Protect and Survive: A Timeline

Yea, MAFF plastic bowls! A real Cold War icon that! :D
We need to see soyer boilers next.

Frankly I've no sympathy for the Mayor considering how much food everybody else it getting.
 
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Kinda weird the swedes are in contact with Great Britain but seem to know very little about their neighbours.Finding out about Finland would involve basically tuning in to finnish radio.At the worst they could ask swedish border guards or send a swedish ship towards Finland and report back.The only logical explanation is that Finland is gone,whatever remains of the finnish authorities having fled to who knows what bunker.The attack on Stockholm probably killed over 200 thousand in the immediate aftermath,tens of thousands would have died due to burns and radiation sickness in the following weeks.Non-fatal injuries are probably about equal to the number of dead excluding persons blinded by the flash.Following such a strike most surviving residents would likely have fled to other regions,radiation fears unfounded or not driving them away.Untouched is a bit on the light side.Somewhat weird that the lucky ones are in this situation.
 

Macragge1

Banned
Yea, MAFF plastic bowls! A real Cold War icon that! :D
We need to see soyer boilers next.

Frankly I've no sympathy for the Mayor considering how much food everybody else it getting.

Glad you liked it! The bowls thing is just one of so many mad things you realise when you look into the plans; we were prepared enough to make a million and a half party bowls but apparently skimmed over any long-term plans for putting food in them.

Yeah,the Mayor was a dick - unfortunately for him, he was also very poor at hiding this trait, right up until the end.

Kinda weird the swedes are in contact with Great Britain but seem to know very little about their neighbours.Finding out about Finland would involve basically tuning in to finnish radio.At the worst they could ask swedish border guards or send a swedish ship towards Finland and report back.The only logical explanation is that Finland is gone,whatever remains of the finnish authorities having fled to who knows what bunker.The attack on Stockholm probably killed over 200 thousand in the immediate aftermath,tens of thousands would have died due to burns and radiation sickness in the following weeks.Non-fatal injuries are probably about equal to the number of dead excluding persons blinded by the flash.Following such a strike most surviving residents would likely have fled to other regions,radiation fears unfounded or not driving them away.Untouched is a bit on the light side.Somewhat weird that the lucky ones are in this situation.

You're right in saying that the Swedes could turn on the radio/send a ship to check out Finland and the Baltic, and of course they have done this and are pursuing this avenue of exploration. The view though - and it's perhaps an optimistic one - is that a relative big player like Britain will have satellite imagery, targetting data and so on for these areas that it was unable to give to a non-NATO neutral during the combat; it's hoped that this information could save the Swedes time, and perhaps more importantly, lives and equipment that would otherwise be risked heading into nominally hostile and heavily irradiated territory.

'Untouched' is of course, very subjective in this case - those living in eastern Stockholm or the other poor souls burnt or blinded by the blast are unlikely to feel so blessed. In comparison with other, similar size countries, however, Sweden has done quite well.


Awesome update. For some rather odd reason the librarian is reminding me of me ex girlfriend.

Glad you enjoyed it; that the Librarian reminds you of an ex seems somewhat... unsettling... given what we've seen her do, but hey, what the hell!
 
Making a million and a half plastic bowls is easy and probably cheap. They also have the great advantage of lasting almost litterly for ever.
OTOH food is not so easy to store, apart from some things like the ones you mentioned. It goes off, it takes up room, it's expensive and so on and so forth.

During the TTW phase it was intended that the government take over food stocks of the big supermarkets for post-strike use. I think there was also an implicit assumption that it was pointless to stockpile food for 55 million people if 20, or 30 million of them would be dead within 18 months of a strike.

Btw I'm now the proud owner of a copy of the Emergency Planning Guidance to Local Authorities. I've already spotted a couple of Home Office porkie pies. :D
 
I have been away from AH.com for a while, but I had to come back to see what's happening. Glad to see this TL is still going strong, you are doing an excellent job as always Macragge.

