The Four Horsemen: the Nuclear Apocalypse of 1962
- Thread starter Onkel Willie
- Start date
marathag
Banned
Depends on Fallout Patterns, and how Nehru notes how the political winds have shifted, with the 2nd World all but eliminated. Its possible that India gets full US backing with the Border skirmish going on at the same time as WWIII starts, and rhen quickly ends.
Chapter V: Peace, the Beginning of Nuclear Winter and the Early Reconstruction Era, 1962-1963.
First glimpse into the post-war world.
EDIT: this chapter has received two additional paragraphs concerning the financing of reconstruction, i.e. a money printing rather than debt spending based economic policy.
At nine o’clock in the morning on Sunday November 4th 1962, President John F. Kennedy made a solemn nationwide television and radio address, without a doubt the most important national address in history as the country had endured unimaginable death and destruction. The speech started with Kennedy expressing his deepest sympathies with everyone suffering from the effects of the war and assured them that help was on the way. In the next part of his speech he affirmed all the rumours of the cities that had been destroyed, almost fifty in total in North America, taking away the hopes of millions of Americans that their loved ones might still be alive. Though an exact number was difficult to give with incomplete and unverified information as well as destruction of records, the President explained that an estimated 30 million Americans had died. It was the greatest loss of life in national history, but Kennedy concluded his speech with hope and determination: “This loss is gigantic, a hundredfold greater than anything we could ever have imagined before the beginning of this war war, scarcely more than one week ago. What you’ve endured is beyond belief. This is not an easy thing to say, but the suffering isn’t over. Many difficult months, probably even years, are ahead of us, and yet I have faith that this great nation will not only survive this catastrophe but will endure and rise again through the joint effort of us all. This country will be back on its feet before this decade is out.”
After his national address from the provisional capital of St. Louis, Missouri, Kennedy imposed martial law for several reasons. The main reason was that widespread looting, rioting and general lawlessness gripped major parts of the country, with local authorities unable to restore order. Besides the looting, people looked after their own, robbing and stealing from others or demanding forced labour, sexual favours or some other form of cooperation with or submission to criminal acts for food or protection. It was every man for himself, and the murder rate skyrocketed as food and water became scarce. The surviving remnants of organized crime, chiefly the Italian-American Mafia, as well as religious charlatans quickly took control of this situation while racially motivated violence gripped large parts of the Deep South, which was unacceptable to the government of course. These phenomena are etched into the memories of the people that lived through these times, but it must be said that the majority of Americans in fact looked out for each other and sat tight. The bad, however, is easier remembered than the good.
A prominent racial cult emerged, but in the northwest rather than the south: petty criminal Charles Manson escaped from McNeil Island Corrections Centre, He used his unmatched persuasive charm to establish a little kingdom in the southeast of Washington, the north of Oregon and western Idaho, based on an esoteric, pseudo-intellectual ideology of race war ideas partially drawing on the Book of Revelation as well as Mein Kampf and seasoned with elements drawn from various Asian religions. The cult was completely pyramidal in nature: it solely served the leader with plenty of food, copious material possessions, and innumerable sexual partners. This thinly veiled white supremacist kingdom was suppressed by US military and National Guard units four months into its existence in February 1963. Manson was killed trying to escape. Less organized racial violence continued primarily in the south for much of the sixties, often with Ku Klux Klan involvement. The National Guard was deployed in numbers to restore order.
The Insurrection Act of 1807 empowered the President of the United States to deploy US military and federalized National Guard units in US territory in particular circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder, insurrection and rebellion. More specifically, the Insurrection Act could be invoked under three circumstances: 1) when requested by a state’s legislature, or governor if the legislature cannot be convened, to address an insurrection against that state, 2) to address an insurrection, in any state, which makes it impracticable to enforce the law, or 3) to address an insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy, in any state, which results in the deprivation of Constitutionally secured rights, and where the state is unable, fails, or refuses to protect said rights.
