Mark I is formed to handle the rising crime rate.

1988:

The crime rate in the United States rises 400%. New York’s Manhattan Island becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A 50-foot containment wall is erected along the New worthless junk nobody wants shoreline, across the Harlem river, and down along the Brooklyn shoreline. It completely surrounds Manhattan Island. All bridges and waterways are mined. The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the island. There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners and the worlds they have made. The rules are simple: once you go in, you don’t come out.
Robert Plissken racks up an incredible record as a glider pilot and leader of Black Light Squadron. Plissken and his unit fly a famous mission over Leningrad, and earns his first Purple Heart. He is the youngest man decorated by the President. **[The youngest soldier ever decorated by a U.S president was 13 years old, but there is no proof that Plissken received a Congressional Medal of Honor, because past presidents have bestowed all sorts of awards and medals, including Purple Hearts, not just the Medal of Honor! Anyway, as stated before Snake Plissken belongs to an alternative space-time continuum line which diverges from ours in many ways.]**

Between 1988 and 1993:

The bombs and biochemical weapons cause atmospheric damage. The aerial toxins re-combine their molecular structures in unpredictable ways. The wind carry them around the world until rainfall deposits them again.
Plissken earns his second Purple Heart over Siberia: he loses his left eye.
When he leaves the Army, he turns to crime (bank robbery) to support himself. He runs with an Army buddy, Bill Taylor, who has a bad leg.
Plissken starts to refer to himself as "SNAKE" **[Probably his former war nickname, soon assurged to popularity among the general public.]**
He also gets long hair and Cobra tattoo around this time.

1993:

Snake Plissken, Fresno Bob, Harold Helman – and possibly Bill Taylor – try to rob a bank in Kansas City. Helman deserts them, leaving Snake and Bob facing capture by the USPF. Snake escapes, but Fresno Bob is caught and killed. The USPF skinned him alive, according to Snake.
Between 1993 and 1997:
Snake Plissken becomes notorious as the most successful and dangerous criminal in the United States of America.


1997:


Pollution has become an out-of-control causative factor for problems across the globe, with consequences related to the spread of soil diseases, telluric disturbances, and violent shifts in climate.
The United States calls a meeting -- the Hartford Summit – where it plans to coerce China and Russia to stop fighting based on the revelation of a top-secret energetic source the U.S. has developed or has access to that involves tritium and nuclear fusion. President Harker has convincing technical information about the process on a cassette tape, which he intends to play at the Hartford Summit and so end the war. He is flying to the Summit on Air Force One. **[EFNY does not provide enough information to determine whether the device is a new energetic process or an experimental weapon. EFLA doesn’t mention it, so it could be just a conceptual engineering development.]**

Events of "Showdown In San Francisco" occur:

Day 1: Snake robs the Denver Federal Reserve Depository, gets away with several billion dollars in credit discs. He meets with Taylor in the Atlanta hummer station several hours later and they travel on the underground tube-train to San Francisco.

Day 2, 4:00 AM Pacific Time: they are ambushed in the San Francisco underground station by the USPF. Snake can run much faster than his buddy because Taylor has a bad leg, and Taylor is wounded and losing blood, which slows him down even more. Snake has almost gotten completely away – he’s on another platform out of sight of the USPF hounds and a train is coming that he could catch. But he gives up his chance to escape and goes back to where dozens of Blackbellies surround him with guns just to try to persuade Taylor to surrender and save himself. Taylor eventually refuses to surrender, and he is killed, but Snake surrenders and survives. He is 30 years old. **[Day 1 and 2 scenes were deleted from the movie during the final edits but can be viewed separately on the EFNY Dvd Special Edition released in 2003.]**
Day 3, 7:00 PM: as President Harker is flying to the Hartford Summit on Air Force One, the jet is hijacked by the National Liberation Front Of America and deliberately crashed inside New York Max. Harker survives by ejecting in an escape pod, but he is trapped inside the prison.

