Land of Flatwater: Protect and Survive Middle America

[ObssesedNuker]

The most patriotic country in the world? With a Constitution which worked over a huge unveleoped country while neither telegraph nor railways existed?

Uh... what?

The area West of the Mississippi did not start to get heavily settled until after the introduction of railroads. The mentality of the people of the United States in the 1800's was also very different from the mentality of the people of the United States in the 1980's. The US in the 1980's was not, in fact, the most patriotic country in the world... otherwise Reagan would have been able to be alot more open with what he was doing. Patriotism and nationalism are pretty much the same thing and the stuff happening in the Third World at the time strikes me as much more patriotic then what Americans did.

I will also cite the uncharted waters we are treading here. To quote a post I had made in another forum:

Nobody has ever suffered the kinds of losses inflicted by total nuclear war. There are no catastrophic event on the historical record, that is the last ten thousand years, that has inflicted tens of millions too hundreds of millions of deaths in the space of one hour...

If you go to pre-history, you can find those kinds of events... and you'll also find that they were the kinds of events that lead to the near-extinction of the human race. And the average American is much less hardier (physically speaking) then the average human being of those times. Mentally speaking... well, the precedents for such situations in terms of casualty counts is nonexistant in terms of records. There are however a number of precedents for the rapid (even sudden) loss of government control: total anarchy and all the deprivations that came with it.

Note that an all-out Soviet strike would be weighted towards counter-force, but there will plenty of counter-value strikes. In the other threads (and this one) I have also noted a underestimation of the fallout problems in terms of food production. The heavy metals and longer-lived radioactive particles are going too demolish the fertility of American agricultural regions for DECADES... what crops that would manage to grow in such conditions would be unsafe to eat because of the output of Alpha and Beta particles.

If the destruction of national infrastructure does not do the United States in, the scarcity of (safe-to-eat) food will.

 

[LeX]

The Soviets unconditionally surrendering also will help this view, as well as allow the remaining governments in the old USA to declare "victory."

The Soviets surrender? Seems unlikely.

 

[John Farson]

The Soviets surrender? Seems unlikely.

I very much doubt there will be a Soviet surrender, if only because no Soviet government exists anymore. In Protect and Survive there is a scene where the British are interrogating one of the survivors of a Soviet nuclear submarine. When asked to show the places in the USSR hit with nukes, he uses up all the pins he was given (which were a LOT), then gestures for more That scene alone indicates how fucked the USSR is.

 

[LeX]

I very much doubt there will be a Soviet surrender, if only because no Soviet government exists anymore. In Protect and Survive there is a scene where the British are interrogating one of the survivors of a Soviet nuclear submarine. When asked to show the places in the USSR hit with nukes, he uses up all the pins he was given (which were a LOT), then gestures for more That scene alone indicates how fucked the USSR is.

Given that an American counterpart would do the same, wouldn't it be about as meaningful to say that the USA "surrendered"?

 

[ObssesedNuker]

The Soviets, from a industrial-military standpoint, would actually come out of the nuclear exchange better off then the USA. World War 2 had shown that civil defense is best provided at a community level, but the United States was unwilling to do that on the prospect that it was too 'communist'.

The Soviets, on the other hand, actually took civil defense measures and seriously looked undertook things such as industrial dispersion and plans for the evacuation of skilled personnel to untargetted rural areas. In the 50's and 60's, the idea was to reduce the damage from the nuclear stage so the conventional war could proceed with maximum efficiency. But, like the Soviets attitude towards nuclear weapons, these programs were changed with the realization that a nuclear war would mean societal collapse*. In the 70's and 80's, the purpose of the civil defense program was to preserve as much of modern society as possible to enable the survivors to rebuild as quickly as possible.

On that note, the Soviets were well aware that their nation would collapse under nuclear war and the successor nations would bear little resemblance which is why they (like the United States) put MUCH more emphasis on weapons systems then civil defense. One historian I read said something to the effect that it doesn't matter if the USA 0.1% of its military budget on civil defense and the USSR spent 1%... the rest of those expenditures were going to weapons and both became aware that, in the end, their nations would be destroyed.

