DBWI-2008-46 years after the bombs

[Broz]

now is 9th month of the year 2008, more than 46 years after the megalomanaical superpowers reclesly anhialated themselves in all out nuclear war, may the bastards be cursed forewer by all who draw breath

let this be a place to gather all the stories of us whos parents survived the war, of all the postwar generations, all ower the world
say here what life is like where you live, what you do, how your people survived

 

[Snarf]

I don't remember much about my parents. I know that I was born in San Diego a few years before the Russians bombed it and everything else. I was just a little boy then, no more than four or five years old. My mother was a nurse at County General; I remember her putting me on the plane to New Mexico where I'd end up being raised by my grandmother in Santa Fe. My father was a Marine. I last saw him one morning as he left to board a transport for Cuba. He probably died there...

Santa Fe was just a tiny town then, and it's still not much of a town today despite absorbing all the refugees from Albuquerque when it got hit. The valley just wasn't a good place to be setting off a nuke...it contained the blast nicely, sheltering the surrounding area. The state government collapsed finally around 1968. The Navajo Nation ended up taking over the area and the reservation government effectively became the new state government in New Mexico and Arizona around 1972. I guess there are some advantages to being desperately poor--you've got nothing the enemy wants to bomb.

Anyway, at least when the Indians took over here they didn't resort to lots of show-trials and mass hangings; all in all they've been pretty fair and most of the bandit gangs were broken up by the tribal police by the mid-70's. Not like in Mississippi when the black militants took over in 1965, blaming the war on white people (nevermind that Castro started the whole damn thing). They're still lynching whites in a lot of the smaller towns. We've still got that border dispute with the Mescalero Apaches around El Paso but that's relatively minor; they at least help us when the latest Mexican warlord decides to head north. Overall from what I've been told we're probably in one of the best areas in the old USA--a hell of a lot better than what used to be California or the East Coast, anyway.

I found work with the railroad and we've managed to restore rail service to Arizona, Utah, and parts of Texas and Oklahoma. Some people want to push a rail line all the way up to Canada but there's not much left up there--too far north of Salt Lake City and Mormon country it's just too cold in the winter and it was even worse in the first few years after the war. Anyone who didn't starve probably froze to death.

There's talk of bringing back the USA but I don't know if that's such a good idea; big countries start big wars. The USSR was even bigger than the USA and they started the biggest one of all...

 

[see]

Sure, there's the cancers from all that strontium-90 and such, but really, Argentina wasn't hurt that much by the Atomic War. We're productive enough agriculturally that we got through '63 reasonably well with rationing. The plagues had a hard time getting down the Isthmus of Panama, and we still had functioning government able to take necessary public health measures.

It's fortunate, really, that the Soviet Union didn't take the Rio Pact seriously when making its target list. I think Australia's participation in British nuclear weapons and missile development marked it as a target, rather than ANZUS. After all, New Zealand didn't get hit, either.

It's pretty obvious we've prospered since. We'd been pretty wealthy in the 1920s; the autarky efforts that started in the '30s didn't hurt, either. We had the knowledge, resources, and infrastructure to step up when most of the rest of the industrialized world was devastated. And we're not tied down policing a whole oppressed empire like the South Africans, or have a running sore like the Congo War. Not that we don't have the occasional issue with Brazil, of course.

 

[Svartekaptenen]

We were lucky indeed that my country was not worth any missiles, we did however have one Russian missile plowing down in the forest southwest of Stockholm which killed many in the capital, but basically we stayed intact
there is the radiation of course but it is steady declining from year to year. After the short war we formed the Scandinavian union with Norway
and Denmark and the western parts of Finland. We did recieve a lot of refugees from Russia, the Baltic states and Germany and they have
adapted well in our country, they do however mourn their own countries.
We do send recog flights into former Sovietunion from time to time but there are not much to see, we have heard tales of cannibalism and medieval states in the interior, most big cities on the continent are gone
Paris, London, Berlin, Köln, Amsterdam but there are some functioning governments left, Spain and Portugal got of easy and so did Greece and
Turkey even if they lost Istanbul. We have created some enclaves on the coast of Germany and in Estonia and are trying to help the people there
with all our powers however our resources are limited with the harsh winters and all, I have been told that there are still much dust in the atmosphere that are blocking the sunlight.

