Duck and Cover! An American Spinoff of Protect and Survive.

Update!

Part IV: A Brave New World

Armageddon + 14 Days


Paradise Lost [2]:

It had turned into the story of the century. The exploits of the ships crew were being printed on pamphlets. Songs were written and sung about the bravery and the determination of the aviators. There was even talk of creating a play about it, though actors were in short supply in today’s day and age.

Somehow, the USS Nimitz had sailed from Norfolk, Virginia to the natural bay of Aberdeen Washington in roughly two weeks. Most of the particulars of the mission were kept top secret from the masses, which only gave more room for the legend to grow.

There were tales of massive battles, sinking of the whole Soviet Fleet single-handedly, and rescuing thousands of Americans stranded thousands of miles from home. Sadly, the truth is much more mundane than the legends.

The USS Nimitz or CVN-68, had just left its home port of Norfolk, Virginia on the morning of the 19 of February 1984, two days before Armageddon, in route for the battlefields of Europe. Preparing for war, the Navy had called back all of the aircraft carriers to their home ports, and ordered them refit and rearmed for the escalating conflict.

Those desperate days were spent gathering fuel, food, ammunition, and re fitting the nuclear reactors with ne w fuel rods. After the floating cities were fully supplied, they and the rest of their strike groups could travel nearly 6,000 miles at 13.5knots (roughly 25kph) without stopping. The stage was set for war.

War for the USS Nimitz never came. Two days after setting sail, and heading toward the middle of the Atlantic, the bombs flew, missiles arched across the sky and the world ended.

Armageddon was upon us.

The ships continued their course for the first couple of days. However on the third day a radio message was received.

Hello, this is FEMA, is anyone out there?

That first message and the correspondence between the Admiral and the General changed their mission forever.

On day 6 a flight of F-14 Tomcat fighters were dispatched to escort the FEMA team’s travels to Washington, after those fighters returned, they had two new missions.

One, make their way to the natural bay outside of Aberdeen, Washington.

Two, coordinate with as much of the US Navy as was left and rescue as many American nationals as possible.

The first turned out to be easier than the second. With the Destroyers and PE-3s scanning for submarines their passage through international waters would be risky, but not impossible. The Soviet Navy was geared more toward defence, so as long as the fleet hugged the coast they should be safe.

The last week had been eerily quiet. Besides the occasional civilian container ship, they ran into few naval vessels of any kind. Sonar scans and flight’s of PE-3’s confirmed their suspicions. Most American surface fleets were struck by nuclear missiles of one kind or another. They would be lucky to find any other mostly intact surface ships.

They were spared a strike, perhaps it was due to their closeness to the American mainland, perhaps it was due to their orders being changed so often, but they were spared an attack.

About a week into their journey, off the coast of Brazil, they ran into their first submarine. Practice depth charges were dropped and hailing calls were issued. It was assumed that the ship would be American, it hadn’t attacked them yet. The mysterious sub disappeared to the north sometime later. They never saw that submarine again.

Off the coast of Argentina only a day later, they ran into another submarine. After the practice charges and hailing calls the sub surfaced and began to respond. It was the USS Dallas, the ship that in another world would be made famous by the novel The Hunt for the Red October, but here it served a grander purpose. The USS Dallas was single handedly responsible for tracking down and breaking the silence of most of the remaining American submarines. That mission received mixed success. Roughly 8 American submarines would be reached over the course of the next two weeks, 7 would eventually make it home to Washington.

The entire total voyage took nearly 15 days of pushing every ship in the fleet to the brink of collapse. The crews were exhausted of days of traveling top speed and the stress that a single Soviet sub could sink every ship in the fleet.

However, on Tuesday March 6th 1984, the USS Nimitz arrived in the natural bay outside of Aberdeen. Joyous crowds, parades, fireworks, and a band met the returning heroes. The submarines were still on their mission, to rescue embassy personnel from every country possible. The fate of that mission was still to be determined.

*The Fireman was walking down to his mailbox. With the EMP many telephones and radios were destroyed, and the intermittent service that the power companies were able to supply was not helping people stay in touch either.

He shook his head, and smiled. People were reduced to talking to each other in person! The horror! At the very least he didn’t have to force his daughter off the phone every night. Three hours for one person was enough.

He passed a mail-boy who was just leaving for his rounds. The light blue shirt, the canvas bag stuffed with letters, newspapers, and pamphlets, and his bike signified his job to anyone who looked.

With gasoline reserved for the military, the normal mail trucks were out of operation. Mail now had to be delivered by foot. As most adults needed to work the fields and work on construction projects, the demographic of children between 13 and 16 filled the manpower gap needed to deliver the mail.