*On that note, it is worth reviewing the evolution of Soviet military thinking on World War 3 for a moment. In the 50's and most of the 60's, the Red Army's expectation was that there would first be a large nuclear exchange, that while devestating, would not be fatal to the combatant nations. Thus, a conventional war would follow... in other words the stages would go nuclear then conventional.

As the 60's continued, the Soviet military leadership slowly came to realize what the Soviet civilian leadership already understood: a nuclear war be the end of World War 3 with no winners. This was what brought about Soviet military support for the USSR's commitment to 'no-first use' of nuclear weapons the 1970s. Then the thinking turned towards a conventional conflict followed by a nuclear one... and the Soviet military at all periods operated under no illusions of 'limited nuclear war'.

 

[Gen_Patton]

It is mentioned in the original Protect and Survive, that the Soviets do "unconditionally surrender."

 

[Macragge1]

It is mentioned in the original Protect and Survive, that the Soviets do "unconditionally surrender."

I only wonder if we can trust anything that the Officer was saying at this point, given his state of mind?

 

[Mario Rossi]

It is mentioned in the original Protect and Survive, that the Soviets do "unconditionally surrender."

IIRC

'The Great War! They got a radio message from some Lieutenant-Colonel in Vladivostok or the Urals or wherever we didn't turn to bones and dust - unconditional surrender.' Another long, long draw - 'we're all heroes.'

Given the original context, I think we still do not know if this statement is real or not: the message could not exist at all; it could be a fabrication by CHANTICLEER or by others; it could be real but not reflecting the truth. So, I'll be cautious about considering the whole USSR "won" even after months. Just IMHO

 

[Mario Rossi]

Jack is arrived early, sorry for repetition.

 

[Bernard Woolley]

I think that we can safely say that no one has 'won' in the traditional sense of the word.

 

[Mario Rossi]

I think that we can safely say that no one has 'won' in the traditional sense of the word.

Everything turns grey

 

[Chipperback]

What happens to the United States?

A long period in the wilderness. A lot of patchwork territories, big and small...mostly small.

". The heavy metals and longer-lived radioactive particles are going too demolish the fertility of American agricultural regions for DECADES.

No doubt about that. You are going to have disruption of the biosphere across the board. However One thing we can never underestimate is how mother Earth acts as an organism. And how we as human beings will be forced to respond to it.

"The Soviets, on the other hand, actually took civil defense measures and seriously looked undertook things such as industrial dispersion and plans for the evacuation of skilled personnel to untargetted rural areas.

That was a key advantage. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a very large piece of land. It stretched something like 9 time zones? It would be dang hard to hit that much land, but given how many weapons the USA built, you can bet that land would get a decent-sized plutonium duvet.

"Also, how will future generations see Reagan in the Protect and Survive-verse? I'm asking because I recall that in the Cuban Missile War TL it was implied that JFK was remembered in infamy because of his role in starting the war (rightly or wrongly). Likewise, because of this and LBJ's authoritarian rule the Democrats were thouroughly discredited. Will a similar thing happen to Reagan and the GOP? People in 2014 might be thinking "Ok, so the economy was crap under Carter and there were the hostages. But then Reagan gets in, and just a couple of years later we got nuked."

That assumes that people 2014 even remember Reagan. I'm reminded of that scene in "Threads". It's 1996, and you have a group of children..including the daughter of one of the main characters in a building that perhaps was a school, and there was a TV set playing a tape of an educational program, and none of those young people knew what the hell was going on. The only person who did was the old woman in the back of the room, mouthing what the presenter was saying on the video.

There is a strong possibility that things could have ended up like that. The devolution of the human species down to the prime thought of day-to-day survival first, foremost and only.

Who wins? A laughable concept. Nuclear war is not a winnable game, period. Both sides will unconditionally surrender to the concept that they've destroyed what took centuries to create. That alone would depress me beyond comprehension, because how can you declare a winner...when so much was lost?

