Protect and Survive: A Timeline

Japan

I wonder how bad are things in Japan following the war.I expect that US military bases were wiped of the map and by extension cities close to them suffered damage.Also the soviets certainly wiped Tokyo of the map in an effort to destroy the japanese government,they probably bombed any japanese military installations on Hokkaido being the island closest to soviet territory.Whatever is left of the japanese government would possibly have fled to the south of the country.The worst would only now come, cut off from any imports the japanese economy would collapse completely,famine ensuing in the long term.Maybe the country goes back to the days when civil war was the norm there.
 
If this is 1984 then the Gene Genie should be with the Met in London, unless he got a transfer after the events of Ashes to Ashes. In TTL there will certainly be a lot of dead coppers for him to ease across to the other side. :(

To me the two detectives remind me a bit more of the 'Andies' in Hot Fuzz to some degree. Their conversation over the tinned peaches is reminiscent of the conversation over prawn cocktail crisps in Threads.
 
Another good update, did you base the policeman on the one in Soylent Green, who also helps himself to contents of the murder victims home.
 

Macragge1

Banned
Very good start Macragge1, looking forward to more!

Macragge1, this is simply delightful. A much better read than history thesis lookalikes which normally overpopulate this forum! Keep up the good work!

I love it!

Good update. It'll be interesting to see where this story goes.

Nice update:), we get a closer look on the individuals and their lives after the war.

Thanks a lot; I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Another good update, did you base the policeman on the one in Soylent Green, who also helps himself to contents of the murder victims home.

There's probably a bit of him subconsciously; the idea of the sort of low-level corruption is just a sort of Third World thing that shows how desperate and unprofessional everyone's become.

Everyone loves the Clash!

They're the only band that matters, no matter what timeline you're in.

Both very valid statements.

If this is 1984 then the Gene Genie should be with the Met in London, unless he got a transfer after the events of Ashes to Ashes. In TTL there will certainly be a lot of dead coppers for him to ease across to the other side. :(

To me the two detectives remind me a bit more of the 'Andies' in Hot Fuzz to some degree. Their conversation over the tinned peaches is reminiscent of the conversation over prawn cocktail crisps in Threads.

Gosh, there'd be thousands; It'd be a harrowing image watching Gene have to take in a whole parade ground of lost souls on the day of the exchange.

I love the two Andies.

'-and 'cos talking to them's an uphill struggle!'

Metal bin hits Nick Frost rigtht in the head

'Fuck off!'

Ahhh perfect. I was waiting for the Gene Genie to make an appearance

Gene Hunt Pic

The thing I love about TTL and your writing style is that it's so easy to visualise and feel the emotion. :p

There's almost certainly a subliminal bit of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes in this, given the period it's set and the fact that I really loved both shows.

Glad that you're enjoying the timeline.

Also, I thought I'd throw this in here -

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=49157

It's an interesting look at a restored ROC post (there's a lot of good stuff on that site) as it would have been at the time of the Exchange.

On a similar note; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsCJMYgFNuU - 1971 docu on the ROC; pretty interesting.
 
Gosh, there'd be thousands; It'd be a harrowing image watching Gene have to take in a whole parade ground of lost souls on the day of the exchange.

And, if you include American cops, there'd be millions on the day of the exchange.

He'd need a whole small country to take all those in (not to mention all the cops from other countries that were nuked).

I am interested in the story. Are you going to have any flashbacks?

BTW (this has nothing to do with the detective story) the largest skyscraper in the southern U.S. is probably Edison Plaza in Beaumont, which was constructed in 1982 (since Beaumont was spared, unlike every other major city in Texas), which is, probably in this TL, a command center for relief efforts in East Texas (OTL, it was the city of Beaumont's command center during Hurricane Rita in 2005).
 
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I can just see Gene wondering where 'the bloody hell' all these cops came from. The pub won't be big enough to acomodate them all.

'My name is DCI Sam Tyler/DI Alex Drake and I was killed in a nuclear exchange. I woke up in 1973/1981...'
 
Who is left

What countries which have been attacked still function more or less?I'm including in this category countries which still have government ministers alive and able to claim authority over their territory even if they have no way of imposing themselves.I imagine many countries might still have a government but next to no army or police still functioning,so de facto they're gone as functioning states.But still I'm willing to include such countries as still nominally there,at least able to make contact and exchange information.
 
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Macragge1

Banned
Will the prime timeline still be continued or will that be stopped so Macragge1 can focus on the written fiction?

BTW, it would be a good idea to put that in the Writer's Forum so it doesn't count as being published, should you want to publish it "for real."

The prime timeline will definitely be continuing, but there won't be such a strict '1 Prime/ 1 Spin-off/ 1 Prime/ 1 Spin-off system as there was with Prospero. Both will be going on concurrently though.
 