 

[NomadicSky]

I grew up in the State of Franklin.

My country takes it's name from a proposed state back during the 1800's.

My fathers family was lucky enough to be in the Eastern half of Tennessee when the war hit. They'd recently moved to Knoxville from Memphis.

Oddly enough we later learned that Oak Ridge had been a target but somehow nothing ever touched Tennessee beyond the blast that took out Memphis.

My mothers family fled Northern Mississippi settling in with my Great Uncle in Bean Station deep in the Appalachian Mountains.

When the Tennessee state government finally collapsed our county seceded.

Knoxville legally became the capital in the 1970's and our government moved taking control over half of what had been Tennessee bring order, stability, and progress. Unlike the other half of Tennessee under the control of New Liberty.

In 1983 our country yet again became a state as we joined the new Confederate States.

Today the Future seems bright we've even signed a treaty with New Liberty finally agreeing to open our borders and trade between our nations.

 

[Sachyriel]

Well, "Canada" is getting populated again, but only barely by these so-called green technologies. Things like wind-farms made a huge comeback after a system was set up to determine the new winds after the bombs blew the weather to shit. Now 7% of the heat in our homes comes from wind, and almost 12% of energy. Everything else is from hydro-electric and coal.

The hardest part of living in the Frozen Territories is to be reminded, we had the power to stop this before it happened. Between the north pole and the 49'th parallel, we were the biggest nation that tried to keep a simple peace.

We got wasted by both sides. Caught in the crossfire. Soviet Union takes out American Ally, the US took out Soviet Warship Convoys in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans with nukes. The fallout centred around us.

After awhile, some people came out of hiding. They say you can get any poorer by underestimating stupidity. Or, they would, but only the so called 'stupid' people survived. Those who went paranoid before the bombs fell and insituted some sort of survival plan. Not alot survived, some were out getting supplies still.

Heh, I guess not much of the old satelite-bouncing system still hangs in there, with the land-line nets and new sats getting launched by allies. But the news will get out somehow, and even if we don't have the codes to the other nations nets, we'll tell our stories.

The Stories of the Red River Metis Republic, New Winnipeg as it's capital.

(OOC: Think outside a central-canadian blast zone of an atomic bomb. Winnipeg, probably destroyed, but some farmland up north might survive. New Winnipeg is more north, more cold, and has a small farming community within the city along with wind-mills and other resource-gathering communities.

Hey, Canada could have stopped it...)

 

[Bobindelaware]

I remember spending my 14th birthday (Nov 3) in a fallout shelter just south of York, Pennsylvania. Not a lot of memories of that particular birthday, just that it was in the basement of an old furniture store. For some reason, a tan leather recliner fascinated me.

But I remember the trip to the shelter, though.

We had just gotten out of bed to listen to the news on the radio when the Air Raid siren @ 200 yards from my house went off. My dad told my mom to grab us kids (my brother was 10 at the time) and get us to the car instantly. We roared down the highway to the store with the shelter - seems like my dad had made the arrangements a few days before - and we were about half way between the car & the doors when the sky went white. Mom screamed, my Dad grabbed her & hustled the four of us inside, down the steps and through a large sliding door into the "old warehouse" that the owner had converted into the shelter. The owner, a Mr. Lewis, got us settled and passed candles out to everyone and said to keep them ready. About that time the sound wave hit, my Dad saying it was about fifteen miles away. I never heard anything like it since the War. I won't even try to describe it, but if you ever heard it you would know what I mean.

Inside were about ten others besides us - Mr. Lewis' family & employees - and stacks of canned or preserved food and large bottles like you used to see on top of water coolers. As far as food & drinking water, we were OK, but there wasn't much else.

About noon, Mr. Lewis checked the door with his radiation meter, said, "Looks OK." & said we should check it every hour.