Under the expanded Presidential authority of martial law and the Insurrection Act, US Army and National Guard units were deployed to the hardest hit areas to restore order, in some cases by publicly executing the worst offenders by firing squad or by hanging. These were the last public executions to take place in the US. These troops weren’t just there for repression, however, but also to provide shelter, medical relief, food supplies and clean drinking water to tent cities full of refugees that emerged across the country. These would become a feature of life for another decade. If at all possible, the army and National Guard would restore critical aspects of normal life like electricity, running water, heating and some forms of modern communications like phone lines, radio, television or all of these.
It became clear that the efforts to restore law and order would take months, if not years. Under these circumstances the mid-term elections, originally scheduled for Tuesday November 6th 1962, couldn’t take place because in many cases it was unclear if those with the right to vote had survived or where they were. There were two extremes in the government: some proposed to proceed with the midterms 30 days later than planned while others would see them postponed for a year. A compromise was reached: the elections for the House of Representatives, the Senate and the 35 up for election gubernational seats would be held six months later on Tuesday May 7th 1963. Preceding the election, which took place six months after the war, everything was done to ensure it was a legitimate election. Everyone with an ID that seemed legit could vote. The end result was that the Democrats maintained their dominance in Congress.
The Second Reconstruction Era began, the First Reconstruction Era being the one that followed the Civil War. With martial law still in effect and the need for it clear to everyone, Congress endowed the executive branch with far-reaching powers that would have been seen as unconstitutional or a violation of states’ rights before the war. The cities that had been hit were declared Fallout Zones that no civilians were to enter under any circumstance; military and scientific personnel were to wear NBC suits when they went, and even then only for a maximum of three hours at a time. The radius of such a Fallout Zone was typically 20 miles (32 km), or 30 miles (48 km) for cities that had been hit multiple times like Washington and New York.
Uncle Sam was utilized once again to rally people to reconstruction as well as rationing. To see the country through the coldest winter in living memory the government bought up food stocks at government set prices and distributed it to the populace (attempts to buy food abroad were unsuccessful as harvests failed worldwide and food became a vital commodity, more often than not under government control). Similar to the Victory Gardens of WW I and WW II, any land that was halfway arable (in areas with acceptable radiation levels) was used for farming or raising livestock: waste ground, railway edges, ornamental gardens, lawns, sports fields and golf courses. Rationing was imposed and soup kitchens became a fact a of life. The healthcare sector was put under the direct authority of the government, buying up stocks of medicine for distribution and nationalizing the pharmaceutical sector. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Anthony J. Celebrezze, former Mayor of Cleveland, thusly became one of the most prominent faces of the (second) Reconstruction Era. Despite his best efforts, however, epidemics of typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera and the flu among others erupted in parts of the country, particularly in refugee camps.
The new office of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development was created and Kennedy appointed Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey to this key position. To begin replacing the tent cities full of refugees, Humphrey bought available construction materials at prices fixed by the government. Everyone with experience in construction was given a job building public housing, adding to cities that had survived the war and building completely new ones in areas with safe levels of radiation. To increase the rate of construction, production in non-essential industries was cut down by 75%; and non-violent convicts were offered clemency to increase the workforce. To ensure fairness, new houses were allocated through a lottery so no bribery or preferential treatment could take place. Despite these energetic efforts at damage control, over 1 million Americans died of famine in the winter of 1962-’63. The next winter would see no more mass death in the United States, but people would have to wait until the end of the decade for a semblance of normalcy to return. Much the same applied to America’s northern neighbour Canada, where the government organized relief in much the same way as the US from the temporary capital of Calgary.
This required debt spending, but that was hard to do as the banking system of the northern hemisphere was gone. There were very few banks, if any, to borrow money from to engage in debt spending in the north and what would be borrowed from banks in the southern hemisphere wasn’t going to cut it. The USA transitioned from a debt economy to a money printing economy based on the controversial doctrine of Modern Monetary Theory, something that was likely to result in hyperinflation under normal circumstances. Modern Monetary Theory argues, in short, that a government can finance any budget deficit by de facto monetization and hence have no monetary limits. In the event of a genuine national emergency like nuclear war, the government spends first, the central bank assists, and the mess is sorted out when the emergency is over. The issue of inflation was dealt with through raised interests and higher taxes to reduce the private sector’s ability to spend money. The US still had enough natural resources, a more than sufficient industrial base and plenty of human capital to internationally enforce the newly minted dollars (never mind military and diplomatic power) backed by reduced but still existent economic value, in exchange for the goods and services, machinery and talent that it required for development.
