Protect and Survive: A Timeline

[Baron Bizarre]

Still enjoying this mightily, but since we haven't seen him in awhile, here's the Mutant Boyfriend:

"Hey, do any of you people remember where I was supposed to deliver this woman? I lost the invoice!"

 

[modelcitizen]

I might give it a go at some point.

is any of this potentially useful?


(btw, I think this website is interesting, it may have been noted earlier in this thread --ha ha, thread/threads, no pun intended-- I first saw it today: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1964to1979/filmpage_warnings.htm )

========== ========== ==========

P and S tropes?

Low-level officers doing their humane best
The constable, our friends in blue, various non-coms and lieutenants all pitch in to hunt for bad guys and protect the innocent (or at least the less-guilty), often encountering tremendous risk in doing so. These folks never harm the innocent for the sake of convenience, and will go out of their way to help bystanders when they can. Notice, for example, the constable who takes an elderly blinded couple to safety instead of coldly dispatching them, and, when using pretended intent to abuse a laborer as a ruse to check on the elderly couple, gives the terrified worker his rations for her trouble once they are out of sight.

High-level officials not so humane
The top decision-makers are as calloused as you can’t begin to imagine. Refugee ship from South Africa? Blow it up and sink it. Argentines pawing at the Falkland Islands? Nuke Buenos Aires. There’s nothing that can’t be fixed without a decisive stripe of Grim Reaper.

What soundtrack for such a film?
Various suggestions are put forth on the discussion thread. The more cheerful parts can be back-grounded with NIN songs like “Hurt.”

The Post -Apoc world is grim, but not grandiose.
Warlord states and the People’s Republic of Free Gibraltar have not come about. Charlton Heston hasn't wandered onto the set to howl, "Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!!"

Reminiscing about nuclear wars that almost were:
Threads, The Day After, When The Wind Blows, nightmares from childhood or young adulthood or adulthood, numerous survival guides from the Cold War era, the thread’s watchers discuss these with morbid enthusiasm.

 

[NickB]

Just wanted to post to say that I found this thread the other day and have enjoyed reading it so much, I've joined the forum in order to say so.

I might well have survived the exchange as an 11-year old in 1984. I grew up in Redditch, south of Birmingham, but I think far enough way to not get caught up in the edge of a blast. Though I'd assume one of the bombs that hit Birmingham would have been targeted at Longbridge in an attempt to wreck that facility even quicker than British Leyland ever could.

Though now I'm living in Colchester, and I suspect parts of East Anglia were just about the worst possible places in the UK to live. By my reckoning, on top of the bombs aimed at the USAF bases in Suffolk, there'd have been one or two for Colchester Garrison, others aimed at the ports at Harwich, Felixstowe and Ipswich, and if anyone survived that, prevailing winds would blow most of the fallout from London this way. Not a very healthy place to live...

Looking forward to reading more.

 

[Dunois]

With regards to targets in France I think that we can add a few mores, chiefly the main airbases (Creil springs to mind) and the garrison towns in the North-East and East.

This might be something of interest,I'm not sure if its 100% accurate but the 1990 FEMA map for predicted fallout patterns in the US is to say the least chilling, http://www.ki4u.com/webpal/d_resources/list.htm scroll down to see the map,the red zone more or less dead.The fallout patterns might end up as a way for splitting countries apart.Since no one would dare cross a hot zone like that communities might end up cut off from one another.

That map on its own does not mean anything, since we don't know what dosage the red areas represent. There is a lot of rubbish around the web concering fallout especially in the light of the Fukushima Daiichi incident from last month.

The amount fo radioactivity (measured in Becquerels) released by one nuclear bomb is actually going to be much lower than the total amount of radioactivity released by Chernobyl. This is because the amount of fissile material used in an nuclear bomb is much much lower than the one used in a nuclear reactor. Also, most of this material will have undergone fission, something which is not the case in a nuclear reactor where some of the U238 gets transmuted into Pu239. Plutonium 239 is highly radioactive with a half life of 24 400 years.

