Inspired by Doomsday 1983 and World War Z
Create your own oral history for the author of this following book to document. I'd be interested to see what this A-ATL world looks like. Unity City and Unity (territory) refer to the six counties adjacent to each other along the Missouri River where Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas come together as DC is not much more than a mildly radioactive crater, otherwise everything else needed should be as below.
29 June 2019
Office of August “Bill” Chavez
President of the Restored United States
Re: History of our Country, 1983-2018
(To whom it may concern),
Given the approach of the one-year anniversary of Freedom Day and the 243rd anniversary of Independence Day, I know you have interest in documenting an oral history of the Six Hour War and the thirty-five years afterwards. You were born only a few years before the event and while losing many of your family members I can only warn you that this event will not be easily discussed by anyone about fifty or older. For most of us who had family in those days, we lost spouses, children, parents, and in many cases all of the above. I lost a wife and two daughters in the fires that hit Albuquerque that day, and despite the official histories I survived only by luck. To that end, because you are still listed as a reserve Colonel with the Cascadia Armed Forces, per the Treaty of Denver you are recognized as equivalent in the United States Armed Forces and thus maintain a security clearance level of Black Trapezoid. While the older system was somewhat more straightforward, this means you have Trapezoid level clearance – fairly basic but need-to-know information you are not to share – and Black means you are able to acquire more secured information (as my personal representative) but are to share it only with myself, JCoS General Mathis, House Speaker Lemmington, Senate Majority Leader Rubenstein, and Secretary of Records Quelermain. I believe in the purpose you seek to fulfill, and with the access granted above you should find your task easier though by no means simple.
I will start with a brief overview of the information available then give you my own story and ask that it be kept anonymous, my term will likely be over by the time the book is ready for publication and now that Presidents serve only one term it matters less than before but I strive to make the histories as complete as possible. In September 1983 the world hung perilously close to war following the ‘Able Archer’ exercise in Europe between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization members along with the downing of Korean Air flight 007 by Soviet officials. US forces moved to high alert while those of the USSR moved to their maximum readiness. Yuri Andropov had come into leadership for the Soviet Union only a few months before and unknown to us at the time his health began to deteriorate quickly. Just after midnight Moscow time on 26 September 1983, A new computer put in place by their defensive systems apparently malfunctioned and Serpukhov-15, the defensive bunker for coordinating reported a missile inbound from Montana, going to highest alert. As a lone missile, this was believed to be a false alarm and was apparently not reported higher, much to the alarm of the other men in the bunker. A second alert went up, this time with four missiles. While Petrov was scrambling to prevent what he correctly believed to be another false alarm, one of his subordinates managed to contact the higher Party apparatus in Moscow who confirmed the false readings off of the satellite, readings later found to be due to a rare alignment of orbits and sunlight angles. Petrov was able to contact the Party officials in question just after they called Andropov, who was on dialysis at the time, and ordered massive retaliation after confirmation from two other stations was obtained. Reportedly he got a report that the alarm was false but only after the launch order was given. Knowing what was about to happen, he simply accepted his fate and ordered every other high party official to make for bunkers as quickly as they could. Not everyone trusted the old KGB director, but those who heeded the advice however reluctantly were saved while those who ignored it almost universally perished.
The shock of a full-scale Soviet attack caught our people off-guard, the first Soviet missiles began hitting the Midwest just four minutes after ours headed to space. The ‘honeycomb’ of nuclear blasts across much of the Midwest and parts of the Rockies created a deadly radiation cloud that, along with the lack of medicines, preventable diseases, and starvation, would see over 75% of the US population alive on 01 September 1983 dead by 01 September 1984. The largest remaining city was thankfully Eugene, Oregon – with Redding, California and Grant’s Pass/Medford, OR intact that area began recuperating as soon as they were organized. In addition, large parts of Idaho and Eastern Oregon remained intact as did St. George, UT; Grand Junction, CO; Port Charlotte and Gainesville FL (the latter still has a Soviet nuclear weapon lodged in the basement of an older downtown building now encased in concrete and steel), Springfield MO, large parts of KY focused around the Tri-Cities (formerly Somerset, Corbin, and Hazard along Highway 80), Florence SC, about half of Nashville survived the bombing of the Percy Priest Dam and the urban county south of it, Poughkeepsie NY, and thousands of smaller towns and even more individual homesteads/ranches/etc. WSM out of Nashville managed to cobble together enough power from the surrounding hydroelectric dams to never go off the air, along with WSB in Atlanta (via the station at the transmitter itself which became part of the Stone Mountain Redoubt), WHASA in Louisville, KY, stations like KSJK under the Cascadia Communication Committee, KFAQ in Tulsa, OK ,and KOA in Denver (surprisingly the latter two scrounged to get enough power to keep information transmitting even in the worst of times thanks to various ingenious means), were the only radio stations that never officially went down which could be heard more than 50 miles from their transmitters. You might start at those cities if you do not have a plan already.