This pissed off plenty of countries who had to accept these devalued dollars, but the alternative was the US bankrupting itself to finance reconstruction, which would continue economic suffering. Particularly leftist political parties and regimes denounced the Americans as “capitalist robbers”, but being robbed was apparently preferable to the largest economy tanking completely. This situation persisted into the mid to late 70s when a new equilibrium was established in the banking world: Australia, Brazil, China, India, Iran, New Zealand, South Africa, Yugoslavia and Zaire were fast becoming the new great powers and established a banking system replacing that of the Old World. Singapore would become the new Switzerland in this system. At the end of the seventies, a transition back to normal debt spending was made.
In Cuba, all order had collapsed in more ways than one. The military had disintegrated in the fight against the Americans once the nuclear phase had begun, with units retreating from affected areas and soldiers deserting in droves. Similarly, the authorities collapsed as they couldn’t handle all the sick, wounded and displaced. The Americans set up an occupational authority composed primarily of Cuban Americans that had fled the country after the Cuban Revolution. Though political convictions differed, the Cuban Americans leading the National Transitional Council had one thing in common: anti-communism. This set the country up for a civil war as Castro led an insurgency against “the American occupiers and their fascist puppets.” The difference was that Castro now lacked foreign backers.
Germany had seen sixty to seventy nuclear detonations, ranging from low kiloton range tactical nuclear weapons to multimegaton city busting strategic nuclear weapons. This had reduced the country to an immense blackened dead zone with most major cities gone and surviving undamaged pockets concentrated around smaller towns, villages and hamlets. Three fifths of the pre-war population of 74 million of West and East Germany combined, almost 45 million people, had died. Millions of survivors became homeless and would die of cold, hunger or radiation sickness. The surviving city of Aachen became the provisional capital of Germany, but the German government could exercise little to no influence on what happened beyond the relatively undamaged pocket around this city. In Germany, the post-war years are remembered as a time in which the Germans became each other’s enemies. Those who had nothing took what they could while those who had something tried to protect it, in both cases at all costs. It got to the point that towns built walls like in medieval times to keep people out, and along with those walls came neo-feudal style rule with people working for the protection of a local strongman. A nuance, must, however be made: most Germans were not in fact like this and simply sat tight, awaiting what was going to happen. Millions more would die the next few years.
Over the next thirty years, the government would try with great difficulty to unite the pockets and re-establish something resembling a country. As radiation levels subsided at the end of the decade, more and more people were sent out to cultivate any land that was somewhat arable. Postal services were re-established in 1965, albeit under military control and protection as postmen – often on bicycle or horseback as motorized vehicles were in short supply – were vulnerable to bands of marauders who didn’t hesitate to kill for as little as a slice of bread or a flask of clean drinking water (some of these roaming bands consisted of ex-military). Re-establishing communications in Germany and bringing news of the outside world were a tentative first step. Germany, despite the monstrous damage it had suffered, would not vanish quietly into the night.
Britain had seen the destruction of almost three dozen major cities including, most prominently, London, Dover, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as smaller towns that had the misfortune of being located close to a military base. Some of these were hit by multiple missile strikes. Like in the US, all the affected cities became no-go areas for civilians. The historical city of York was selected as the new capital and from there Prime Minister Macmillan enacted policies similar to Kennedy’s in the US, but he too was unable to prevent a famine in his country despite rationing being in place and the reintroduction of Victory Gardens. France was in a similar position, also losing three dozen cities (most of them in northern France) that included Paris. The government relocated to Marseille and began preparing for an influx of refugees from northern France fleeing to the remarkably well-off south. Italy had seen half a dozen megaton range nuclear strikes concentrated in Apulia to take out the American Jupiter missiles stationed there and Rome, Naples and Milan had been destroyed too. The government in Florence started to rebuild while struggling against the resurgent Cosa Nostra and tensions that threatened to create a north-south split. Meanwhile, the Church had to organize a Papal conclave. Pope John XXIII had sought safety in the catacombs below St. Peter, but those hadn’t protected him. The conclave took place in Santiago de Compostela in Spain and the conservative Cardinal Giuseppe Siri was elected. He would reign as Pope Gregory XVII until his death in 1989. He was instrumental in securing what little aid the predominantly Catholic Latin American countries were able to give (whilst not suffering from physical damage, except for Cuba and Panama, the nuclear winter affected their harvests too).