You're right in saying that the Swedes could turn on the radio/send a ship to check out Finland and the Baltic, and of course they have done this and are pursuing this avenue of exploration. The view though - and it's perhaps an optimistic one - is that a relative big player like Britain will have satellite imagery, targetting data and so on for these areas that it was unable to give to a non-NATO neutral during the combat; it's hoped that this information could save the Swedes time, and perhaps more importantly, lives and equipment that would otherwise be risked heading into nominally hostile and heavily irradiated territory.

'Untouched' is of course, very subjective in this case - those living in eastern Stockholm or the other poor souls burnt or blinded by the blast are unlikely to feel so blessed. In comparison with other, similar size countries, however, Sweden has done quite well.

About Sweden and Finland: they were engaged in pretty extensive secret cooperation in the 80s, and had - for example - plans for building a joint defense of the Åland Islands in time of war. Hence, I think the Finnish and Swedish militaries would have the means to communicate between each other also below the governmental level. I am thinking especially about the naval forces near Stockholm on the Swedish side and around Åland and on the Archipelago Sea on the Finnish side.

After the exchange, the surviving Swedish and Finnish naval and air units in this area would certainly try to communicate with each other and to determine the extent of damage on the mainland. Even if the main population centres like Turku, Rauma, Pori, Vaasa etc. on the Finnish west coast and navy bases like Pansio (near Turku) are hit, there would be some surviving Finnish ships out, presumably maintaining some sort of "neutrality patrols" (and/or ostensibly upholding FCMA Treaty responsibilities towards the USSR) and some of these would seek to contact the Swedish Navy especially if they only find ruins when returning to the Finnish coast.

The exchange took place in the winter, and the Finnish coast will likely be icebound until April: thus we are talking only about those ships with at least some icebreaking capabilities - icebreakers, larger merchant ships pressed into service during the emergency, the larger Finnish Navy ships like the Turunmaa class corvettes or the minelayers. Quite likely the civilian ships coming from the south / the Swedish coast to Finland have already been running in escorted convoys before the exchange: even during normal winters icebreakers and cargo ships travel in convoy-like formations out of necessity (like last winter), now they would have been escorted by Finnish and Swedish navy ships, in turn.

If all major centers in Finland have been hit (the capital area, Turku, Tampere, Oulu, Rovaniemi, etc.), the best bet for finding at least some surviving Finnish authorities would be the western countryside in southern Pohjanmaa (Bothnia), say in a small parish south of Vaasa or Seinäjoki. This is the traditional area for evacuating parliament members and government notables, given its good connections (rail and sea) and distance to the eastern border (and the strategic targets along it). It would also be very reachable by Swedish navy and air units.
 
Excellent update.

Perhaps Whitelaw - besides asking Sweden for some of its food reserves in exchange for the intel and airmen - has his people working on plans for population control?

Specifically, having enough people to perform agricultural (and other) work, while targeting a certain percentage of people to starve.

Cruel and inhuman, without a doubt. At this point, post-exchange, survival is top priority...and I'd imagine numerous options that none of the leaders pre-war would even consider are being planned out.
 
One problem for the finns is that any surviving soviet citizens would likely have fled over the border.While Leningrad would have been nuked perhaps 20-30% of the population would have survived of these maybe half would have fled towards Finland.Most survivors while unaware of what the rest of the USSR looked like would have been smart enough to assume there are only ruins so they would run towards the nearest safe place or presumed safe place.
Considering the small size of Finlands population combined with the loss of Helsinki and maybe several other cities, in the coming years russian speakers may end up even a majority in many places.Of course the finns won't look to kindly at russian refugees and some inevitable clashes are to be expected.
 
One problem for the finns is that any surviving soviet citizens would likely have fled over the border.While Leningrad would have been nuked perhaps 20-30% of the population would have survived of these maybe half would have fled towards Finland.Most survivors while unaware of what the rest of the USSR looked like would have been smart enough to assume there are only ruins so they would run towards the nearest safe place or presumed safe place.
Considering the small size of Finlands population combined with the loss of Helsinki and maybe several other cities, in the coming years russian speakers may end up even a majority in many places.Of course the finns won't look to kindly at russian refugees and some inevitable clashes are to be expected.