Day 3, 7:45 PM: Snake Plissken arrives at New York Maximum Security Penitentiary.

Events of "Escape From New York" occur.

Day 4, Evening: Snake Plissken escapes from New York with the President and the tape. He asks Harker how he feels about the people who died helping him to escape -- after all, they all struggled together to survive, and that should mean something – but Harker’s response shows he feels nothing for their sacrifice. Snake walks away with his amnesty papers, a free man, leaving Harker to play the tape on live broadcast to those assembled at the Hartford Summit. But the Summit is an embarrassing failure because the tape the President plays is a substitute that Snake handed over in place of the real one. Snake destroys the real tape as he walks away.
President Harker’s credibility is destroyed by the humiliation of the Summit failure. There are no other tapes about the process anywhere available, and the scientist who invented the insanity had died months before: no illustrative documents left, neither a scientific research team to re-display what was discovered. In the following weeks, the President is ridiculed both at home and abroad. Harker goes totally nuts: the war goes on. It is denounced as a massacre. The public and global feedback is horrendous. Russia’s backlash is strong. The United States is under siege.
For a while, world is just one more step towards total annihilation.

1998:

The World War III continues, while forces hostile to the U.S. government both within and without grow stronger as America’s military resources are exhausted. Third World hostiles are encouraged by the country’s weakened borders.
Snake Plissken lays low, keeping out of sight.
The U.S. Justice System breaks down, and the United States Police Force Mark II takes its place, replacing courts and other Police forces. USPF doubles in size, and the country is effectively under martial law.


1999:


Los Angeles becomes hell on earth. The city is ravaged by crime and immorality. A presidential candidate for the next election predicts a millennium earthquake will destroy the city in divine retribution.

2000:

Aug 23, 12:59 PDT: Los Angeles is destroyed by major earthquake and a religious fanatic (the visionary candidate) is swept into the Office of President of the United States. Election become merely a formality. The U.S Constitution is amended to allow the President to accept a lifetime term of office. The country’s capitol is moved from Washington, DC, to Lynchburg, Virginia. The great wall is built along the southern border, cutting off the flow of illegal aliens. Surrounded by water, L.A. is now an island off the new western shore, tilting on the edge of the continental plate. Street gangs, South American terrorists, and the criminally insane take control of the once-great City of Angels. L.A. is a no-man’s land of chaos, anarchy and darkness. The USPF, like an army, is encamped across from it in the San Gabriel Mountains.
The President’s first act as Permanent Commander in Chief is Directive 17: it declares that Los Angeles is no longer a part of the United States and that all citizens found undesirable, unfit, or unworthy of their citizenship will be deported from the mainland to this "Island of the Damned", and they can never come back. Firebase Seven is a fortified base camp in the San Gabriel Mountains. It serves as the deportation center, a sprawling police complex with low concrete bunkers, gun emplacements, satellite communications, vehicles, troops, the works.
With New York Max in the East and Los Angeles in the West, the United States of America becomes a totalitarian country under theocratic rule. Tobacco, red meat, fur coats, tea & crumpets, blimey! outside marriage, and all sorts of other "immoralities" are made illegal.

2001:

The war between the U.S., Russia, and China simply 'peters out'. **[It looks like America went out as the 'factual winner' when the big dispute ended. There is no mention in EFLA, but something seemed pretty clear: for the rest of the world America was still a threat to deal with.]**

Between 2001 and 2009:

Acid rain pollution due to gas and earthquakes reaches climatic proportions across the world. The ozone layer grows thin as a result of chemical weapons exploded during the war. Ultraviolet radiation becomes a considerable hazard to human health.
Third World countries begin increasing their military capabilities. They start to ready themselves for the "Big Revenge" on post-industrial countries. However, they still have a long way to go. **[Cuba, Mexico and South America]**
Development in technological and bacteriological fields is at its peak. Scientists have learned to produce designer viruses that are time-dependant, along with other terrible weapons.
The "Sword Of Damocles" project reaches fruition. **[The equivalent of Reagans "Star Wars" project.]**
Having dropped out of sight for a while Snake becomes active again in robbery and sabotage. Plissken is named "Most Wanted" by the USPF; he is the most notorious criminal in U.S. history and World’s most dangerous man alive. His picture is broadcast on the Police Channel. Sometime during this period, Snake teams up with Texas Mike O’Shay and Carjack Malone.