In general the situation in western European countries was similar: they had their capitals destroyed and several other major cities (like Antwerp in Belgium and Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands), but survived with great difficulty. Of all the European capitals, Berlin was the only exception because neither side would risk hitting its own troops with a nuke. It was an island in a sea of scorched black earth. Neutral Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Finland and Yugoslavia were best off, but struggled with food shortages as well as refugees and resulting flareups of xenophobic nationalism. This time, no aid from the US would be forthcoming as the Americans had their own problems.
The Warsaw Pact states were just as bad or worse off. The bombs had stopped falling as all of them had offered to surrender unconditionally if the bombing stopped, which was enough for the US to agree to peace. Poland had seen two dozen nuclear strikes concentrating on targets along the river Vistula to cut off logistics to Soviet forces attacking the West from East Germany and Czechoslovakia, resulting in the destruction of Warsaw, Krakow and other cities, as well as dozens of nuclear strikes in the rest of the country. Czechoslovakia’s Czech half had been saturated with nuclear weapons to obliterate Soviet forces invading West Germany from there, prompting the Slovak half of the country to secede. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had seen their capitals destroyed, but were better off than their heavily damaged allies Poland and Czechoslovakia and East Germany, the latter of which had been annihilated. All former Warsaw Pact countries signed peace treaties with the West in neutral Geneva, except for the Soviet Union as initially no-one could be found with enough authority to sign on their behalf. It wouldn’t take long for ethnic strife to break out as Eastern European countries were no longer kept in line by Moscow. Old rivalries resurfaced. Within a year, Hungary would be fighting with Romania over the suppression of ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania in a bloody internecine war.
The Soviet Union had ceased to exist and no longer had a government able to communicate with the outside world. About 20 million people, less than 10% of the pre-war population of 215 million, had survived, most of those in Siberia and Central Asia as the heaviest hit parts were those west of the Ural Mountains. Half of these survivors would die in the next few years. Any semblance of central authority and law and order was gone and the country became one of countless warlords running their own fiefdoms and defending what little weapons, territory, shelter, food, water and medicine they possessed and having people work for access to them. The Russian Warlord Era began: some would stick to communism, others would return to Christian Orthodoxy and nationalism, death cults emerged, even more were based on plain old greed, some warlords were benign despots and others tyrants.
After months of searching, the Americans nonetheless located someone who could act as a representative of the USSR. The commander of the Siberian Military District, Colonel General Gleb Vladimirovich Baklanov, was the highest ranking Soviet official that could be found in a bunker above the arctic circle, near a small surviving fishing town. After radio contact through Morse code, he agreed to meet the Americans in February 1963. In the extremely cold winter American battleship USS New Jersey made her way through the polar ice preceded by an icebreaker and on Sunday February 17th a helicopter that had picked up Baklanov landed on the battleship’s aft deck. Along the way, he’d seen the blackened ash heaps that used to be Soviet cities and towns and this left him severely depressed, knowing all of his family and friends were most likely dead or dying. After signing the Soviet Instrument of Surrender in the presence of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Baklanov withdrew to his quarters. At sunrise the next morning he was found dead in his bunk as he had committed suicide with a cyanide capsule; he was given a burial at sea with military honours. He left behind a suicide note, which would be put on display in the National World War III Remembrance Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. The world was at peace and America was left as the sole superpower after winning the Cold War, but at a terrible price.
EDIT: this chapter has received two additional paragraphs concerning the financing of reconstruction, i.e. a money printing rather than debt spending based economic policy.
Chapter V: Peace, the Beginning of Nuclear Winter and the Early Reconstruction Era, 1962-1963.