The most important number however is the absorbed dose measured in Sieverts, Rads, Rems or Grays for humans. Unless we know what the total exposure in Sieverts of the areas concerned will be over say a month and what the average hourly dose will be in Sieverts, making assumptions regarding how safe or how unsafe crossing "red zones" will be is impossible.
Ground bursts will maje things much much worse since radioactive particles will "stick" to dust and be carried with the wind. This will still happen in the case of airbursts but on a smaller scale.

Don't forget as well as radiation decrease with time, a month after the attacks the red zone might be safe provided that you only stay for one hour or so, a year later they will be completely safe. Today one can stand by Reactor 4 in Chernobyl and recieve negligible doses of radioactivity.

A good thing which will come up of the war is that knowledge of radioactivity will massively increase as a result. Some breakthroughts in treating radioactive poisoning and in minimisings its effects might very well occur at some point. Who knows some people might even come up with ways to harness radioactivity as a source of energy.
As it was the Chernobyl disaster allowed this to be discovered:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus

 

[Macragge1]

Again, an awesome update from Macragge!



Don't forget that France is a large country, while the northeast will be in a poor condition, the western seaboard will be fine and likely almost unscathed in places.
The loss of Paris will be a huge problem as I have said before, since it might that command and control will be problematic for a while. But if most prefects have survived on a local level (and they likely have in most départements), I can easily see them being granted emergency powers in order to get things up and running.

I dunno...while I agree that some of France might escape in relatively good condition, you have to remember that the French retained their own considerable nuclear capability, and at the time of the war would've had several nuclear bomber, submarine and missile bases that would surely have been hit, if nothing else;

- Luxueil Air Base, in Franche-Comte (French/Swiss border for those who don't know);
- Istres-Le Tube AB, near Marseille;
- Toulon AB, (nuke storage);
- Tours would get it, as it has a nuke component production site;
- The Centre de Etude de Valduc in Burgundy (nuke production & assembly);
- CESTA, nuclear weapons R&D, in Aquitaine;
- Brest, having a nuclear sub base, would be a big target;
- The French IRBM silos in Vaucluse (SE France) would doubtless get hammered;
- Landivisiau Naval AB in Brittany (land station for nuke-armed Navy planes).

Anyone - feel free to correct me if I got those sites wrong or if I'm otherwise full of it.

That said, even those targets do leave large areas intact (if irradiated), if Paris were the only city to be targeted as such. So...better than the UK, but not exactly "unscathed". Methinks this TL is a bit kinder to France than it'd have been if I wrote it.

Jason, this is a map I've made some months ago for France; it includes targets identified by Whitelaw in the early days after the Exchange and others suggested by Dunois itself



Here's a map with your suggestions:

Very interesting and useful stuff guys; it'll come in handy in future installments, so thanks a lot!

One thing we have to remember is that peacetime norms of how government's deal with separatists is now how they will deal with them now. In peacetime they are rival political parties, or pressure groups and are treated accordingly. That's not going to be the case in the post-nuclear apocalypse world.

What do you think would happen if some surviving members of SNP, or Plaid Cymru decide to try and set up an independent Scotland and Wales? They'll get to meet Mr. Chieftain tank and all his heavily armed friends.
That's going to be the same for France, Spain and Italy.

Central governments are not going to tolerate any attempt to break-away from the centre. Plus for a lot of places that might like to break-away if they want to keep on eating they need to stay part of the country they belong to.

Breakaway attempts depend also on how much of the army is still left.If you have at most a brigade size force of traumatised conscripts who saw the worst of the war its unlikely they could do much of anything against even rag-tag separatists.So basically it boils down to how good where the soviets at wiping out NATO forces.If the soviets followed the strategy of everything and anyone that can be nuked is nuked then separatism is a real probability.Somehow Great Britain might not be a good example,while a nuclear power being cut off from direct contact with the mainland the soviets might have said we wont nuke it off the face of the earth.France in 1984 had a similar sized nuclear arsenal to Britain but a conscript based army so somewhat bigger,plus french forces would have arrived faster in Germany then british units.So the french might have ended up with more nukes landing on them and consequently their surviving force is smaller.As I said it boils down to what is left of the army,if next to nothing survived like in West Germany a balkanised future is likely,if there is still a substantial force maybe not.

What Jan says, basically. What one has to remember that Civil Defense planning in the UK and the US (as well as the European nations) placed the maintenance of control over all else - over rescuing survivors, over supplying food - over anything.