The older children were used in a pony-express type system where they passed letters off from one town to the next until they reached their proper destination. Because they were the only form of sure communication, the post office was gaining a lot of prestige and prowess. Some claimed it was due to the Presidents influence, but most acknowledged it was because the post office worked.

It was almost surprising how quickly the teens accepted jobs at the post office. Before Armageddon most probably hadn’t mailed a letter for anything besides holidays, and now they were rampant mailers. His daughter had now sent at least one a day, maybe more. Usually to her friends in town, but he did see some in there for the government in Columbia. Mail, now politically active teens! Who knew what could happen next, they could be cleaning their rooms!

He stepped up to the double glass door. He was mailing a package of potassium iodine pills to his sister. It was one of those things you didn’t trust to leave in the mailbox any more.

Before he could open the door, the Station Chief walked up. “Just the man I was looking for!” The Fireman turned around. The Station Chief was standing next to a military officer of some kind. “We went to your house, and your wife said you went down to the Post Office so we came here.” He laughed. “The Major needs one of my best men for a training mission, so I said I knew exactly who. You!”

The Fireman nodded, he was off duty and he didn’t feel like saluting and holding the box at the same time. “Major.”

The marine Major replied “I need you to teach some of my boys how to properly open a locked door, none of my men can seem to properly do it, and we’re just wasting too much time. There’s an operation coming up and I need my men prepared.”
The Fireman though for a minute “Station Chief, am I open on Monday?”

The Station Chief puffed out his chest and smiled “absolutely.”
 
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How realistic is the voyage? I am willing to overhaul some major parts if need be.

My theory was this close after Doomsday, nothing will be plying international waters for a while. and the chance of them running inoto any Russian subs is slim, the PE-3s and destroyers should provide a good enough screen for the lone wolf subs.
 
How realistic is the voyage?

I am not an expert, but it didn't strike me as odd that a little US Navy survives and finds home. I am undecided on the matter of evacuations. There would be very little time to communicate this to the countries of Latin America and especially to the Americans there, then very risky to enforce it if not supported by these nations and finally I ask myself how many of these US citizens would rather stay where they were considering the US they had known has been largely wiped off the map while the immediate damage in most Latin American countries might be limited. Depends on the degree of spontaneous Anti-US-sentiment, too.
 
Southern Nebraska would be in the path of fallout from strikes on ICBM fields in the west of the state so any control would be largely in theory,I doubt anyone would dare go in even with geiger counters showing decreased radiation risks the fear would be too great.In fact the map has to show the areas of severe radiation risk or fear of it.The Seattle area would have received multiple strikes and its unlikely the authorities would want to come back for anything more than a short trip for years to come even if in theory the risk would be limited volunteers would be in short supply.
 
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How realistic is the voyage? I am willing to overhaul some major parts if need be.

My theory was this close after Doomsday, nothing will be plying international waters for a while. and the chance of them running inoto any Russian subs is slim, the PE-3s and destroyers should provide a good enough screen for the lone wolf subs.
The rescue would probably be limited to the area covered by helicopter from the Carrier near the coast.
 
Sorry I haven’t been able to update as frequently as I could earlier. I’ve had to deal with some family issues and as you all know, family comes first.
 
Author’s Note: Sorry I haven’t been able to update as frequently as I could earlier. I’ve had to deal with some family issues and as you all know, family comes first.

Part V: Where Angels Dare to Tread

Operation Phoenix [3]:

The government in Columbia quickly put new arrivals to work. Refugees were used in odd jobs during much of the end of February and the beginning of March, sorting food supplies, helping at hospitals, and clearing forest areas for the spring planting. Some were put to other tasks. With most of the states of Oregon and Washington pacified, the government soon found little threat from those living within their borders.

It was the large numbers of dead were quickly causing problems. Felled by radiation, disease, accident or starvation, hundreds of thousands were left dead after Armageddon. Whole towns were filled with cadavers and most of the areas outside of struck cities the dead could be found stacked three high along the highways for miles. In the panic following the attacks, few of the dead were buried and the unsanitary conditions were breading grounds for disaster.

Small localized outbreaks of disease in areas where the dead were piling up were in danger of becoming pandemics. The government decided that something had to be done about the corpses and fast. Unable to come to a consensus, the national government left the problem to local officials to solve as “the large number of variables involved” prevented the federal government from coming up with a national solution.

With little fuel to spare, various ideas were tried with varying results. On method involved digging massive mass graves. However the graves proved far too tedious to dig by hand in the frozen soil. The fuel could not be spared for backhoes and the idea was soon abandoned for others.

