The Day After: An American Spinoff of Protect and Survive

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The Last City on Earth

Cleveland, Ohio faced many of the same problems that plagued major cities across the planet as the war turned nuclear. The emergency services were desperately trying to move as many people out of the city as possible. What could have been a normal pre-war car crash became a humanitarian nightmare as the highways leading out of the city became clogged.

Two small cruise ships sank in Lake Erie as hundreds of refugees clambered aboard. What started as a gesture of human kindness by the Captains turned into a nightmare minutes later. Most perished of hypothermia and drowning in the freezing water as rescue never materialized.


Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport was a scene of organized chaos. The control tower, ignoring many FAA mandates, attempted to launch as many aircraft as physically possible before the bombs hit. Although the flight plans for the aircraft that day were chartered for normal destinations, air traffic controllers told them to go south as far as their gas tanks could take them, and land.

Clevelander became synonymous with the American diaspora among many South American countries where they found shelter.


[FONT=&quot]Due to some unorthodox twist of fate as fire rained across the planet, Cleveland was left unscathed. Perhaps the Soviet ICBM never left the launcher. Perhaps the warhead had a malfunction and splashed harmlessly into the Arctic Ocean. [/FONT]
But as cities across the world were reduced to radioactive slag, Cleveland was left alone. As the city slowly came to the conclusion that yes, it had survived, things began coming back to life.

The air traffic controllers at Cleveland-Hopkins, without much beyond an old radio, began to land any plane that they could reach. Military aircraft landed after a harrowing journey into the depths of the USSR and back. Pilot accounts were grim, as they reported that few if any cities west of the Ural Mountains were left. It appeared that a bitter victory had been won, if victory were defined so loosely as to apply to nuclear warfare.

Civilian aircraft arrived as well. While mostly domestic flights circled about looking for a place to land, many of the later flights were told that Cleveland survived. Flying as direct a route as possible, most still arrived on their last legs of fuel. Some international flights arrived as well, including a British Airways 747 that was originally slated for a landing in New York somehow found its way to the last city.

With news of Cleveland’s survival, many of the refugees stranded along highways began to reverse their momentum and the small trickle of returning motorists soon became a flood. Refugees from relatively close cities such as Toledo and Pittsburgh began arriving late in the night.


To say that the war left Cleveland without any damage would be ridiculous. The EMP caused normal power to be disrupted. The sewage system began to clog and public transportation ground to a halt. A majority of stores were picked clean and local warehouses were under control of FEMA.

[FONT=&quot]But the largest casualty of the war was the Mayor. [/FONT]His wife and children were trapped in New York City for a wedding during the attacks. He was forced to stay behind and help manage and prepare for the bomb. After news filtered in that NYC suffered multiple direct hits, the depression that lingered from the death of the Mayor’s youngest daughter in a car accident came back to the surface. And two days after stepping down as mayor, he committed suicide.
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The office of mayor was transitioned to the Law Director, who declared emergency powers placing the city under martial law with Cleveland Police and remaining National Guard units acting as its enforcers.
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As they began to adjust to their new world, the winds in the atmosphere began to shift, blowing fallout from all over the Midwest closer to the city. The Black Snow was coming.

*The Son’s predicament had not gotten much better over the last three days although he was able to ditch the wagon for a backpack and find cans of food in burned out houses and cars. The Son was walking toward the City and everyone else was leaving. He took shelter in an abandoned house, where he slept on the floor. He couldn’t take himself upstairs to use one of the beds. People had used those beds once. So long yet so short ago. And thus ended Day One.

“Son you’re crazy!” the Man shouted. “Don’t you know the City is ruins? There’s nothing there. No people, no buildings, it’s a radioactive hole in the ground. You’re walking toward your death!” The Son shrugged it off, that’s what they all said. Death! Death! Death! And all he could think about was life. They have to be alive, they have to!

Day Two wasn’t much better. He passed fewer and fewer people. Most were still wandering out of the City and others had different purposes.

What’s he doing here?” a Looter shouted! “Get him out of here!” A second Looter pulled out a gun. A gunshot became a thunderclap against the sounds of silence. Couldn’t be louder than a .22 he shot once at summer camp. Bullets whizzed by. He was running. More claps of thunder, more shouts. Then finally “Leave him alone, he’s crazy, going TOWARD the City. The dumb motherfucker is running toward his death!”

He ate his cold ration out of a can and was running out of food and fast. But that didn't matter as he was getting sick, vomiting all over himself at random intervals during the day. He just knew he ate something bad, but deep inside he felt that it was radiation poisoning. After a couple more hours, and less and less people passing by, sleep found him in the back of a bus.
 