At nine o’clock in the morning on Sunday November 4th 1962, President John F. Kennedy made a solemn nationwide television and radio address, without a doubt the most important national address in history as the country had endured unimaginable death and destruction. The speech started with Kennedy expressing his deepest sympathies with everyone suffering from the effects of the war and assured them that help was on the way. In the next part of his speech he affirmed all the rumours of the cities that had been destroyed, almost fifty in total in North America, taking away the hopes of millions of Americans that their loved ones might still be alive. Though an exact number was difficult to give with incomplete and unverified information as well as destruction of records, the President explained that an estimated 30 million Americans had died. It was the greatest loss of life in national history, but Kennedy concluded his speech with hope and determination: “This loss is gigantic, a hundredfold greater than anything we could ever have imagined before the beginning of this war war, scarcely more than one week ago. What you’ve endured is beyond belief. This is not an easy thing to say, but the suffering isn’t over. Many difficult months, probably even years, are ahead of us, and yet I have faith that this great nation will not only survive this catastrophe but will endure and rise again through the joint effort of us all. This country will be back on its feet before this decade is out.”
After his national address from the provisional capital of St. Louis, Missouri, Kennedy imposed martial law for several reasons. The main reason was that widespread looting, rioting and general lawlessness gripped major parts of the country, with local authorities unable to restore order. Besides the looting, people looked after their own, robbing and stealing from others or demanding forced labour, sexual favours or some other form of cooperation with or submission to criminal acts for food or protection. It was every man for himself, and the murder rate skyrocketed as food and water became scarce. The surviving remnants of organized crime, chiefly the Italian-American Mafia, as well as religious charlatans quickly took control of this situation while racially motivated violence gripped large parts of the Deep South, which was unacceptable to the government of course. These phenomena are etched into the memories of the people that lived through these times, but it must be said that the majority of Americans in fact looked out for each other and sat tight. The bad, however, is easier remembered than the good.
A prominent racial cult emerged, but in the northwest rather than the south: petty criminal Charles Manson escaped from McNeil Island Corrections Centre, He used his unmatched persuasive charm to establish a little kingdom in the southeast of Washington, the north of Oregon and western Idaho, based on an esoteric, pseudo-intellectual ideology of race war ideas partially drawing on the Book of Revelation as well as Mein Kampf and seasoned with elements drawn from various Asian religions. The cult was completely pyramidal in nature: it solely served the leader with plenty of food, copious material possessions, and innumerable sexual partners. This thinly veiled white supremacist kingdom was suppressed by US military and National Guard units four months into its existence in February 1963. Manson was killed trying to escape. Less organized racial violence continued primarily in the south for much of the sixties, often with Ku Klux Klan involvement. The National Guard was deployed in numbers to restore order.
The Insurrection Act of 1807 empowered the President of the United States to deploy US military and federalized National Guard units in US territory in particular circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder, insurrection and rebellion. More specifically, the Insurrection Act could be invoked under three circumstances: 1) when requested by a state’s legislature, or governor if the legislature cannot be convened, to address an insurrection against that state, 2) to address an insurrection, in any state, which makes it impracticable to enforce the law, or 3) to address an insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy, in any state, which results in the deprivation of Constitutionally secured rights, and where the state is unable, fails, or refuses to protect said rights.
Under the expanded Presidential authority of martial law and the Insurrection Act, US Army and National Guard units were deployed to the hardest hit areas to restore order, in some cases by publicly executing the worst offenders by firing squad or by hanging. These were the last public executions to take place in the US. These troops weren’t just there for repression, however, but also to provide shelter, medical relief, food supplies and clean drinking water to tent cities full of refugees that emerged across the country. These would become a feature of life for another decade. If at all possible, the army and National Guard would restore critical aspects of normal life like electricity, running water, heating and some forms of modern communications like phone lines, radio, television or all of these.
It became clear that the efforts to restore law and order would take months, if not years. Under these circumstances the mid-term elections, originally scheduled for Tuesday November 6th 1962, couldn’t take place because in many cases it was unclear if those with the right to vote had survived or where they were. There were two extremes in the government: some proposed to proceed with the midterms 30 days later than planned while others would see them postponed for a year. A compromise was reached: the elections for the House of Representatives, the Senate and the 35 up for election gubernational seats would be held six months later on Tuesday May 7th 1963. Preceding the election, which took place six months after the war, everything was done to ensure it was a legitimate election. Everyone with an ID that seemed legit could vote. The end result was that the Democrats maintained their dominance in Congress.