Later on, about 4 in the afternoon, another shock and explosion, about 18 miles away, according to my dad, who saw light coming in through a plumbing vent. He fixed that leak right away.

Somewhere around 8:00, we listened to a poor quality radio message from a government representative saying that the President and Vice President had both been killed when Washington was destroyed, but an acting president - that phrase gave me the cold shakes - would be announced in the morning and a report to the Nation would be given.

Man, was I scared . . .

Bobindelaware

 

[Seldrin]

Well, I suppose it all went downhill for Australia when we declared for the US and UK. I wasn't born back then, but my parents were... they were small children and they can remember their parents, my grandparents, boarding the transport ships and sailing out of Sydney harbour...
Needless to say, they never came back, I think it might have been Australia's strong ties with the British nuclear program that got us targeted, I don't know who belonged to the missiles, I only know that they came from the north, from Asia.
All the major cities were wiped out, and all the foreign bases, thats a big hit for one of the most urbanised countries in the world, millions died...
But my family escaped, they fled to Alice Springs in Central Australia, the de facto capital now. We are rebuilding, New Guinea and Tasmania are under our control now, the rest of the country is too badly damaged from the bombs and the resulting chaos of the people that remained.

 

[BrianP]

I don't exist, at least in the way I would have existed if the war had not happened.

The Soviets targated Louisiana up and down the Mississippi River, taking out many of the chemical plants, ports, and oil refineries located there. Those who would have been my grandparents and parents survived the war itself, but died in its aftermath.

My grandfather was principal of the local high school, which was used for an emergency shelter. He was also head of the local civil defense administration, but no amount of preperation could have saved the small town of Abita Springs. He tried to hold things together to the best of his ability, but he was stabbed to death a couple of weeks after the war in a food riot.

His widow and two sons, one who would have been my father, left and spent the next few months roaming around southern Mississippi and Alabama. Radiation eventually killed the woman who would have been my grandmother, and the two boys were seperated. The one who would have been my uncle, aged nine, was never heard from again.

The 14 year old boy who would have been my father was taken in by a family in Alabama. He was not taken in out of sorrow or sympathy, but because he was young, strong, and able to work the fields. However, by the summer of 1964 he died of a severe case of scarlet fever, and buried in some unknown grave in Alabama.

 

[Venusian Si]

Well What's there to really say about Greater Atlanta. People always told me that Historians could never figure out why Atlanta wasn't bomb, and I can't even tell you why.

After the war, The North Georgia region became the Nation of Greater Atlanta. Unlike The Black Supremacist nation of Nova Afrika and the White Supremacist nation of the N.C.S.A. with the States of Franklin, the Three Virginias, and the Carolinas. Greater Atlanta was to achieve Racial Harmony. G.A. has no diplomatic connection to the previous nations mentioned or that wierd nation of Westsylvania. Still we have good connections with Greater Savannah (South Georgia/most of Florida).
There are even talks of our Nations Uniting into either Atlantica or New Georgia.

Anyway my parents were born after the war. They lead poor but fruitful existance until the 80's. At that time the Christian/Neo-Pagan cult that viewed the 80s as the returning of God recruited my parents and caused them so much pain.

After their suffering, they left the church and gave birth to my twin sister and me. But my sister died during a delievery and my parents commited one of those still popular Religious Suicides. I was then adopted by a Cherokee Family that wanted to reconnect to their ancestral land.

Now, I have a major problem. My family is moving back to the Five Nations Federation and I don't know whether to go or stay. Any advice?

Oh just one question from me. How does the Virtuweb (ooc:internet) work and how did it come into existance? Thanks!!

 

[I Guangxu]

I'm posting from the Greater Pittsburgh Protectorate. I think its great to set something like this up, so the stories can be told.