One idea involved dumping the bodies in local lakes and streams. An ancient method used during times of crisis, it initially appeared to be working. The streams and lakes quickly swallowed the bodies, which were never seen again. The fast solution did nothing but cause the water to become undrinkable. The rotting bodies poisoned water sources for many refugees. Thousands more were soon dying from dysentery and cholera, only making the problem worse.

The already overflowing hospitals were swamped with even more sick and dying. The national government legalized “prescribed euthanasia.” The new tactic was used with grim resolution on the chronically sick and the very old. The thousands of “euthanized” were soon adding to the problems posed by the dead.

Finally a workable solution was reached. The logging industry had always been vital to the economies of Oregon and Washington, however now it was a matter of life or death. Massive pyres were erected out of felled trees, when started and constantly fed by massive logs, the pyres were hot enough for bodies to be cremated in mass. It has been estimated that thousands were disposed of in this way.

The Corpse Crisis as it came to be called highlighted other major problems facing the medical system. The hospitals were no longer able to provide quality medical care, and the large numbers of patients admitted each day quickly caused rampantly unsanitary conditions. A stay in the hospital is now likely to be the last in your life, as diseases were quickly spread among the admitted.

The death toll was even more drastic among doctors and nurses. Like their forbearers during the black plague, the diseases that they had spent frantic days treating they were soon succumbing to. As the diseases began to spread out of control, the government quickly labeled some hospitals as quarantine zones and doctors and nurses were not allowed in.

The sick and infirm were piled in the quarantine zones and left to die. They too were thrown in the mass funeral pyres.

*The General handed the President a brief from across the desk. “Sir in light of recent events I still believe that the best option from here is to initiate OPERATION FREEDOM immediately. Albeit a modified version.”

The President thought for a moment. He was familiar with OPERATION FREEDOM; the military was going to help pacify rebels in Idaho. “What modifications are your men proposing?”

“It’s not so much a modification to OPERATION FREEDOM, but rather another mission sir , a replacement, called OPERATION PHOENIX.”

The General pulled out a manila folder from his briefcase and slid it across the desk. Large, printed red letters ran across the front, “DeStRes: RESOURCES APPROVED.” Smaller letters scrawled below read “Go get em!”

The President looked quietly at the summary page and thumbed through the rest of the packet. “I will have to think this one over; you’re proposing a lot general.”

“I know sir,” he said quietly.
 
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Falkenburg

Monthly Donor
One slightly jarring note.

Euthanasia would surely not be adopted "With relish", would it? Perhaps "Grim resolution", instead?
Given the heroic efforts Medical Personnel are undoubtedly making 'Relish' seems inappropriate.

The psychological effects of adopting such a policy might also contribute to the losses of Medical Personnel, as suicidal guilt takes a toll.

Otherwise, nice job. ;)

Hope the Family matters resolve themselves happily.

Falkenburg
 
One slightly jarring note.

Euthanasia would surely not be adopted "With relish", would it? Perhaps "Grim resolution", instead?
Given the heroic efforts Medical Personnel are undoubtedly making 'Relish' seems inappropriate.

The psychological effects of adopting such a policy might also contribute to the losses of Medical Personnel, as suicidal guilt takes a toll.

Otherwise, nice job. ;)

Hope the Family matters resolve themselves happily.

Falkenburg


Bad wording, sorry about that (fixed it).

I based this event off of that Oregon is one of the few states where Euthanasia is legal, and as the most populous state, it should begin to see death as a solution.

It is like fighting fire with fire, by removing a large number of sick and injured hopefully there could be enough room for the doctors to get working on patients they can help.

Couldn't it be at least done on a large scale. I know that first "shall do no harm" but shouldn't there be an Apocalypse corollary.


The suicide guilt never crossed my mind, these people signed up to save lives not take them. I never thought about how this would effect the doctors, and only focused on helping the overcrowding problem.

I'll have to cover that more in another post.
 
Bad wording, sorry about that (fixed it).

I based this event off of that Oregon is one of the few states where Euthanasia is legal, and as the most populous state, it should begin to see death as a solution.

It is like fighting fire with fire, by removing a large number of sick and injured hopefully there could be enough room for the doctors to get working on patients they can help.

Couldn't it be at least done on a large scale. I know that first "shall do no harm" but shouldn't there be an Apocalypse corollary.


The suicide guilt never crossed my mind, these people signed up to save lives not take them. I never thought about how this would effect the doctors, and only focused on helping the overcrowding problem.