Several military formations, regular and territorial, will have been deliberately positioned away from target areas during the build up to war so as to avoid destruction; even traumatised and under-equipped, they will still be an overmatch for the vast majority of rebels.

Still enjoying this mightily, but since we haven't seen him in awhile, here's the Mutant Boyfriend:

"Hey, do any of you people remember where I was supposed to deliver this woman? I lost the invoice!"

Glad you're enjoying it, and glad that strange, strange man is back.

is any of this potentially useful?


(btw, I think this website is interesting, it may have been noted earlier in this thread --ha ha, thread/threads, no pun intended-- I first saw it today: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1964to1979/filmpage_warnings.htm )

========== ========== ==========

P and S tropes?

Low-level officers doing their humane best
The constable, our friends in blue, various non-coms and lieutenants all pitch in to hunt for bad guys and protect the innocent (or at least the less-guilty), often encountering tremendous risk in doing so. These folks never harm the innocent for the sake of convenience, and will go out of their way to help bystanders when they can. Notice, for example, the constable who takes an elderly blinded couple to safety instead of coldly dispatching them, and, when using pretended intent to abuse a laborer as a ruse to check on the elderly couple, gives the terrified worker his rations for her trouble once they are out of sight.

High-level officials not so humane
The top decision-makers are as calloused as you can’t begin to imagine. Refugee ship from South Africa? Blow it up and sink it. Argentines pawing at the Falkland Islands? Nuke Buenos Aires. There’s nothing that can’t be fixed without a decisive stripe of Grim Reaper.

What soundtrack for such a film?
Various suggestions are put forth on the discussion thread. The more cheerful parts can be back-grounded with NIN songs like “Hurt.”

The Post -Apoc world is grim, but not grandiose.
Warlord states and the People’s Republic of Free Gibraltar have not come about. Charlton Heston hasn't wandered onto the set to howl, "Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!!"

Reminiscing about nuclear wars that almost were:
Threads, The Day After, When The Wind Blows, nightmares from childhood or young adulthood or adulthood, numerous survival guides from the Cold War era, the thread’s watchers discuss these with morbid enthusiasm.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtectAndSurviveATimeline

Anyone who wants to edit it feel free.

This is all really cool, guys; many thanks!

Just wanted to post to say that I found this thread the other day and have enjoyed reading it so much, I've joined the forum in order to say so.

I might well have survived the exchange as an 11-year old in 1984. I grew up in Redditch, south of Birmingham, but I think far enough way to not get caught up in the edge of a blast. Though I'd assume one of the bombs that hit Birmingham would have been targeted at Longbridge in an attempt to wreck that facility even quicker than British Leyland ever could.

Though now I'm living in Colchester, and I suspect parts of East Anglia were just about the worst possible places in the UK to live. By my reckoning, on top of the bombs aimed at the USAF bases in Suffolk, there'd have been one or two for Colchester Garrison, others aimed at the ports at Harwich, Felixstowe and Ipswich, and if anyone survived that, prevailing winds would blow most of the fallout from London this way. Not a very healthy place to live...

Looking forward to reading more.

Thanks for the kind words.

 

[Andristan]

Would a group of traumatized conscripts, under-equipped and all that, still support the central gov that may or may not still be in contact or even existence, against the community that the unit was drawn from? UK was fortunate that their gov survived in Britain, I believe the French gov had fled to an overseas territory, IIRC. So that military unit that is being held in reserve in order to combat the break-aways, might be very willing to ignore that central authority in order to help their own friends and families back home.

 

[ivfl]

A country like France would have the added problem of refugees from Belgium and the western part of former Germany.Already meager resources would be overstreched.While most germans would have died survivors would have almost certainly fled to whatever region they think is safe.This might lead to a violent conflict between locals and refugees since neither has the resources to survive.On a related note we might end up with a bit of irony here.Europeans might end up fleeing to North Africa with whatever means at their disposal.While some countries there have been nuke surely Lybia and Egypt and the general conditions are not that good,any surviving spaniard or italian might desire this then living on the edge.Something of an irony compared to how things are today.Of course the locals might not be that welcoming but anyway many would be willing to take the chance.

