Cold War Rivals in a New World

Prologue: A certified Isekai moment

22nd of January, 1990, 10:34 pm
Near the US-Canadian Border
Joanne Slim sat in the family car, waiting for her husband Karl to pay the gas bill at the gas station they had stopped at during their trip to Canada. It was snowing heavily. At least 8 inches (203.2 mm) of snow laid on the land beside the highway. They had gotten lucky and arrived mere minutes after the highway was cleared of snow. Her husband got back into the car.
" Let's get back onto the highway before it has to be cleared again", he sighed, closing the car door.
In a cheerful tone, she replied: " At least we aren't freezing, like we were in that alpine hut. And when we get home, there isn't much we have to do.", trying to lift Karl's mood, which was quite bleak after already driving for 5 hours. As he turned onto the highway, the amount of snow increased, as did the wind velocity.
" I'm afraid this is gonna take even longer, when I can't even see 300 feet (91 meters)
infront of the car.", Karl grumbled.
After a while, the visibility became better as the amount of snow significantly decreased. When Joanne looked in the rear mirror, she was perplexed. She expected to see highway for miles, but instead she saw what she could only identity as ocean , and a long landmass that seemed to be inhabited. What she in fact was looking at, was Alaska.

Same day, same time, Ukrainian-Polish Border.

Igor was a new border guard at the Ukrainian-Polish Border. He sat in his metal guardhouse, waiting for someone or something to cross the border on the small road he was guarding. The raindrops falling onto the metal roof made consistent noise, just enough to keep him awake. He would finish his shift in less than half an hour. Since Poland started to distance itself from the Warsaw Pact, border control was tightened, and since he had nothing to do while he waited for the Kharkov Tank Factory to respond to his application, he figured he would take a temporary job as a border guard to make some money while he waited. The rain poured down even harder, making more noise, but even so, Igor was barely awake. He suffered an instance of microsleep. He woke up a few minutes later to sounds of waves.
Poland had just disappeared.