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Cleveland doesn't have ferry boats. We're not New York. The closest examples would be the ferries in Port Clinton that go to the islands. The two big pleasure cruisers are the Nautica Queen and the Goodtime, but IDK if they were around in '84. The Goodtime I or II might have been around, but no clue. The Queen's rated capacity is 400 people, but I doubt they would use the cruise ships to get out. The Goodtime I is around (Named after the original Goodtime). It was sold and moved to the Islands, but that probably wasn't until late spring 1984. As for radars, Cleveland Center is in Oberlin and they cover a large swath of airspace over the Great Lakes region. Cleveland TRACON covers the arrivals and departures into and out of Hopkins. You also have Burke Lakefront, Cuyahoga County, and Lost Nation airports, all of which are designated reliever airports for Hopkins.

For radio communication, WWWE 1100 AM has 50,000 watts of broadcasting power. Their transmitter in Brecksville should still be working.

Voinovich kills himself (Was that wedding artistic license or did that happen OTL?)? That leaves the mayor position to either the Law Director (I have no fucking clue who it is) or the president of City Council, which is...oh Dear Lord, George Forbes. Depending on who you talk to who was alive at the time, he's either a savior or a primadonna. We'll be fine, and make sure you talk to Jan (JN1) about the effects of HEMP. We have the East 72nd Street Power Plant, multiple fresh water intakes into Lake Erie, four functional airports (IMHO, you save Cleveland, you save at least Cuyahoga County as well. There is a reason why we call it "Greater Cleveland" after all. :p), and manufacturing. If the rural parts of Lorain, Medina, and Geauga Counties are intact, we have farmland as well.
 
Want to bet there's quite a few Buffs and KC-135s at Cleveland Hopkins IAP? Not to mention Youngstown and even along the Interstates?
 
Want to bet there's quite a few Buffs and KC-135s at Cleveland Hopkins IAP? Not to mention Youngstown and even along the Interstates?

Maybe F-14s of the RAG at Oceana as well? Don't forget, we have Burke Lakefront downtown and County Airport out in Richmond Heights. Do you think a lot of BUFFs survived their runs intact and with enough fuel to reach Cleveland? Maybe we have a few F-4s from the Michigan and Indiana ANGs that were airborne at the time of the attacks.
 
Cleveland doesn't have ferry boats. ... The two big pleasure cruisers are the Nautica Queen and the Goodtime, ... The Queen's rated capacity is 400 people, but I doubt they would use the cruise ships to get out. The Goodtime I is around (Named after the original Goodtime).

As for radars, Cleveland Center is in Oberlin and they cover a large swath of airspace over the Great Lakes region. Cleveland TRACON covers the arrivals and departures into and out of Hopkins. You also have Burke Lakefront, Cuyahoga County, and Lost Nation airports, all of which are designated reliever airports for Hopkins.

For radio communication, WWWE 1100 AM has 50,000 watts of broadcasting power. Their transmitter in Brecksville should still be working.

Voinovich kills himself (Was that wedding artistic license or did that happen OTL?)? That leaves the mayor position to either the Law Director (I have no fucking clue who it is) or the president of City Council, which is...oh Dear Lord, George Forbes. Depending on who you talk to who was alive at the time, he's either a savior or a primadonna.

We'll be fine, and make sure you talk to Jan (JN1) about the effects of HEMP. We have the East 72nd Street Power Plant, multiple fresh water intakes into Lake Erie, four functional airports (IMHO, you save Cleveland, you save at least Cuyahoga County as well. There is a reason why we call it "Greater Cleveland" after all. :p), and manufacturing. If the rural parts of Lorain, Medina, and Geauga Counties are intact, we have farmland as well.

The ferries and the wedding were artistic license. If you don't mind I will change the ferry reference to the cruise ships. I have a feeling that every method of transit would be used to get out. Small cruise ships no exception. There is plenty of places to land passengers (if not in real ports) that theoretically could be away from the blasts.

This is America, people do have hearts... somewhere.

While Forbes looks to be a good, if divisive, choice to run Cleveland during a disaster his personality would simply clash with some of the decisions that the Mayor will make later. If anything I would prefer an anonymous character, one I could mold the way I want. The unremembered Law Director would be perfect, giving me the freedom to go where I must to tell the story.

As for Cleveland's resources. Go baby Go! A revitalizing American city, pulling itself out of the Ash, is just what the world needs. Cleveland ITTL has everything going for it. Manufacturing, near one of the largest agricultural areas in the world, a growing population as it is located (close enough) near many major eastern cities. What could possibly go wrong?

But this is Protect and Survive...
 
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Want to bet there's quite a few Buffs and KC-135s at Cleveland Hopkins IAP? Not to mention Youngstown and even along the Interstates?

Perhaps, I am not too familiar with Air Force emergency landing procedures, though in theory the ranges of some bombers could return to Ohio. If you have insight on USAF emergency landing procedures feel free to PM me or post, I'm a little out of my league here.