 

[modelcitizen]

Would a group of traumatized conscripts, under-equipped and all that, still support the central gov that may or may not still be in contact or even existence, against the community that the unit was drawn from? UK was fortunate that their gov survived in Britain, I believe the French gov had fled to an overseas territory, IIRC. So that military unit that is being held in reserve in order to combat the break-aways, might be very willing to ignore that central authority in order to help their own friends and families back home.

depending on the character and commitment of officers and non-commissioned officers, a lot of soldiers could very well end up remaining devoted to their country to the best of their ability.

when knocked over and nearly shattered, given a gentle firm reminder that their basic commitment remains as reason for being, I think a lot of people will stand fast in their loyalties in this (severe!) crisis.

if someone in authority or immediate authority gives a shaky "well, it's your call" vibe, then it could splinter in myriad directions, including a new leader emerging to recommit to the original goal (nation! country! homeland!) or design a new goal (piracy, "popular front," et al), or let's-go-home-dammit, et cetera

 

[Dunois]

depending on the character and commitment of officers and non-commissioned officers, a lot of soldiers could very well end up remaining devoted to their country to the best of their ability.

when knocked over and nearly shattered, given a gentle firm reminder that their basic commitment remains as reason for being, I think a lot of people will stand fast in their loyalties in this (severe!) crisis.

if someone in authority or immediate authority gives a shaky "well, it's your call" vibe, then it could splinter in myriad directions, including a new leader emerging to recommit to the original goal (nation! country! homeland!) or design a new goal (piracy, "popular front," et al), or let's-go-home-dammit, et cetera

Agreed, gentle but firm leadership will be key here, the French conscripts units might be the only thing that stand between the current difficult situation and anarchy and the end of centuries of glorious history. Everyone has lost something in this current ordeal, for some it might simply be a relative but for others it might be their entire families. Yet for better or for worse they still have each others and they have an entire nation to rebuild, hopefully for the better avoiding the mistakes of the past!

A text circulated among the Free French during the war, copy of a speech made by Leclerc, urging the Free French not to lay their arms down until "the tricolor flags flies once again atop Strasbourg cathedral". It only takes one officer to make a similar speech urging his men not to give up until "the Eiffel Tower once again stands proud among the Paris skyline".
Similarly someone in Britain could say the same thing about Big Ben.
"We won't stop the tireless task of rebuilding until Big Ben chimes again across London!".
What about writing a speech along these lines Macragge? Ideally something made by someone low key (Army lieutnant or a surviving MP), which would then spread like wildfire across the survivors?

A country like France would have the added problem of refugees from Belgium and the western part of former Germany.Already meager resources would be overstreched.While most germans would have died survivors would have almost certainly fled to whatever region they think is safe.This might lead to a violent conflict between locals and refugees since neither has the resources to survive.

In the short term this is going to be an issue indeed. But in the long run the refugees will be a boon as they will allow for some of the losses suffered during the war to be compensated. The key will be to manage the transitions effectively between the survival stage, the recovery stage and eventualy the reconstruction stage. I would like to point that France has actually faced massive population movements in the past and during war time. This was during the Battle of France when what is called the exode (exodus) in French happened with upwards of twelve milion people moving from northern to southern France in a period of weeks, including nearly two milion of refugees from Belgium and the Netherlands. The authorities were not prepared for this at the time, but they nevertheless did a very good job in some places. Jean Moulin at the time was a Préfet and from what I know, he managed to do a very good job locally in feeding and accomodating refugees in the Chartres area. I would really be surprised if lessons from this entire episode have not been drawn and incorporated to civil defence plans in case of nuclear war.

 

[ivfl]

There is a certain difference between 1940 and any nuclear war.France was not devastated in 1940 despite suffering serious losses.Paris was largely unscathed.In fact overall deaths suffered by France where below 900000 for the war this includes colonial troops sent to fight.In this war the destruction of the Paris region alone would have resulted in over 6 million dead if we include the entire metropolitan region,I'll assume a 60% death rate.Most of France would either be in ruins or overwhelmed by looting and violence.Panic is actually rare in most disasters,but it largely depends on how much do people still believe there is a functioning government.With word spreading of Paris wiped off the map and millions dead,plus refugees coming from other places panic and chaos are a real probability.