I'll have to cover that more in another post.
Depression and even suicide will be higher than normal among health professionals and military and police that had to leave people in quarantine zones to die.
 
I cited it often in P&S thread, but for whom not still informed, I suggest reading "Warday" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday); it features some evident distortions ("Hollywood" EMP effects, Europe and Japan dodging the War in a very..odd way) but illustrates well what could have been the ordinary life after a limited nuclear war in the '80s.

Backing on thread: until now I read a very nice bit of work, it shows what it seems to me the default positive attitude of Americans, even if of course bended by atomic fire. With the last installment we see even clearer the other side of the country, the damned ones and those who have to deal with them. Again, you're doing well :)
 
Update!

Part V: Where Angels Dare to Tread

The Last City on Earth [3]:

The Dark Days began with the Black Snow.

The unseasonably warm weather was beginning to end. Before, all around Cleveland, snow had begun to melt from the dramatic shift in weather after the strikes. However much like society, the weather was beginning to “normalize.”

The lake effect snow that scourged the City for much of the winter had come back with a vengeance. As feet of black snowflakes slowly drifted down, Geiger counters went wild all across the city. The fresh snow was radioactive. The feared radiation that plagued the surrounding area had now come to roost.

The Mayor’s Council went into a panic. Though there were chemical plants in the city, their ability to produce appropriate quantities of Potassium Iodide was limited by their inability to gather the necessary raw materials. Local areas were scavenged with little help for the necessary materials.

The scavenging teams had less success finding the raw materials to produce KI, and had better success finding quantities of KI and other forms of ingestible Iodine. Raiding many abandoned fallout shelters, groups of survivalists, and local warehouses, the teams were able to provide the bare minimum ration of iodide for only a fraction of Cleveland’s population.

The radiation sick began to fill the already stressed hospitals. Citizens were warned to stay indoors. Businesses and reconstruction efforts ground to a halt. Refugees were dying outside the gates. Military patrols forced away refugees trying to take the opportunity to sneak into the depopulated city. Survival was now a matter of waiting. After the numbers of needless deaths, the Mayor’s Council set up a 24-hour curfew until the crisis was over.

After the first, and the second, and the third day indoors people were complaining about the 24-hour curfew. Cabin fever was rampant and counts of domestic violence skyrocketed. Some families food stocks were desperately low, and the refugee’s meager barracks provided little protection against the cold and the snow.

A hasty solution was implemented. Bulldozers pushed the snow into Lake Erie, power washers melted the snow off of roofs and sidewalks, and refugees were sent to work shoveling snow by hand away from the city. NBC suited soldiers cleared routes through the city’s sewer system for workers in the vital industries. Eventually the snow was cleared away, and the efforts of teams of refugees cleared fresh snowfalls overnight, slowly the city returned to a pattern.

While the citizens of Cleveland had a hard time during the Black Snow, the refugees took the brunt of the blow. Few of them worked in the “vital industries” and those that did were not afforded the protection their local coworkers were given. They were marched through the abandoned streets with little thought given by their “guards” to the radiation.

Their meager shelters provided little protection, from the radiation or the cold. Hundreds were dying from radiation sickness, frostbite was common, and cold and pneumonia were killing as many as the radiation.

As food rations dwindled during the Black Snow, the Mayor’s Council authorized the used of military force to “acquire food and supplies as necessary.” The Dark Days were just beginning.

*The Refugee trudged down the street to the factory. Walking as briskly as they dared down the ice-covered streets, they were making slow progress to their new jobs. The guards stared callously from behind the goggles of their NBC suits.

He had begun the factory job a few weeks before. The factory had one purpose, producing chain-link for the fences surrounding the hundreds of sprouting refugee camps. Abandoned cars came in, walls came out.

The conditions in the factory were barbaric. Working ridiculous hours with little rest, the conditions in the factory were less like the conditions the American worker was used to. But rather more like the conditions their grandfathers worked in the sweatshops at the turn of the century.

Overtime was little, pay was abysmal, and the factory was boiling in some areas and freezing in others. Workers were subjected to sharp shards of metal, fast moving machines and brutally production minded managers.

Striking was illegal. An aborted strike at one of the rail producing factories was crushed by military action. Unions were nonexistent, and striking was not only illegal but almost useless.

The scores of refugees clamoring for any job but the “snow crews” quickly replaced factory jobs quality jobs and those that did strike or were injured. Shoveling radioactive snow off of the city streets was close to a death sentence.

The Refugee stepped into the factory; it was payday, the day of the week to look forward to. He shook his head. The money they handed out was not worth the amount of labor that they worked, but what they got was better than nothing at all.