It's been a while since I've written here, but I'll like to give props to one of my favourite writers :)

Let's go to the stories:

So SAS President Pretorious has arrived; it's in a sorry state, and that's no surprise. Side question: have already been or will be there other ships from Europe or Africa? I remember hints, in early chapters, about somehow survivings authorities in France (en route to South America), Norway and Spain. We are several weeks after the first contacts, still silence from them?

I join myself in the disbeliefing about cuban/angolan tacnukes driven-SA collapse. It should require a very lucky mix of strategic/tactical surprise by Soviets' lackeys and disorganization by Republic forces. Impossible is nothing, and military history is full of examples of absolutely established concepts crushed by the ugly truth of the real life, however I agree with the others when they say that we shouldn't take everything said by the refugees as being the Gospel truth. Sure enough the Cape Town self bombing story seems very strange, lefting aside a "Samson option", why waste one of your few device over your capital city? Maybe to give a mercyful fate to white citizens? Anyway I imagine too a sort of high power Rwanda style hell on earth situation all over Africa.

The sub's inspection is one of the most apalling scene ever read; the crew goin' Chikatilo, damn. I remember the surrender of a Soviet Sub in Warday where the only deads found on board were some mutining sailors, but as always Jack likes to take the whole thing to higher levels :D

The Spook is a fuckin' genius, he should be officially promoted to MI5 Director General, Whitelaw must do it; Can we assume that SU as political entity isn gone? If so, the Officer's guys were right, we've "won" the war, even if I don't know how much we have to celebrate.

Touching final sequence, God bless all the "John" of this world, wherever they are.

Happy to see the new installment, should we call it "The Blues?"

I'll be curious to ear the king's speech about the SA pals, and props for representing OH the "business as usual" OTOH the moral decadence of Police, something that remind me of the Irvine Welsh's cops.

Keep on, Jack, you're great!
 
Others have said it, I'll echo them - this is first-class work, Macragge.

Forgive some musings on the American situation. Most people have been talking about the National Guard as if they're angels of law and order, going to help knit the country together aganst secessionists. In fact, they're problem #1. Perhaps you're looking at the 2011 National Guard and think they're standup fellows, integrated with the Regular's command structure and often serving more grueling rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan than their Regular counterparts, because no one realized it was necessary to make State laws to protect them from indefinite overseas deployment. Yea, those guys aren't what we have in 1984. A senior NG officer in 84, by definition, was commissioned early-to-middle Vietnam, a fair number of them after Tet - when there was no chance of them being deployed in Vietnam. Simply getting a comission at that point meant you had friends in the Governor's office, liked having a gun, uniform and maybe a tank or jet, but didn't feel like seeing combat against an actual enemy. The Regulars are impressively apolitical. The NGs don't even pretend (some progress has been made since '75, since many of these problems have been identified, but it's been very slow going). You'll find many of them from state political dynasties. The guys willing to lay down their lives for the whole United States of America - mostly did, in the German Wasteland and the Korean Unholiness. The balance of military power in the USA has shifted from the President, wherever he may be, to the Governors. And they're likely to talk back to the Governors in a way that Regular Generals do not talk back to the President. Bad juju.

I was looking at the 1990 target list, and Vermont jumped out at me. No primary targets. No secondary targets. One tertiary target - the city of Burlington, which is not the state capital. Given the reliability of the Soviet part of the Exchange, I reckon 50-50 odds that Vermont got no nukes at all; it may be the most whole and functional of the States. With the horror that Massachussetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island are glass while New York, New Hampshire and Maine are crippled, Vermont is going to have a big refugee problem. I wonder how the Governor will handle things. As close as it is to New York, perhaps that's where our valiant Prospero crew met the Secretary.

Idaho and Wyoming are nearly as good, and Oregon and Oklahoma not too bad. Nevada will survive the Exchange (an on-target hit at the base isn't going to damage the Strip), but not the disruption to its water supply and the seething mass of hell coming over its western border. Just a different way to die, I suppose. The Mayors of Las Vegas and Cleveland could be interesting viewpoints too.

Thank you for your work.

EDIT: Oh, South Africa - yeah, it's gonna be that bad, including the unique concept of victory that involves nuking your own major city. Plan Orange 84 hasn't been written and accepted yet, and this is an Orange situation; the government has no concept of acceptable (white) losses yet, so it's going to throw everything it has at the "kaffir" uprising. Even if the nukes from Angola are retconned, that situation remains. It won't be enough, especially with Johannesburg gone. The refugees are, at least to my mind, probably all despicable...but the things they've seen happen as their nation collapses brings them to the mental state where that's almost normal and tame behavior.
 
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Shawn, this is the US map of cities hit by Soviet devices according to the Secretary; note that it lacks of the strikes on military centers.

us1f.jpg


us2m.jpg


us3d.jpg
 
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