 

[Dunois]

There is a certain difference between 1940 and any nuclear war.France was not devastated in 1940 despite suffering serious losses.Paris was largely unscathed.In fact overall deaths suffered by France where below 900000 for the war this includes colonial troops sent to fight.In this war the destruction of the Paris region alone would have resulted in over 6 million dead if we include the entire metropolitan region,I'll assume a 60% death rate.Most of France would either be in ruins or overwhelmed by looting and violence.Panic is actually rare in most disasters,but it largely depends on how much do people still believe there is a functioning government.With word spreading of Paris wiped off the map and millions dead,plus refugees coming from other places panic and chaos are a real probability.

The loss of Paris will indeed be a major blow, especially since the Paris region has in all likelyhood recieved several bombs. I would say at least four bombs of c1MT each are likely.

Nevertheless Britain suffered the loss of London and of many other centres as well and so far things are going in a broadly positive direction. What I am trying to say trough my messages is not that France will be a Eden in the middle of a devastated Europe, but that recovery there should on balance happen as fast and as well as in Britain.

Looting and violence will happen and has happened everywhere. But it could equally end really fast as soon as martial law is effectively implemented. Regarding law and order actually, I bet that public humiliation/floggings with a placard around one's neck saying "I stole food from depots" will be as effective if not more so than executions.

But going back to France, the country will likely recieve as many megatons as Britain, possibly a bit less due to the lack of NATO installations. Since France is over twice the size of Britain the amount of megatons per square kilometre will be lower and using this as a measure of destruction, France will therefore be better off than Britain.
Do you really think that the Soviet Union has the warheads/missiles to waste on places like Saint Brieuc, Compiègne, Chartes, La Rochelle or even Limoges? So far we know that many large cities in Britain have survived including Leicester, Portsmouth and Swindon. The SU simply does not have enough warheads to carpet France and Britain entirely while having to deal with America, China and the rest of NATO at the same time.

 

[ivfl]

This is one thing i actually don't know how many soviet warheads where there?I watched the lists on http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datainx.asp.And judging by that in 1983/84 the USSR had about 35 to 37 thousand nukes.Of these about 7000 where on ICBMs which would have been targeted at North America,Australia,New Zealand and what other regions where far from them.Add to this about 700 nukes on strategic bombers headed almost certainly for North America.The 2000 or so SLBMs would have probably been spread evenly between targeting the US and maybe Europe,China and other regions of the world.That leaves almost 25000 nukes for China,Europe,Middle East,Japan and South Korea.Even assuming that only 40% of these would have been targeted at Europe that means about 10000.Assuming a 40% failure rate maybe a bit too much but for the sake of argument it would still mean about 6000 nuclear detonations on the European continent without adding a few hundred SLBM strikes.Even half that would still mean 3000 nukes detonating in Europe from a soviet strike.

 

[Macragge1]

Would a group of traumatized conscripts, under-equipped and all that, still support the central gov that may or may not still be in contact or even existence, against the community that the unit was drawn from? UK was fortunate that their gov survived in Britain, I believe the French gov had fled to an overseas territory, IIRC. So that military unit that is being held in reserve in order to combat the break-aways, might be very willing to ignore that central authority in order to help their own friends and families back home.

depending on the character and commitment of officers and non-commissioned officers, a lot of soldiers could very well end up remaining devoted to their country to the best of their ability.

when knocked over and nearly shattered, given a gentle firm reminder that their basic commitment remains as reason for being, I think a lot of people will stand fast in their loyalties in this (severe!) crisis.

if someone in authority or immediate authority gives a shaky "well, it's your call" vibe, then it could splinter in myriad directions, including a new leader emerging to recommit to the original goal (nation! country! homeland!) or design a new goal (piracy, "popular front," et al), or let's-go-home-dammit, et cetera

Obviously, as Andristan says, there's gonna be a problem with desertion, abandonment of central govt etcetera.

Modelcitizen has hit the nail on the head, however, when he talks about the 'basic commitment as a reason for being'. There will, of course, be huge concern for family members after the attack. Most though, will know pretty soon what has happened to their families. If they're dead, then they're dead. If they're alive, their soldier/cop husband/father/son etc can best serve them by continuing to get better food and security for them.