I was a contractor for the Los Alamo research facility living in Albuquerque the day the war broke out. Often known as ‘the Land of Manana’ it sat at the crossroads of the only two trans-national interstate highways in the region. Being caught between Los Alamo and Las Vegas (the City of Glass was not the only one) on my way to work on a project ironically involving nuclear fusion and peaceful atomic energy production when the first massive explosion rang out to the West. Foolishly I looked in that direction a few seconds after the blast, temporarily blinding myself, but unlike many my vision would largely recover within a few hours. I stayed at my car not knowing what to do – we lived near the center of the city. Walking back through the interstate through scrub brush and endless plains would be largely futile and I knew to expect radiation thanks to some older training videos. There were several large caves in the area, thankfully I banded together with other survivors nearby and managed to find ways to boil water in the caves if only by siphoning gasoline to use as a fuel source. Ten days later we emerged to a very different world, approaching the city of Las Vegas we saw starving and desperate people fighting it out amongst themselves for scraps or worse. Warehouses nearby were controlled by motorcycle gangs who lived high off the hog and wasted needed supplies. My wife had said I was always a reluctant man to force, I hoped she would have been proud as I organized three dozen survivors and began to build first the town government, then a local government, then a multi-county system in less than a year. Turns out there were a lot more survivors than we initially thought as many in Albuquerque had fled into the surrounding areas. I confirmed the death of my wife and children, finding the children dead at the house and my wife Lucia laying in her bed, she had put the children to sleep and apparently given them something toxic. I was later told the remains were still radioactive when the Reorganization Commission tested them at my request fifteen years later, according to the pathologist there was a poison in their bodies but the radiation would have killed them more slowly within one to two weeks. I forgave my wife and thanked the almighty that the children did not have to suffer, in my grief I met my future wife Sevana who was an Indian graduate student that escaped the city.
For years we continued steady growth and thought we might be the only ones left, rumors of radio broadcasts kept us going and water was fiercely rationed while foodstuffs were distributed carefully. Underground gardens became somewhat normal after someone figured out a way to use glass cables attached to reflectors to distribute light into basements easily and we had a solar-powered steel mill up and running within the year. Focused solar rays were able to melt even the toughest of steels into a liquid state that could be remade into whatever we needed, Spanish became a secondary language for almost everyone. Our first contact with the outside world, ironically, was with a Mexican reconnaissance convoy looking to salvage material out of Los Alamo. We knew the base was all but a ruin save for a few remote parts of it yet knew also that any US government that might emerge would want the site back, so we refused them permission to go citing the deadly radiation lingering there even in 1987. They helped us get more established before leaving, soon we had improved water reclamation along with a jumpstart in reorganizing a University of New Mexico. Thankfully the great motorcycle gangs avoided our part of the country as we apparently had little to offer and the need for water and gas made travel there impractical for most. We had functional oil and natural gas wells, two small working refineries, and began rebuilding a network of railroad tracks to facilitate communication. Tapping into the Ogallha aquifer also let us expand agricultural production but we stayed very careful not to draw off too much as the supply was bountiful then but its extent was unknown.