The Second Reconstruction Era began, the First Reconstruction Era being the one that followed the Civil War. With martial law still in effect and the need for it clear to everyone, Congress endowed the executive branch with far-reaching powers that would have been seen as unconstitutional or a violation of states’ rights before the war. The cities that had been hit were declared Fallout Zones that no civilians were to enter under any circumstance; military and scientific personnel were to wear NBC suits when they went, and even then only for a maximum of three hours at a time. The radius of such a Fallout Zone was typically 20 miles (32 km), or 30 miles (48 km) for cities that had been hit multiple times like Washington and New York.
Uncle Sam was utilized once again to rally people to reconstruction as well as rationing. To see the country through the coldest winter in living memory the government bought up food stocks at government set prices and distributed it to the populace (attempts to buy food abroad were unsuccessful as harvests failed worldwide and food became a vital commodity, more often than not under government control). Similar to the Victory Gardens of WW I and WW II, any land that was halfway arable (in areas with acceptable radiation levels) was used for farming or raising livestock: waste ground, railway edges, ornamental gardens, lawns, sports fields and golf courses. Rationing was imposed and soup kitchens became a fact a of life. The healthcare sector was put under the direct authority of the government, buying up stocks of medicine for distribution and nationalizing the pharmaceutical sector. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Anthony J. Celebrezze, former Mayor of Cleveland, thusly became one of the most prominent faces of the (second) Reconstruction Era. Despite his best efforts, however, epidemics of typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera and the flu among others erupted in parts of the country, particularly in refugee camps.
The new office of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development was created and Kennedy appointed Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey to this key position. To begin replacing the tent cities full of refugees, Humphrey bought available construction materials at prices fixed by the government. Everyone with experience in construction was given a job building public housing, adding to cities that had survived the war and building completely new ones in areas with safe levels of radiation. To increase the rate of construction, production in non-essential industries was cut down by 75%; and non-violent convicts were offered clemency to increase the workforce. To ensure fairness, new houses were allocated through a lottery so no bribery or preferential treatment could take place. Despite these energetic efforts at damage control, over 1 million Americans died of famine in the winter of 1962-’63. The next winter would see no more mass death in the United States, but people would have to wait until the end of the decade for a semblance of normalcy to return. Much the same applied to America’s northern neighbour Canada, where the government organized relief in much the same way as the US from the temporary capital of Calgary.
This required debt spending, but that was hard to do as the banking system of the northern hemisphere was gone. There were very few banks, if any, to borrow money from to engage in debt spending in the north and what would be borrowed from banks in the southern hemisphere wasn’t going to cut it. The USA transitioned from a debt economy to a money printing economy based on the controversial doctrine of Modern Monetary Theory, something that was likely to result in hyperinflation under normal circumstances. Modern Monetary Theory argues, in short, that a government can finance any budget deficit by de facto monetization and hence have no monetary limits. In the event of a genuine national emergency like nuclear war, the government spends first, the central bank assists, and the mess is sorted out when the emergency is over. The issue of inflation was dealt with through raised interests and higher taxes to reduce the private sector’s ability to spend money. The US still had enough natural resources, a more than sufficient industrial base and plenty of human capital to internationally enforce the newly minted dollars (never mind military and diplomatic power) backed by reduced but still existent economic value, in exchange for the goods and services, machinery and talent that it required for development.
This pissed off plenty of countries who had to accept these devalued dollars, but the alternative was the US bankrupting itself to finance reconstruction, which would continue economic suffering. Particularly leftist political parties and regimes denounced the Americans as “capitalist robbers”, but being robbed was apparently preferable to the largest economy tanking completely. This situation persisted into the mid to late 70s when a new equilibrium was established in the banking world: Australia, Brazil, China, India, Iran, New Zealand, South Africa, Yugoslavia and Zaire were fast becoming the new great powers and established a banking system replacing that of the Old World. Singapore would become the new Switzerland in this system. At the end of the seventies, a transition back to normal debt spending was made.