Agreed, gentle but firm leadership will be key here, the French conscripts units might be the only thing that stand between the current difficult situation and anarchy and the end of centuries of glorious history. Everyone has lost something in this current ordeal, for some it might simply be a relative but for others it might be their entire families. Yet for better or for worse they still have each others and they have an entire nation to rebuild, hopefully for the better avoiding the mistakes of the past!

A text circulated among the Free French during the war, copy of a speech made by Leclerc, urging the Free French not to lay their arms down until "the tricolor flags flies once again atop Strasbourg cathedral". It only takes one officer to make a similar speech urging his men not to give up until "the Eiffel Tower once again stands proud among the Paris skyline".
Similarly someone in Britain could say the same thing about Big Ben.
"We won't stop the tireless task of rebuilding until Big Ben chimes again across London!".
What about writing a speech along these lines Macragge? Ideally something made by someone low key (Army lieutnant or a surviving MP), which would then spread like wildfire across the survivors?

The speech thing is certainly a cool idea; the closest I've come so far is the Controller's speech in Jumping Someone Elses' Train. Unfortunately for Britain there hasn't been a great orator yet; Whitelaw was never particularly good at speeches; There's also less of an environment to encourage such speeches - this is not a war of good against evil; the war is over, and everyone has lost.

Still, I shan't rule out something like this turning up in the future

The loss of Paris will indeed be a major blow, especially since the Paris region has in all likelyhood recieved several bombs. I would say at least four bombs of c1MT each are likely.

Nevertheless Britain suffered the loss of London and of many other centres as well and so far things are going in a broadly positive direction. What I am trying to say trough my messages is not that France will be a Eden in the middle of a devastated Europe, but that recovery there should on balance happen as fast and as well as in Britain.

Looting and violence will happen and has happened everywhere. But it could equally end really fast as soon as martial law is effectively implemented. Regarding law and order actually, I bet that public humiliation/floggings with a placard around one's neck saying "I stole food from depots" will be as effective if not more so than executions.

But going back to France, the country will likely recieve as many megatons as Britain, possibly a bit less due to the lack of NATO installations. Since France is over twice the size of Britain the amount of megatons per square kilometre will be lower and using this as a measure of destruction, France will therefore be better off than Britain.
Do you really think that the Soviet Union has the warheads/missiles to waste on places like Saint Brieuc, Compiègne, Chartes, La Rochelle or even Limoges? So far we know that many large cities in Britain have survived including Leicester, Portsmouth and Swindon. The SU simply does not have enough warheads to carpet France and Britain entirely while having to deal with America, China and the rest of NATO at the same time.

Excellent analysis.

With regards to the idea of super-harsh punishment as deterrence, that's something that's going to be even more apparent soon.

France is gonna get covered in more detail soon as well.

This is one thing i actually don't know how many soviet warheads where there?I watched the lists on http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datainx.asp.And judging by that in 1983/84 the USSR had about 35 to 37 thousand nukes.Of these about 7000 where on ICBMs which would have been targeted at North America,Australia,New Zealand and what other regions where far from them.Add to this about 700 nukes on strategic bombers headed almost certainly for North America.The 2000 or so SLBMs would have probably been spread evenly between targeting the US and maybe Europe,China and other regions of the world.That leaves almost 25000 nukes for China,Europe,Middle East,Japan and South Korea.Even assuming that only 40% of these would have been targeted at Europe that means about 10000.Assuming a 40% failure rate maybe a bit too much but for the sake of argument it would still mean about 6000 nuclear detonations on the European continent without adding a few hundred SLBM strikes.Even half that would still mean 3000 nukes detonating in Europe from a soviet strike.

Interesting statistics. Suffice to say that the Soviets had enough missiles to do a huge amount of damage to the West and then double that twice.