Maybe F-14s of the RAG at Oceana as well? Don't forget, we have Burke Lakefront downtown and County Airport out in Richmond Heights. Do you think a lot of BUFFs survived their runs intact and with enough fuel to reach Cleveland? Maybe we have a few F-4s from the Michigan and Indiana ANGs that were airborne at the time of the attacks.

The problem though is fuel, we can have all of the surviving fighters and bombers, but without fuel they are little more than massive hulks of aluminum and precious advanced technology. Cleveland's biggest problem is that it is and island, stranded in a sea of radiation, refugees, and raiders.
 
Perhaps, I am not too familiar with Air Force emergency landing procedures, though in theory the ranges of some bombers could return to Ohio. If you have insight on USAF emergency landing procedures feel free to PM me or post, I'm a little out of my league here.



The problem though is fuel, we can have all of the surviving fighters and bombers, but without fuel they are little more than massive hulks of aluminum and precious advanced technology. Cleveland's biggest problem is that it is and island, stranded in a sea of radiation, refugees, and raiders.

If Toledo survives, we have the Sunoco refinery there. It's only a 2-hour drive. Not to mention Hopkins has a pretty extensive tank farm (you can see part of it going by the airport on 237) in its own right. Raiders would have a problem in Cuyahoga County. Not only is there CPD to contend with, you also have the police departments of the other 61 communities county-wide plus the Sheriff's Office, the Metroparks Ranger Department (who have full police powers under Ohio law), and the Highway Patrol post in Berea. And those of the four counties surrounding Cuyahoga (Maybe Northern Summit. Akron is in the center of the county so it and points south probably got schwacked pretty badly.).
 
This is Dark as hell, but very well written.

This is utterly captivating. Kudos.

If Toledo survives, we have the Sunoco refinery there. It's only a 2-hour drive.

@Jim Smitty:I feel honored, Smitty, your ASB timelines are always entertaining and I enjoy reading them very much. Your writing has also improved dramatically and I am flattered by your compliment.

@statichaos: I was truly captivated by A World of Laughter and a World of Tears. You deserved your Turtledove. I'm also wishing on a star for a new update. Hint. Hint.

@thepenguin: I love all the information you are just force feeding me. Researching in such detail for every part of the US that I will cover (which will be a lot) is almost impossible. You local yokels out there feel free to contribute!

As for fuel... the biggest problem is going to be crude. Your refineries are great, but without anything to refine they become empty tanks just waiting.

While airports do keep reserves, in other P&S threads we have discussed how long such stockpiles will last. The conclusion is a couple of weeks at most, and that's with stringent rationing from the get go.

While you may think raiders are not going to be a problem, the refugees are going to take up much of the police's time and effort, raiders can easily carve out something amongst the inattention.
 
Every SAC wing had recovery teams, with fuel, spare parts, munitions, and personnel to turn around returning bombers and tankers and get them ready for further rounds. Recovery bases were preselected, though there were alternates and alternates to alternates. Civilian airports, former bases that had been closed in the '60s and early '70s, even straight stretches of interstate highways, were to be the recovery fields. And essentially, that's the unclassified story. Basically, they leave home base when DEFCON-III is called, and drive into areas least likely to be attacked. After the attack, Looking Glass or Nightwatch contacts the recovery teams and directs them to proceed to a recovery field and get ready to receive returning bombers and tankers, turn them around, and prepare for further operations as directed by National Command Authority and CINC-SAC.
 
Of course the theory about bomber recovery probably worked on paper exactly how many bombers would still be operational after the main exchange is another matter.Whether surviving planes would still be serviceable for a trip of over 8000 km and whether the crews still had the fighting spirit most would probably be worried about surviving family and friends.In real life I don't see how things would go smoothly.Bomber crews would be on the edge of a nervous breakdown most of them anyway, maybe not while on route to targets in the Soviet Union but the return trip when they could take stock would put many of them close to breaking poinT.Seding these guys back up without proper screening is a bit risky.
And they would be few in number most bomber crews would be lost.
 
SAC always trained for it, expected to do it, and had everything in place. And there's also the chance that even one or two main bases might escape being hit, which means additional stocks of fuel, munitions, etc. are available.

Not to mention that in SIOP, not every bomber goes in to strike. Some, once they took off and opened their orders, would be assigned to a reserve force under CINC-SAC for post-attack use. And there would be enough civilian airports surviving even under a worst-case scenario for bombers and the recovery teams to meet up, and turn aircraft around.
 
Gen_Patton said:
With news of Cleveland’s survival, many of the refugees stranded along highways began to reverse their momentum and the small trickle of returning motorists soon became a flood. Refugees from relatively close cities such as Toledo and Pittsburgh began arriving late in the night.