In 1990 we made contact with the Colorado Commune out of Pueblo, the first organized American government in control of more than a single county. Soon after the Lubbock Alliance came calling as did the West Texas Republic and the Republic of West Texas (I recommend you not confuse the two, or as some of they say ‘ems fightin’ words’). We began to cautiously integrate into the Western Trade Pact and were able to get help rebuilding the interstate highways, reopening downtown Albuquerque’s main junction a few years later. Santa Fe was reclaimed and rebuilt around the same time, becoming the true capital for the state with Farmington, Las Vegas, and Gallup as the other main state hubs. Rail lines soon connected us to much of the rest of the country, ironically our blistering sun and steel-making capacity made us the “Pittsburgh of the West”, now over a quarter of US steel is made or recycled within 75 miles of Santa Fe. Our population grew according to our resources, our military more formally organized, and we were visited by many other nations between 1995 and 2005. Perhaps my favorite memory was walking into a diner near old Albuquerque that was restored to see ice cream actually made available for the first time in almost twenty years, my then-fifteen-year-old daughter asked why I cried upon seeing civilization finally returned even if only in such a small way.
In many ways we were lucky, the foodstuffs here remained adequate if not plentiful while the warlord problem never got this far west or south outside of coastal southern California. We always had power and while summers can blister here we never had the all-encompassing winters that threatened so much of the other parts of the country. I still mourn my first family, my wife now comes with me to lay flowers at the grave and three years ago was the first time I had not shed tears for them on that day. We have so much to be thankful for, and even had I not emerged as the compromise candidate for the first Transitional then Restoration Presidency in Denver I think the five major nations would have accepted whoever won, even if only reluctantly, and we’re all looking forward to our first national elections next year. Overall we did not fare as badly as we could have, Latin America had its spasm of violence between Brazil and Argentina but is now the hub for much of the world’s finance and research while New Zealand is the new Switzerland. Australia was hit harder than anyone thought, the loss of Sydney, Townsville, and Pine Creek hurt though miraculously Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth survived to rebuild the nation. Europe, Russia, and ironically northern China were devastated as Moscow apparently had missiles pointing at every major city north of the Yellow River and a few minor ones too. In Europe the Swiss are still expanding slowly but steadily now controlling southern Germany, northern Italy including Venice and Genoa, easternmost central France, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg with a tract of land between the Meuse and Ruhr rivers. Fortress Switzerland is the most powerful country in Europe with United Scandinavia and the Republic of Iberia not far behind as Ireland is back on its feet as is the United Kingdom. Southern Italy is broken into the Papal States and Greater Italy (Sicily, Sardinia, southern-most Italy) and the leftovers of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Lithuania have become a Central European Federation dedicated to warding off the Communists if they ever rise again. Northern and Eastern Germany are reunited with a capital at Magdeburg while the Belgians, Dutch, and parts of France not mired in the wars of city-states seek union with Switzerland, in the alternative they may unite among themselves. Information on the Balkans and Middle East is patchy at best but Lebanon is apparently the major power, the carnage of 1983 was enough to make most of the Middle East pause for long enough to sign a ‘durable cease-fire’ before nacine wars kicked off again twelve years later.
In the former Soviet Union there were enough government officials to survive that a Party apparatus was in place shortly after the conflict. From near the city of Ufa they began to rebuild, albeit slowly, only to find that the great granaries of the Ukraine were radioactive and there was little way to get water to those in Kazakhstan. Most of European Russia south and west of Moscow is now independent though the ruins of that once-great city are jealously guarded by the Model Red Army. Her population is recovering and with the rebuilding continuing the first priority of both Semanyorsk and Unity City is to establish a permanent peace treaty. They actually put a man in orbit last year and are talking about a new space race, we’re likely to join in to prevent all the eggs being in one basket ever again. Korea was all but wiped out and Japan survived to become the isolationist ‘New Bakufu’ tech hub she is today, communication is still only by radio and only the ports of Hiroshima, Kitakyushu, and Osaka are open to foreigners even if her merchant ships do travel abroad. Anything north of the Zambesi and Zaire Rivers outside of the parts of old Northern Mozambique and islands now under South African control are largely the domains of warlords, the former Angola and Zimbabwe still under consolidation efforts by the nuclear-capable Union of South African States. That should get you started, the Congress here in Unity along the old Nebraska-Missouri border will certainly be interested to see your findings once they are available. Remember, not every part of the country is totally pacified yet, and there are still plenty of people with vivid memories of food pirates and rapist thieves. Tread lightly, and good luck!