I grew up in Pittsburgh proper, my family came here when my parents were still young during those hellish years right after the War. No one is sure why Pittsburgh survived, and probably nobody ever will. It was certainly a target, its just that... the attack never came. Some say the missile meant for it malfunctioned and exploded en route, or else missed it for somewhere else. Some say it was an act of God, and while I consider myself an atheist, I can't deny that whatever else it might have been, it was certainly a miracle.
As one of the only major cities in America to survive, Pittsburgh was naturally a magnet for refugees, something both helpful and harmful to the city. Even into my own early memories, some twenty years after the War's end, I remember living with my parents and grandparents all together in a tiny apartment. Nobody ever complained, because all we had to do to see where else we could be was look right outside our one window, down at the lines of people coming in from the camps to get their rations and look for work. I still remember the last food riot only ten or so years ago, during the recession. It was over pretty quick once they brought in the tanks, but I could hear the fighting from where I was lying awake in our bedroom.
The cancer took my grandparents one by one when I was young, leaving just me and my parents, and then just me and my mother once the cancer took my father as well. As much as I hate to say it, things kind of improved after that, simply due to the fact that what little we made split a lot better between fewer people. Between what my father had managed to save when he was alive, what my mother made as a nurse in the camps, and what I made doing whatever odd-work I could fight past the refs for, we actually had enough to get me into school at the Cathedral of Learning.
I'm a clerk in the Protector-General's offices these days (its how I have internet access), though I still live in the same little place I grew up in (its not like I make enough to afford any place all to myself). I'm pleased to say that we were able to finally close the largest of the refugee camps recently, and we're hoping to be able to do the same to the rest in time as we find more opportunities for resettlement.

 

[glenn67]

If there was no World War III in 1962, I would have been born in Brooklyn and speny my first few years living in a co-op apartment a few blocks from Coney Island. Instead, I was born in the metropolis of Burlington, Vermont.

My parents spent their vacation in the Catskills when the bombs hit New York City and blasted it to kingdom come. Nearly every building in all five boroughs was destroyed. My father was an aircraft mechanic at the time. There would be no home, neighborhood or job for my parents to return to. Presently, the former borough of Manhattan is now a National Park and a memorial to the victims of the nuclear war.

After spending a few months in upstate New York, my dad found a job repairing corporate planes at a small airport in Vermont, which escaped the wrath of the Russian nukes. As the United States collapsed, the Green Mountain Republic of Vermont was born in 1964. George Aiken, a former US Senator who had the good fortune to be away from Washington DC, was elected our first President of Vermont.

By the time Aiken retired in 1974, Vermont was leading the former USA in job creation and had a 1% unemployment rate. My parents and most of the vacationers in the Catskills were Jewish, and they contributed to the growth of the Jewish community in Vermont. A few prominent Jews included the founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, the first female President Madeleine Kunin, and the current President Bernie Sanders.

The success story of Vermont led the International Olympic Committee to award the 1980 Winter Olympics, the first in 20 years, to the city of Burlington. I will never forget the moment when Mike Eruzione scored the winning goal in the final seconds as Vermont defeated Quebec 4-3, and went on to defeat Alaska for the gold medal, the first awarded to the Republic of Vermont. Eruzione would go on to sign with the Edmonton Oilers as he and Wayne Gretzky would lead the team to 8 consecutive Stanley Cups.

In international competition, Vermont and Canada would be friendly rivals and dominate the World Championships and Olympics for the next 20 years.

I would attend Dartmouth University located in the Free State (country) of New Hampshire and graduate with a degree in Accounting. After working a few years for the Vermont Office of Taxation, I landed my dream job at Arthur Andersen in Montpelier.

The country's famous civil liberties lawyer Patrick Leahy is my next door neighbor. I am a regular tennis partner with former Transportation Secretary Carlton Fisk--he was a big fan of the Boston Red Sox and dreamed of playing on that team until World War III put Major League Baseball out of business.

My doctor Howard Dean tells me that now is the perfect time to take a vacation in Alaska. He has a time share in Wasilla, home of that country's President Sarah Palin (and of the Federal Penitentiary where its former President Ted Stevens is living after his conviction on embezzling millions of dollars from the national treasury).

I am looking forward to hearing from my fellow Vermonters.