I sort of disagree with the idea of a huge influx of Soviet refugees into Finland in the near future, mainly on geographical grounds. North of the Ladoga, the Finno-Soviet border is mostly wilderness; more, it is wilderness with a lot of closed military areas on the Soviet side. Considering that the bigger centres, like Murmansk or Arkhangelsk, are important targets, the population post-exchange would be pretty low here.

South of the Ladoga, there is the Isthmus, also with military targets, and the radiating field of rubble that was just recently Leningrad. Any Soviet refugees from outside the Isthmus (part of which has been likely evacuated in the early days of the war) and the city itself would have to wander through the destroyed Leningrad area on their way to SE Finland. I think this would present an obstacle of sorts, at least in the short run.

But certainly if there is no cohesive (national or local) government to (try to) maintain order, eastern Finland would be, in time, a chaos of civilian refugees and armed groups of men from both sides and the national border would become a legal fiction. Some of this future balance hinges on the level of Finnish mobilization at the time of the exchange: can any local Finnish groups or armed units (or "units") offer a counter to the Soviet (ex)military or civilian groups present here, as well as on the actions of Sweden and other governments / forces active in the Baltic area.
 

Macragge1

Banned
Making a million and a half plastic bowls is easy and probably cheap. They also have the great advantage of lasting almost litterly for ever.
OTOH food is not so easy to store, apart from some things like the ones you mentioned. It goes off, it takes up room, it's expensive and so on and so forth.

You're quite right. Another problem was that the emergency stocks kept getting depleted during the seventies when we were doing a passable impression of a second world country. Tate and Lyle sugar, for example, was released from war stocks during a 1975 shortage.

Apparently pilferage was another low level problem involved with storing these foodstuffs - one can only assume most casual stealers of Mars bars would think twice once the army rocked up.

Btw I'm now the proud owner of a copy of the Emergency Planning Guidance to Local Authorities. I've already spotted a couple of Home Office porkie pies. :D

Oh my; are they trying to pass anything on the 'fallout-is-actually-really-noisy' level of misinformation?

Yeah, she is, in the Chinese sense lol. The other fictional character(s) she reminds me of is a cross between Susan and Adora Belle Dearhart from the Discworld novels.

Thinking about it, I've realised that the subconscious basis for the Librarian is probably the girl character in 'If...' (which is a fantastic film); certainly, I've got the 'Neighbourhood Watch' visualised similarly to the 'Crusaders' on the roof at the end of the film -
if.jpg


And somehow that's the best shot I can find online, but oh well.

I have been away from AH.com for a while, but I had to come back to see what's happening. Glad to see this TL is still going strong, you are doing an excellent job as always Macragge.



About Sweden and Finland: they were engaged in pretty extensive secret cooperation in the 80s, and had - for example - plans for building a joint defense of the Åland Islands in time of war. Hence, I think the Finnish and Swedish militaries would have the means to communicate between each other also below the governmental level. I am thinking especially about the naval forces near Stockholm on the Swedish side and around Åland and on the Archipelago Sea on the Finnish side.

After the exchange, the surviving Swedish and Finnish naval and air units in this area would certainly try to communicate with each other and to determine the extent of damage on the mainland. Even if the main population centres like Turku, Rauma, Pori, Vaasa etc. on the Finnish west coast and navy bases like Pansio (near Turku) are hit, there would be some surviving Finnish ships out, presumably maintaining some sort of "neutrality patrols" (and/or ostensibly upholding FCMA Treaty responsibilities towards the USSR) and some of these would seek to contact the Swedish Navy especially if they only find ruins when returning to the Finnish coast.

The exchange took place in the winter, and the Finnish coast will likely be icebound until April: thus we are talking only about those ships with at least some icebreaking capabilities - icebreakers, larger merchant ships pressed into service during the emergency, the larger Finnish Navy ships like the Turunmaa class corvettes or the minelayers. Quite likely the civilian ships coming from the south / the Swedish coast to Finland have already been running in escorted convoys before the exchange: even during normal winters icebreakers and cargo ships travel in convoy-like formations out of necessity (like last winter), now they would have been escorted by Finnish and Swedish navy ships, in turn.