He stepped up to the machine and began his twelve hour chore of snipping the streams of hot metal into the right shape.

As he walked out of the shop that night, he was handed his pay. The tri-color bills were an invention of the Mayor’s Council. Seeing how greenbacks were unreliable as a currency, they had invented their own.

Not based on GDP or some magical figure pulled out of the sky, the Cleveland Dollar was based upon the new gold standard, the kilocalorie. Printed by a local shop the Kilo, as it was called in short, had proven to be a reliable source of trade. The new minimum wage was based upon the philosophy of a 1500 kilocalorie diet and the brand new bills in his hand did total up to 1600 Kilos a day, a good amount for a week’s work.

As they marched back to the camp, someone grumbled that the moment they walked through the gates of the camp, they would have to pay 1500 Kilos a day for food, housing and medical payments. Considering the cost of most of those things however 1500 Kilos a day was a fair deal even if the food was bland, the housing meager, and the medical treatments inadequate, at least they had those commodities.

The Refugee did the math; he would have 700 Kilos left over, a small fortune for a fugee. He would save the money, who knew when he would need it next.

The Black Snow was falling as they marched through the gate. Passing the other way was a snow crew. The Refugee was sure they would be in the clinic tomorrow. Such was life.
 
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Good update again, the calorie based currency is an interesting invention which hopefully won't last a lot longer than a year at most.

I have my own doubt about the snow crew dying of radiotion poisoning, especially as we are now a month or so after the nuclear attacks and using the seven tenth rule, radiation levels will have decreased by a highly noticeable amount. Cases of mild to severe poisoning will happen however, especially is snow is ingested by accident. Said poisoning would be survivable in better circumstances, but given the lower standard of care available in post strike Cleveland the mortality is sadly bound to be quite high.

With regards to refugee accomodation, I bed that abandoned homes, warehouses and such would be used at first. But it might very well be the case that refugees with skills get better accomodation than unskilled refugees.
 
Those falling to "snow sickness" as it comes to be known are already sick from radiation poisoning. Those who are affected the most are the most sick from previous exposure. Their exposure to the radioactive snow just made their symptoms worse.

The housing arrangement is awkward. Those with the most rare technical skills, or other valuable skills live in abandoned houses. Those with less important skills live in an assortment of places, empty warehouses and schools being the most common. The majority, those with little to no important skills, of refugees live in concentration style camps.

However many refugees are dying from the mass amounts of radiation in the area. Not only is Cleveland dealing with multiple local strikes, but also the western drift of fallout from the Eastern Black Zone, the former Boston-Washington metropolis.

Only time will tell how long the refugees can survive in these harsh conditions.
 
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Good update again, the calorie based currency is an interesting invention.

Yes and no. While money's worth is relative and bound to change (even in a normal peacetime economy, you have inflation), a calorie is a calorie. And I am not sure if pegging the worth of money to calories will work for even a shorter period of time.
When you get into a situation when 1500 calories don't feed you, but you need 3000 to do so, the city's government is bound to be in trouble. You mustn't allow injustices to stick out so obviously! Besides, one should have rationing and foodstamps to deal with that delicate matter.

Germany had two periods of locally produced "Notgeld" (emergency money) in the early 20s and late 40s. These worked quite OK simply by not being related directly to the defunct Mark.

So, as a city magistrate, I would rather use another term fro the new currency, like

C-town Dollar
Erie-Dollar
Rock'n'Roller
Indians-Dollar
:eek:
 
The official name is the "Cleveland Temporary Emergency Dollar," officially called the dollar and the most common colloquialism is the Dollar. Its nickname (like the term Buck for the American Dollar) is the Kilo, because its value is based upon the Kilocalorie. However, 1 Cleveland Dollar is not worth 1 Kilocalorie, but 100 Kilocalories similar to how the $1 bill is worth 100 cents.

Though the worth of a single Kilocalorie is worth more than a single cent. If the minimum wage in 1984 is $3.40 twelve hours of work is worth $40 and 80 cents. Thus we can extrapolate that 1500 Cleveland Dollars are worth anywhere between 40 and 50 dollars. The average cost per calorie is then roughly 37 cents, a hell of a lot of money. In 1980 the cost of a WHOLE LOAF OF BREAD (1400 calories) was roughly 57 cents, making the cost per calorie roughly .04 cents. That means that the cost of food has just skyrocketed almost 100 times what it used to be.In this world $7 dollars goes much farther than it used to.

That said, a kilocalorie like an ounce of gold does have fluctuation in price and worth.
Thanks for the advice,

-Gen_Patton :)
 
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