P&S: Where Would You Be In That Universe?

[Canadian Dragon]

I was 12 years old and living in Edmonton with my foster family at the time. Probably early on in the course of WWIII, I would have gone home to be with my real family living in Grande Prairie, a few hundred kilometres to the northwest in northern Alberta. My foster family would've also tried to get out of Edmonton while they could, most likely out to Pigeon Lake about an hour's drive south of Edmonton. My foster dad's brothers and friends had cabins by that lake and often went there during the summer.

As my real dad is Australian and has friends and relatives in Australia, it's possible that my real family and I would have tried to get a flight to Sydney and if he was worried enough, arrange to have us stay with friends and/or relatives elsewhere in NSW, Victoria or Queensland - hopefully well away from any of the major cities and major RAAF/RAN bases.

If my family wasn't successful in getting out to Oz, which was pretty likely, we would've just stuck it out up north in Grande Prairie while the nukes flew.

 

[Mumbles]

In the right thread this time. . .

Depending on whether or not NZ was struck (and no-one is really sure if that would have happened or not, now or then, and the people who know for sure aren't telling), I'm either fine, living within sight of one of the targets, or otherwise impoverished. I would have to have been very unlucky to have been killed outright.

My english relatives on the other hand in Durham (Sunderland and Seaham) are in a bad place indeed. I'll likely never get to meet them.

 

[NoOneFamous]

My Dad is probably dead. He was a Naval Reservist who would have been in Norfolk.

My oldest brother is alive, he was on board the USS Callaghan. My next oldest brother is dead, he was in Basic in San Diego.

The rest of us are alive in State College, PA

 

[RCAF Brat]

In an early 1980s nuclear war?

Deposited as fallout somewhere downwind of Cold Lake Alberta.

 

[Dub_Phil]

Butterflied away I'd imagine. My childhood home is more than likely burning as a result of the nuke dropped on Dublin Airport.

 

[CDurham]

Either killed in the womb if my mother dies when Sheppard AFB is hit, or born within a few months of the attack and possibly the victim of infanticide if my parents situation is desperate enough. They lived in Wichita Falls, TX and she was 6 months pregnant with me in February 1984. Sheppard AFB was (and still is) a major NATO training base. Considering I was born with a cleft lip and palate and was unable to breast feed...

 

[lukedalton]

Me and my family die in the nuclear attack due to living in Bologna at the time, a train node and a certified target

 

[SactoMan101]

In my case, sadly dead. Sacramento, California in 21 February 1984 was home to Mather AFB (home to SAC's 320th Bomb Wing), the Air Logistics Center at McClellan AFB in North Highlands, California, the Sacramento Army Depot and (of course) is the state capitol of California, not to mention the large railroad marshaling yard of Southern Pacific Railroad northeast of Sacramento in Roseville, California. In short, the city would be hit with at minimum five warheads. The blast effect of five circa 500 kT warheads would pretty much kill most of the population of the Sacramento metro area.

Unfortunately, my brother--who was living in Mountain View, California at the time--would be dead, even if he was working at his office in next-door Sunnyvale. The Soviets would have targeted Moffett Naval Air Station with at least a 1 MT warhead, not only to knock out the runways but to destroy the famous Blue Cube buildings that were the control centers for US spy satellites; the blast radius of a 1 MT detonation would have flattened my brother's condo and probably flattened his place of work.

 

[Dolf]

Dead and forgotten as most Germans

 

[Pangur]

Working of the Irish P&S I would have survived the nuclear exchange and back in uniform stationed God knows where. All my family would have survived as well

 

[iainbhx]

I'm in Swansea at University, as Wales got off with one nuke, presumably at the weapons establishment in Cardiff, I'm OK. The parental units and my little bro are probably alive on the western fringe of Stourbridge, but as Brum ate eight nukes and Wolvo had one as well, they probably aren't doing too good.

I meant to do a P&S Wales, but I've got this little monster which takes up a lot of my time.

 

[hugh lupus]

Dead ,very ,very dead along with my wife and soon to be born daughter.
I've read war plan UK and the Soviets were going to carpet bomb my area with nuclear weapons.
I knew this at the time and it was oddly comforting.
A bright flash and goodbye

 

[Stuyvesant]

Butterflied

 

[DrakonFin]

Dead, I afraid. I live in Rauma on this time and nearby nuclear plant of Olkiluoto was one targets. So if winds goes badly...

If you accept my spinoff as canon, then Olkiluoto (and Rauma) survived. Apparently the nuke meaned for the nuclear plant never reached its target for some reason. So you would be comparatively fine, Rauma also being one of the first places in Finland to receive Swedish aid in the spring of 1984.

I would also live through the Exchange, most likely, but only 50 km or so from the nuclear explosion at the Rissala airfield. I was a small child at the time and a bit sickly at that, so it might be very possible I would never see adulthood, though.

 

[Saphroneth]

Being from Britain, I'm almost certain my family would have caught the blast radius of several megatons.
The island (especially England) is so small and densely packed that the burst radii overlap... and my family lives close enough to High Wycombe that I'd cop it from the strike to take out the RAF Commands.

 

[Bernard Woolley]

Live quite close to Rosyth, however I'm beyond the blast radius and there is a high ground between me and the dockyard. I'd in all probability have survived the initial attack. However in the '80s Fife was a NFZ so I have no faith that the council was even slightly prepared for the aftermath, even inadequatley.

 

[Julius Vogel]

I would be fine as would the vast majority of my close family, whom I think were all back in NZ about this time (although the ones in Toronto would be sadly dead unless back in NZ for a trip). IIRC 1984 all the ones in Europe had returned home and others hadn't left for Europe yet.

We largely lived in the country areas too and were quite self sufficient at the time, although lack of petrol fuel would hurt. Amusingly, the NZ government's Think Big energy substitution plan would be very useful in this scenario, designed as it was to address security issues evident from the Oil Shocks. IOTL it was a flawed project for many reasons, a major one being the government foreign debt increase necessary to pay for the projects. I suspect government foreign debt is not an issue in this TL anymore.

Medium term I'd have a bit of a hard time, being a sickly child.

The NZ government commissioned a report on the effects on NZ of the kind of nuclear war we might experience. It was pretty positive in the short term, contrasted to everyone else, but things were not so rosy in the medium to long term. Nuclear related illnesses would spike and our capacity to deal with that would likely be over-whelmed. Our economy was incredibly dependent on exporting to areas that will be massively disrupted/destroyed as well.

 

[Fred the Great]

Hmm, I was in early primary school in Launceston, Tasmania (you know, island state of Australia), so in all likelihood I guess the only effects I might have noticed would be a lack of new television shows and adults being rather depressed. Tasmania is a reasonably good place to be in a nuclear armageddon all things considered. Hydro power, a full range of primary industries, beer, cricket . . . . what more do you need? Apologies to all of those who are dead.

 

[pipisme]

I was living in Wimbledon Park in south-west London at the time so I expect I would have been killed in a nuclear attack.

 

[Lapoleon]

Since my parents were living in the south of the Netherlands at the time there might be a very, very slight chance they survived. But I would most certainly have been butterflied away since it's three years early. I haven't been able to find target maps for the Netherlands, but I assume most targets would be in the west (especially Rotterdam) or near military airports.