Protect and Survive: A Timeline
- Thread starter Macragge1
- Start date
I think it was Jukra here who said that Finland had stockpiles of oil and raw materials sufficient to last for a year at then current consumption rates during the Cold War.
I think that you are seriously underestimating the recovery potential of Sweden and Finland (it can't be lower than Britain) and for several reasons:
-Both countries had large armies of conscript reaching in the hundreds of thousands. Relative to the size of their smaller populations these armies are huge. British Army on the other hand lost a good part of its men and equipment on the continent.
-Sweden railway network was almost entirely electrified then and most of Sweden power supplies come from hydroelectric and nuclear sources. Neither are likely to have been massively targetted, so once the grid is repaired (easier said than done I know), power is available.
-The agricultural base of both Sweden and Finland is rather large and can be expanded yet further due to the low population densities. Slaughtering maybe up to half of the livestock would free up more food for human consumption, and more land for potato farming. That is also true for Britain by the way, these millions of sheeps in the countryside can be mass slaughtered for food and warmth and the land turned over to potato farming.
-Refugees from Denmark and northern Europe can only come to Sweden by boat (the Oresund bridge was not built then). Boats can be sunk if the powers that be decide to do so. Refugees from Norway especially will still be a problem. But there Sweden has a chance to instantly replenish its losses with them. Give any Scandinavian refugee ten acres and the means to farm potatoes on them I say. Finland can probably secure Karelia with its conscript army and gain a buffer zone against Soviet refugees.
-Sweden and Finland still have significant wood based industries, these are now vital as the material is available.
-Sweden industrial base is fairly dispersed so even in Stockholm, Gotebörg and Mälmo are gone, there will be reasonnable amount left.
Scandinavia will recover faster and better than the United Kingdom I say. If whatever Swedish politicians left are smart enough, I would offer protection to what remains of both Denmark and Norway. Its now or never to realise that old Swedish dream of uniting Scandinavia!
Oh, it might. It'd keep it at a trickle that soon stops as small boats run out, at least (I suspect that sinking small boats crossing the strait in the Helsing area at night will not be easy to sink).I certainly hope it won't come to that.
The Finns returning in triumph to the lands stolen from them by the evil Stalin and to liberate their kinsmen further east who long suffered under the Czarist and then Bolshevik yoke?
Hukka Palle! (Spelling?)
Hukka Palle! (Spelling?)
Sir Chaos
Banned
Leningrad and Murmansk are gone, but what other targets are there in between these two places?
A fair few
Airfields at Topoduzheme, Kem/Poduzhemye, Letneozerskiy, Petrozavodsk and several around Murmansk and the Kola.
Naval bases around Murmansk - including SSBN bases.
Various components of Leningrad Military District and their bases.
Transport and Comms centres at Kamdalaska, Belomorsk, Ledmozero, Suoyarti.
Ah.
If they got nuked, Karelia is going to be a mess.
If they didn't, the Finns are going to have big problems securing control unless they can do some kind of deal.
And then there's the seething mess of what used to be Leningrad...
looks like Scandinavia is going to be a "quiet superpower"
kind of a change from the old viking days, alas, alas...
(with Vikings, the main effect on your kids would be that they'd be born with red hair, not an awful thing over the longer term)
"Give any Scandinavian refugee ten acres and the means to farm potatoes on them I say."
once paranoia is overcome, an impromptu "homesteading" policy would be a smart move for any country with open spaces and shall we say a stressed population. that's probably the best reason to let the South Africans ashore after giving the guilty-looking ones a fierce set of beatings.
Not just a mess, but a mess with half a dozen motor rifle divisions running out of food with no supply line left behind them based out of a HQ which has probably been nuked.
Murmansk will glow as much as St Petersburg, I think there's at least 12 military targets within 50km of Murmansk.
Sir Chaos
Banned
The ones with enough decency to look guily aren´t the ones who deserve the real beatings.
Tom Lehrer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pklr0UD9eSo a pretty funny song.I wonder if Lehrer assuming in this timeline he survived the war is still singing and what would he think of his former songs now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pklr0UD9eSo a pretty funny song.I wonder if Lehrer assuming in this timeline he survived the war is still singing and what would he think of his former songs now.
Sir Chaos
Banned
Aren´t those targets mostly clustered around Leningrad and along the coast (Murmansk/Polyarny)? I mean, shouldn´t there be a relatively target-free zone of thinly populated land somewhere in the middle?
Hakka päälle, IIRC. Anyway, I suspect a less violent warcry may be necessary... they aren't supposed to keep on hacking, after all.
If nothing else there isn't much in the way of a Danish or Norwegian miltary left to say no.
And this is assuming the Soviets didn't obliterate Finland due to past grudges and whatnot.
Whatnot being general Soviet paranoia and fears about the "Finns stabbing them in the back again"
I suspect that during the conventional phase the Soviets pushed through northern Finland to try and get to Norway. The Finns would have resisted and the Soviets probably invaded the southern, more populous part of the country.
When WMD started being used in Germany the same probably happened in Scandinavia. The Finns would have no effective way to fight back and would suffer badly.
Interestingly the US and Sweden had a defence treaty that stated if the USSR ever attacked Sweden that the US would come to its aid. In a similar vein a document in the British National Archives recently released stated that there was an agreement between NATO and Switzerland that while in peacetime Switzerland would be neutral in war it would support NATO.
It does now look like both Sweden and Switzerland would have been de facto allies of NATO. I suspect that the USSR would know this, or at least suspect it as they had a few good sources within NATO, so that possibly means that the Soviets would hit those two neutrals harder than we have previously believed.
When WMD started being used in Germany the same probably happened in Scandinavia. The Finns would have no effective way to fight back and would suffer badly.
Interestingly the US and Sweden had a defence treaty that stated if the USSR ever attacked Sweden that the US would come to its aid. In a similar vein a document in the British National Archives recently released stated that there was an agreement between NATO and Switzerland that while in peacetime Switzerland would be neutral in war it would support NATO.
It does now look like both Sweden and Switzerland would have been de facto allies of NATO. I suspect that the USSR would know this, or at least suspect it as they had a few good sources within NATO, so that possibly means that the Soviets would hit those two neutrals harder than we have previously believed.
I suspect even if the Finns didn't resist (which is very unlikely) that the USSR would stomp all over them.