 

[Weaver]

I was 17 in 1962, working in my first job as a junior audit clerk and in late October was travelling into Manchester, in what was then Lancashire in Northern England, every day on a job with two senior clerks.

On 29 October I remember the two seniors talking in the car about the crisis in Cuba, and joking about the chances of getting out of the city if the war started.

Well I was amazingly lucky I suppose. When Manchester was bombed the factory where we were working, it just fell down. I had been sent down to a storage room to bring up some ledgers for checking and was trapped there. There was a cupboard with some stale loaves of bread and a broken water pipe that maintained a slow trickle, and those things kept me alive through the fires, under the rubble.

I managed to dig my way out eventually, but never saw my workmates again. Or anybody else from my life before the war.

Even five miles is a long way around here, and I have never left Manchester. I managed to team up with some other kids, and we scratched out a living by working for the local Commissioner in reclamation work....the Commissioner issued rations to workers on a day by day basis.

Nowadays I am one of the oldest people still alive, but don't think I will live long because my cataracts are making me blind. You only get rations if you work, so I am resigned to dying soon. It's not much of a life anyway, living in an waste of ruins, searching for useful scrap for the Commissioner.

I heard an aeroplane last week..a jet, very high it was, the first I've heard in years, so maybe things are starting up again. But I don't think so, there are so few people alive nowadays, the Commissioner says that there are 250 people in our group, and I don't personally know of any others. That's not to say there aren't any more of course...there must be, because there is a Government in York that tells the Commissioner what to do.

One thing I always wondered....did we win?

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

I am writing from Manila , you silly "blanches" (OOC: insult against whites, esp. Americans and Russians) and I must say that from the perspective of a wiser and more patient culture. As my parents have always pointed out, the world is finally returning to a state of "normalcy" after 500 years of "Blanche Ascendancy", Asia is finally reaching a new technological age. With the creation of hte Sao Paulo Declaration of 2001, the Southern Hemisphere is coming into its own place. With the Southern Cross Alliance based in Bangkok, Thailand a new age of political ideas and ideals is discussed. Under the leadership of leaders like President Steven Biko of Azania, Premier Hu Jintao of China, Dobrica Costic of Yugoslavia, and Suharto of Indonesia have shown themselves as true leaders, by helping to unite the peoples of the alliance with the 2004 space launch of the Chin Shan space station. If it wasn't for the 1962 war, you "blanches" would have found another place and another reason to kill off humanity and/or exploit the lives of the 80% of the world's populace which was unaffected ....

 

[Weaver]

Jeeze, mate can't you play another tune?

 

[Douglas]

I never existed.

My father's family lived in a small industrial town in southwest Washington State. After the holocaust, paper just wasn't really a big deal, especially once refugees from Portland, OR and the Seattle area came flooding in. It got pretty bad, and my grandfather eventually took his family beyond the Cascades (where he grew up) to eke out a living as a hired hand on one of the few farms that made it. My grandfather died in the early 1990's of a heart attack after he worked himself to death; his wife committed suicide soon afterwards. My father never married or had kids: his lung collapsed in 1969, and no one could help him.

My mother was born in another industrial town in SW Washington just before the war. Her dad was an engineer, so he and his family packed up and moved to what was left of California. He eventually divorced his wife, and died of cancer in the early 1990's as a relatively wealthy owner of one of the few surviving factories in America. His wife, and my mother, lived in abject poverty after he left them. My mother committed suicide at the age of 15 in 1977, and the woman who would have been my grandmother worked as a bitter seamstress for a commune until her death a few years ago.

OOC: This thread is really depressing, but the responses have been very high-quality for the most part. As a side note, my dad did have a collapsed lung in 1969, my mother did contemplate suicide in 1977, my grandfather had a heart attack in the 1990's that he survived by 10 years, and his wife really did go insane after his death in RL.

 

[RCAF Brat]

While I was growing up, my parents told me of the day all that was good in the world died. Of how free men faced a tyrannical empire in a battle that nobody won. I was told of how we were once part of a great nation, not the greatest, but worthy of standing next to them. All of that was burned to ash, by a force of great evil called the USSR.

But that is the past. This is present, the world in which we must live. So while we curse those who made the world how it is, we must live in it. And we thrive. Today, there is a home for those who seek peace, order, and good government. When men are free, and the laws are just. This is Acadia.

My parents were children when the world burned, my grandparents were soldiers, though not entirely to blame for that. Now the world belongs to my generation, the first that does not directly remember Canada. That does not remember the Darkness. Us, the Quebecois, Newengland, Newfoundland, and all of the other nations are free of the past. We are not rich and decadent like the United States, nor are we a tyrannical hell, like the USSR of old, nor both like the 'Middle Kingdom' is today. We are still here, we are still free, we don't starve in the winter, and that is all that matters.

If people must ask, I am a policeman, one who enforces the law. Before anyone opens their mouth, I am married, to a Quebecoise, who is beautiful, clean, (OOC no genetic issues), obviously fertile, (we have five children so far, and there will be more if God wills it), and most importantly, a Catholic, like all civilized people ought to be.

But back to the topic at hand. Acadia is a lush verdant land, with clean soil and clean water. There are a few places that were poisoned long ago, but now they are safe. Halifax is a good example. It was once a great city, until the Night of Fires, when it was burned like most of the other such places. But Halifax is like a phoenix of legend, rebuilt in most of it's glory, out of the ashes left from before. This is because it is a natural harbour, and thus a logical place to put a city. So Halifax was reborn, and became the capital of a Nation, instead of just a province like before.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

Jeeze, mate can't you play another tune?

Boo Hoo!! That's the sound of the world's smallest violin playing for you "Blanche"? Just because you guys reside in the collapsed former United States of America or Western Europe, you expect those of us who live in the Southern Hemisphere to start bowing and crying every time you start moaning about how the world no longer revolves politically or economically around your dilapidated systems. The world moved on without you. At least the Russians who now line every courtesan service from Bangkok to Dubai to Beijing, doesn't moan about how they could have ruled the world if the Soviet Union hadn't pursued one policy or another.

 

[RCAF Brat]

Boo Hoo!! That's the sound of the world's smallest violin playing for you "Blanche"? Just because you guys reside in the collapsed former United States of America or Western Europe, you expect those of us who live in the Southern Hemisphere to start bowing and crying every time you start moaning about how the world no longer revolves politically or economically around your dilapidated systems. The world moved on without you. At least the Russians who now line every courtesan service from Bangkok to Dubai to Beijing, doesn't moan about how they could have ruled the world if the Soviet Union hadn't pursued one policy or another.

Piss off wog! We don't need you and your drugs, fat tourists or corporate trusts here. Just because our grandfathers did something stupid doesn't mean we a done forever! We'll rise again, just like the phoenix. We've already got back most of what we burned, though now we live in smaller, more manageable nations. You and your friends in the middle kingdom will be left in the dust. It may take another couple of generations, but we will put you back in your place.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

Piss off wog! We don't need you and your drugs, fat tourists or corporate trusts here. Just because our grandfathers did something stupid doesn't mean we a done forever! We'll rise again, just like the phoenix. We've already got back most of what we burned, though now we live in smaller, more manageable nations. You and your friends in the middle kingdom will be left in the dust. It may take another couple of generations, but we will put you back in your place.

Last time I checked, you guys certainly need us more than we need you. Need I remind you of the fact that you guys irradiated the Great Plains and the Ukraine, along with most of the fertile territories of the Northern Hemisphere, with your "nuclear showdown"! As for the drugs, as a capitalist, you should know that "buyer beware" applies to all things , including the heroin, opium, cocaine, and occasional ganja you purchase from the Southern Cross Alliance (SCA). If you wanted to, maybe you could grow some your own...Whoops, I forgot, you can't!!!... As for the corporate trusts, simply stop buying Sony electronics, stop eating at Jollibee Burgers, stop drinking Red Bull, it's as simple as that!! The fact that we can keep our people fed, housed, and with a clean water supply, without a massive military buildup should be a lesson that you "Blanches", with your tribal and territorial alliances could learn from....