2009:

In Cleveland, Snake, Carjack Malone, and Texas Mike O’Shay attempt an unspecified crime. Carjack turns Snake in and runs out on him, leaving Texas Mike and Plissken at the mercy of the USPF. Carjack is captured anyway and sent to L.A. Mike is possibly killed but Snake escapes in a fashion that has the USPF utterly baffled. **[It looks like Snake’s most resounding action to date. Malloy says: "We thought we had you back in Cleveland... how’d you DO that?!"]**

Between 2010 and 2013:

Fearing a massive terrorist invasion from South America, the United States prepares for war. **[Somehow, Miami, Florida, manages to become one of the strategical beach-heads on American soil. Since the city is very close to Cuba – and hundred of thousand of Cubans who fled Castro’s regime live there already – it would be a reasonable place for a large invasion force to land.]**
In the past, Snake has been badly injured, shot several times in the abdomen. **[As seen in the scars he reveals while changing clothes in EFLA]**
Snake goes underground and drops from sight for a while though he remains on the "Most Wanted" list.

2013:

Third World countries are poised to hit America.
Snake has been the USPF’s Most Wanted Man for 10 years. Convicted in absentia of "27 moral crimes".

New Vegas, Thailand, U.S. Territory: two weeks before the events of EFLA, Snake is captured by the USPF.

Wednesday: Utopia, the President’s daughter, steals a prototype satellite activation device and hijacks Air Force Three, forcing it to take her over Los Angeles, where she ejects in an escape pod. She delivers the device to Cuervo Jones, a member of the Shining Path (a terrorist group) and the leader of the Mescalito Justice, the biggest gang in L.A., with whom she thinks she’s in love. Cuervo Jones is priming L.A. as a beachhead for the invasion of the country, and he plans to use the device to support the attack. Miami is also an invasion point for Cuba.

A 5-man rescue team is sent in immediately, but all contact with the men is soon lost.

Friday, 7:00 P.M: Snake is delivered to Firebase Seven- Los Angeles Deportation Center.

Events of "Escape From L.A" occur.

Saturday: Snake activates the Sword Of Damocles sun-powered satellites, and the pulse not only knocks out energy all over the world, but fries the power infrastructures and all electromechanical devices. Planes fall out of the sky, boats with engines lie dead in the water, and all other motorized vehicles fail as power shuts down around the world. All but the most primitive invading forces are rendered ineffective. The guns still fire bullets, though, and total chaos ensues.
Robert Plissken walks away. He is 46 years old.

2013-(...):

Civilization has been thrown back to the Pre-industrial Era ---- less or more. Billions of people will die of starvation, thirst, disease, and violence in highly developed portions of the world like North-America and Europe, but the inhabitants of primitive countries would hardly be affected at all by the loss of electrical power.
People would still have excellent hand tools and books to tell them how to make and do things. There would be a total breakdown of civil order for many decades, but men would gather weapons and band together in fortified communities so they could protect themselves from roving gangs of thieves and killers. Those ones with the most power (the largest number of guns and people willing to use them) would take over large pieces of territory and establish their own small countries or kingdoms. It’s all quite temporarily.
And then... when the supplies would vanish from the face of the Earth forever... who knows what will happen? Perhaps a new world will arise, not necessarily as bad as the previous one.
Plissken doesn’t give a sh*t about it, anyway.
His future is NOW.


Fan fiction timeline compiled and written by Tiziano Caliendo.



"Escape from New York" belongs to:

 
"Escape from L.A." belongs to: