When the Wind Blew: a P&S Open Thread

[Will Ritson]

Title of TL:
There won't be any illuminations this year

Setting:
The Lancaster/Morecambe urban area, at 120,000 people, is one of the largest surviving urban areas in the UK.

Brief Description:
Despite a few early concerns with nearby blasts at Barrow-in-Furness (15 miles) and HMS Inskip (15 miles), the city has become a Lancastrian Portsmouth. A centre for governance (and refugees) in the north west. With a university, port facilities and a nuclear power station, Lancaster takes on added strategic importance in the new Britain, along with nearby Blackpool.

The timeline will be three short pieces - a combination of people stories and brief reports from local officials to Whitelaw. The three pieces will be: 1) War day; 2) Reorganisation 3) Frontierland, covering the period Feb - June 1984.

Thoughts?

 

[Macragge1]

I'm rather interested in this one; given the quality of the NI Tet Offensive thread I've no doubt you'll do the good idea justice!

 

[Will Ritson]

I'm rather interested in this one; given the quality of the NI Tet Offensive thread I've no doubt you'll do the good idea justice!

Thanks! As long as I finish it, of course. Given my previous poor timekeeping with the "1984" back story, "NI Tet" and "A Three Legged Race" (all of which I do intend to complete at some point), I think sticking to three short entries is about my limit!

I'll be using the suggestions I put into P&S, based on your summary of NW targets.

North west England (inc. suggested yield)

Liverpool x 8
3 x bombs - targeted at dock complex at Bootle (1 x 500kt), north of city centre (1 x 500kt) and south of city centre (1 x 1mt)
- slightly east of city centre (university, administration, hospitals) (1 x 500kt)
- Liverpool airport (transportation, motor vehicle engineering) (1 x 1mt)
- Birkenhead (administrative, docks, shipbuilding) (500kt)
- Ellesmere Port (motor vehicle engineering, oil refinery, oil storage) (500kt)
- Widnes (chemicals, power station, ship canal) (1mt)

Manchester x 4
- Trafford Park (motorway infrastructure, Barton airfield, engineering, petro-chemicals, ship canal) (500kt)
- City centre (administrative, universities, hospitals) (1mt)
- Manchester Ringway airport (airport, Wythenshawe Hospital) (1mt)
- Ashton-under-Lyne (communications, road and rail infrastructure, water supply) (500kt)

Preston x 1 (500kt)
- 1km South of city centre (Administrative, transport infrastructure, vehicle engineering at Leyland)

Carlisle x 1 (500kt)
- City centre (administrative, key rail and road transport junction)

Bolton x 1 (1mt)
- 2km south east of Horwich (rail engineering, water supply, rail and motorway transport)

Barrow-in-Furness x 1 (500kt)
- Dock and port complex, shipbuilding, Royal Ordnance works, steelworks

Anthorn, Cumbria x 1 (500kt)
-Communications

 

[modelcitizen]

It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, shit, you could say that.

How odd that he could see out of his left eye, since he had stupidly glanced up at The Inopportune Moment with half his face kind of covered from that flash.

And ahhhh the right eye hurt.

Bad enough it doesn't work, there has to be pain too.

He wondered idly how many were upset that these events hadn't come in time to preclude Valentine's Day.

Or better yet, Saint Valentine's Day massacre, bwa ha ha...

 

[DrakonFin]

Title of TL: The Land of Sad Songs - Stories from a Protect & Survive Finland

Setting: Various places in Finland, small survivor communities and an area controlled by a government remnant.

Brief Description: Despite losing virtually all major population centres and having most of the national area contaminated by fallout, enough Finnish people and even some authorities survive in a few locations.

Includes various fragments, survivor recollections, stories etc. from Finland before, during and after the nuclear destruction of 1984. I am considering setting the TL up as a Swedish government-sponsored post-war project aiming to preserve the memory of the events in Finland, which still is seen as a sort of an irradiated Wild East from the point of view of relatively unscathed Sweden a few decades after the exchange.

 

[Hörnla]

I am considering setting the TL up as a Swedish government-sponsored post-war project aiming to preserve the memory of the events in Finland.

That is a very nice way to give it a format.

 

[Bernard Woolley]

Title of TL: The last flight of XM594.

Setting: RAF Scampton and various other locales.

Brief Description: The story of one Vulcan bomber's last operational sortie.

 

[modelcitizen]

Title of TL: The Land of Sad Songs - Stories from a Protect & Survive Finland

Setting: Various places in Finland, small survivor communities and an area controlled by a government remnant.

Brief Description: Despite losing virtually all major population centres and having most of the national area contaminated by fallout, enough Finnish people and even some authorities survive in a few locations.

Includes various fragments, survivor recollections, stories etc. from Finland before, during and after the nuclear destruction of 1984. I am considering setting the TL up as a Swedish government-sponsored post-war project aiming to preserve the memory of the events in Finland, which still is seen as a sort of an irradiated Wild East from the point of view of relatively unscathed Sweden a few decades after the exchange.

By your very title, I'm wagering you have ample appreciation of the impressive qualities of Finns in extremis.

 

[basileus]

Title of TL: Vacanze d'inverno/Winter holidays

Setting: An Italian family from Lombardy (mother, two sons, 15 and 9 years old, and maternal grandma, 76) stranded in their own recently acquired vacation home at the seaside in Liguria, Italy, where they were peremptorily sent by the worried father/husband. Dad remained stoically, and crazily, at work till the end, as many others, hoping for the menace to dissolve.

Brief Description: An attempt to render the utter panic mounting in the country in the wake of the likely end of the civilized world, and a homage to my father's worst nightmares. Even the warmest of winters can be cold and bitter, when there's little hope for the future in the eyes of a mother.

The idea is there, what's difficult will be coordinating with mario Rossi's "Noi non ci saremo", for example as for the likely nuke targets in Northwestern Italy.

 

[basileus]

By your very title, I'm wagering you have ample appreciation of the impressive qualities of Finns in extremis.

Well, to me wll always be the Land of Ice and Snow. That song by Stratovarius is the true national anthem...

 

[Bolt451]

Title of TL: The girt big war and how we be afterwards. (probably, something local )

Setting: Rural Gloucestershire (Undecided village in the Cotswolds)

Brief Description: The continuing life of a small village in the Cotswolds following the war, possibly in the format of a day to day diary of a parish councillor. Starting from seeing (or almost seeing) the nuclear strike on GCHQ in Cheltenham


OOC note :I first started reading Protect and survive at my girlfriends house in Cheltenham. It darkly amused me to know I was easily in the blast range of any nuclear strike on the (then) GCHQ site (I can almost see it from an upstairs window). GCHQ has since moved to a custom built sight but heavier and older equipment remains at the site at Battledown.

 

[Dunois]

I book my own slot just in case !

Title of the TL: Le Souvenir Français (The French Souvenir) title subject to change
Setting: France
Brief Description: A bird eye view of the build up to war in France, the war itself and the subsequenty recovery and rebuilding of France up the TTL present day.

Title of TL: The girt big war and how we be afterwards. (probably, something local )

Setting: Rural Gloucestershire (Undecided village in the Cotswolds)

Brief Description: The continuing life of a small village in the Cotswolds following the war, possibly in the format of a day to day diary of a parish councillor. Starting from seeing (or almost seeing) the nuclear strike on GCHQ in Cheltenham


OOC note :I first started reading Protect and survive at my girlfriends house in Cheltenham. It darkly amused me to know I was easily in the blast range of any nuclear strike on the (then) GCHQ site (I can almost see it from an upstairs window). GCHQ has since moved to a custom built sight but heavier and older equipment remains at the site at Battledown.

Though luck then that Cheltnenham is not on Macragge1 target list ...

I think that it is becoming increasingly clear that we need a proper target list done for the P&S Universe. Especially since disagreements are already appearing as to what the true extent of the war and destruction were. Macragge1 target list for Britain and for the United States is a very good point to start!

 

[Bolt451]

I book my own slot just in case !

Title of the TL: Le Souvenir Français (The French Souvenir) title subject to change
Setting: France
Brief Description: A bird eye view of the build up to war in France, the war itself and the subsequenty recovery and rebuilding of France up the TTL present day.



Though luck then that Cheltnenham is not on Macragge1 target list ...

I think that it is becoming increasingly clear that we need a proper target list done for the P&S Universe. Especially since disagreements are already appearing as to what the true extent of the war and destruction were. Macragge1 target list for Britain and for the United States is a very good point to start!

Well bugger my post then. I personally would think GCHQ would be attacked and could've sworn I heard it would've been (though that was probably from Cheltenham residents, not military historians)

 

[Dunois]

Well bugger my post then. I personally would think GCHQ would be attacked and could've sworn I heard it would've been (though that was probably from Cheltenham residents, not military historians)

It would still be nice to hear what happen in an area which is not attacked however. Especially as Cheltenham due to its facilities could become a good capital once the government gets out of the Corsham bunker. This is Macragge to decide though ...

 

[Freizeit]

Title of TL: The girt big war and how we be afterwards. (probably, something local )

Setting: Rural Gloucestershire (Undecided village in the Cotswolds)

Brief Description: The continuing life of a small village in the Cotswolds following the war, possibly in the format of a day to day diary of a parish councillor. Starting from seeing (or almost seeing) the nuclear strike on GCHQ in Cheltenham


OOC note :I first started reading Protect and survive at my girlfriends house in Cheltenham. It darkly amused me to know I was easily in the blast range of any nuclear strike on the (then) GCHQ site (I can almost see it from an upstairs window). GCHQ has since moved to a custom built sight but heavier and older equipment remains at the site at Battledown.

May I suggest Gotherington? My grandfather lived there and was a chief engineer in the aerospace factory near Cheltenham, and in the event of a nuclear war he was supposed to organise the reconstruction of his street.

 

[Bolt451]

May I suggest Gotherington? My grandfather lived there and was a chief engineer in the aerospace factory near Cheltenham, and in the event of a nuclear war he was supposed to organise the reconstruction of his street.

That could work, I was pondering somewhere larger like Bishops cleeve or Stow on the Wold but a smaller place may serve to better show ties in the community

 

[Freizeit]

That could work, I was pondering somewhere larger like Bishops cleeve or Stow on the Wold but a smaller place may serve to better show ties in the community

If you're interested, here's a map of all the nuclear bunkers in Gloucestershire.

 

[Bernard Woolley]

GCHQ at Cheltenham was possibly a target on the RSIOP, or at least some versions of it. However since we've never seen any versions of the RSIOP we'll never know for sure.
It would really depend on a number of circumstances and what version of the RSIOP was used. However like the power stations I don't see any point in hitting GCHQ in a full exchange as realistically there won't be anything for it to listen to and the warhead(s) used to target it are better used elsewhere.

Targeting the main GCHQ facility during the conventional phase of the war makes more sense to me.

 

[stalkere]

I assume that is where the characters will end up. There is now way they can last long in Buffalo. I'll talk with stalkere, and see what he thinks.

How about you submit a form like it says in the OP, and well take a closer look at it.

New England is a long walk east of Buffalo - not sure where these guys are headed, exactly, but probably a bit North and East of Buffalo, on the Ontario Plain. wide Open farmland.

The three warheads scheduled for Buffalo/Niagara Falls were all airbursts at 1KM, so fallout would not be a bad problem. After the initial thermal pulse/blast/shockwave, the big problem is the fact that it is bitter cold winter and hardly anybody in the urban area can heat without electricity. EMP and the cold effects is going to kill just about everybody that survives the blast except the rural folks with wood stoves.

 

[stalkere]

Title of TL:
Land of rolling hills
Setting: New England

Brief Description: tracking a group of refugees escaping devastation in Medway, MA(my hometown, or any suburb west of Boston)who trek north and try to find a new community or join an existing one in northern Maine. (Bonus points if they join up with Medway, ME)

Sounds good to me - but how are they going to trek anywhere in February? Especially February of '84? leaving aside any Nuclear Winter considerations - IIRC, that was a mothering cold winter OTL.