If all major centers in Finland have been hit (the capital area, Turku, Tampere, Oulu, Rovaniemi, etc.), the best bet for finding at least some surviving Finnish authorities would be the western countryside in southern Pohjanmaa (Bothnia), say in a small parish south of Vaasa or Seinäjoki. This is the traditional area for evacuating parliament members and government notables, given its good connections (rail and sea) and distance to the eastern border (and the strategic targets along it). It would also be very reachable by Swedish navy and air units.

Glad to see you're still enjoying it, and thanks for the kind words.

Thanks also for the information on all the Scandinavian stuff; it's one of my many blind-spots, and stuff like this will make keeping the story going all the easier.

Just did my Early Modern Europe exam, 'Power, Culture and Belief.' Said something about how the French Revolution made France into a nation because Danton said 'audacity' three times in a row in a speech once. If I pass, I'll eat a hat of some kind.

It is pretty late; all my mates who don't do History pretty much went 'aww' and then laughed in my face, in that order, when they heard.

Great update btw; i'll stop rambling now.

Similar here; I basically rely on bluffing hard and fast and hoping whoever is marking just doesn't care. I've been using the same fake historian as reference since A-Levels; it seems no-one ever checks.

Glad you liked the update!

Excellent update.

Perhaps Whitelaw - besides asking Sweden for some of its food reserves in exchange for the intel and airmen - has his people working on plans for population control?

Specifically, having enough people to perform agricultural (and other) work, while targeting a certain percentage of people to starve.

Cruel and inhuman, without a doubt. At this point, post-exchange, survival is top priority...and I'd imagine numerous options that none of the leaders pre-war would even consider are being planned out.

Thanks!

There's going to have to be an element of 'expediency' in order to keep the country from the brink; the only real certainty is that it's unlikely to be a pleasant process.

I sort of disagree with the idea of a huge influx of Soviet refugees into Finland in the near future, mainly on geographical grounds. North of the Ladoga, the Finno-Soviet border is mostly wilderness; more, it is wilderness with a lot of closed military areas on the Soviet side. Considering that the bigger centres, like Murmansk or Arkhangelsk, are important targets, the population post-exchange would be pretty low here.

South of the Ladoga, there is the Isthmus, also with military targets, and the radiating field of rubble that was just recently Leningrad. Any Soviet refugees from outside the Isthmus (part of which has been likely evacuated in the early days of the war) and the city itself would have to wander through the destroyed Leningrad area on their way to SE Finland. I think this would present an obstacle of sorts, at least in the short run.

But certainly if there is no cohesive (national or local) government to (try to) maintain order, eastern Finland would be, in time, a chaos of civilian refugees and armed groups of men from both sides and the national border would become a legal fiction. Some of this future balance hinges on the level of Finnish mobilization at the time of the exchange: can any local Finnish groups or armed units (or "units") offer a counter to the Soviet (ex)military or civilian groups present here, as well as on the actions of Sweden and other governments / forces active in the Baltic area.

Yeah, I was going to put something like this. Leningrad, Murmansk and all the towns in that sort of area were amongst the most targetted places on earth - we'd hit them more than once, and then the Americans would hit them a few times as well. Far from a 20-30% survival rate, I'd think that anything north of 5% in these areas would be very optimistic.


Interestingly, though I put two good-sized atomic bombs on Newcastle in this timeline, I've still not managed to do as much damage as Geordie Shore, which must be testament to MTV's awesome, terrible power.
 
Studying the fallout patterns in the U.S., East Texas (again, under the assumption that the Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange area is still intact) appears to avoid the heaviest fallout (from the Midwest, although cold fronts may have a hand in bringing this to Texas), and most of the blasts in East Texas are probable airbursts over Dallas-Fort Worth, Marshall, Lufkin, Houston, and Galveston.

OTOH, they are going to have a heck (understatement) of a refugee crisis, because there is a probable partial evacuation of the DFW, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston-Galveston areas between the time of the first exchange and the final exchange.

Assuming both of them weren't killed in Austin (75/25 shot that one or both die in the exchange) the governor (Mark White in OTL) and/or lieutenant governor (William Hobby, Jr.) is going to have a lot of disaster to handle (Bryan-College Station is probably the acting captial, since it is in a relatively central locaton in East Texas, and Texas A & M is nearby).