And not just the destruction, and the death. There is also the loss of the seemingly trivial, but special things. Birthdays and holidays. Ballgames and picnics. The interaction with people. Those things that make life happen. Those will be changed and not for the better.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Given the original context, I think we still do not know if this statement is real or not: the message could not exist at all; it could be a fabrication by CHANTICLEER or by others; it could be real but not reflecting the truth. So, I'll be cautious about considering the whole USSR "won" even after months. Just IMHO

I recall Macragge out right stating that it was just a rumor flying around. Plus: why would the expedition back to Europe be so worried about Warsaw Pact military remnants if that were the case?

 

[The Uchronian]

What happens to the United States?

A long period in the wilderness. A lot of patchwork territories, big and small...mostly small.



No doubt about that. You are going to have disruption of the biosphere across the board. However One thing we can never underestimate is how mother Earth acts as an organism. And how we as human beings will be forced to respond to it.




That was a key advantage. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a very large piece of land. It stretched something like 9 time zones? It would be dang hard to hit that much land, but given how many weapons the USA built, you can bet that land would get a decent-sized plutonium duvet.



That assumes that people 2014 even remember Reagan. I'm reminded of that scene in "Threads". It's 1996, and you have a group of children..including the daughter of one of the main characters in a building that perhaps was a school, and there was a TV set playing a tape of an educational program, and none of those young people knew what the hell was going on. The only person who did was the old woman in the back of the room, mouthing what the presenter was saying on the video.

There is a strong possibility that things could have ended up like that. The devolution of the human species down to the prime thought of day-to-day survival first, foremost and only.

Who wins? A laughable concept. Nuclear war is not a winnable game, period. Both sides will unconditionally surrender to the concept that they've destroyed what took centuries to create. That alone would depress me beyond comprehension, because how can you declare a winner...when so much was lost?

And not just the destruction, and the death. There is also the loss of the seemingly trivial, but special things. Birthdays and holidays. Ballgames and picnics. The interaction with people. Those things that make life happen. Those will be changed and not for the better.

At least Protect & Survive wasn't a quite a full-blown war........or there'd be fallout still in the atmosphere for a year at least(I recall hearing that the fallout seemed to have largely dissipated by April, so that's a really good indication of just how much worse things could have gotten.......but then again, the TL may not be entirely accurate. I'd like to know how much megatonnage was used.)

 

[Unknown]

How far do you plan on taking this, Chipperback?

 

[Chipperback]

As far as all the rest of the timelines

 

[LeX]

The Soviets, from a industrial-military standpoint, would actually come out of the nuclear exchange better off then the USA. World War 2 had shown that civil defense is best provided at a community level, but the United States was unwilling to do that on the prospect that it was too 'communist'.

The Soviets, on the other hand, actually took civil defense measures and seriously looked undertook things such as industrial dispersion and plans for the evacuation of skilled personnel to untargetted rural areas.

To this I should provide this link.
However it is pretty obvious that the USSR as a nation no longer exists, it will simply be statelets run by whoever is the highest-ranked officer in the area.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

However it is pretty obvious that the USSR as a nation no longer exists, it will simply be statelets run by whoever is the highest-ranked officer in the area.

Pretty much what I said and pretty much what the Soviets in the 70's and 80's predicted.

 

[LeX]

Pretty much what I said and pretty much what the Soviets in the 70's and 80's predicted.

Yeah, although you have admit if the Soviets really did have that dispersed military/industrial capacity survive, it would be a boon for whoever comes to power locally. Perhaps they would be quicker to have a warring states period, with reasonably advanced and well-equipped postwar warlords going at each other for the eventual reunification of Russia proper.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Yeah, although you have admit if the Soviets really did have that dispersed military/industrial capacity survive, it would be a boon for whoever comes to power locally. Perhaps they would be quicker to have a warring states period, with reasonably advanced and well-equipped postwar warlords going at each other for the eventual reunification of Russia proper.

That's actually more optimistic then what the Soviets thought would happen. The article you linked actually overestimates the extent, effectiveness, and purpose of the Soviet civil defense program, which should be expected given that it was apparently written by neo-con warhawks in the late-70's*.

*When I saw Donald Rumsfeld's name at the end, I knew this was the kind of stuff that Reagan used to propogate the myth of US nuclear weakness in his campaign against Carter.