I'm just one of the writers on Wasteland 2 (and a really, really minor one, most praise by far should go to Nathan Long), but I think this permeates a lot of the setting, or at least my interpretation of it, this kind of "dunno really" attitude, a focus on the basic human nature to misremember and misinterpret things. That's not exactly novel to a post-apocalyptic setting but it can lead to excellence if done with consistency, and I believe it was a strong element in WL1 with factions like the Guardians.
In WL2 you can see it not just in how people look back to history and interpret it with cults like the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud and God's Militia), but even in more recent events and the vastly different retellings and interpretations of the events in Highpool from Wasteland 1, and even the nascent legends forming about it, or of course the faction struggles of the Rail Nomads, their legend forming and something as simple as retelling an already existing Luddite legend (John Henry) into their own form. A lot of wrong-doings in the history of Wasteland's setting stem from people's inability or refusal to understand each other, from the minor (Bobby and his dog) to the major, and even in non-obvious ways (such as the fact that the Rangers let the inmates live, which we don't know exactly why they did, but it was a mistake probably based on a bad misread of the situation and the nature and intentions of the majority of the people in that prison).
I think that's what bugs Woolfe about this writeup which I can kind of get but it shouldn't be read as a historic document. Remember, in WL2 you can already find different and conflicting retellings of the events of WL1's main story even among different Rangers and in different lore piece. We kept that in very purposefully because that's how human memory works, and that same process is at work here. Maybe the 6 year timespan is to specific to mention, but who knows if it's even true, the intent of it was again more to indicate it was a long, grandscale conflict.