In Cuba, all order had collapsed in more ways than one. The military had disintegrated in the fight against the Americans once the nuclear phase had begun, with units retreating from affected areas and soldiers deserting in droves. Similarly, the authorities collapsed as they couldn’t handle all the sick, wounded and displaced. The Americans set up an occupational authority composed primarily of Cuban Americans that had fled the country after the Cuban Revolution. Though political convictions differed, the Cuban Americans leading the National Transitional Council had one thing in common: anti-communism. This set the country up for a civil war as Castro led an insurgency against “the American occupiers and their fascist puppets.” The difference was that Castro now lacked foreign backers.
Germany had seen sixty to seventy nuclear detonations, ranging from low kiloton range tactical nuclear weapons to multimegaton city busting strategic nuclear weapons. This had reduced the country to an immense blackened dead zone with most major cities gone and surviving undamaged pockets concentrated around smaller towns, villages and hamlets. Three fifths of the pre-war population of 74 million of West and East Germany combined, almost 45 million people, had died. Millions of survivors became homeless and would die of cold, hunger or radiation sickness. The surviving city of Aachen became the provisional capital of Germany, but the German government could exercise little to no influence on what happened beyond the relatively undamaged pocket around this city. In Germany, the post-war years are remembered as a time in which the Germans became each other’s enemies. Those who had nothing took what they could while those who had something tried to protect it, in both cases at all costs. It got to the point that towns built walls like in medieval times to keep people out, and along with those walls came neo-feudal style rule with people working for the protection of a local strongman. A nuance, must, however be made: most Germans were not in fact like this and simply sat tight, awaiting what was going to happen. Millions more would die the next few years.
Over the next thirty years, the government would try with great difficulty to unite the pockets and re-establish something resembling a country. As radiation levels subsided at the end of the decade, more and more people were sent out to cultivate any land that was somewhat arable. Postal services were re-established in 1965, albeit under military control and protection as postmen – often on bicycle or horseback as motorized vehicles were in short supply – were vulnerable to bands of marauders who didn’t hesitate to kill for as little as a slice of bread or a flask of clean drinking water (some of these roaming bands consisted of ex-military). Re-establishing communications in Germany and bringing news of the outside world were a tentative first step. Germany, despite the monstrous damage it had suffered, would not vanish quietly into the night.
Britain had seen the destruction of almost three dozen major cities including, most prominently, London, Dover, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as smaller towns that had the misfortune of being located close to a military base. Some of these were hit by multiple missile strikes. Like in the US, all the affected cities became no-go areas for civilians. The historical city of York was selected as the new capital and from there Prime Minister Macmillan enacted policies similar to Kennedy’s in the US, but he too was unable to prevent a famine in his country despite rationing being in place and the reintroduction of Victory Gardens. France was in a similar position, also losing three dozen cities (most of them in northern France) that included Paris. The government relocated to Marseille and began preparing for an influx of refugees from northern France fleeing to the remarkably well-off south. Italy had seen half a dozen megaton range nuclear strikes concentrated in Apulia to take out the American Jupiter missiles stationed there and Rome, Naples and Milan had been destroyed too. The government in Florence started to rebuild while struggling against the resurgent Cosa Nostra and tensions that threatened to create a north-south split. Meanwhile, the Church had to organize a Papal conclave. Pope John XXIII had sought safety in the catacombs below St. Peter, but those hadn’t protected him. The conclave took place in Santiago de Compostela in Spain and the conservative Cardinal Giuseppe Siri was elected. He would reign as Pope Gregory XVII until his death in 1989. He was instrumental in securing what little aid the predominantly Catholic Latin American countries were able to give (whilst not suffering from physical damage, except for Cuba and Panama, the nuclear winter affected their harvests too).
In general the situation in western European countries was similar: they had their capitals destroyed and several other major cities (like Antwerp in Belgium and Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands), but survived with great difficulty. Of all the European capitals, Berlin was the only exception because neither side would risk hitting its own troops with a nuke. It was an island in a sea of scorched black earth. Neutral Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Finland and Yugoslavia were best off, but struggled with food shortages as well as refugees and resulting flareups of xenophobic nationalism. This time, no aid from the US would be forthcoming as the Americans had their own problems.
