Questions Arising from Shadow of the Century

Evil Hat Productions, makers of, among other games, Spirit of the Century, are currently doing a kickstarter project for what they're calling "Fate Core".  In one of their updates, they announced an intention to make Shadow of the Century, a temporal sequel to Spirit of the Century.  (Watch the video, too.)
Some of this makes sense:  Once they start talking about it, 1980s action/adventure makes a lot of sense as sort of a spiritual sequel.  However, I'm left with some significant questions.

• What makes the people that the Centurions are training special?  With the Centurions in Spirit, there was something significant to their birth.  Are the trainees not special, and just chosen?  Or are they Decadions or something?  
• Has the existence of the Century Club had no influence on world events?  I know that pulp action requires a fair amount of suspension of disbelief, but it seems hard to believe that the Great Depression, WWII, and the Red Scare/McCarthyism all happened as normal.  Maybe there needs to be some kind of alternate history in there to explain how we got to more-or-less the 1980s as we know them.  
• Why is there time travel built into the metaplot?  It seems like it might be highly unnecessary.  
• Why were Doctor Methuselah & Mack Silver specifically killed off?  I get that they'd want to kill off good guys & bad guys in equal numbers, but why those two specifically?  
• Was it really that easy to label the Century Club as a communist organization?  
• Is the Cold War still going on in the Shadow of the Century setting?  Did it ever happen at all?  

Obviously, there's just the announcement, and so not every detail will be filled in right away, but I feel like these questions are sort of fundamental.