The IX Center can be used as a processing center and shelter. It's right alongside Runway 6R/24L. And it's HUGE. You have a ground floor and three basement levels (more or less confirmed by employees of the Cleveland Tank Plant [which is what the IX Center was before being turned into a convention center] and by current IX Center security personnel). Total space is 2.2 million square feet. It served as an emergency high school for the North Olmsted School District in 1990 after students burnt down the front of North Olmsted High School. It didn't open as an exhibition hall until 1985, but Park Corp has probably done a lot of the heavy lifting to clear the space by February of '84). You also have the Public Auditorium Downtown, with about 400,000 square feet of space (in the underground convention center built in 1965. I don't know exactly how much space is in the original building.).

We have numerous hospitals all over the county, including the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals (the former because you tend to get recognition when the oil sheiks come to you for their heart problems, the latter for pioneering cardiac procedures). Cleveland Catholic Charities will come to the forefront for aid of displaced persons (Maybe feature Bishop Pilla in the next update offering a Mass of Thanksgiving at St. John's Cathedral?;)), as will the local chapter of the Salvation Army and Red Cross. Don't forget the numerous hotels within fifteen minutes of the airport. In a pinch, you could even set people up in the salt mine underneath the lake.
 
What do you think happened to famous criminals in this world?Ted Bundy,John Wayne Gacy were at the time on death row and their executions years away.Is it possible they escaped or some order like all death row/life in prison inmates will be shot.Of course the situation is complicated by the varied situations in the states.Illinois is in the direct path of fallout from the ICBM fields so surviving Illinois state prison guards would be having a far bigger problem than lets make sure Gacy doesn't escape.In some states the situation might solve itself like Missouri literally wiped off the map alongside any death row/life in prison inmates.Still any speculations on what if any famous criminals from the time period escaped or ended up summarily executed?
 
What do you think happened to famous criminals in this world?Ted Bundy,John Wayne Gacy were at the time on death row and their executions years away.Is it possible they escaped or some order like all death row/life in prison inmates will be shot.Of course the situation is complicated by the varied situations in the states.Illinois is in the direct path of fallout from the ICBM fields so surviving Illinois state prison guards would be having a far bigger problem than lets make sure Gacy doesn't escape.In some states the situation might solve itself like Missouri literally wiped off the map alongside any death row/life in prison inmates.Still any speculations on what if any famous criminals from the time period escaped or ended up summarily executed?

While I cringe at the thought of it, I imagine that surviving prison guards would, in the name of self protection and survival or out of vengeance or just to rid society of "vermin" would just shoot & kill surviving violent offender prisoners.
 
Cleveland doesn't have ferry boats. We're not New York. The closest examples would be the ferries in Port Clinton that go to the islands. The two big pleasure cruisers are the Nautica Queen and the Goodtime, but IDK if they were around in '84. The Goodtime I or II might have been around, but no clue. The Queen's rated capacity is 400 people, but I doubt they would use the cruise ships to get out. The Goodtime I is around (Named after the original Goodtime). It was sold and moved to the Islands, but that probably wasn't until late spring 1984. As for radars, Cleveland Center is in Oberlin and they cover a large swath of airspace over the Great Lakes region. Cleveland TRACON covers the arrivals and departures into and out of Hopkins. You also have Burke Lakefront, Cuyahoga County, and Lost Nation airports, all of which are designated reliever airports for Hopkins.

For radio communication, WWWE 1100 AM has 50,000 watts of broadcasting power. Their transmitter in Brecksville should still be working.

Voinovich kills himself (Was that wedding artistic license or did that happen OTL?)? That leaves the mayor position to either the Law Director (I have no fucking clue who it is) or the president of City Council, which is...oh Dear Lord, George Forbes. Depending on who you talk to who was alive at the time, he's either a savior or a primadonna. We'll be fine, and make sure you talk to Jan (JN1) about the effects of HEMP. We have the East 72nd Street Power Plant, multiple fresh water intakes into Lake Erie, four functional airports (IMHO, you save Cleveland, you save at least Cuyahoga County as well. There is a reason why we call it "Greater Cleveland" after all. :p), and manufacturing. If the rural parts of Lorain, Medina, and Geauga Counties are intact, we have farmland as well.

Re the ships: isn't Lake Erie usually frozen in late February?
(And - slight subject change - would that layer of ice protect from contamination the water underneath it?)
 
Re the ships: isn't Lake Erie usually frozen in late February?
(And - slight subject change - would that layer of ice protect from contamination the water underneath it?)

Usually, but when you look at the ice cover plots at that time, Lake Erie's mostly open. Still, the big cruisers would more than likely be in winter storage. Could change that part with people rushing to a Laker wintering across the river from Canal Road and people falling into the river because of the panic. Water is an excellent moderator of radiation and the freshwater intakes go out at least five miles into the lake and into deep water.
 
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