Seeing as there's been a lot of discussion about how well the Government will be able to keep control, and the lengths they'll go to do it, I'm going to present without comment the final paragraph of Duncan Campbell's meticulously researched 1982 book 'War Plan UK - The Truth about Civil Defence in Britain' -

Britain and NATO each say they stand for 'freedom'. National independence will be defended against outside aggression. That is fine and proper. But as we have seen, the first home defence task of Britain, within NATO, is to extinguish public dissent. If war comes, freedom will already have been sacrificed to the cause of making war. That is the ultimate insult, obscenity and deception of what the British government calls civil defence; it asks citizens to die for freedom with their lips sealed and their cries unheard, lest they call out too loudly for freedom and their own independence of choice, thought and action

 

[Lemon flavoured]

Britain and NATO each say they stand for 'freedom'. National independence will be defended against outside aggression. That is fine and proper. But as we have seen, the first home defence task of Britain, within NATO, is to extinguish public dissent. If war comes, freedom will already have been sacrificed to the cause of making war. That is the ultimate insult, obscenity and deception of what the British government calls civil defence; it asks citizens to die for freedom with their lips sealed and their cries unheard, lest they call out too loudly for freedom and their own independence of choice, thought and action

Without wishing to derail the thread, that was more or less what happened in WW2.

 

[Bernard Woolley]

Was going to say the same thing. Campbell was/is a lefty, and he was against the nuclear detterent in general. IIRC from the book he suggested that we adopt the Swiss approach - public shelters and neutrality.

 

[ivfl]

West Germany probably had about 500-600 nuclear detonations from a soviet strike including tactical nukes.Great Britain maybe 200,France 250 for the simple reason that with a conscript based army their armed force was a bit bigger.Belgium maybe 80,Holland >100,Denmark >100,Norway 70(?),Italy 100(?),Spain 80(?),Portugal over 40,Greece around 50,Turkey >100,Luxembourg 5(?).Other countries Sweden between 5 and 20,Finland maybe 10,Austria same.I'll assume Yugoslavia was attacked as well while a comunist country the Stalin-Tito split would not have been forgotten plus it could have become a threat post-war so somewhere around 50,Switzerland probably 4 since we assume 2 strikes per target on average,Ireland(2).Iceland about 7 NAS Keflavik 3-4 the capital maybe 2-3(?).
This should give us about 1900 warheads,of course some targets would have been hit 3 or even 5 times,Fylingdales was probably hit 5 times while others only once.This doesn't include nuclear weapons used at sea around Europe maybe 100 also doesn't include tactical nukes used by NATO on west german soil to stop the russians.These are the minimum numbers i think are even remotely plausible for a soviet strike,the real numbers would be somewhat higher especially for the nuclear powers like France and Britain,although for Germany I think they would be about accurate.Some countries would have been hit harder due to being in the vicinity of the battlefield,like poor little Denmark which ends up in a worse state than anyone else but West Germany taking into account size.

 

[ivfl]

On a somewhat related note another country which would have been in similarly dire straits would be Israel,small size with the added knowledge that it had nuclear weapons.I would estimate around 70 nukes would have destroyed the country, of these maybe 4 targeted at Dimona to make sure nothing remains of it.Add to that strikes on air force,army and navy bases plus Jerusalem,Tel Aviv and Haifa and pretty much a second holocaust.As size Israel is only half the size of Denmark.

 

[altamiro]

Add to that strikes on air force,army and navy bases plus Jerusalem,Tel Aviv and Haifa and pretty much a second holocaust.As size Israel is only half the size of Denmark.

At this point, another few millions of innocent victims don't make a lot of difference any more. Several hundred millions are dead. Israel is ITTL just one of many nations completely destroyed.

 

[ivfl]

Israel would be a bit unusual in the sense that while countries like France and Britain might pick up the pieces eventually
,countries like Germany,Denmark,Israel,Holland and several others will never recover since they will have been completely destroyed.Israel would not have gone down without a fight though.Almost certainly they would have used the so called Samson Option and nuked their neighbours so no one can profit from its destruction.In fact in the Middle east some countries would have received strikes from several directions.Lybia would have been nuked by the US and Israel,while Iran by the Soviet Union,US and almost certainly a few israeli jets with nukes on board.Iranian fundamentalists would have been despised by all three nuclear powers.

 

[Wolf]

I am guessing that the Vatican would also be on that list of countries that was completely destroyed.

On that topic how long before there is a new Pope? In the days between the KLM jetliner being shot down and the Exchange were there evacuations of the College of Cardinals?