(Rick Perry is in Haskell County (probably) in 1984, which in this TL is still standing, but gets Abilene's refugees. Assuming he wasn't in a city that got hit.)
 
Tut, tut, that's not the right way to hold a Sten gun. Fire it like that and it'll be uncontroleable.
I must be more conservative than I thought because at the end of If I found myself sympathising more with the Establishment figures and their ideas of responsibility and duty. It could be argued that the end scene is a fantasty; after all remember the scene when the chaplain is in the headmaster's drawer after they've shot him? :D

Need to double check the EPGLA again, but there was a bit about not being able to predict targets. I thought yeah, we don't know what was in the minds of Soviet targeteers, but we could make an educated guess. :p
 
Tut, tut, that's not the right way to hold a Sten gun. Fire it like that and it'll be uncontroleable.

A particularly bloke-ish response now but...

She's cute enough to be allowed to hold the Sten any way she likes. lol :p
 
Studying the fallout patterns in the U.S., East Texas (again, under the assumption that the Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange area is still intact) appears to avoid the heaviest fallout (from the Midwest, although cold fronts may have a hand in bringing this to Texas), and most of the blasts in East Texas are probable airbursts over Dallas-Fort Worth, Marshall, Lufkin, Houston, and Galveston.

OTOH, they are going to have a heck (understatement) of a refugee crisis, because there is a probable partial evacuation of the DFW, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston-Galveston areas between the time of the first exchange and the final exchange.

Assuming both of them weren't killed in Austin (75/25 shot that one or both die in the exchange) the governor (Mark White in OTL) and/or lieutenant governor (William Hobby, Jr.) is going to have a lot of disaster to handle (Bryan-College Station is probably the acting captial, since it is in a relatively central locaton in East Texas, and Texas A & M is nearby).

(Rick Perry is in Haskell County (probably) in 1984, which in this TL is still standing, but gets Abilene's refugees. Assuming he wasn't in a city that got hit.)

Where's the fallout pattern, though? And why would Marshall & Lufkin get hit, but with Tyler still standing?
 
XX - Silent Hedges

The beautiful downgrade/ Going to hell again/ Going to hell again.

Great update as usual Macragge1, glad you used my point about the grain silos, but the situation is even worse than I imagined in that department.
Still we have 3 millions tons of grain left.
Assuming a consumption of 500grams per person per day for one year, that translate into 182.5 kg of grain to feed one man for one year, lets round it up to 200kg to make our lives easier.
3 millions tons is 3 billions kilos, so the current stockpile can feed:
3 000 000 000/200 = 15 000 000 persons for one year

FIFTEEN millions persons is rather low to be honest and 500grams of grain only translate into circa 1 800 kilocalories a day. A man at rest can live on this, but not someone doing hard physical labour in the fields (at least 4 000 kcals are needed there).
Transport and miling of the grain is going to be a problem. Though long term I could see small storages and milling facilities being developped close to the farms, as used to be the case up to the nineteen century.

Potato farming might be the best option to go for in my opinion. Give every labourer their own plot to farm potatoes and production should ramp up rather fast. This however needs organisation and more importantly security (why farm if someones steals your produce).
The mass death of farm animals is going to be a blessing rather than a curse long term. The dilemna of feeding animals as opposed to men has always presented itself whenever food became scarce. The culling by radiation of the cheptel solves it. Thus freeing up huge tracts of land for farming. When the time will come to restart livestock production, pigs and chicken will be a better option compared to sheeps and cattle, the latter needs grassland and straw, the former don't need them as much and can be fed scraps especially the piggies.

Glad to see that Sweden has done well, its now or never for them to unite Scandinavia now under a banner of reconstruction and recovery!

Yea, MAFF plastic bowls! A real Cold War icon that! :D
We need to see soyer boilers next.

Frankly I've no sympathy for the Mayor considering how much food everybody else it getting.

The Mayor was a dick indeed, but sadly you get these profiteers in every conflict and in every war. Its a nice occasion for these bastards to build their own little fiefdoms with power to get as much food, women or gas as they want for themselves.
 
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