The Warsaw Pact states were just as bad or worse off. The bombs had stopped falling as all of them had offered to surrender unconditionally if the bombing stopped, which was enough for the US to agree to peace. Poland had seen two dozen nuclear strikes concentrating on targets along the river Vistula to cut off logistics to Soviet forces attacking the West from East Germany and Czechoslovakia, resulting in the destruction of Warsaw, Krakow and other cities, as well as dozens of nuclear strikes in the rest of the country. Czechoslovakia’s Czech half had been saturated with nuclear weapons to obliterate Soviet forces invading West Germany from there, prompting the Slovak half of the country to secede. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had seen their capitals destroyed, but were better off than their heavily damaged allies Poland and Czechoslovakia and East Germany, the latter of which had been annihilated. All former Warsaw Pact countries signed peace treaties with the West in neutral Geneva, except for the Soviet Union as initially no-one could be found with enough authority to sign on their behalf. It wouldn’t take long for ethnic strife to break out as Eastern European countries were no longer kept in line by Moscow. Old rivalries resurfaced. Within a year, Hungary would be fighting with Romania over the suppression of ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania in a bloody internecine war.
The Soviet Union had ceased to exist and no longer had a government able to communicate with the outside world. About 20 million people, less than 10% of the pre-war population of 215 million, had survived, most of those in Siberia and Central Asia as the heaviest hit parts were those west of the Ural Mountains. Half of these survivors would die in the next few years. Any semblance of central authority and law and order was gone and the country became one of countless warlords running their own fiefdoms and defending what little weapons, territory, shelter, food, water and medicine they possessed and having people work for access to them. The Russian Warlord Era began: some would stick to communism, others would return to Christian Orthodoxy and nationalism, death cults emerged, even more were based on plain old greed, some warlords were benign despots and others tyrants.
After months of searching, the Americans nonetheless located someone who could act as a representative of the USSR. The commander of the Siberian Military District, Colonel General Gleb Vladimirovich Baklanov, was the highest ranking Soviet official that could be found in a bunker above the arctic circle, near a small surviving fishing town. After radio contact through Morse code, he agreed to meet the Americans in February 1963. In the extremely cold winter American battleship USS New Jersey made her way through the polar ice preceded by an icebreaker and on Sunday February 17th a helicopter that had picked up Baklanov landed on the battleship’s aft deck. Along the way, he’d seen the blackened ash heaps that used to be Soviet cities and towns and this left him severely depressed, knowing all of his family and friends were most likely dead or dying. After signing the Soviet Instrument of Surrender in the presence of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Baklanov withdrew to his quarters. At sunrise the next morning he was found dead in his bunk as he had committed suicide with a cyanide capsule; he was given a burial at sea with military honours. He left behind a suicide note, which would be put on display in the National World War III Remembrance Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. The world was at peace and America was left as the sole superpower after winning the Cold War, but at a terrible price.
Last edited:
The end of the Cold War has led to the start of the Cold World sounds like fun times ahead for what is left of the Russians not much better for the rest of Europe, or the USA for that matter.
Irvine
Banned
H
How is Latin America? Brazil is probably the country with the best food situation right now, compared with the others.
Wouldn't they have been out of range for Soviet bombers?
As for Canada, climate effects of nuclear notwithstanding, it appears the prairies had been spared any direct hits. Wonder what that will mean for food production farther down the line.
Any Nazis or Fascists, original or belonging to the new generation, causing trouble in Europe?
Not only those. It would have been hit with its own bomb. There was a bunker in Holgate. It was for monitoring fallout but would still probably have been a target.
Guess Nasser and his fellow third world socialists need a new backer now that the USSR is an irradiated wasteland.
I a bit surprise that Latin America besides two countries wasn't really hit. You think someone were remember to hit their major cities too.
At least the USA won the cold war. Through the Chinese are still mostly in intact. Weird that John were removed them from the target list.
At least the USA won the cold war. Through the Chinese are still mostly in intact. Weird that John were removed them from the target list.
At that time, the USSR didn't have anything to reach Latin America. They had few ICBMs so they had to aim those to the USA and the bombers didn't have the range for even a one way trip (and they'd also need all of them to hit the USA as hard as possible)